At the WWDC Developer Conference in June, Apple released a series of heavyweight development frameworks including HomeKit, HealthKit, and CloudKit. The release of HomeKit has an important impact on the hot domestic and international smart home market. At the Developers Conference, HomeKit is very short (less than 2 minutes), giving the outside world a very superficial concept. Therefore, the depth of coverage of domestic and foreign media is limited to the beginning of Apple's layout on smart homes. As for how the framework is specifically positioned, how can manufacturers and entrepreneurs respond to questions that are of concern to everyone?
The Wisdom Cloud team's view of HomeKit has a very different perspective than the media report. As an authorized developer of Apple's long-term MFi (Madefor iPhone/iPad/iPod Peripheral Program), we have close relationships with several of the first announced HomeKit partners (including Haier, Broadcom, Marvell, TI, etc.). We started to research the wireless device configuration technology (Wireless AccessoryConfiguraTIon for short) before the release of HomeKit. In order to help our many partners to connect with HomeKit, we have done a detailed analysis of this framework. Here I can share with you our understanding of HomeKit and its impact on the industry.
What is HomeKit?
Let us first listen to how Apple officially describes HomeKit:
HomeKit provides seamless integraTIon between accessories that support Apples Home AutomaTIon Protoco land iOS devices,allowing for new advances in home automation.
To put it simply, HomeKit wants to break the chaotic market structure in which the various intelligent hardware manufacturers are in charge and the user experience is uneven, so that the smart home devices of various manufacturers can interact and cooperate at the iOS level without directly connecting these manufacturers. After carefully studying this architecture, we found that HomeKit is a set of protocols, a database on iOS, and a new mode of thinking for the interconnection and interoperability of smart home products. Apple has left a lot of room for development by smart hardware developers and third-party developers.
First talk about the communication protocol. HomeKit specifies how smart home products connect and communicate with iOS terminals. CraigFederighi, senior vice president of Apple Software, understates WWDCKeynote that the HomeKit protocol's binding function (SecurePairing) ensures that only your iPhone can open your garage door. Of course, the software and hardware communication protocols are much more learned. Among the announced chip partners are Broadcom, Marvell and Ti, which are mainstream suppliers of implantable Wi-Fi chips, so it can be confirmed that HomeKit mainly supports Wi-Fi or direct-attached Ethernet devices. At present, there are many difficulties in the development of Wi-Fi intelligent hardware, including how to pair the device with the mobile phone, how to get the Wi-Fi password and join the hotspot at home, how to ensure stable and secure remote connection and so on.
At the database level, Apple introduced an infrastructure that is conducive to industry development: a smart home database that can be queried and edited by third-party apps on iOS. This database contains several very important concepts that are useful for today's smart hardware developers: home, room, zone, device, service, action, trigger.
HomeKit sees the home as a collection of smart home devices that combine these devices organically through homes, rooms, and areas. The two concepts of equipment and services are very interesting. Here Apple introduced a concept that is relatively unfamiliar to the hardware industry, but quite "Internet": Service Oriented Architecture. A hardware device is defined as a unit that provides one or more services that can be discovered and invoked by third-party applications. For example, Philips' HueLED lights can be understood as devices that provide lighting services, where switch control, color and brightness control are specific functions of this service. Similarly, Haier's Tianzun air conditioner can be understood as a device that provides multiple air quality related services such as refrigeration, heating, and air purification.
All the smart devices that support the HomeKit standard in the family publish the supported services and are included in a unified database through the iOS discovery mechanism. On top of the basic units of equipment and services, HomeKit defines scene units such as home, room, and area (combination of multiple rooms) to create an organic combination of multiple devices in the home. For example, appliances in the bedroom (such as lights and curtains) can be organized into a single scene for unified control. Zones can combine devices in multiple rooms to control them together.
What else can HomeKit do in addition to remote control?
When it comes to control, HomeKit's design is far less like a media interpreter, simply turning the iPhone into a universal remote control. There are two important automation concepts in HomeKit's control system: Trigger and Action. This is very similar to the foreign IFTTT application, users can use the simple "IFXTHENY" formula and many off-the-shelf data interfaces to achieve a very diverse automatic reminder and operation functions. Similarly, through the triggering and operating mechanism of HomeKit, you can automate various scenarios: for example, “put the curtains up when the bedroom lights are turned onâ€.
Of course, in Apple's style of doing things, they use HomeKit as a development framework, and they will not and cannot participate in the definition and implementation of these specific scenarios. Just like iOS can have the infrastructure to develop games, but Apple does not play games, HomeKit open data interface to developers, to facilitate their innovation in smart home. One selling point of HomeKit is the integration of Siri. The user can control the command by voice input. This is actually the facility for developers, because the instructions themselves are developer-defined.
