- Interoperability
With the proliferation of devices in the home, interoperability becomes more important yet more complicated. For consumers, interoperability has to work frictionless.
At UEI, interoperability is our core business. No, really. The ‘Universal’ in our name refers to universal interoperability; starting with Universal Remote Controls 36 years ago! Over the years, we have expanded our interoperability to other protocols – Bluetooth, HDMI-CEC, ZigBee, Z-wave, Zigbee RF4CE and from there to IP. Our QuickSet® software can discover and control a very wide variety of IoT and entertainment devices throughout the home.
And since then, we’ve embraced Matter.
- Matter
We’ve developed a white label Matter Controller. This smart hub is part of our extended UEI Butler family of products, and lets you discover, control and interact with Zigbee, Matter and other devices in your home.
The promise of Matter is universal interoperability… between Matter-compliant devices. Yet while it is certain Matter products are going to come, there is a great legacy of products that were made before Matter came along, and that are never going to get updated to support Matter.
That’s where our giant knowledge base comes in. We know how to talk to millions of devices from thousands of brands, and we know how to talk and interpret Matter. So we have created hubs that can act as a Matter Bridge: receive a command via Matter from, for instance, a smart speaker or a smartphone, then translate it to another format, such as infra-red, to control a legacy air con unit, or Zigbee to control your sensors for example. This way, we can bring tons of products that are not Matter-compliant into the Matter ecosystem.
- Multi-Admin
Our QuickSet powered Matter-Controllers support Multi-Admin mode allowing for easy sharing of devices among other ecosystems like Google, Apple, Amazon etc. This enables control of Matter and Non-Matter devices side by side opening up prior walled gardens providing true interoperability within the home.
- Entertainment Experience
A lot of what we do revolves around video, but with QuickSet we promise to enhance home entertainment in the widest sense, covering audio as well. Research shows that on average, users listen to streaming music more than 1.5 hour a day, and listen to podcasts for more than an hour.
QuickSet blends in audio including whole-home audio and video use-cases to improve engagement, so it is not only consumers who benefit, but also service providers and, in applicable cases, advertisers.
- Making the Smart Home Actually Smart
The term ‘smart home’ has been around for years but often it doesn’t mean much more than those devices in the home are connected to the network, and the internet – just like a smartphone and a smart TV. That doesn’t necessarily make it smart, though. It’s of course very practical if you can control your central heating and your air conditioning from a device you carry in your pocket, but wouldn’t it be more practical if both systems were connected to each other?
At UEI, we’ve made a smart thermostat that can control the cooling as well as the heating, depending on the desired and the actual temperature. It can even know if your windows are open or closed, thanks to sensors it can communicate with.
With the expansion of our UEI Tide™ family, we’re aiming to reimagine Intelligent Climate Control. The new products and features we’ll be showcasing include a battery-operated wireless controller, so you can bring your thermostat where it matters most; a battery-operated 24V AC thermostat that works without the need for a C-wire; a thermostat that can function as a Matter Bridge, offering control everywhere; a thermostat with built-in IAQ (indoor air quality) monitoring; and a Smart TRV or thermostatic radiator valve.
- Sustainability
Furthermore, we’ll be showcasing sustainable control solutions in the form of ‘green’ remotes. Our UEI Eterna family of products is built around an Xtreme Low Power Bluetooth chipset that can run so long on a simple pair of AAA batteries that most users will never need to replace the batteries throughout the life of the product.
To attain a similar ‘battery-for-life’ performance for remote controls with backlight, we’ve developed UEI Eterna XLR – a remote that harvests energy from ambient light to keep itself charged, so you don’t need to use up the batteries.
And to take things a step further, we’re showing a concept of a completely battery-free remote we’ve conceived.
You can see all this product technology at booth #52023 at CES 2024 at the Venetian Expo. https://www.uei.com/ces-2024
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Safe Harbor Statement
This blog contains forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the Safe-Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words and expressions reflecting something other than historical fact are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including the timely development, delivery, technical performance, and market acceptance of products and technologies identified in this release; the purchasing by UEI customers of the UEI ETERNA, UEI TIDE, UEI BUTLER, QUICKSET products and technologies identified in this release in the quantities anticipated by management; the adoption of the energy harvesting and low power technologies identified in this release by UEI customers, the continued penetration and growth of UEI low power, energy harvesting, HVAC technologies, UEI Quickset and other products and consumer technologies identified in this release; and other factors described in UEI’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The actual results that UEI achieves may differ materially from any forward-looking statement due to such risks and uncertainties. UEI undertakes no obligations to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.
