Slow process HomeKit was approved, thunder little rain"

Technology Daily News, apple (Apple) 2014 released HomeKit smart home platform in the WWDC conference, like most of Apple's products and services, became industry focus, however, and attention is not proportional to the boom, 1 years later, it is really dilute cold front traveling, with the advent of HomeKit smart home products is not much in the end, why such a big gap, many third party hardware manufacturers complain that apple is demanding an obstacle.

When HomeKit is released but the actual product is great in strength and impetus, always only the stairs, until June 2015, only the first batch of 5 companies issued related products, including Ecobee smart thermostat, Elgato home air quality and temperature and humidity and water use sensors, iHOME smart socket, Lutron intelligent lighting switch HomeKit equipment, Insteon HomeKit Home Furnishing intelligent switching equipment, the other a deserted house with Apple released the grand to say exactly the opposite, in the end why?

Industry complaints are an obstacle to Apple's own requirements. Apple forced all want to support the HomeKit platform equipment must be embedded with built-in Apple authentication chip and firmware, and meet many standard apple, many want to support HomeKit vendors, that to achieve this, the product almost had to re build, including the main board in order to accommodate the chip also redesigned, led to a sharp rise in the cost. Not only the cost of the chip itself, but also includes all previous old designs have become sunk costs, new design had to re test, think not just beat a retreat.

Apple high standards of safety has become the obstacle, HomeKit can accept Wi-Fi or low power Bluetooth equipment (Bluetooth LE), but Apple must with a 3072 bit key encryption, also need Curve25519 Elliptic Curve Cryptography Application ultra high security encryption algorithm, Curve25519 should normally be used for digital signature encryption and other applications. The industry complained that this seemed musket to kill a butterfly, on the Wi-Fi device, can cope with such a demand, but low power Bluetooth device is often based on small battery low power operation, power saving and low efficiency is usually, to encrypt the computational needs are often inadequate, resulting in significant delays in product testing some manufacturers even delay up to 7 minutes.

Use Wi-Fi power consumption problem

The main function of smart home products are mostly immediate reaction in control, or home appliance products, if the delay to a few minutes, almost as useless as completely, and such as smart locks, as long as the delay of 40 seconds, it is better to go directly to the door. This delay can not accept so, smart home products manufacturers such as Broadcom chip factory general turmoil, even (Broadcom) and Marvell (Marvell) has to design low power Bluetooth chip, in order to meet the requirements of the encryption requirements of apple.

One of the first batch of 5 HomeKit equipment manufacturers Elgato, from the Elgato to find business opportunities, originally did not expect to have these problems, aware of solution of using adjustment of firmware and increasing chip built-in memory encryption processing operation needs, now Elgato is going to put the solution as a business to do, need to be sold to other manufacturers.

However, the use of Wi-Fi, the old problems will hit the power consumption, such as smart locks if the use of the Wi-Fi, will soon run out of battery power, the user can't stop to use or replace the battery, will stand it, leading to the use of the battery is not connected to the power supply equipment can not be entirely practical.

In late July 2015 the Silicon Valley conference embedded devices (ESC SV), manufacturers again rumble of guns, they complained that Apple requires harm in order to accommodate the entire chip to re create the motherboard, so that more equipment costs, and in the very price sensitive consumer electronic market, expensive is not a good thing. The industry also pointed out that HomeKit is not the only choice, there are dozens of smart home platform, many are more open than HomeKit.

Security is an issue that must be considered

The apple is really kill Yan, and carp? There is still reason, is the manufacturers too strawberry? Perhaps the answer is half and half, apple itself requires special chips are selfish, such as all the information will be uploaded to the iCloud, can strengthen and expand the apple ecosystem, but also therefore require encryption of information security issues to avoid these requirements, good for apple, but from the hardware business, but Apple itself is also not ready to complete the HomeKit although, released in 2014, but pointed out that Apple seems to be taking the hardware to Apple Watch after the listing back began to seriously deal with HomeKit, but Apple itself is still "learning by doing" stage, even the entire HomeKit program until the first batch of manufacturers to send a few months before the real verdict, it all adds up to the hardware developer issues.

But Apple's requirements is not without reason, consumers will want the same platform products can have a high degree of interoperability, therefore, it is necessary to firmware and hardware specifications or requirements, and finally become the individual, cannot become an ecosystem, will lose the meaning of HomeKit platform and the other; high safety requirements, there seems to be little carp, but considering the future development of smart home will be increasingly exposed to user privacy, security is indeed the beginning must consider many issues, networking products, ignoring safety problem, as long as the product can be used as good, especially low