Through the analysis of the HomeKit architecture and the first batch of partners, we can think that Apple in the smart home is actually creating an ecosystem of manufacturers + developers to serve users. Through an open design concept, Apple has reserved a considerable amount of space for the partners, while also refining their division of labor. Hardware manufacturers' expertise is in providing good products, and building a good user experience on mobile phones is the strength of developers, especially third-party developers. And Apple itself continues to be positioned by the platform. In the public creation to promote the development of the smart home industry, privately consolidate the core position of iOS devices in the home.
What is missing from HomeKit?
But we can also see that the smart home combination of HomeKit smart hardware + iOS + Apps / Siri is obviously incomplete. When a user is holding an iOS device at home, the phone can temporarily become the central nervous system of the smart home, but the high mobility of iOS as a part-time central nervous system is obviously inappropriate or not enough: when the user leaves home, the original perfect The intelligent family was immediately hit back to the Stone Age.
Here Apple has set aside a vacancy: Coordinating smart hardware hubs outside of iOS. There are two possibilities here: one is the practice of partial hardware - Apple can use its own AppleTV, Airport router, and iTV to be launched in the future as a persistent smart home hub. Another possibility of partial software is that this responsibility is placed on iCloud.
The most important thing is, what opportunities does HomeKit provide to domestic startup teams and hardware manufacturers?
Finally, let me analyze the current status of the smart home market and the opportunities that HomeKit brings. At present, there are four main marketing strategies for smart home products:
The first type is an integrated smart home system such as Haier uHome or Control4 in the United States. It connects the compatible lighting, audio-visual and security electronic devices to a central control system through physical wiring or wireless communication methods such as Zigbee. This overall solution is functional and user-friendly, but requires professional installation and is expensive. Domestic manufacturers generally choose to cooperate with real estate developers, mainly in the pre-installation market, but the popularity rate is relatively slow.
The second category is that international first-line home appliance companies first develop a software agreement to connect their own products into a platform, and then let other manufacturers' products join their ecosystem through the opening of the agreement. Samsung's SmartHome and Haier's U+ smart home operating system are the same. Samsung is cutting in from the strong TV and mobile phones, and Haier is entering the market with the leading edge of white goods.
The third type is to cut in by router/gateway, to replace the popular products such as routers to lower the threshold of entering the home, occupy the data entry of the family, and then gradually integrate other products. There are quite a few players on the smart routers in the market recently. Xiaomi is also a high-profile use of Xiaomi smart home model room to demonstrate the integration of the millet router.
These three categories are based on platform thinking, with high thresholds and long periods. Most startup teams and manufacturers choose the fourth strategy: to achieve the ultimate in single-function products, break into the family at a single point, and then gradually expand the product line and try to integrate other products. Nest (before Google acquisition), Dropcam, BelkinWeMo, Smartthings, Hue, Ink Weather, Magic Teng, Bolian, and most home appliance companies and smart hardware makers are taking this product direction.
Obviously HomeKit's positioning is more friendly to the fourth category of players, and the first three types of players will be more impacted in the future.
Apple hopes to attract these single hardware manufacturers to connect with them through a more open model. In addition to providing comprehensive protocols, a common database and a large iOS user base, third-party developers have also been introduced to make them available for manufacturers' products, providing software support for applications in different scenarios.
Therefore, the situation of players who have the ability and ambition to operate the first three platform modes is a bit embarrassing. Those companies that do not compete directly with Apple on hardware products can try to be compatible with Apple HomeKit. The development of Samsung and Xiaomi and the similar platform of Apple will inevitably lead to the emergence of a large number of smart home platforms with a large scale, which will bring a very high R&D to hardware manufacturers who hope to be compatible with these platforms. And maintenance costs.
Helping these hardware manufacturers overcome the compatibility issues between these smart home platforms has also brought new opportunities to providers of IoT technology and cloud services. Wit cloud, and IoT service platforms like Arrayent and AylaNetworks that are similar to ours are based on providing complete hardware cloud support services, and can be more smart home manufacturers by providing cross-platform access capabilities of hardware products. accept.
In general, the launch of Apple HomeKit is a good development for the entire smart home industry. After the launch of iOS8 in October, it will greatly increase consumers' attention to relevant intelligent hardware. A reasonable architecture has been built on the mobile operating system, and the opportunity to leave it to players is quite huge. The Google IO Developer Conference, which is about to be held by Google, will definitely have corresponding actions, so that the popularity of the smart home market will continue to heat up. ShowTime!
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