Apple Home and Matter highlights from CES 2024

CES is an absolutely massive trade show every year in Las Vegas where pretty much all parts of the technology industry get together to share their new and sometimes kind of crazy ideas for us Apple home users we get a sneak peek at what a lot of these smart home companies are going to be doing over the next year as we think about how we might want to upgrade our smart home and with another year of matter adding more and more devices compatible with apple home we have a lot to talk about this was a big show for smart Bo smart lighting as well as robot vacuums and thanks to GOI for sponsoring this video and starting off with aara they had a bunch of exciting announcements here at the show including a new smart plug which uses not only thread but also Wi-Fi so it can serve as an additional thread border router on your network which long story short makes your smart home more reliable and this is possible because of a chip from nxp semiconductor and this is a little bit of a side note here but you probably know the chip that's in your computer or your smartphone but you probably don't know a lot about the chips that are running your smart home and they actually influence a lot of the features and things that are possible so I'm thinking about doing a video all about what goes into those chips and the different companies that make them let me know if you're interested in that in the comments below next up aara announced their new M3 Hub now this not only serves as a zigby hub like all other aara bridges for padding those devices into homekit but it also works with matter they've added the capability with the infrared sensor on the m three Hub to add infrared devices like that old fan you have sitting around into matter cars also added a lot of matter controller functionality there for running automations from their M3 Hub and it'll even be able to communicate with other matter devices particularly zigby devices as they add software updates after the device comes out that said if you're just running a lot of your car devices in apple home and using automations there I don't see a huge benefit for this M3 Hub but we'll have to see when I try it out car also had some interesting Concepts at their Booth including a water shut off valve which pairs with their leak sensor so when one of their leak sensors detects water it can shut off the water for your entire home and hopefully prevent any kind of major water damage now I mentioned at the start of the video that this was a big year for smart locks including aar's new announcement of the u300 we'll get to that in a minute but first thanks to GOI for sponsoring this video and having some really exciting products that they announced at CES starting out with their HDMI 2.1 sync box this allows you to sync your goie lights via HDMI 2.1 which means you can sync to 8K video resolution or 4K at 120 frames per second for the latest gaming consoles if you prefer to sink your lights with a camera on the TV they have the TV backlight 3 Pro kit which then enables the same functionality and both setups use image and sound recognition to then when it sees an explosion on the screen add some really immersive explosion light effects and all kinds of other things it can recognize also listening for audio in the content you're watching so it can do the same thing for Sirens GOI had a really cool setup of this in their booth and I was really impressed both setups will ship with matter compatibility later this year so you can also control them in things like apple home and they'll ship in kits with lights included but then you can also use any of Go's dream view technology lights GOI also announced a really cool dotree light strip that supports matter and so they've added some nice diffusion on the light strip built in so you don't see all those individual lights on the light strip just the nice glow of the color this looked really slick and they had a number of places demoing this in their Booth it supports matter as well and will be shipping later this year now you might be familiar with GOI from their lighting Products but they also have an entire GOI life brand which has more smart home appliance type devices including some new smart plug bu they announced this year that support matter I loved how small the US Outlet version of these are and I'm excited to play with them in my smart home they also announced a GOI life smart tower fan which is 42 in tall and supports matter looks very classy and a tower fan isn't going to take up a lot of space on your floor so to find out more about GOI CES announcements and products from GOI you can get today check out the link in the description and thanks to goie for sponsoring this video so going back to aar's u300 lock this is a lock that's meant to work on the door handle not the dead bolt like a lot of smart locks and it includes a keypad and it works with matter over thread so that's how it can communicate with apple home I'm looking forward to trying one hopefully in my garage so subscribe for that video coming soon lockley also announced an apple home key lock that not only has Apple home key where you can just easily tap your iPhone or Apple watch to the lock it wakes up the iPhone or Apple watch and unlocks the door but it also has face recognition and a fingerprint reader so you might not even need to worry about pulling out your Apple watch or phone to unlock your door it can just recognize you uh lley also has some signature technology around scrambling the numbers on their keypad which they say makes it harder for someone