In Smart Home, Retrofit May Be The Next Big Thing

When you look around at many of the smart home systems coming to market,mostrequire what is called in the business tech world afork lift upgrade, meaningyou have to throw out your old hardware and replace it with new gear in orderto get theadvantages of new technology.

Takethe Nest Protect smoke alarm. Its a neat device that enables you to get alerts and to control it via a mobile device, but in order to do so you have to toss out the oldsmoke alarmin the process.

But now, some newer smart home products are coming to market that enable you to use what you have by transforming a dumb device to one thats smart.

Consider the Roost smart battery. Just announced a week ago, the Roost is a Wi-Fi enabled battery that turns any smoke alarm that takes a 9 volt battery into a smart smoke alarm. The battery, developed by a team that helped pioneer some of the earliest low-power Wi-Fi chips, can last for up to 5 years and costs $25 to $35 depending on how many batteriesyou buy.

Swapping out batteries too much work for you? Then try the Leeo smart night light, which sends you alerts when your old smoke or carbon monoxide alarm goes off.

The Roost Smart Battery

And whatabout that door lock? If youve been thinking about making it smart, new smart locks from the likes of August and Danalock fit over your existing lock mechanism and make it a Bluetooth enabled smart lock.

Dont want to throw out those LED light bulbs you bought for $20 a pop at Costco a year ago? Try the Emberlight, which makes a smart light socket that transforms existing lightbulbs into smart bulbs.

And so on.

You might ask why not just throw out the old gear and replace with the new? For one, its a bit wasteful. A million homes throwing out a whole households worth of smoke alarms results ina whole bunch of electronics heading to landfills.

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In Smart Home, Retrofit May Be The Next Big Thing