Smart Home Expands From the House to the Yard to the Car

In the previous blog in this series, I discussed how the smart home is moving outdoors with a range of devices that can personalize the ambiance of an outdoor living space, create a new type of entertainment space, and increase home safety and security. This trend is part of a move by stakeholders in the smart home space to find new ways to bring additional value to consumers through smart home devices. Smart home products and services currently bring value to consumers inside the home, but also extend outdoors, and increasingly into vehicles.

Smart Home Product Offerings for Vehicles 

In a recent briefing with Vivint Smart Home, I was told about the company’s latest offering, Car Guard. Vivint claims the product is a first-of-its-kind service that allows homeowners to manage the security of both their home and car via the Vivint Smart Home app. Installed under the dashboard of most cars, the small device is powered by Mojio, a platform and software as a service solutions provider for connected cars. By building a relationship between the smart home and car, consumers can enable a variety of new and interesting applications. For example, consumers can use the Vivint Smart Home app to activate lights and record video using outdoor cameras if the car is disturbed while parked in the driveway. Other examples include triggering the smart home to turn on or off lights, locking the front door, closing the garage, and arming the security system when the car drives away, as well as locating the car with GPS tracking or geolocating. This feature notifies users when the car comes and goes from specific areas like the home, office, or school. The device offered by Vivint Smart Home is priced at $199 with a $9.99 per month service fee.

Vivint Smart Home is not the only smart home company focused on extending its products and services to the car. Both Google and Amazon featured cars as part of their smart home displays at CES this year. Amazon has partnered with Telenav, which will now include Alexa as part of its in-car navigation system, while Google has partnered with Anker to develop a device called Roav Bolt, which enables Google Voice Assistant in the car. 

Smart Home Devices Extending Beyond Walls and Changing the Market

Whether it be the backyard or the car, one trend is clear: smart home technology is increasingly extending outside of a home’s four walls. This is a conscious effort by stakeholders to create more value for consumers with smart home products. The smart home is quickly shifting from an emerging market serving early adopters to a mainstream market where connected devices are part of our everyday lives, in and outside of the home.