After a series of speculations, the rock announced, this Tuesday (12), its official entry into the smart home market. The company presented a line with security cameras, doorbells, lamps and sockets. As expected, the products are manufactured in partnership with Wyze and will initially be sold only in the United States.
According to the company, the devices are compatible with Google Assistant and Roku Voice. Alexa support is expected to arrive in early November.
As expected, users will be able to control video feeds through a dedicated channel on Roku OS. In addition, an app will also be available for iOS and Android.
In the app, users will be able to control devices, get cloud video recording history, activate smart alerts and receive package delivery notifications. However, some of these features will be limited to a subscription, which has not been priced.
The cheapest of the newly announced devices are smart sockets, which let you control all the others. One unit of it costs $8.88.
The most expensive is the external camera with a floodlight, which costs $100. Its light has a brightness of 2,600 lumens, which is activated by motion. The device is waterproof, has a 270° field of view and can see up to 9 m away.
To TechCrunchRoku said that “this is just the first step towards [linha] Smart Home” and hinted that more smart products could be launched in the future.
Some of the new devices are already available for pre-order on the company’s official website. All will arrive exclusively on shelves and in the American Walmart online store starting next Monday, October 17th.
Matter standard seems not to have been adopted by the company
According to Roku’s statement, the devices appear not to support the Matter protocol, which had its version 1.0 released earlier this month.
Despite Roku being part of the Connectivity Standards Alliance and the Matter Working Group, the organizations behind the standard, the company didn’t even mention the standard at launch.
Matter, in practice, seeks to solve a major problem with smart devices: the incompatibility between them. It is a protocol developed and tested since 2019 by a group of more than 200 companies, such as Apple, Google and Samsung.
The standard was supposed to be released in 2020. However, at the end of 2021, it was postponed to spring/summer 2022. In addition to the giants, devices from more than 100 companies should be supported by Matter soon. Among them are: ecobee, iRobot, LG, Samsung, Signify and TCL.
With information: rock, The Verge and TechCrunch
https://tecnoblog.net/noticias/2022/10/12/roku-entra-no-mercado-de-casas-inteligentes-mas-parece-deixar-matter-de-lado/