“Awhole new world opens up when you get these various systems all talking to each other”
As I sit here at my desk, I can see an electronic radiator valve that’s part of my Evohome setup, an Arlo camera just outside the window and a Wi-Fi controllable aircon unit on the wall. Naturally, me being me, there’s loads more stuff like this all around my home and back at my office.
These pieces of tech work just fine in a standalone manner. Some need internet access (such as my Arlo cameras), while some will continue to work without external connectivity (thankfully, my Evohome heating fits into that category; if the internet goes down, my radiators stay toasty). But none of these systems need to be interfaced with anything else to work properly. You can just treat them as individual, unrelated products.
I’m sure that many people who buy these things are perfectly happy using them in a discrete manner too. Perhaps they interact with an app on their phone, but nothing really beyond that.
The thing is: there’s a whole new world that opens up when you get these various systems all talking to each other, and also to other bits of kit around your home or office. For example, sitting here I can say “Alexa, show me the side gate” and the Echo Show on my desk will fire up an integration between the Alexa system and the cloud-based back-end to my Arlo cameras. Within a second or so, up
