"smart home" articles

Voice control, data analytics, machine learning, sound recognition, and artificial intelligence play a substantial role in simplifying, streamlining, and automating the smart home, radically enhancing the value proposition by providing context, awareness, and decision making that moves the market beyond scripted, pre-programmed automation scenes. Integration between core smart home entryway and living room products and emerging ones in the kitchen, garage, and bedrooms are increasingly...

Data analytics solutions, including disaggregation and energy modeling, provide detailed information and real-time feedback that can inform energy providers' home energy efficiency and demand response programs. Data sources include interval energy consumption data from meter data management systems and devices in the home such as thermostats and major appliances. The effectiveness of many energy programs is tied to applying this type of technology. More consumers see the benefits of...

There is continued demand for new products and services spanning beyond just traditional PCs and mobile devices including entertainment products, appliances and productivity tools, connected health devices and a multitude of smart home devices. Securing these products against the mass of internet threats and leaks has become an ever more complex task. Parks Associates quarterly survey of 10,000 internet households tracks adoption of all connected devices used by consumers....

“There's an app for that” was a great slogan when Apple used it to tout its powerful device and app store support in the early days of smart phones, but as more and more companies develop their own apps and consumers use more connected devices, consumers want a unified control experience. Currently, some level of unified control is available via smart home hubs, security providers, internet service providers, high-end custom installments, and even the master smart home apps on...

In the age of the Internet of Things (IoT), a tsunami of new information is coming from connected devices. Insurers, intent on securing the deepest level of insight, will need a way to tap into the source. Traditional insurance practices for data acquisition through third parties may not work; IoT data will be a source of competitive advantage and, therefore, not readily shared. The companies deploying smart home solutions, not the insurer, will have control of the relationship and...

Parks Associates’  CONNECTIONS™: The Premier Connected Home Conference  series is excited to announce  Plume  as a Research Partner. Plume is the creator of the world's first Consumer Experience Management (CEM) Platform powered by OpenSync™. As the only open and hardware-independent solution, Plume enables the curation and delivery of new Smart Home Services rapidly and at a massive scale. This allows Service Providers to offer their subscribers a...

Parks Associates’ research reveals that 20% of US broadband households report the COVID-19 pandemic has increased their interest in smart energy solutions that can help them manage their energy use, cost, and comfort. Energy management programs and smart energy solutions can deliver immediate cost benefits to consumers, but the energy industry has generally been unable to find solutions that trigger widespread engagement among their customer base. Utilities have tried different...

Rising cost of living has made households more sensitive to energy cost. This has been accompanied by increasing energy demand from existing energy infrastructures most of which are old and dilapidated. Demand response (DR) programs have been designed to ensure sustainable energy supply using existing infrastructures. Natural disasters associated with climate change such as the 2021 winter storm in Texas has also contributed to the heightened concerns of consumers about the...