British brand Veho is best known for its action cameras and rechargeable batteries (as well as sponsoring Southampton FC), but now it's branching out into smart home gear. Its Kasa range has just launched, and comprises of smart lighting, smart monitoring and smart power devices.
At the moment, only the lighting products are available on the Veho website. These include a smart Bluetooth lightbulb and a smart Bluetooth LED light strip. There's no word on when we'll see the other devices.
"We are very excited about our new Kasa Smart Home range and releasing products in a new and rapidly expanding category," said Veho sales and marketing director Ben Vallance.
"Consumers are increasingly interested in controlling and monitoring their home through their smartphone applications, whether they are within the home or remotely. The Veho Kasa Smart Home range aims to make that as simple as possible so the consumer can plug and play without complicated installations."
The smart home is indeed taking off. Last year, Google bought smart thermostat Nest, while Apple launched its HomeKit platform that lets your home devices talk to each other. So far, home automation kit has been prohibitively expensive and required an installer to help fit it. Apple and Google are known for making products that are easy to use, so here's hoping the smart home and internet of things become reality before too long.
Both have been promised for years now. As with any new tech, these things take time.
As the best known of the bunch, we're seeing Nest integration being built into more devices. You can control your Nest from your Misfit Flash fitness tracker, for example. So you can warm the house up while you're out running.