to see you entering the PIN code and then guess what the PIN code is to enter the home another feature lockly boasts is ability to manage the battery power especially when the lock isn't in active use and they claim this adds months to the battery life compared to their competition Utch is another company with an apple home key lock and they announced that late last year but they were here at the show showing off their line of locks including their model that supports home key and obviously CES is a huge show for televisions but we don't have time to get into that here but one product in that category I saw is the ano TX rz7 this is a new receiver from Eno that not only supports Apple AirPlay like a lot of modern receivers so you can stream to it straight from your Apple devices but it also supports a integration with Sonos and they actually work with Sonos so you can control the volume of the receiver right inside the Sonos app you don't need to also pull out your receiver remote or another way to control the receiver now you might have heard last year that the latest spec for matter adds support for robot vacuums and since apple is on the board of matter supporting matter that means that they're likely to add support to robot Vacuums in their devices now there's no guarantee at this point how that will look or even if it will work directly in the home app or just the homekit SDK but it stands to reason at this point that the robots that support matter now this year will have much better integration with your Apple smart home and a number of the big robot vacuum companies were here with matter support pledged for their new models including eax with their debot X2 combo now this is a really clever idea because robot vacuums are great at cleaning up let's say 95 99% of the floor a lot of the time but there's always those spots that they can't get to for one reason or another and so eax has added a handheld vacuum that's cordless that just docks in the same place as the robot vacuum and it even comes with a longer attachment to make it easy to clean the floor as well Robo rock also has an Innovative solution for the same kind of problem but what they're doing is adding an extra arm on the robot that extends out in order to get into those Corners which is kind of hard to do for a round shaped Robot vacuum and this new flexi arm feature as Robo Rock calls it is coming to their S8 models this year and like eax Robo Rock has pledged to support matter with their latest Vacuum models speaking of matter flick was also here at CES now I love their tiny little buttons as well as their new flick twist but the problem is the flick twist doesn't talk directly to Apple home like their buttons do but they're kind of solving that problem Al together by moving both their Hub LR and their Hub mini to support matter as matter controllers and this means that then you can use buttons or twists that are paired with those hubs and then control matter devices directly from there Nano Leaf also had some exciting new announcements first they opened pre-orders for their Skylight which they announced at CES last year so that's available for pre-order now starting at $249 for a three pack of those lights you can put on your ceiling and add all kinds of cool colors to what would otherwise be a pretty boring ceiling light Nan Leaf also announced some new outdoor lights are supposed to be coming later this year both permanent outdoor lights to put under the eve of your roof as well as some outdoor string lights that look really nice with big large bulbs they also announced a new orchestrator feature which can work with Mac or PC to listen to and analyze the music and audio output from your computer and then orchestrate your Nano Leaf lights in the room to really match the music previously Nano Leaf had been using microphones on some of their devices to actually pick up the sound in the room so if there was other sound other than the music it would imitate that instead of the music and uh this is supposed to analyze the music more and actually imitate it and I was at a nano Leaf party last night and saw this orchestrator in action it's very cool and CEO Jimmy Chu is very excited about it especially for things like the home DJ Market nail Leaf is also showcasing a product that integrates with their system via their API but is actually a separate company founded by one of their former engineers and that's Fanta Chi spelled Qi at the end and these are some really cool display boxes which give a nice lighting effect to shelves that can showcase sneakers action figures Lego any kind of Collectibles you have and the benefit of this compared to just under cabinet lighting like LED light strips is that there's a light all the way across the top of the compartment so you get a really nice even lighting that can change to whatever colors or scenes you want to showc case your collection a duros smart area is a company I first found out about here on the show floor this year at CES and they're shipping some new matter products this year including some really cool filament Edison style bulbs they are dimable and support all shades of white and warm temperature light so no colors they look really great and they should be coming to amazon.com walmart.com as well as other retailers later this year speaking of matter powered lights GE sync announced some new under cabinet lights for their kitchen cabinets and these provide a really nice diffused light under your cabinets and GE was touting their experience of making light bulbs and lights long before smart H Tech was ever a thing and