Agreed. It's just the start. A threshold - with the Telink/xped collaboration providing the first affordable and interoperable tech for scaling up the smart home....and with the potential to scale up many other areas where the tech can add value in asset operations, maintenance and data management.
See below:
Scaling the network and interoperability
There are however two challenges to scaling up the smart home implementation: one is how to implement properly functioning wireless sensor network technology to grow the network of devices in the home, and the other is related to interworking between different technologies.
Addressing the issue of growing the wireless network, BLE mesh technology like that offered by Telink Semiconductor can support multiple terminals to control multiple smart devices simultaneously in real time. This is critical: without the appropriate network traffic control technology, it is very hard to update and reflect the status of multiple smart devices on every control terminal in time and automatically. In fact, it could result in inconsistent control and might lead to devices and controllers not being in in sync.
A typical problematic scenario without such network traffic control technology might be that you turn off a light in your house using the app on your cellphone, but this might not show up immediately on any other smartphones being used in the same house to control or monitor appliance status.
Then there is the challenge of interoperability between different types of devices operating on different communications protocols, such as 802.15.4 (or ZigBee) and Wi-Fi. Since the Internet of Things incorporates a diverse range of device types, it will be necessary for different devices to be able to talk together in a common language across the various connectivity types, if smart home systems are to be scaled up and implemented widely.
In order to do this, it requires a solution that not only provides an all-in-one system-on-chip for the internet of things addressing all protocols and standards, but also concurrent real time control of connected devices using different standards in the home, without using an external hub. A device like the TLSR8269 bridges the communications between smartphones and controllers that predominantly use Bluetooth low energy (BLE), and home automation devices that use ZigBee (IEEE 802.115.4) mesh networks. Such a device can support both BLE and 802.15.4 stacks to run simultaneously, so that seamless control of multiple devices using the different communications protocols can be achieved at the same time.
