2013 review — three vendors, one annoyed homeowner

End of year — time to take stock. The kit is in three buckets:

Hue (Philips, 5 bulbs now): Zigbee + bridge + local REST + cloud-optional. Reliable, fast, expensive. Best-in-class. No complaints.

Wemo (Belkin, 2 plugs + 1 motion sensor I added in October): WiFi + cloud-required for off-LAN + SOAP/UPnP locally. Works most of the time. Drops off WiFi monthly. The motion sensor's PIR is too aggressive — false positives every time the heater kicks on near it.

IFTTT (cross-vendor): Web-only, 5-15 s latency, cross-vendor unifier of last resort. Cheap. Slow. Acceptable for time-and-location triggers; unacceptable for instant-feedback automations.

What worked this year

• Hue + the local REST API as a self-contained lighting system. App and scripts hit the bridge over the LAN; the bridge drives the bulbs over Zigbee with near-zero latency, no cloud in the loop. The one gap is physical control — there's still no good wall switch or button for Hue, so every change goes through a phone or a script.
• Sunset porch automation. Started as a Python cron, moved to IFTTT. Still works.
• Power telemetry from the Wemo Insight. Useful for "did I leave the iron on" anxiety queries.

What didn't

• Multi-vendor app sprawl. Three apps for one house. The motion-triggers-Hue Recipe through IFTTT misses 1 trigger in 10. Unacceptable for security-class automations (still ahead of me).
• WiFi reliability on cheap devices. Wemo's WiFi stack is a known-bad data point — and I expect the same from every $30 WiFi smart plug landing in 2014.
• No conditionals. "Porch light at sunset, but only if I'm home" is impossible in IFTTT today.

Forecast for 2014

Predictions in approximate order of confidence:

1. The hub becomes the unifier. (Confidence: 90%)

SmartThings (the Kickstarter-funded startup) shipped to backers this summer. Retail launch is rumored for 2014 — possibly Q2 or Q3. Dual-radio (Z-Wave + Zigbee) plus a Groovy SmartApps platform; if they ship to general retail, this is the first credible local-running multi-protocol hub.

2. Amazon ships a voice assistant. (Confidence: 80%)

The rumors of "Amazon Doppler" (voice-activated speaker) have been growing all year. Bezos has been talking publicly about voice. End of 2014 I expect something on shelves.

3. Apple gets serious about smart home — announcement, not necessarily shipping. (Confidence: 70%)

WWDC 2014 (June) is when Apple's smart-home play emerges. Rumored branding: "HomeKit." Will require an MFi (Made for iPhone) authentication chip — meaning vendors must add a $1-2 BOM line item to ship "Works with Apple Home." Apple's play is security-first and walled-garden. Expect announcement at WWDC; first devices Q4 or 2015.

4. Google moves on smart home — acquisition or build. (Confidence: 60%)

Google needs a smart-home strategy. The Motorola Mobility purchase hasn't taken them where they hoped. Whether they buy their way in (Nest is the obvious target — Tony Fadell's design DNA, complementary to Android — but Honeywell and Lowe's would also make sense) or build organically off Android, I expect a move in 2014. A consumer-device voice assistant from Google probably doesn't ship until 2015 or later — they're well behind Amazon on voice.

5. Zigbee 3.0 lands and partially unifies the Zigbee profiles. (Confidence: 60%)

ZLL (lighting) and HA (home automation) are different profiles today; a device built for one isn't guaranteed to interop with the other. Zigbee 3.0 is supposed to merge them. Spec is in late draft; ratification mid-2014.

6. The "I want to talk to my house" use case becomes table-stakes. (Confidence: 95%)

If Amazon ships voice, the next 18 months are about getting every smart-home device working with that voice surface. Hue is positioned for this — local REST + Meethue cloud both work. Wemo will scramble. SmartThings will be the integration layer between voice and not-voice devices.

Net commitments for 2014

What I'll buy:

• SmartThings hub when it ships at retail. Migrate the Wemo automations off IFTTT.
• A few Z-Wave door/window sensors (the SmartThings starter kit comes with two).
• Whatever Amazon ships if the device is real (predicting late 2014).
• An in-wall switch solution I can actually live with. Wemo's switch needs a neutral wire my older boxes don't have, so I'm hunting for a no-neutral option — more on that once I've wired one in.

What I won't buy:

• More WiFi-only plugs without a local API.
• HomeKit-exclusive devices in 2014 — waiting to see what the MFi tax does to BOM and to see if devices actually ship.

What's next

Next up: the first in-wall smart-switch attempt. Wemo's switch wants a neutral wire half my boxes don't have, so the real question is what works in an older house without rewiring. There's a no-neutral story coming once I've found the answer and put it in the wall.