- What's Currently Possible with iOS Device-Controlled Home Automation
- What the Future Holds for iOS Device-Controlled Home Automation
- iOS Device-Controlled Home Automation is Becoming Very Simple
What the Future Holds for iOS Device-Controlled Home Automation
In the near future, more categories of home automation products will become available. One of the more interesting categories is smart appliances, such as refrigerators, as well as washers and dryers, which will be controllable from an iOS mobile device. Imagine being at a supermarket, tapping on your iPhone’s screen, and being able to determine if you need to add milk, for example, to your shopping list, based on what the smartphone determines is currently in your fridge.
Virtually all of the home automation products available right now rely on a home’s existing wireless network in order to remotely communicate with a propriety app that’s needed to control each separate product. While this will most likely remain the case for a while into the future, the HomeKit tools that have been built into iOS 8 will make it easier for users to access and work with these proprietary apps, and allow the apps to tap into core functionality of the iPhone or iPad more easily.
For example, we’ll soon be seeing home automation apps become compatible with Siri, so they’ll accept voice commands and requests in order to remotely control various products and devices from an iPhone or iPad. Plus, security features that utilize the Touch ID sensor that’s built into the Home button of these devices could be used in addition to (or instead of) passwords in order to keep unauthorized people from remotely accessing or controlling various home automation products being used in someone’s home.
How these HomeKit tools will be implemented by the various home automation companies and app developers is yet to be seen. However, Apple has developed these tools to enhance security-related tasks associated with home automation, and at the same time, has issued some strict guidelines in terms of how these technologies can be used to provide home automation services without infringing on a consumer’s privacy.
In other words, a company developing home automation tools to work with the iPhone or iPad can not create or utilize an app that also gathers or utilizes customer-related information or data for anything other than home automation purposes.