aNewDomain — One of the cool things I saw at CES 2015 was by a German company named Yetu. Back in 2013 Yetu was at Disrupt in Berlin showing off a very early version of what we finally got to get our hands on at Showstoppers. That was enough, too, because after that Yetu raised $8 million for its vision: Creating an open source platform that truly connects the smart home of the future, regardless of standards and operating systems.
Polished, Present and Open Source
At Showstoppers we got to take a look at more polished hardware and software. Yetu showed us how you can be watching something on YouTube and let’s say your doorbell rings. Yetu will automatically pause what you are watching and bring up a video of your front door. From there you can choose to either unlock and open the door using your smart door unlocker, or you can tell that annoying solicitor to go away. All without ever getting up from your comfy smart couch. Just kidding, the couch isn’t smart … yet.
Of course Yetu does much more than that. Depending on what kind of smarts your home already has, or even if you decided to upgrade in the future, the open source, platform-agnostic system designed by Yetu will keep your options open. You can monitor your energy use, security system, hue lights and a ton more. This reminds me of something you would have securing your house in that movie “The Purge.” Only open source.
Since everything in your home is connected, regardless of what software you’re running, Yetu will work on home appliances, gaming consoles, tablets and PCs, giving you a handy software interface to work in either the web or native applications.
Will having a smart home change your life? Right now, I’m going to say probably not. But soon it could. Not change your life, maybe, but make the more mundane parts of it more interesting and easy. I know it sounds really silly to want something that can open your door so you don’t have to get off the couch — but I think it’s much more than that.
There’s so much data floating around in our daily lives that we don’t take advantage of enough. You could really fine tune a lot of your home living experience with a truly connected, smart home platform. Much more than being able to unlock your door with the tap of a key. But that is pretty cool, though, right?
Spec Rundown
Let’s take a look at the hardware. Yetu is one piece of hardware — the gateway. The rest of the process is accessed via HTML5 web applications on any device you want to use Yetu on. It also has APIs that let developers create apps, depending on what the specifics needs are. That is really cool, and it uses Yetu’s REST API so you can code in Javascript or whatever HTML IDE you like. All the new smart devices and home automation protocols can be integrated using Eclipse, too. Very cool.
Yetu says it is the, “open internet platform for all kinds of new services in the smart home. For creative developers. And as no retrofitting is required: for every home. Today.” So far it looks like it could be, and as the technology develops and we get other cool ways to track data and control our homes, it’ll be really interesting to see what evolves.
All Images: Mat Lee
