Lowe's To Sell Off Its 'Under-Performing' Iris Smart Home Automation Business (cepro.com)

CIStud shares a report from CE Pro: Giant home improvement retailer Lowe's is giving up on the smart home market. The company announced its "difficult decision" to exit the home automation market and is seeking a buyer for its Iris Smart Home business as part of a "strategic reassessment." The announcement is part of multiple other maneuvers by Lowe's that include closing its Orchard Supply Hardware business, dumping its Alacrity Renovation Service, shutting down all its locations in Mexico, and shutting more than 50 locations in the U.S. and Canada. Lowe's Iris was hailed as the only entry-level home automation system that handled ZigBee, Z-Wave and Wi-Fi when it came out in 2012. Speaking to investors, president and CEO Marvin Ellison [lumped Lowe's Iris in with other initiatives as an] "underperforming... non-core business."

Comments

Massively overpriced

[Kokuyo]

This is not about the specific product but home automation in general:

Am I just naive or is this whole sector massively overpriced?

I have not yet found a product line that would fit all my home automation needs (like lights, door lock, surveillance cameras, garage door, intrusion detection, shutters, smoke detection, home entertainment control and so on), has a UI that doesn't make you want to pull out your hair by the roots AND is actually affordable.

Because let's be honest, a wireless light switch does not cost more than 3 bucks to produce. It just doesn't. And then I keep seeing prices like 20 to 50 bucks a pop.... remember how many switches you need and do the math.

After all this time of home automation being a thing, especially with the smart home appliances Google, Amazon, etc are offering, one would think that doing it yourself with arduino or something comparable could not still be the more versatile and cheaper option. But my gut tells me it is.

So am I being naive or haven I just not yet stumbled upon the right product?

Re:Massively overpriced

[JaredOfEuropa]

Very good point. I have had a few Z-Wave switches die on me as well due to what I suspect are heat issues. Luckily, Euro pattress boxes are a little roomier, and I went with Düwi switches. Feature-poor and a little old fashioned in terms of Z-Wave functionality, but they keep going, and each dimmer even comes with its own spare fuse... German gründlichkeit.

As for the price of this stuff, isn't the Z-Wave license fee a big part of that? Also: some jackass holds a patent on "instant notification", the idea that if you switch a light on using the wall switch, the central controller is instantly notified of the change rather than learning of it through a periodic status poll. That patent alone adds €s to the price; these days people expect that switches support that functionality. Still, with high prices (higher still in Europe, believe me...) I didn't find the total overall cost to be that daunting. I did spend a few thousand € on fully automating the house, but I do get a much lower heating bill out of it (Z-Wave allows me to control radiators separately in each room, so we only heat the ones that are in use). And the convenience is worth it - even according to the wife, which is the only real yardstick by which to measure such things.

What does surprise me about the home automation market is that a lot of manufacturers seem to think we want shoddy products that look like crap, while the functionality isn't very well thought through: there always seems to be one maddingly missing link that keeps us from doing what we want with them. Fibaro are an exception: I can't speak for their controller but their peripherals work very well, they are designed well and feel like premium products.

The whole automation is missing the point

[Cyberax]

The whole home automation industry is missing the point. I spent a lot of time and money on trying different products and I could barely find anything worth using.

Let's look at light switches. What's the main requirement for a light switch? Yep, being able to reliably operate it blindly in the dark. Amazingly enough, quite a few vendors fail this. For example, GE ZigBee switches have almost a one second delay between pressing the switch and light coming on. Sounds trivial but it's actually quite a significant problem.

Let's look at smart outlets next. What is the requirement here? Simple, being able to replace existing outlets in existing electric boxes. Again, there are barely any products capable of doing this.

I'm seriously considering funding a development of the wireless light switch done right - it'll behave like a regular switch but will have a mechanical actuator to flip it remotely.

Re:The whole automation is missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

and a sycophantic obsession on cloud dependence on requiring a connection to the vendors proprietary cloud offering else the hardware becomes a brick, stop it, people don't want to throw away hardware because a company went out of business or a product line got the axe from a merger.