“How far are we from the real smart home era?”
Since the birth of the smart home industry, almost every practitioner has thought about this issue. With the evolution of the times, users’ demands for smart homes are constantly improving.
01. History of Smart Home Evolution
The first generation of smart homes replaced the traditional remote control with a mobile app. The stupid and stupid remote control got on the touch screen of the phone and became an independent but split app.
Second-generation smart homes began to integrate a variety of distributed apps with a set of protocols and link the various home products. In addition, voice control hubs such as smart speakers have begun to appear, making user control more convenient.
However, integrating the remote control into the mobile phone and letting the user manipulate the home appliance with voice is not the ultimate direction of the smart home. The so-called intelligence is obviously not as simple as embedding the remote control into the mobile phone.
When AI has been able to perceive human behavior, needs, and even emotional changes, the evolution of smart homes will only move toward a more “smart” direction. Instead of human thinking, people do not need to control, is the ultimate form of smart home.
On October 21, 2019, the whole house Internet home appliance brand Yunmi held a new product launch conference in Beijing, released its new VIoT 5G CPE product, and unveiled a new high-end AI technology home appliance brand coKiing. AI and 5G have become the key words for the future of Yunmi Smart Appliances.
A smarter smart home era is coming.
02. What kind of air conditioning do users need in the AI era?
In 1928, Carrier produced the first household air conditioner in history. Since then, air-conditioning products have begun to evolve and evolve.
From the early window to the now common cabinet, wall and central air conditioning, the shape of the air conditioner is constantly changing. The air conditioning core refrigeration technology is also continuing to iterate: the upgrade of refrigerant from early CFCs to more environmentally friendly HFCs, the emergence of inverter air conditioners and constant temperature air conditioners further enhance the user experience.
However, the evolution of air conditioning in history has mostly revolved around the core refrigeration technology. The perception of air conditioners by ordinary users has always been a “technical black box” that can generate cold winds.A cold product seems to be difficult to interact intelligently with users.
The intelligent transformation of air-conditioning, first of all, is to give this “black box” more intelligent perception.
On October 21st, coKiing released its new AI inverter air conditioner series, and the core selling point of this series of new products lies in the “full house temperature field, AI smart wind” proposed by innovation. The traditional “air conditioning” is given to itself and to the dual “perceptual evolution” of the environment.
In order to upgrade the air conditioning’s own perception, coKiing is equipped with the “AI Thermal Eyes” function. The core of AI’s thermal eye is a set of infrared thermal sensors. This sensor can sense the presence of the human body, realizes that people come from the wind, and people take the wind to stop, thus actively turning on or off the air conditioner.
In addition, coKiing’s new infrared thermal sensor can accurately recognize the position, motion state and temperature changes of the human body, and realize the wind to follow people or wind to avoid people blowing. Whether it is the hot and cold moment of urgent need to cool down, or the sleep time of air conditioning sickness, coKiing can meet the needs of users.
At the same time, the coKiing air conditioner and three external temperature and humidity sensors in the room can realize the ambient temperature and humidity detection of the whole house. With the help of various sensors, the one-key AI intelligent wind function of the coKiing air conditioner can realize automatic operation in different scenarios, so that the home environment can achieve constant temperature and humidity.
In addition to AI, coKiing air conditioners have not ignored the configuration of core components. Take the Royal cabinet series as an example, the best air conditioner compressors in the industry – Japan Matsushita inverter compressors. The compressor has better durability and stability than a conventional compressor. The addition of this compressor allows Royal to achieve core experience such as quiet, low energy consumption and long life, and its refrigeration and energy saving performance are also guaranteed.
For coKiing, a high-end home appliance brand, Chen Xiaoping, founder and CEO of Yunmi Technology, explained: “The brand positioning of Yunmi is a new middle-class group, and the positioning of coKiing is higher.” In product positioning, coKiing Central air-conditioning products were introduced once, and the large-sized people were also important target users of coKiing.
But at the same time, coKiing still maintains a high price/performance ratio. CoKiing central air-conditioning one for three sets for only 9999 yuan, relative competing products, coKiing still has a certain price advantage.
