IKEA's Electrifying New Furniture

Ah, IKEA. A modern day miracle from Sweden, where little more than the loose change from in between your couch cushions can buy you yet another couch. But IKEA isn't known for their technology, or their home automation abilities. But that might be changing soon.

IKEA has announced that this Spring, they will start selling a new line of furniture with wireless charging built in. That means that you'll be able to buy a nightstand from IKEA with a special pad on it, and if you rest your phone on that pad, it will charge. No wires, no connectors. It's not just nightstands either, you'll be able to get full on tables and lamps with chargers built in, or just the pad itself to rest on other, non-charging furniture.

This is a pretty big move for IKEA, and a big win for the wireless charging industry. But there are a few things to consider before you run out to your local blue and yellow behemoth and pick one of these things up. First of all, the furniture uses the Qi wireless charging standard, one of the most popular standards out there. That's all well and good, but not every phone supports it. There are a handful of android devices that do, but some of them have their own proprietary charging standards. And Apple devices don't support wireless charging at all, unless you buy a bulky case with the receivers built in.

So while this is absolutely a cool idea, it's really only cool for the handful of people with compatible devices. But just wait, wireless charging will undoubtably catch on faster, now that IKEA is behind it.

Your Suggestions: Nest Thermostat

I was curious to see what all of you out there thought of home automation, specifically, why you want it. So I took to the Smart Porch Facebook page (if you haven't like it yet, there's an easy way to fix that) and asked you. One response I got stood out at me, specifically a message that popped up in my inbox from RJ. Apparently he had so much to say, he didn't want to limit it to a comment, and he didn't disappoint:

"I'm saying money's the big reason I want all this stuff. I've seen that new thermostat with the touchscreen at home depot, the big round one? And they were saying if you install it, it saves you a couple hundred bucks on your heating every year. It just sucks because the thing costs like three hundred by itself. Spend money to save money, and all that."

All good points made, RJ. The Nest Thermostat is a beautiful piece of hardware, actually designed by the same man that designed the iPod. Nothing but a round touchscreen and a big dial that's oddly satisfying to spin. And RJ's right, they do claim to be able to save quite a bit on your heating and cooling bill. But how exactly does it do it?

Well, to start with, Nest is dead simple to use. You spin the dial to the temperature you want. If it gets too hot, turn it down. Too cold, turn it up. After a few days of playing with it, it starts to learn what settings you like at specific times of day. Like it colder at night? It will notice, and start automatically cooling the house when it gets dark.

Not only that, but Nest also has motion sensors that can tell when you've left the house. So if you're usually gone for work from 9-5 each weekday, it won't worry about keeping the house comfortable while you're gone. But it will make sure to have it comfy for you when you get back.

Nest is one of the first home automation products I've seen that is genuinely cool looking from every angle, and I would love to have one for myself. But with a price tag of $249, it's tricky to invest in one, even if it claims to pay for itself in savings on your electrical bill. And that's the problem, RJ is absolutely right: You have to spend money to save money, and that's never been truer than it is in home automation.

Is There an Amazon Echo In Here?

Home automation is usually thought of as a complete system, wired throughout the home. Multiple pieces all working together in perfect harmony. That's often the case, but it doesn't always have to be. The Amazon Echo is an example of a type of home automation that, while basic, only requires one device.

At its core, Echo is a bluetooth speaker. It's a tall cylinder that sits in the middle of your home, on a table or shelf. The trick is that it connects to your home's Wi-Fi network, as well as your smartphone, and listens to you. Sounds creepy, doesn't it? Well, it kind of is, but it's kind of cool too. All it's listening for is a trigger word, either "Amazon" or "Alexa." When it hears its name called, it wakes up and starts taking voice commands, very much like Siri or Google Now on your iPhone or Android.

So what can it do? Pretty much everything you'd expect from something like Siri. Set alarms, play music, create to-dos, tell you the weather, etc. Nothing all that fancy. In fact, I would personally wonder what the big difference is between something like this and your smartphone, apart from the fact that you have to press a button on your phone to trigger the voice commands. Even that's a stretch, as the iPhone will listen for the phrase "Hey Siri" if it's plugged in.

The bottom line is, the Echo is just a glorified smartphone with a bluetooth speaker attached to it. There's every been some speculation that the Echo is just reusing parts from the unsold Amazon Fire Phones, which haven't exactly been flying off the shelves. Still, it's an interesting idea, especially if it were to be integrated into other home automation systems in the future.

Linq Smart Vents on Kickstarter

The results of home automation are glamorous. They make our homes seem like something out of a sci-fi novel, adapting to our every whim and anticipating our every move. The actual pieces that create that effect however, are often anything but glamorous. Strange sensors embedded in walls, wires running every which way. Light switches, door hardware, it's all very boring stuff we tend to try not to think about. And there's a new home automation product on Kickstarter that's going one step further: The Linq Smart Vents.

These devices aim to replace the vents attached to your AC and heating system. A very un-glamorous part that we never think about. But, like many of the stranger home automation devices out there, what they do is really interesting.

