How digitalSTROM is Changing Smart Home Innovation with CloudSight
Smart home technology is nothing new, at least in this day and age. Once a mere concept that only seemed possible on the The Jetsons, the smart home is a dream of the past that’s paving the way for the future of how we live. However, one electrics company based in Switzerland is quickly gaining traction ahead of the smart home curve. digitalSTROM operates a smart home platform that allows a variety of different devices and services to interact with each other, which offers customers more comfort, energy efficiency, and security in their home. More specifically, digitalSTROM networks buildings, home technology, household appliances and consumer electronics with each other and with the Internet. According to their website, “there is almost nothing you can’t control and automate with digitalSTROM,” and we’re not too surprised. Most recently, digitalSTROM won Best App in the Smart Home category via FOCUS-MONEY Magazine’s 2017 App-Test. You can see the digitalSTROM experience in the one minute video below:
Where is smart home technology actually taking us, and what are the next steps after simply synching the lights in your home? digitalSTROM CEO Martin Vesper thinks the possibilities of smart home technology are endless. For example, the folks at digitalSTROM developed “dS device bots,” which enable an electrical device to access cognitive services, learn on its own, adopt itself and also directly interact with the users.
For example, say you want to make a cup of tea. A user can photograph a random tea bag and send it to the dS Kettle bot. The precise tea variety is interpreted through the photo. Then, the technology finds out how to prepare this variety (e.g. water temperature) and forwards this knowledge to the teakettle, which in turn prepares the water at the optimum temperature for the user. As a result, the teakettle is set up optimally by means of an image and a dS bot.
“Integrating Cloud services has become increasingly easy and cost-effective.”
In order to foster this type of smart home technology and employ such cognitive services, digitalSTROM integrated CloudSight into its applications for its ability to visually interpret images such as the tea bag in the example above. “The CloudSight API is well-structured so that a quick integration was possible. The service is stable and delivers good results,” writes Vesper. “The recognition quality was a decisive advantage.”
Some companies get intimidated when it comes to integrating an established API, and for good reason. digitalSTROM’s whole platform has to run seamlessly in order to continue pleasing their current customers and growing their consumer base. Vesper needed to find a technology that wasn’t going to fail him, his company, or his customers. “Integrating Cloud services has become increasingly easy and cost-effective,” he writes. “This opens up completely new applications because low effort and less cost allow it to be used even within a very small scope that is still powerful for the user.”
“Image recognition obviously plays a significant role in the automation of the home because we still must do many things manually.”
What’s next for digitalSTROM and the smart home as we know it? Vesper explains that the rapid development of cognitive services that reflect knowledge and capabilities in certain areas, combined with networked devices, leads to a growth in virtual application because existing devices can now acquire increasing capabilities over time. “Image recognition obviously plays a significant role in the automation of the home because we still must do many things manually,” Vesper writes.
There’s no denying that image recognition will make its own home in the smart home market. We just can’t wait until we can psychically automate our coffee machine to produce each employee’s favorite cup of joe.
