International American Football Association (IFA) It was full of news Smart Home Technology This year, with some interesting ideas coming from Aqarathe company responsible for many stylish products such as U200 Smart LockAlong with its broad launch of cameras, sensors, locks and home security devices, the company also revealed a small device that addresses a different kind of security problem.
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The Voice Mate H1 is a small disc that uses voice commands and connects to the M3 Center — Aqara's flagship smart home control hub. Most importantly, the Voice Mate H1 only listens to you when you're holding it. Instead of passively waiting for a “wake-up phrase” like “Hey, Siri” or summoning “Alexa” by name, the microphone doesn't activate until you pick it up and the light turns green.
The puck has sensors that can detect when it's picked up, and then allow it to initiate commands to change settings, lock or unlock doors, or trigger scenes. The device doesn't need to be in any particular location, as it communicates with the hub over your home network, following the company's “always connected” motto.
It can perform simple commands like “Close the curtains,” while complex ones like “Turn off the living room lights when no presence is detected for 30 minutes” invoke the Large Language Model (LLM) to set the prescribed condition or scene.
The device’s small size also raises questions, though – the most obvious of which is: what happens if you lose it? Assuming the dog doesn’t manage to get hold of the puck first, speaking to Voice Mate uses Aqara’s custom Copilot AI to take action on your devices or troubleshoot issues via the app (it can’t respond with audio, as there’s no speaker on either the Hub M3 or the puck). Plus, LLM uses the cloud, but it doesn’t store data locally.
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Aqara first announced its AI-powered smart assistant at this year’s CES, and it’s currently only available on a handful of devices. When I spoke to Aqara representatives at their demo booth (which looked more like an actual smart home), they told me that the company is headed in this direction for the long term.
Full voice integration with all of your home devices via a sophisticated LLM that can perform any action on your behalf sounds nice, but we’ll have to wait and see how the technology develops. Some additional security concerns arise with the puck that acts as a “key” to access all of your smart home’s voice-activated features, but we’ll have to try the device out in person to test it further.
The drive's battery is supposed to last “over a year” since it only draws power when you're holding it. But again, we'll delve deeper into battery issues once the device is available.
As for connectivity, the M3 Hub is compatible with all of Aqara’s Matter-compatible Zigbee products, and also works as a Matter bridge. Aqara clarified that the Voice Mate H1 might not work with everything, as it’s still a new technology. On that note, the Voice Mate H1 isn’t on the market yet, as it won’t be available until later this year or early 2025.
Aqara unveiled a handful of other smart home devices at this year’s IFA in Berlin, including its first outdoor smart home camera with impressive true color night vision, local storage, end-to-end encryption, and cloud syncing.
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The company also showed off its new smart garage door controller (which in the future will supposedly open automatically when it detects your car) and even a smart valve controller that can manually close a butterfly valve if it detects moisture.