showing just how dim all of their newer lights can get I also really like ge's design for these under cabinet lights for dealing with cable management you're not left having to tie up a bunch of cables under your cabinets it's sort of a modular system that you can extend uh for however long your cabinets are GE sync hasn't had the most Sterling reputation when it comes to Smart Home reliability over the years but of course their representatives reiterated how they're combining both their knowledge of making the lighting part of the technology with new hardware and software for smart home Integrations to improve this track record so we'll have to see as I hopefully test these products out later this year as they get ready to ship but it certainly looks promising here at CEO s now these under cabinet lights are supposed to start shipping in March of 2024 and gsync also has some outdoor matter string lights as well as upward-facing outdoor lights coming later in 2024 you might have heard of Abode security there a security system manufacturer that makes a security system with professional monitoring that also works right inside of Apple home and they launched a new outdoor security camera which has an optional long range Wi-Fi antenna and the whole system then enables you to have 1.5 miles of Wi-Fi range so they say so that sounds pretty amazing and the pitch from the company is that that will allow you to put the camera further away from your home and then have it looking back at the status of your home rather than what you have to do with most security cameras today on the outside of your house which is Mount them on your house and have them looking away from your home so creative application here of actually some more advanced chips back to the starting the video and that's from Morse micro with their Wi-Fi chip and Zant with on device image recognition so this camera shows a live view in Apple's home app and then records Clips to abodes security system this camera is launching in q1 of 2024 and cost $200 I also met with Eve here at CES and they had some boxes to show of their Eve energy Outlets they announced in December and those should be shipping in less than a month in February speaking of announcements from Eve coming in February there also launching a new EVE motion blinds made to order service from their website Belin announced the stand Pro iPhone doc at front so this is going to cost $179 and pre-orders will be starting later this month on von.com and you just Mount your iPhone in the dock and it uses NFC to pair to it and then charges it and this is the first official dock to support Apple's dock kit they announced at the developer conference last June so what this allows it to do is the iPhone can tell the doc where to turn the camera in order to track multiple faces within the frame of the camera I saw a demo of this earlier this week and it looks very cool now the smart home application is you might be familiar with with tvos 17 apple add the ability to use FaceTime on your Apple TV with an iPhone tied in with continuity camera but in talking to both the Reps at belon here at the show as well as emailing my contacts at at Apple PR I've gotten no official word if dock kit will work with continuity camera theoretically it should because Apple's developer documentation says that dock kit works with any camera app that uses Apple's camera apis which I would assume that continuity camera does so this could be a really cool tool to have let's say near your TV in your living room and then be able to FaceTime with friends and family with all of the people in your home on the couch and the phone could pan around to different people and put them in frame and Belin did confirm that that does work just with FaceTiming straight from the iPhone I just think then being able to put the people you're talking with on the big screen via Apple TV would be really cool so we'll have to see as this ships early this year is that actually possible how does that work out and you'll be able to get a Belin stand Pro for $179 again with pre-orders starting this month so it was amazing to come to CES this is my first CES and first time in Los Vegas so really exciting show and thank you so much for subscribing watching the channel supporting me and enabling me to do this and thanks to goie for sponsoring this video you can find links To Go's announcements at CES as well as some products from goie down in the description below and one of the things I loved about this show is getting to meet a lot of my fellow apple and smart home creators in person here at the show and this show is so massive I guarantee you there's things that other creators have talked about that I haven't gotten to and vice versa so I made a playlist somewhere here on the screen with a bunch of 2024 CES Recaps in the smart home space as well as if you're interested in getting into Apple home more and doing some more automations I recently made a video all about how to do that and get you started so you can check out any of those here on the screen thanks again so much for watching and I hope to see you in the next video

Channel: Eric Welander

Views: 53,141

Keywords: Eric Welander, apple, apple ecosystem, HomeKit, ces 2024, ces apple home 2024, ces apple home, ces homekit, ces, ces apple home products, aqara ces, govee ces 2024, aqara ces 2024, belkin ces 2024, belkin stand pro, belkin dockkit, ecovacs ces 2024, roborock ces 2024, matter home ces, matter home, matter at ces, homekit at ces, apple home at ces

Id: nrObmNJmwQ8

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 12 2024