Smart home hub keeps pace by adding as many standards as possible

The Almond+ and Almond 2015 smart home hubs from Securify are now given support for Nest products, another move by the maker for compatibility with yet another IoT product standard. Nest products are popular enough that supporting them is a big deal for a company that wants to be at the center of everyone’s smart home.

The Almond routers already support ZigBee, Z-Wave and Philips Hue. These routers link up to any number of smart home appliances and devices so they can be controlled in one place. This makes it more convenient than having to go through dedicated apps for everything, even though Nest provides much of the same functionality that the Almond routers do. They can also be programmed to take specific actions like adjusting the thermostat to previously specified temperature whenever a user’s smartphone is connected.

Even as “connected” devices proliferate, there is still not one dominant standard in the market. Everyone is vying for position in the market, so new standards and OS keep cropping up. Huawei has recently announced an open source OS called Lite OS, and a development kit for its HiLink networking protocol. This may or may not be related to another open source OS for “connected” devices, LiteOS. Huawei’s system is set to launch in the second quarter of 2016 and HiLink is already being implemented by 60 third-party developers.

Huawei is a giant among China manufacturers, of course. It isn’t known what kind of pull the company might have in its home market, as China likes to favor homegrown technology. However, for exporters, the favorite standards right now appear to be Z-Wave and ZigBee. A search on Global Sources will reveal thousands of products compliant with these standards. It makes sense, then, that these standards would be included in the Almond routers. With standards still battling for supremacy, though, the surest bet for smart home hub makers is to keep adding support for whatever becomes popular next.