Today it is hard to get homelkit stuff to work with Phillips Hue. Google doesn't work with Amazon, and so on. This new alliance will be the answer to the worlds problem. Peace in the middle east, no more starving children, climate change has ended.
Yea right!
Before this standard will be mainstream, it'll take at lease a year before the standard is hammered out, assuming everyone cooperates. Hardware built to meet this standard will come shortly after that, maybe. Will it all interoperate? no one knows.
It'll likely take 5 years or more for the most of these manufacturers switch their devices exclusivly to this standard. Between the time it takes to flesh out the standard, getting the functions needed on these standard, and the manufacturing pipeline, it is just the way things are. No one needs to stall to make this take so long, it just will take that long.
Standards are written to be slightly ambiguous, for many reasons. Google will interpret one part different than Apple interpreted it, as well as Amazon, so they will work similar, but not totally compatible. It is the way life it. Certainly a zigbee device won't be able to talk to a BLE device, who can't talk to a WiFi device.
This new standard will work in the hubs, and almost no where else. The hubs will talk to the devices that manufacturer built them to work with, and nothing else. That sounds like the way things are today, only there is likely to be more things that work with the Amazon or Google hubs.
What should you do?
- Wait? that is fine, if you have been waiting and have limited need for home automation. Maybe pick a hub after one is released in a couple years, and a couple minor devices at the same time. After 3-7 years, it will be ok to stick with products that promise to work with the hub you picked.
- Keep using what you have? If you have something and it is working for you, keep going. No need to change now. Maybe in the future, your protocol will migrate to the new protocol, or the new hub will support legacy protocols.
- Pick something and start now? If you want home automation now, then pick something and get started. It should keep working for then next few years, unless the manufacturer changes their mind or goes out of business (and plenty have, including Best Buy, Lowes, and others).
The home automation landscape hasn't changed a bit with this new standard. Over the last 20 years companies have come and gone in this space. Having a bunch of companies get together and promise a new protocol changes nothing.
Home automation is a little easier than maybe 20 years ago, but it is still someone mostly for tech savvy individuals. Nothing wrong with that. If you are handy with the soldering iron and some coding, the NodeMCU/Node-Red solution will work. If you want plug and play, pick a manufacturer and stay in that eco-system.
