UPDATED 12:59 EDT / JULY 14 2014

Built-in smart home : New products + risks

This week’s Smart Living roundup features a new addition to a company’s home automation lineup, home automation’s Canadian invasion, and connected bulbs putting home networks at risk.

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Smarthome adds Honeywell Lyric thermostat

 

Smarthome, a store dedicated to selling home automation products, added the Honeywell Lyric thermostat to its smart home offerings.

Lyric is not the first smart thermostat out in the market, but what makes it different from the popular Nest learning thermostat is that it is dynamic.  Lyric doesn’t ‘learn’ the user’s schedule, but adjusts to it accordingly.  It uses the paired smartphone’s location to determine when it should go into energy saving mode or when to heat up or cool the house.  If no one’s at home, the smart thermostat automatically goes to energy saving mode, and detects that you’re on your way home to set the temperature accordingly.

Lyric also has a Fine Tune feature, which considers outside temperature, humidity and weather to deliver the most suitable indoor temperature.

Samsung smart home solution invades Canada

 

Samsung has teamed up with Canderel Residential, a condo developer in Toronto, Canada, to have its home automation solution available to new home buyers.

The prospected building will open in 2017, showcasing 25 units embedded with smart home technology, while the other units have the option to add automated features. The basic home automation package will include control access to the building, remote door lock, a surveillance system, temperature and lighting control.  Other home automation features the condo owners can choose include control of the entertainment system, washer-dryer, stove and other smart appliances.

Samsung aims to extend its smart home partnership to other developers in Canada.

Connected lightbulb exposes Internet passwords

 

As more home appliances connect to the Internet, daily routines are certainly becoming more convenient. But how safe are these Internet-connected devices?  Is our personal data safe?

Researchers at Context Information Security were able to hack LIFX, a smart lightbulb that connects to your home’s WiFi network.  Hacking the lightbulb system allowed them to change the lighting, but what’s troubling is that it also allowed them access to Internet passwords.

Though the hack was quite complicated for the average person to perform (it took the researchers two weeks to crack it), the tools they used for the hack were readily available, which means hackers with the right knowledge could cause huge problems for homeowners using LIFX.

“We bought some light bulbs and examined how they talked to each other and saw that one of the messages was about the username and password,” Michael Jordan, research director at Context Information Security, told the BBC. “By posing as a new bulb joining the network we were able to get that information.”

In a blog post, LIFX stated that it has released a firmware update to address the security flaw and advised users to update their systems. Aside from stronger security, the update also includes improvements in the bulb itself as they are now more responsive and has improved color output.

Scott Swartz, CEO and founder of MetraTech, believes that the notion of security and personal data is extended to the entire smart home ecosystem and is more than a data security issue.

“There is and will continue to be ongoing debate about how to protect personal data. Manufacturers promote ‘privacy by design,’ anonymizing data as soon as products or services are designed. The next step is parameters to prevent the collection, storage or transmission of data,” Swartz explained in an interview with SiliconANGLE.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks via photopin cc

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