Elgato announces $50 Avea smart lightbulb and Eve smart home sensors
Apparently, the world needs another smart lightbulb, and Elgato's going to sell it to you. Called Avea, the $50 bulb connects to your iDevice directly using Bluetooth (no external hub needed), and lets you set the mood in any room with an appropriate shade of light. Just one iPhone (4S and up), 5th gen iPod Touch or iPad (3rd gen or newer) can control a whole house full of lights and give users multiple lighting scenes to choose from. Plus, there's an alarm feature that wakes you with the gentle gleam of a 7W LED bulb pumping out 430 lumens (which is just a bit brighter than its competitor from Lumen, and is roughly equivalent to a 40W incandescent bulb).
Joining Avea in Elgato's smart home of the future is a whole host of sensors, dubbed Eve, for measuring air quality, temperature, humidity, energy and water consumption, too. These sensors will utilize Bluetooth and presumably work with Apple's HomeKit networking protocol -- meaning that you'll be able to monitor your home from your iOS device and interact with the sensors using Siri. The idea is to make abodes more comfy and efficient, but we don't yet know how much it'll cost to reap Eve's benefits. A preview of the sensors can be had this week in Germany at IFA 2014, with pricing and availability to come "soon."
