One language for connected devices: Gigaset cooperates with Conrad Connect

8. November 2018 Published by Raphael Doerr

The smart home has evolved over time in many households. Perhaps they started out with Amazon Echo Dot. Or maybe the connected lights from Philips Hue came first. Or a fitness tracker wristband. Or a Gigaset Smart Home alarm system. At any rate, there’s a wide range of different components that are all part of the Internet of Things (IoT), but weren’t originally intended to communicate with each other. And how can they when they’re from different manufacturers or different product categories? Yet that’s precisely what makes the smart home so enticing: The fact that everything is somehow one!

The smart home uses its own brain

How would you like the lights to go on when you open the front door? Or, conversely, for the system to turn everything off when you leave home and have again forgotten to switch the bathroom light off. That would need components from different manufacturers to interact – and now they can do that: with Conrad Connect. More than 3,000 compatible products from 70 different brands can currently be connected with each other on the free IoT project platform for smart living so as to create smart routines and automate everyday processes. And, of course, we from Gigaset are one of them – our Smart Home system now cooperates seamlessly with devices from other vendors. A special role in that is played by the physical sensors the system’s users already have in the home.

Boundaries between manufacturers are being removed

One possible scenario: The smart lock on the front door recognizes when a member of the household returns home. Various routines can be initiated automatically using the Conrad Connect platform: The Gigaset Smart Home system deactivates the alarm siren and switches the light in the hallway on. At the same time, the smart speaker in the kitchen play your favorite radio station or reads your upcoming appointments from Google Calendar.

Another example: The windows in the living room are tilted open. The connected weather station out in the garden detects that the wind is picking up and there is drizzle. Conrad Connect can be used to create a project that reminds you by SMS to get back home quickly and close the windows.

But there are even more farsighted options: The platform has access to the latest weather data and, even if there is no weather station, could tell you in the morning to close the windows because there’ll soon be a change in the weather.

Open for everything

“We feel sure that we as a manufacturer will only gain a firm foothold in households if we open up to other platforms,” says Dirk Kelbch, Head of Smart Home at Gigaset. “That’s why our devices are compatible with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant or lights from Philips Hue. Our cooperation with Conrad Connect now is only a logical consequence, since this approach delivers far greater customer benefits. And that will prove its worth.”

Apart from the Gigaset Smart Home system, lights from Philips Hue, the weather stations from Netatmo and Weatherhub, or the smart speaker Amazon Echo can be connected by means of Conrad Connect, for instance.