>> HOMEY - HOME AUTOMATION TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Introducing Homey - the winner of the Smart Spaces category in the EIT ICT Idea Challenge.

Homey, developed by dutch based engineers, is a speech controlled environment for home automation that utilizes a number of existing wireless standards (802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, ZigBee, Z-Wave, Infrared, nrf24l01 and 433.92Mhz band) which means it can interact with both old and new components within the home - even that old television you may have!

It is currently an active kickstarter campaign and has already started to receive substantial backing, already passing the initial pledge amount with the campaign running until 27 June. In addition to voice control; it also offers predictive behavior and a simple learning and integration workflow to get your devices defined within the environment.

They even offers developers to write JavaScript code to extend the functionality of the unit.

I think they have nailed the aesthetics of this device quite well, the unit will be a 11 cm (4.3") sphere with multi-colored LED rings to provide visual feedback to the user. It will be interesting to see how the Infared usability will function as they are typically directional.