FROM January 1, 2016 the newly founded subsidiary Robert Bosch Smart Home will bring together all Bosch’s smart-home activities, including related software and sensor-system expertise.
The newly founded company will offer products and services for connected homes from a single source, including solutions that can report break-ins and control heating to save energy. From January 2016, customers will be able to order the first Bosch products in this field online. These include the Bosch smart home controller, a smart thermostat, and a contact for doors or windows. Bosch’s smart-home solutions are aimed at a giant market: according to market experts, by 2020 alone some 230 million homes worldwide – almost 15 per cent of all households – will feature smart-home technologies.
“Setting up the Bosch smart-home subsidiary is an important strategic step toward pooling and expanding on our range of solutions for the smart home. Smart homes facilitate new services that make their occupants’ lives easier, and they offer major business potential,” said Dr. Stefan Hartung, the member of the board of management of Robert Bosch responsible for the Energy and Building Technology business sector.
“The Bosch smart-home system is easy to install and operate: one system, one app, one user experience. Our solutions relieve users of tiresome routine tasks while offering them more convenience and safety,” said Dr. Peter Schnäbele, the future managing director of the Stuttgart-based Robert Bosch Smart Home.
When it comes to connectivity, Bosch believes open standards and open platforms will make the technology as user-friendly as possible. For this reason, the Bosch smart-home system is modular and expandable, and it is easy to connect compatible devices made by other manufacturers to it.
Bosch smart-home system solutions mean that a single platform is sufficient to interconnect the heating, lighting, smoke alarms, and appliances in a home. All these can then be operated simply using a smartphone or tablet. The core of the system is the Bosch smart-home controller, a central control unit that connects the components with each other and to the internet. In the future, users will be able to use the Bosch smart-home app to combine the basic functions of unrelated devices.
For example, the door and window contact solution reports whether a window is open. When this happens, the system can automatically turn down the heating in the relevant room, in line with the user’s preference settings. What is more, users can check their smartphone anytime, anywhere to see whether doors and windows are open or closed. In future versions of the door and window contact solution, the system will sound the alarm if a window or door is broken open when the occupant is absent.♦
