The Internet of Things

Connected sprinkler company Rachio has made it big, with its Iro connected sprinkler system going on sale in 900 Home Depot stores nationwide. The Wi-Fi-connected Iro costs $249 and is now on sale alongside other connected products at Home Depot, such as the Revolv home hub or a variety of Zigbee and Z-wave switches and Continue Reading →

A new mobility report from Ericsson projects that the number of net-connected devices will increase by three or four times over the next five years. There were some 200 million machine-to-machine devices online by the end of 2013 — a broad term that describes any device that exchanges information across a network without need for Continue Reading →

Marvell believes the internet of things will need Zigbee, Apple and voice recognition. The new Marvell silicon includes a microcontroller as well as a wireless chip combined as a system on a chip (SoC). The buyer picks the type of connectivity and gets a layer of software to make supporting the chips’ features easy. The Continue Reading →

The connected home is mostly about light switches and locks today, but several companies are trying to launch connected products with more of a culinary bent. The Drop connected kitchen scale is one of those. On Tuesday it began accepting orders for its $99 connected scale that we covered a few months back. The scale Continue Reading →

Apple announced a new “Home” app and service that allows an iPhone or iPad to control smart appliances, lights and locks around the home. The Home app will securely connect to third-party products such as the Philips Hue lightbulbs, Honeywell’s thermostats and Withing’s smart alarm clocks. “We’ve come up with HomeKit to allow secure pairing Continue Reading →

What if your desk lamp knew where you were at all times, and could broadcast your whereabouts to inquiring coworkers? Strange as it may sound, that’s exactly what the Place Lamp prototype does. Created by Seattle-based designer Sam Stubblefield, this elegant, cylindrical lamp connects with your smartphone and lets you set up invisible, GPS geofences Continue Reading →

Nest Labs is already well known by early tech adopters for its “smart,” energy-saving thermostats and smoke detectors. And it’s not only consumers that have taken notice: Internet giant Google acquired Nest Labs earlier this year for $3.2 billion dollars. But Nest, led by former Apple iPod executive Tony Fadell, says it is exploring a Continue Reading →

Too lazy to flick on a light switch? There’s a Kickstarter campaign you should check out. Homey isn’t the first crowdfunded home automation platform we’ve seen, but it is one of the most personable: the entire device is controlled by human speech. It’s designed to ape the computers on Star Trek, explained creator Emile Nijssen, Continue Reading →

Clothes are the original “wearables,” but Intel wants to make them smarter. At the Code Conference on Wednesday, the company showed off a shirt with conductive fibers for tracking your heart rate. Designed by partner AIQ, the shirt uses Intel’s Edison development board to stream EKG information over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The box of electronics Continue Reading →

Connected devices company Nest, now owned by Google, has been lauded — mostly, it must be said, by the tech press — for turning its attention to the utilitarian devices in your home. The ones no-one loves. The no-frills, (usually) beige plastic devices that squat on the wall or ceiling of your home doing one Continue Reading →