CE Pro September 2024 - 22

Networking+Home Control
LG Acquires Controlling
Stake in Athom's Smart
Home Platform
LG SAYS it has acquired a
majority stake in Athom, a
Dutch smart home platform
company, in a deal that
helps grow LG's smart home
ecosystems and enhances
LG's connectivity within open
smart home ecosystems.
LG plans to integrate Athom's
connectivity capabilities
with its own 'Affectionate
Intelligence' technology and
AI-enabled LG ThingQ smart
home platform, pushing LG
to become a major player in
the AI-driven smart home
landscape. Notably, this better
positions LG in the smart
home market alongside major
competitor Samsung, which
has been continually improving
its own SmartThings smart
home platform.
Athom is the maker and
seller of the Homey smart
home hub, which connects
with home appliances and IoT
devices. The hub also offers
cloud subscription services.
Homey is primarily in European
markets, but devices are
also available in Australia, Singapore,
and North America.
Running on a purpose-built
operating system, Homey Pro
is Athom's flagship product
that can connect to more
than 50,000 devices and
supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,
Z-Wave, Matter, and Thread.
The Homey App Store,
managed by Athom, offers
around 1,000 applications
for connecting and controlling
home devices from
leading smart home brands.
Many applications are based
on official partnerships,
but the platform allows for
apps to be developed by a
Athom is the maker of the Homey smart home hub, which
connects with home appliances and IoT devices.
community of developers
who actively contribute to
Athom's open platform.
Once connected, users
can not only manually control
individual devices, but also
set up automations in what
are called Flows, which
are custom built by users
using When, And, and Then
conditionals. When using the
Homey Pro these automations
are also able to run completely
offline. Users can also
create custom automations
using HomeyScript, which is
a JavaScript-based language
that is meant to deliver more
advanced automations compared
to regular Flows.
Users can also backup the
hub's data to a Mac or Windows
PC or pay $10 per year
to get cloud backups.
According to LG, the
company hopes to create an
AI home that delivers optimal
space solutions by gaining a
deeper understanding of the
customer. In this envisioned
AI-driven home, customers
will interact with generative
AI, which will manage
appliances and smart home
devices to create a personalized
environment.
Trident IoT Announces Latest Zigbee Chip & SDK
RF TECHNOLOGY and engineering company Trident IoT
has announced its latest Zigbee chip and accompanying
software development kit.
According to the Carlsbad, Calif., company, this latest
offering represents its next step in providing comprehensive
IoT solutions designed to simplify IoT development. In
addition to the latest silicon technology in the Zigbee chip,
the software development kit (SDK) is designed by product
engineers who have collectively developed and shipped
millions of IoT products.
Since launching less than a year ago, Trident IoT has more
than doubled its engineering resources and amassed experts
on wireless connectivity across all protocols, including Zigbee,
Z-Wave, Matter, and others, the company says.
According to Trident IoT, the Zigbee chip and SDK have
22 | CE Pro September 2024
been designed from the ground up by the Trident IoT engineering
team backed by over a century of collective end-toend
product development experience to ensure it meets the
real-world needs of today's developers.
" Designed by product engineers for product engineers,
our latest Zigbee chip and accompanying SDK has been purpose-built
to make IoT development faster, easier, and more
efficient, " says Mariusz Malkowski, CTO and co-founder of
Trident IoT. " With this new offering, Trident IoT customers
can expect more predictable development cycles, faster
time to revenue and simply better products. "
To help provide enhanced support and services to
manufacturers within the industry, Trident IoT notes it is in
the process of becoming a Connectivity Standards Alliance
authorized test lab.
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CE Pro September 2024

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