Ever wished you could use your smartphone to control your smart home, beyond just pulling up an app to turn something on or off? We’re now starting to see companies create actual functionality around the Matter initiative. Fluid, a relative newcomer to the smart home field, is building a service on top of Matter to allow you to control smart devices around your home simply by pointing your phone at the device.
Fluid calls this new service Fluid One. You can point your phone at a device, and it will automatically and immediately show you options to control said device. The service also allows for location-based automation and gesture controls. For example, imagine walking around your home and having lights automatically turning on or off depending on how close you are to them.
This new smart home system’s brains are contained within the Fluid Hub. The hub uses the same Apple ultra wideband chip available from Apple’s iPhone 11 onward to connect to all devices in your home. Once you set up the hub within your home and place four smart nodes on your walls to help with integration and automation, you’ll be able to control your devices with just a click, flick, or step.
The Fluid One system will also build an AR rendering of your home floor plan to help with location-based automation. You can see this floor plan, a list, and a graphic of all your smart home devices in a dashboard view on your phone. The view will allow you to monitor and manipulate all of your devices in one area.
With Fluid One, Fluid claims that you no longer have to deal with different menu systems, separate dedicated apps, and microphone usage. It seems that once in “Fluid” mode, your iPhone becomes a remote that can control whatever it’s pointed at. Not only will you be able to do basic on-off commands but you can also change colors, brightness, and volume levels.
The Fluid One system will be compatible with over 20,000 devices from various companies, including Apple, Google, Amazon, and Philips Hue, among others, upon release. Additionally, the company is garnering money and interest for its product through Kickstarter. As such, we don’t have an exact date for when the Fluid One will be released. However, it could be a smart home game-changer if it works properly.
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