Home Connect: A single app for more than one brand of household appliances

Home Connect: A single app for more than one brand

(Phys.org) —An app from BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgerate was announced Friday as able to control appliances. The solution is called Home Connect, and it will accommodate different brands of household appliances. The release said the Home Connect was the first solution in the world to allow multiple appliance brands to be controlled through one app. The Home Connect concept has been devised at a time when 90 percent of households own appliances made by more than one brand, according to the company release. The announcement was made at an IFA press event in Belek, Turkey. IFA is to hold a consumer electronics and home appliances show in Berlin in September. The app, Home Connect, will make its debut there, along with the first connected appliances from "the Bosch and Siemens brand families." The Home Connect project manager, Dr, Claudia Häpp, presented a demo of the Home Connect app in Belek, in a presentation, "One app. For you." She talked about plans for further development.

With the Home Connect concept, the user needs only a smartphone and Wi-Fi router to operate connected household appliances. Users register online with an e-mail address. Data is exchanged between the app and connected using a Home Connect protocol. As for privacy, the release said only the most necessary data is stored on the dedicated Home Connect server and it's stored anonymously. On a technology level, she said, they collaborated with "selected partners" for a "comprehensive security concept."

Home Connect will be available on iOS later this year; an Android version will be ready in early 2015. Next year will also see a further rollout of Home Connect. "We are going to further tap the potential of our connectivity solution, one step at a time," said Häpp. Home Connect has been conceived as an "open" platform to develop a growing range of services.

Quoted in Forbes, Häpp said, "Even though we would like everyone to only buy our appliances, the reality is that about 90% of households own different brands of appliances." She said that based on BSH research, 66 percent of consumers want to control their appliances with a single app.

Home Connect: A single app for more than one brand

The company release noted that in "Germany alone there are over 36 million smartphone users, while the number of technical appliances that connect to the World Wide Web is rising at breakneck speed. This opens the way to a wealth of new services, and Home Connect is precisely adapted to the customer's needs."

More information: www.bsh-group.us/index.php?showPI&y=±=141796

© 2014 Phys.org

Citation: Home Connect: A single app for more than one brand of household appliances (2014, April 27) retrieved 29 March 2024 from https://techxplore.com/news/2014-04-home-app-brand-household-appliances.html
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