Edimax, ZyXEL and Cooler Master
Edimax
Edimax provides smart networking products for home and enterprise users, currently operating in 75 countries with 300 distribution channels worldwide.
Edimax Smart is the overarching brand of its smart home products, which include energy management, networking, monitoring and care solutions. Edimax wants all of these areas to be integrated, allowing it to offer custom solutions from interaction between devices e.g. uses a smart IP camera's heat detection to automatically turn on or adjust the thermostat. It also offers a Smart Plug, designed to control device energy consumption and ultimately save money. Tying things together is the EdiLife app, set for release in Q3 this year. It has plans for smart lighting products too, but said that while Japan is a relatively easy market here (standardised light fittings), the US and Europe are trickier.
On the enterprise side, Edimax showed off the work it is doing with cities like Taipei, with a particular focus on air pollution. The Air Box PM2.5, for example, is part of its EdiGreen range, and capable of measuring air quality, humidity and temperature to aid big data analysis but also to provide accurate, hyperlocal information in real-time, including immediate push notifications when air pollution levels are too high, for example.
ZyXEL
ZyXEL is another firm confident in its ability to lead in the smart home era – it's been around for more than 25 years, has connected more than 400,000 businesses worldwide and has vast experience in networking and connectivity devices.
The company's focus when we saw them was its One Connect software, which it sees as the foundation and baseline of a smart home. It is a comprehensive application functioning essentially as the management hub for all your connected devices. As well as device auto-configuration, it will over a visual overview of all devices, allowing you to manage them individually and grant access permissions between them. Support for Z-Wave and ZigBee devices is present too.
ZyXEL also showcased a couple of LTE Solutions, commenting on how mobile data per user is skyrocketing, average 0.9GB in 2014 and expected to rise to almost 6GB by 2019. First was the LTE HomeSpot Router, allowing up to 32 devices to connect via Wi-Fi to its 300Mbps/50Mbps down/up connection. There was also the MiFi Portable Router, offering the same speeds and connectivity options in a tiny package with a battery life said to last for up to 10 hours.
Cooler Master
Cooler Master may not be the first name you think of when it comes to smart homes and IoT, but as an OEM and ODM it actually has its footprints over a wide range of industries including energy, automotive, telecoms, shopping and even wine cooling. As its name suggests, its expertise is in cooling, and it can leverage this to help larger brands deal with their heat issues, including companies who do directly operate in the IoT space. It offers both active and passive cooling solutions as well as consultation on materials and processes.
Cooler Master showed us a variety of upcoming retail cooling products, and these have since been released at Computex 2016.