It wasn’t so long ago that the pinnacle of convenience was being able to talk to your appliances to get them to function. But alas, how quickly we grow inured to the technology of yesterday. Now, we want even more from our smart home devices — we want them to be able to read our minds. And getting close to achieving that desire is a new smart home solution from Israeli company Intellithings. It’s called RoomMe, and it purports to identify and adjust “everything in your smart home to your specific likings, no manual control required.”
In essence, RoomMe syncs with your smartphone, and learns what your preferences are when it comes to light, temperature, and even security, all by way of a few discreet sensors.
“Too many times instead of hearing what you ask for, Virtual Personal Assistants give you what they think you ask for,” the Intellithings team noted. “What if they could simply sense when you are in the room and give you exactly what you want, without [you] waving your arms or screaming into a device?”
This appears to be the future RoomMe envisions. Simply apply the settings you’d like for a certain room on your RoomMe app, then the RoomMe device will sense when your smartphone is in that room, and make adjustments accordingly.
But wait, you say, what if I live with someone with different preferences than I? Not to worry, RoomMe apparently has that covered, too.
If you and your roommate can’t agree on the ideal temperature setting (let’s say you prefer it to be cold at night while he or she prefers it to be warm), RoomMe will sense when you’re alone in the room, and lower the thermostat. But if you’re in there together, you can have RoomMe set a middle-of-the-road temperature so that everyone is happy (or at least equally unhappy). Similarly, you can program RoomMe to recognize certain people, and set your security devices to record when particular individuals (let’s say your nanny) is around.
Of course, it’s unclear as of yet exactly how precise this technology really is, but now that it’s launching on Indiegogo, brave early adopters can check out its effectiveness for themselves. It’s selling for $139 with a shipment date of May 2018.
