In today’s smart home space, there are four main control means to turn on or off smart devices: through voice command, smart button, smartphone app or home automation.
In today’s smart home space, there are four main control means to turn on or off smart devices: through voice command, smart button, smartphone app or home automation.
Each has its unique characteristics. Voice command is easy and quick. Smart button control is accurate and leaves no ambiguity. Smartphone app allows for customized action. With automation, the house knows and recognizes users’ daily routine patterns, and will adjust lighting, thermostat, etc. automatically as users move about the house.
Amir Sharifat, co-
founder of Shortcut
Labs
All one of the control means will complement one another, and although some may be more popular than others, smart button is always going to be there, said Amir Sharifat, co-founder of Shortcut Labs, the company that introduced one of the first smart buttons Flic in the market. “We want to be the one pushing and leading the smart button market,” Sharifat added.
While automation is the most convenient means of control, there will always be on-demand requests, via voice command or smart button. For example, a user may set up a home automation that turns on TV and brews the coffee when they arrive home, but what if on the third day the user just had a coffee before coming home.
The demand for smart button is definitely growing, and more smart device adoption in the last couple of years has led to the growth in smart button purchase, Sharifat said.
In earlier days, when people want to build a smart home, there were not many products out there. It was a very small niche market. But in the past couple of years, there has been a lot of companies and start-ups that have developed smart home products. All of these have a lot to do with technological advancement.
Product prices have also come down, leading to smart products being able to be built more cheaply, and on top of that, companies like Amazon and Google are pushing low-priced Echo Dot and Google Home Mini, so that consumers can have the products for as low as US$50 in their house.
“Consumers are becoming more and more open to building up their smart homes because the cost is coming down. It’s becoming cheaper and more affordable to build up their smart homes,” Sharifat said, adding that with that, people’s demand for smart buttons is becoming greater as well.
Shortcut Labs has launched an Indeigogo campaign to introduce a new product called Flic Hub, which can be linked with up to 64 smart buttons. The hub will talk to the buttons via Bluetooth, and communicate with a myriad of home devices via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (+ Ethernet), Infrared and a 3.5mm jack for audio.