Smart homes have been popular for several years.
Smart speakers, smart light bulbs, smart sockets, smart door locks… these items have already entered the homes of ordinary people.
But an embarrassing reality is that after many people buy it home, as soon as the novelty wears off, they return to the “manual mode” – the lights are still turned on and off by hand, the curtains are still pulled by hand, and no one cares about the sweeping robot when it is stuck under the sofa.
Smart homes are falling into the useless situation of “the popularization of single product intelligence, but the difficulty of linking the whole house”.
Each device looks smart individually, but when put together it is difficult to form a “1+1>2” experience.
What’s the problem?
Is the technology immature, or is the industry ecosystem fighting?
1. The prosperity and “islanding” of single-product intelligence
Nowadays, you can buy a smart socket for a few dozen yuan, and your mobile phone can control the switch, timing, and power statistics; a smart speaker that costs a few hundred yuan can listen to songs, set alarm clocks, and control home appliances.
The entry barrier for smart homes is already very low.
But most of the smart devices in the home are actually “independent”.
The lamp is from brand A, the socket is from brand B, and the air conditioner is from brand C. They don’t “know” each other.
If you want to “automatically turn off the lights, turn off the air conditioner, and start the camera after leaving home”, you need to set it up in three or four apps separately, and there is no linkage between these actions.
This “isolated” experience turns the smart home into a “mentally retarded home” – not that it is not smart, but that the smart home is too fragmented.
2. The three big mountains of whole-house linkage: agreement, ecology, and cost
Why is whole-house linkage so difficult to implement?
There are three core obstacles.
First, the communication protocol is not unified.
Smart devices need to communicate through “language”.
The mainstream protocols currently on the market include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Thread, Matter, etc.
Products of different brands and generations may use different protocols. Just like if you speak Chinese and I speak English, no one can understand the other.
Although the industry is promoting unified standards such as Matter, the compatibility of existing equipment is very poor, and old equipment cannot support new protocols through software upgrades.
Second, ecological closure and barriers.
Every major technology company has its own smart home platform, working in silos.
Speakers of brand A often have limited support for devices of brand B. Even if they are supported, they are only “basic functions” and cannot achieve deep linkage.
Behind this is a battle of commercial interests – everyone wants to be the “control center” of the home and is unwilling to completely open data and interfaces to competitors.
Users are forced to make a multiple choice question: either buy all products from the same ecosystem, or endure a fragmented experience.
Third, the configuration and maintenance costs are high.
To truly realize “leaving home mode”, “watching mode” and “waking up mode”, users need to set up complex automation scenes themselves.
For example, “If the door lock is unlocked and it is before 7 a.m., turn on the corridor light and adjust the brightness to 20%.”
This logic is more expensive to learn for ordinary users.
Moreover, once a device goes offline, the battery dies, and the router reboots, the entire automation may fail.
Troubleshooting requires expertise and patience, and most people give up.
3. From “showy skills” to “practical”: the disruptive direction of whole-house linkage
To get rid of the useless smart home, it needs to shift from “single product thinking” to “scenario thinking” and lower the user’s threshold for use.
Uniform connection standards are key.
The emergence of the Matter protocol is a positive sign.
It is designed to allow devices of different brands to interoperate through the same standard.
If mainstream manufacturers truly embrace this standard, users will no longer have to worry about brands and can choose smart devices just like ordinary light bulbs.
Simplify the configuration process.
Ideally, whole-home connectivity should work “out of the box.”
The device automatically identifies and configures the network after it is powered on; the scene mode can be set through natural language – “I am going to bed” will automatically turn off the lights, draw the curtains, and lower the air conditioning temperature, instead of asking the user to write logic code.
AI can also learn user habits and proactively suggest automated scenarios instead of letting people set them up.
Lower the maintenance threshold.
Equipment status should be clear at a glance, with self-diagnosis of faults and automatic reconnection when offline to reduce user intervention.
The cloud backup and restore configuration function eliminates the need to start from scratch after replacing a mobile phone or router.
4. What consumers need is not a “comprehensive set” but “worry-free”
The ultimate goal of whole-house linkage is not to allow every home appliance to be controlled with a mobile phone, but to allow users to “not feel the presence of intelligence” – the lights are automatically adjusted to comfortable brightness, the room temperature is automatically maintained pleasant, and security is automatically armed and disarmed.
All this should be done silently in the background without disturbing the user’s normal life.
Only when a smart home is truly “worry-free,” “sensible” and “reliable” can it transform from a toy for a few geeks to a necessity for ordinary families.
This road will still take time, but the direction is clear: less ecological separation and more open collaboration; less function stacking and more scene polishing.
