Come Together, Right Now

Come Together, Right Now

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Over the past few years, consumers have started to recognize the convenience and cost-saving benefits of smart home technologies, but adoption has been slow, especially compared to the amount of investment money being poured into the industry. According to Business Insider, “the smart home market is stuck in the ‘chasm’ of the technology adoption curve, in which it is struggling to surpass the early-adopter phase and move to the mass-market phase of adoption.” But what’s the largest barrier to mass market smart home adoption? Is it high prices? Cybersecurity? Limited demand? Nope, it’s not any of those. Rather, research has found that the largest barrier to smart home adoption is…interoperability (a fancy word for how devices work together and communicate with each other).

 

At the moment, consumers view the smart home as fragmented, and many aren’t willing to invest in any smart home devices until all the kinks are worked out. In an insightful article posted to IoT Agenda, analyst Jessica Groopman sees the current state of the smart home as “just a bunch of smart endpoints” which ultimately is hurting the smart home industry:

 

The very design of connected products requires interoperability in terms of connectivity, communications and integration protocols. Products should be simple to connect. Period. Despite the reality of a painful lack of standards across devices and industries, the need to equip physical products with connectivity and communications flexibility sets both an immediate and long-term value proposition in place (IoT Agenda).

 

When smart home companies invest in interoperability, the users win. As Groopman notes: “open integration and interoperability is really about curating a customer-first relationship.” In a previous blog post, I responded to CNBC Technology Product Editor, Todd Haselton, and his irritation that smart home products don’t work together. This sentiment is being felt by consumers across the globe, causing it to be the single greatest barrier to smart home adoption:

 

Currently, there are many networks, standards, and devices being used to connect the smart home, creating interoperability problems and making it confusing for the consumer to set up and control multiple devices. Until interoperability is solved, consumers will have difficulty choosing smart home devices and systems (Business Insider).

 

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone just learned to get along? At Blackfire Research, interoperability is our game. A few years back, founder and CEO, Ravi Rajapakse, became frustrated – much like Haselton, Groopman, and countless other smart home gadget enthusiasts – when he realized that there was no seamless way to transfer and share entertainment media throughout his own home. The culmination of 10 years of research is a revolutionary new protocol, The Blackfire Realtime Entertainment Distribution (RED) framework, which can stream 5.1 audio channels and 4K video, simultaneously, across multiple devices – all over the standard WiFi you already have. As well as connecting smart home devices like light bulbs, thermostats and door locks, Blackfire also works as a bridge between your smart home and your entertainment systems – with precise synchronization, low latency for lip sync, and overall reliability. Because, as the research shows, that is exactly what smart home owners want – to be able to mix and match devices that can all work together, while having their music and movies available to them anywhere in the home.

 

At Blackfire Research, we’re ahead of the curve: we know what smart home owners want and what technological barriers need to be crossed to make smart home adoption mainstream. That’s why all Blackfire enabled products are interoperable cross brands, so you don’t have to worry about your smart devices not working together. Look for our logo on select Harman/Kardon, Onkyo, Pioneer, Integra and HTC devices.

Making the Smart Home Smarter

Making the Smart Home Smarter

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In his entertaining recent editorial, CNBC Technology Product Editor, Todd Haselton, experienced, firsthand, the frustration that many smart home enthusiasts have endured for a long time: smart home products that don’t work with one another. Typically, manufacturers don’t want their customers to “mix and match” products, but rather, they “encourage” them to stay loyal to their brand by deliberately limiting compatibility with competitors. But what manufacturers don’t realize is that these “technology islands” are actually discouraging potential users from buying any smart home products at all. Aside from the more geeky early adopters (ok, my hand’s up), smart home gadget users don’t want to invest in a brand and have that brand become obsolete within the next few years (i.e. “choose wrong”) so many people just aren’t choosing at all. As Haselton points out: “How do you choose which one to go with? It’s almost like the VHS vs. Betamax wars.”

 

A simple solution to this problem, as Haselton notes, is “one single standard that works for everything.” At Blackfire Research, we’ve done just that. A few years back, Blackfire Research founder and CEO, Ravi Rajapakse, became frustrated – much like Haselton himself and countless other smart home gadget lovers – when he realized that there was no seamless way to transfer and share entertainment media throughout his own home. What was once a personal project to create a multi-room entertainment system soon became ten years of research into a revolutionary new protocol, which we call The Blackfire Realtime Entertainment Distribution (RED) framework. The Blackfire RED framework can stream both HD 5.1 audio and 4K video, simultaneously, across multiple devices – all over the standard WiFi you already have. As well as connecting light bulbs, thermostats and door locks, Blackfire also works as a bridge between your smart home and your entertainment systems – with precise synchronization, low latency for lip sync, and overall reliability. Because ultimately, that is what smart home owners want – to mix and match devices while having their music and movies available to them anywhere in the home.

 

Oh yeah, did we mention that Blackfire enabled products are compatible with each other, even across brands? Just look for our logo on select Harman/Kardon, Onkyo, Pioneer, Integra, and HTC devices. It’s just one of the many ways Blackfire Research is making the smart home a whole lot smarter.

Innovate or Die

Innovate or Die

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This past November, Blackfire Research founder and CEO, Ravi Rajapakse, was asked to speak about innovation in the music industry at Europe’s largest tech conference, Web Summit, in Lisbon Portugal. Joining him on stage was NWA member and founder of INOV8 NEXT, Arabian Prince. Watch them discuss their visions for the future of the music industry and what’s next for audio technology in their panel, “Innovate or Die” below.