Smart home devices are becoming popular in recent years and many brands are coming up with their own smart home solutions. On similar lines to increase compatibility among smart home products, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Zigbee Alliance have now announced a working group to develop and adopt a royalty-free connectivity standard.
The new open standard is named Project Connected Home over IP and it aims to enable communication across smart home devices, cloud services, and mobile apps. This project’s goal seems pretty straight forward as its goal is to increase compatibility across smart home devices and companies with security and this is based upon an open-sourced approach.
For the development of Project Connected Home over IP, a number of companies including IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (it was formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian are onboard. With the new connectivity standard, it will be easier for companies to build products that are compatible with existing voice services like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and more.
It is to be seen how manufacturers will make use of this open connectivity standard and increase compatibility in their future products, and as more companies join, it will be beneficial for consumers.
The project aims to make it easier for device manufacturers to build devices that are compatible with smart home and voice services such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, and others. The planned protocol will complement existing technologies, and working group members encourage device manufacturers to continue innovating using technologies available today. Project Connected Home over IP welcomes device manufacturers, silicon providers, and other developers from across the smart home industry to participate in and contribute to the standard.