Many have expounded on the phenomenon known as "the Internet of things." The idea is that everything from vacuum cleaners to refrigerators are now capable of being connected to, and controlled over, the World Wide Web. This week we’ll look at a set of products from Nexia Home Intelligence designed to allow folks to monitor their homes or small businesses from the Web, using computers, tablets or smartphones.
The base Nexia package revolves around its Home Bridge product (street price $70), which serves as the gateway to the various devices you can control. The Home Bridge is a cute little device that plugs into your Internet router. You talk to it over the Web, and it talks to most of its devices under the Z-wave protocol.
There are a number of types of devices you can control via the Home Bridge. We tested the Schlage Touchscreen Deadbolt with Alarm (street price $180) and the Trane Home Energy Management Thermostat (street price $140) and found installation and setup quite simple (Schlage, Trane and Nexia are all affiliated with Ingersoll Rand). In addition to traditional browser-based applications for control, there are also apps for IOS and Android-based devices. All of the applications are quite simple to use, of course, given the nature of the devices they control.
Other devices include an appliance to generically control lights and anything else that uses power; door and window sensors; motion sensors; and cameras. Although the cameras don’t work over the Z-wave protocol, they do integrate nicely with the rest of the line. Generally speaking, though, the available cameras are not as functional as other brands available on the market today.
What’s the catch? Well, remote monitoring via your phone, tablet or PC is available only with a monthly subscription of $9.99. There are certainly other products on the market that are available at no cost, but the central control is certainly worth a price — one just has to decide whether the convenience is worth the cost. There are also competing products in the market that also require a monthly subscription fee, typically in the same price range.
So how secure is it? After all, you don’t want the bad guys monitoring your cameras, unlocking your doors and breaking into your home or office. The fact of the matter is that the Z-wave protocol is not the weakest link in the chain. More than likely, hackers are going to attack the Home Bridge.
Like the recent iCloud "hackings," intrusions are more likely to be based on social engineering (for example, guessing your login and password) as opposed to "traditional" cracking of the protocols. At least for now it is much more likely for one to be burglarized by "smash and grab" criminals than have one’s home intelligence system hacked.
John Agsalud is an IT expert with more than 25 years of information technology experience in Hawaii and around the world. He can be reached at johnagsalud@yahoo.com.
