AMAZON, APPLE, GOOGLE, and the Zigbee Alliance this week announced a new working group which will work towards developing and promoting the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard.
Zigbee Alliance board member companies such as IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian are also onboard to join the working group and contribute to the project, said the press release announcing the alliance.
The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers and increase compatibility for consumers – since each smart device made by the companies named above have different operating systems with their own protocols and are not compatible with each other.
“The project is built around a shared belief that smart home devices should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use. By building upon Internet Protocol (IP), the project aims to enable communication across smart home devices, mobile apps, and cloud services and to define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification,” says the announcement.
The working group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of any new, unified connectivity protocol. The project intends to use contributions from market-tested smart home technologies from Amazon, Apple, Google, Zigbee Alliance, and others.
One would think Comcast, with its X1-based smart home products and services (which are being deployed in Canada by Shaw, Rogers and Videotron), should want to be a part of this working group.
“The project aims to make it easier for device manufacturers to build devices that are compatible with smart home and voice services such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, and others. The planned protocol will complement existing technologies, and working group members encourage device manufacturers to continue innovating using technologies available today,” adds the release.
The announcement notes the companies are inviting any others from across the smart home industry to participate in and contribute to the standard.
