I’ve been leary of crowdfunding campaigns after being severly underwhelmed at final products.
This project recently announced that Smartthings would be integrated at the $200k stretch goal.
What could be interesting is that this product is supposed to be presence for multiple people, As well as a video camera, and other sensors.
What do you guys think? Is a Device that has the capability to tell who’s currently in the room worth it? I know I’m interested in just that, but I question whether that information would actually make it to ST.
It is ugly but the software behind it looks interesting. The mock up camera images don’t look like “wide angle” to me, more like a 6mm or 8mm lens. I suppose you need a narrow focal length to reliably do facial recognition, though. The automation potential is more interesting than yet-another-IP-camera, anyway.
Looking at what they haven shown for their API, even if they don’t do the ST integration themselves it shouldn’t be that difficult for a developer to integrate the signals from the device with their own endpoints.
This one is based on a combination of a camera doing facial recognition plus a Bluetooth device. They don’t even have a prototype built yet, as they say on the kickstarter page. So right now it’s all just marketing.
Many people are interested in microlocation. There are two big challenges. One) do you have to carry a device with you everywhere you go? And two) how do you define a room? Most technologies, including, by the way, Bluetooth, go right through walls. So the system can’t really tell whether you’re in the living room, The hallway next-door, or even the bedroom one floor up.
The silk project does require you to carry the Bluetooth device with you and doesn’t seem to have even addressed the issue of defining a room space. also, their cute video has stuff being triggered by a baby in a carrier seat and I’m pretty sure you’re not going to get facial recognition off of that. (Like I said, marketing.)
Many people think we’ll eventually get to a smart house that can detect heartbeats and tell people apart on that basis. That removes the requirement of carrying anything. You still have to be able to define a room space though.
Also, you have to be able to define a room space without interfering with other home automation that works. That’s actually kind of a big deal. There are some good micro location systems used by warehouses, but they would
At present, zuli is doing some of the most interesting work. They can define a room space although it does require three devices to do so. But you still have to be carrying your phone with you. And while it does the microlocation well, the home automation part has a lot of problems because it’s all based on Bluetooth so your phone has to be within range of the device being controlled.
Somebody will eventually solve this. I don’t think silk is going to be the one, though. But who knows what they’ll actually deliver, you can never tell from the pre-announcements.