AcceptingIn an interview with the media, Chen Xiaoping said that compared with Yunmi, the biggest high-end differentiation of the coKiing brand is its AI capability. The official information of coKiing will position the brand as “high-end AI technology appliances”. In other words, air conditioners are probably not the only layout direction of the coKiing brand.
When asked if coKiing would cover other home appliances, Chen Xiaoping only left four words that are meaningful: “Please look forward to it.”
03. 5G CPE, High Performance Hub in the Age of Internet of Everything
AI gives the smart brain of smart homes. However, how to better achieve linkage between smart home devices is still a big problem in the whole industry.
Unlike many smart home businesses, Yunmi started out as a smart water purifier and has begun to expand into the whole house Internet smart home appliance market. Many families choose Yunmi, and what they value is actually Yunmi’s “full house” solution.
But the whole house plan has also brought more challenges to Yunmi. Many families install dozens or even hundreds of smart home devices at the same time. These devices may be connected to each other through various protocols such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee. Traditional WiFi routers and gateways may not be able to carry so many devices online at the same time.
In addition, in this refrigerator, the built-in screen is started, and while the user is watching the food video while learning to cook, the demand for network bandwidth of smart home devices has gradually increased.
Building a high-performance “smart home equipment hub” is the only way for Yunmi to be on the smart home road. How to make the whole house smart home system realize the interconnection of large bandwidth, low delay and high stability, which is a big problem that must be solved under the eyes of Yunmi.
The current hot 5G communication technology is one of the solutions to this problem. But obviously, installing a large number of smart home devices for users with 5G modules is still too expensive at this stage.
The WiFi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax) technology on the LAN side can lower the threshold of 5G home access and touch IoT devices such as smart home. As the latest generation of WiFi protocol, the theoretical maximum speed of WiFi 6 is up to 9.6Gbps, and supports massive devices online at the same time, which can make 5G networks take root on the LAN side.
And Yunmi’s final choice is a 5G CPE that combines the 5G and WiFi 6 wireless protocols. At the press conference on the 21st, Yunmi released its first 5G CPE device, the Yunmi VIoT 5G CPE.
Yunmi VIoT 5G CPE
What is 5G CPE? The traditional home router converts the wired broadband signal into a wireless WiFi signal; while the 5G CPE device can convert the 5G signal into a WiFi signal for the user to use.
Yunmi’s 5G CPE products are designed for home IoT devices. On the WAN side, this product supports 4G, 5G full Netcom full-band or wired broadband hybrid networking.
On the LAN side, Yunmi 5G CPE supports WiFi 6 protocol, built-in 4×4 MIMO antenna and 6 WiFi signal amplifiers, which can realize full house WiFi signal coverage, support up to 256+ IoT device access, and downlink The rate is as high as 3.4Gbps.
“We are launching this 5G CPE product, not to enter the 5G CPE industry and traditional communication vendors to grab jobs, but to provide new smart home solutions for our users.” Chen Xiaoping said.
Compared with competing products, Yunmi’s VIoT 5G CPE supports one-button automatic networking of smart home devices without complicated network operation. Obviously, the main positioning of this product is to serve the original smart home users of Yunmi.
In Chen Xiaoping’s view, when the era of AI and 5G comes, the demand for smart homes will definitely change, and Yunmi will continue to embrace these changes.
The actual needs of users are also the core logic of cloud and coKiing product design. Just like adding an infrared thermal sensing module to coKiing, Chen Xiaoping regards this attempt as one of the ways to solve user needs. “This is a practical technology, not a gimmick.” Chen Xiaoping said, “We have also considered using a camera, but it can not detect the temperature, it may also bring privacy concerns to users. The infrared thermal sensor is the best. Solution.”
After realizing that the wind is moving and people are avoiding such user needs, coKiing will not hesitate to spend the cost to solve the demand. “At present, this module accounts for 5% of the entire air-conditioning cost.” Chen Xiaoping said. In the future, users’ demand for smart homes will also emerge in an endless stream.
“When the 5G era is approaching, high-speed connections will be everywhere. And users need to eat, drink, and play.Seeking, also need equipment to carry. Chen Xiaoping pointed out, “This change will make many devices in the home Internet of things become connectors, not just functional devices.” Just like an air conditioner may no longer be just an air conditioner, but will carry a new connection function.