iHome's SmartPlug Lets You Control Your Home with the Cloud
With the popularity of cloud and IoT exploding, it was only a matter of time before a company began producing devices that control the items you’ve plugged into the power outlets all throughout your home or office.
Using iHome’s SmartPlug, consumers can take control of the devices they’ve plugged into their power outlets using a mobile app. Let’s say you leave your home and you can’t recall if you turned off the coffee maker. If your coffee maker is plugged into a SmartPlug, you could simply toggle the power off on the port directly from your mobile device.
The SmartPlug by iHome gives users more options than that; Customers can setup profiles that allow them define power settings the for the devices that they use the most in their home. Using the iHome SmartPlug, businesses and consumers will now be able to streamline their energy consumption saving both time and money.
The SmartPlug connects to a cloud service maintained by iHome. The device itself is small, light and durable. Each device has its own individual management key associated with it that helps secure the devices you are managing within your home. The SmartPlug devices directly connect to your in-house WiFi, giving you the ability to manage all of your power settings on the go from any location in the world.
“The SmartPlug is the first in a long line of products [for iHome Control],” Director of Product Development Gary Schultz told TheNextWeb in an interview.
“We created our own cloud infrastructure to handle our iHome Control line of products. Because we have our own cloud now, we can do a lot of cloud-to-cloud partnerships. You can envision in the future the plug interacting with devices from other manufacturers,” added Schultz.
The SmartPlug starts at $39.99 MSRP so if you wanted to install 10 of these in your house, you’re looking at $400 to do so. For some consumers, that’s a small price to pay to gain complete control of the electronic devices connected to wall outlets in your home.
