Control your smart home with a new touchscreen hub known as WooHoo

By Lulu Chang Published December 21, 2016

If the emergence of smart homes isn’t a reason to celebrate, we don’t know what is. And now, there’s a new smart home hub whose very name practically necessitates celebration. Meet WooHoo, branded as the “world’s first AI-embedded, interactive, and affordable smart home hub that enables comprehensive control of every smart device” in your home. It’s the flagship product from Silicon Valley-based startup SmartBeings, Inc, and it looks like a lot more than your Amazon Echo.

While most of today’s smart home hubs only allow for you to interact via your voice, the WooHoo is different. This 7-inch touchscreen hub (yes, you can actually touch it) also comes with facial and voice recognition. Equipped with a 360-degree rotation HD camera, spatial surround sound system, and a live video assistant for tech support, think of this as a smart home hub, and then some.

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WooHoo isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to controlling your connected devices, though. The hub comes preloaded with integrations with Echo, Nest, and other familiar devices that have been on the market for quite some time. But WooHoo hopes that with its touchscreen feature, it will be able to encourage more interaction between users and technology than ever.

Thanks to the hub’s online platform, you can set and check bespoke dashboards for both your home and business, permitting you to manage, control, and track your devices from your computer. Use it as a security device, to set your Nest thermostat, or to prepare your coffee — the hub is compatible with hundreds of smart devices.

But perhaps the best part of WooHoo is its natural language processing capabilities. That means instead of awkwardly phrasing your requests, you can talk to WooHoo as you would to a human. So whether you want WooHoo to dim the lights or remind you to buy cookies for Santa, this hub knows what you’re saying in plain English.

Currently in the midst of its Kickstarter campaign, the smart home hub has already raised over $20,000 and has 44 days left to go to reach its $30,000 goal. You can pre-order a WooHoo now for the early bird price of $49.

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