All AC vents have switches that allow you to open and close them, giving each room of your house more or less air. In my house, we typically use that vent once or twice a year, maximum. It's kind of a pain to adjust, and I usually never think about it. The Linq system can also open and close, allowing more or less air into a room. But it can do it via a battery powered motor, controlled by a hub. And it can do it automatically.

Why would you want this? It may not be obvious at first, but think about it. You're only ever using one or two rooms of your home at once. Yet your AC system is heating or cooling the entire house. Why should it? That's wasted money. Linq has built in motion and temperature sensors that can detect which rooms you're actively using at any given moment, directing airflow to those rooms while cutting off the others. It focuses your AC's efforts, and based on their studies, saves you a boatload of cash.

It had better save you cash, because it's going to cost quite a bit to get into this system. A package on Kickstarter with just four cents is $350, with each extra vent after that costing another $50. But you have to admit, for such a weird part of your home, it's pretty darn cool, no?

WeMo Setup

When it comes to home automation, there's one big barrier to entry: It's complicated. Even the most basic of smart devices can make a huge impact on someone's day to day life, but if it's too difficult to set up, forget it. It's never going to happen. That's why I'm very pleased to see companies like Belkin start to lean towards simplicity in their product design, especially the WeMo line. WeMo may not be the most powerful home automation tool out there, but when it comes to easy setup, it can't be beat.

The WeMo outlet switch is Belkin's most basic offering. It looks almost like an old timer you would plug into a wall to turn a light on and off at specific times. And in essence, that's exactly what it is, except you trigger the lights with your phone, not tiny plastic clips. To hook it up, you just plug the switch into the wall, and then plug your light you want to control into the switch.






The next, and final step, is to hook the WeMo switch up to your WiFi. To do this, you first install the WeMo app on your phone, and launch it. It walks you through the process of connecting to the switch, linking it to your home network, and setting up any rules you want to use to control the switch.

After that, you're done. The only thing that makes WeMo slightly annoying is that you have to start
the setup process completely over for each switch you set up. That can be quite tedious if you have a lot of switches in your house. Still, it's one of the simplest solutions out there for home automation, even if it's not the most powerful.

If This, Then... What?

If you were to ask me what I think the whole point of home automation is, I would say it's "To make things around your house do what you want, without asking." The way you typically do this is by creating rules in your home automation system, just like you do in an email client. For example, just like you might say anything from a particular email address is automatically filed in a certain folder, you could say that a particular light in your house goes on whenever a room gets too dark.

The issue is that a lot of home automation systems won't talk to each other. So if you have one brand of sensor, and another brand of smart power outlet, the two devices probably won't talk to each other, because the two brands aren't friendly with each other. So you're left with two choices: Stick with one brand of smart devices, which is fairly limiting, or find a middle man technology to bridge the gap between the two brands.

That's where a delightful service called IFTTT comes in. IFTTT stands for If This Then That, which is basically the rule system we just talked about: If This room is dark, Then That outlet turns on. IFTTT works by adding "Channels," which are different ways of triggering actions, or the actions themselves. The great thing about IFTTT is that it's completely independent from any hardware company, like Belkin or Philips. And many of these companies are including native support for IFTTT in their products. So you can have a WeMo switch control a Philibs Hue bulb.


There are endless possibilities with a system like this. You can have your lights blink every time you get an email, or have your coffee pot turn on when it gets cold. Even if you don't have any smart devices yet, IFTTT is a fantastic service, and you can browse the various recipes people have already made to get some inspiration.

A Truly Universal Remote

Even if you're not all that familiar with home automation, you're almost definitely familiar with home theater. We all have at least a handful of set top boxes, TVs and speaker systems that we've collected to make movie night as spectacular as possible. And for every new device, there's a new remote to control it. If you're a home theater power user, you've probably invested in a universal remote, a special type of remote that can be programmed to control all of your devices at once.

In this day and age, I think it's wrong to call a remote "Universal" if all it controls is your home entertainment system. In the age of the smart home, we have dozens of other devices that a truly universal remote should be able to connect to and control. Enter the new Harmony remote from Logitech.

The Harmony remotes have been around for a while, but only as home theater remotes. These new "Home" remotes have the potential to really revolutionize the way your entire house runs.

The hub itself is nothing all that special compared to other home automation hubs. It's the bridge between all of your smart devices and your phone, tablet, or computer. The only thing unique about the Harmony hub is that it can send intra red signals that can be interpreted by your TV.

The remotes are what I find really interesting. They solve an important problem with home automation on your phone: The touchscreen. Home automation isn't something you should have to think about. When we walk into a room we're familiar with, we can reach for the light switch, feel it, and flick it on, all without turning our head. But if our phone becomes the control panel for our home, we're forced to look at the screen and manually find the virtual button we want to tap.

A physical remote has buttons we can feel without looking, like a physical light switch, except one we can carry with us anywhere. If you ask me, this is a huge step forward for home automation, and an even bigger step forward for the universal remote.