When we first met Ubi, a voice-activated Android computer that hangs out on your wall, she was fairly powerless. While she kind-of-sort-of worked well, I found her to be very limited. That changes today, in theory.
Ubi’s creator Leor Grebler has announced Ubi’s integration with SmartThings, a home automation solution that connects to lights, security systems, and presence sensors. Using the Ubi you can turn on lights just by speaking commands and you can ping your house to see who is home, who left, and what appliances are running. In short, it’s just about everything we originally wanted from Ubi.
When I spoke to Leor a few months ago he talked about how the expansion of the platform would improve things considerably for early adopters. While, at this point, the Ubi is a glorified Google search machine, with integration with companies like SmartThings they are definitely headed in the right direction. I, personally, would like some Sonos controls as well as a connection to my Nest device, and presumably that’s in the cards.
While Ubi is still not able to control our environments to any real extent, it’s cool to see that the platform is growing and changing with user input. Ubi works, that’s sure. The question is now how it will work with the rest of our Internet-connected devices in the home.