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Concept
Smart home hub
Summary
A smart home hub, sometimes also referred to as a "smart hub", "gateway'", "bridge", "controller" or "coordinator", is a control center/centre for a smart home, and enables the components of a smart home to communicate and respond to each other via communication through a central point. The smart home hub can consist of dedicated computer appliance, software appliance, or software running on computer hardware, and makes it possible to gather configuration, automation and monitoring of a smart house by communicating and controlling different smart devices that consist of for example home appliances, sensors and relays or robots, many of which are commonly categorized under Internet of things.
A smart home can contain one, several, or even no smart home hubs. When using several smart home hubs it is sometimes possible to connect them to each other. Some smart home hubs support a wider selection of components, while others are more specialized for controlling products within certain product groups or using certain wireless technologies (e.g. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, and/or Zigbee).
A smart speaker with a virtual assistant can often be used for speech input to a smart home hub.
Smart home hubs can have software with open source code or use proprietary software with closed source code, and independently of this the application programming interface can be public or closed. Some smart home hubs must run on proprietary hardware, while others (like for example Home Assistant) can be installed on generic hardware (like for example a laptop or single-board computer with Linux).
Some examples of smart home hubs with closed source code are:
Logitech Harmony Hub
SmartThings Hub
Google Nest Hub
Amazon Echo Show and Amazon Echo Plus which both integrates a Zigbee hub.
Apple HomePod
Some examples of smart home hubs based on free and open-source software are:
Home Assistant
OpenHAB
Some examples of smart home hubs with closed source code, but an open application programming interface are:
Homey
Various communication protocols can be used between smart home hubs and smart house components.
Official source
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