The smart home and IoT boom of the mid-2010s has largely fizzled out, leaving behind abandoned devices, defunct cloud services, subscription paywalls, privacy issues, and a congested 2.4 GHz spectrum. Home automation actually dates back to 1975 with the X10 protocol, but the modern IoT wave fragmented the space with competing standards and unsustainable business models. Local solutions like Home Assistant exist but remain too complex for non-technical users. The deeper problem is that 'smart homes' aren't truly intelligent — they rely on manual rule configuration rather than genuine AI-driven responsiveness, and voice assistants like Alexa have failed to bridge that gap.
257 Impressions