Hive review: The British Gas smart system that’s the hub of all things

When British Gas called us in to the launch of Hive Active Heating, it was clear that this was the starting point for something bigger. Focusing initially where you would expect a heating company to focus, Active Heating was an easy first step. 

Thanks to a household name in British Gas, Hive has always had the advantage of being familiar and safe in a rapidly expanding universe of connected smarthome devices.

We originally reviewed Hive Active Heating at launch and updated it following the release of a much more attractive second-gen design. But Hive has continued to expand, fleshing out its offering, making any home smarter.

Here’s how the whole system plays together.

Hive review: A modular system

As the name suggests, Hive was originally conceived as a modular system. The app changes in recent times moved to open up more slots in the Hive dashboard where an expanding range of products will fit in.

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The entire Hive system relies on several things. The first is the Hive Hub. This is the part that connects to your internet router, giving it an online connection for access through your smartphone or laptop, wherever you happen to be in the world.

The second thing that Hive needs is an app or browser to control it. With Android and iOS apps your smartphone is covered, but Hive is also fully accessible through a browser dashboard, where you can do everything from adding new components to changing your heating schedule.

Hive review: Hive Active Heating

For many of us, Hive Active Heating is going to be the big piece of the puzzle. This is the starting point, the place where the internet of things has really found some traction and the area where you probably have to spend the most money.

• Hive Active Heating 2.0 review: Style meets connected practicality

Ditching the old thermostat and moving to a modern controller with smartphone controls makes a lot of sense. We won’t repeat all aspects of our review here, but jump across the highlights.

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Hive’s latest controller offers a modern design so it looks great on your wall, offering a range of coloured frames so you can dress it up. You can opt for British Gas installation, at £259, or get the kit only at £179. There is multi-zone support (at additional cost), as well as control over your heating and hot water.

It’s been designed for British homes, so works with the types of boilers and systems in most homes – and you don’t have to be a British Gas customer.

Active Heating offers convenience features like geolocation (you’ve left the house, your heating doesn’t need to be on), holiday mode (you’re in Spain, you don’t need your heating on), as well as things like boost modes, so you can give the heating a blast if you’re feeling a bit chilly.

We’ve found Hive Active Heating to be getting progressively more stable, following the initial offering which was prone to disconnecting. A new hub and a new thermostat have made for a great system. That said, when Active Heating does disconnect, there’s little information: you probably won’t know until either the heating doesn’t turn on, or it doesn’t turn off. 

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An update we’d really like to see is some sort of self-diagnosis and alert through the app, because we’ve been lying in bed at night with the heating on full blast, wondering why it hasn’t turned off. Often, it’s because the thermostat has lost connection, but you’re unlikely to know that. Those sorts of incidents aren’t the norm, however, and generally speaking it works exactly as we’d expect it to.

It’s perhaps less sexy than Nest’s Learning Thermostat, but the reassurance of the British Gas name should bring some confidence.

Hive review: Hive Active Lights

The second area where smarthomes have made an impact is in lighting. Thanks to brands like Philips Hue, we’re all aware that lighting can now be a lot more high-tech than it once was. 

For Hive, the journey into lighting has only just begun, with an offering that only covers a few products. You get the option of screw or bayonet fitting (important for the UK market), but it’s all conventional bulb design at the moment: there’s no GU10 spotlight bulb, for example, which is a limitation.

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Hive Active Lights work on a simple plug and connect system, so long as you have a Hive Hub of course. You install the bulb, add it via your Hive app and then you have control. There are three options: dimmable, cool to warm light, and colour. 

The slight downside at the moment is that there are no switches to support the system. That means that once you’ve installed a bulb, you either have to turn it on and off with your regular switch (pointless), or you have to leave it on all the time and control it with your app (a faff).

That’s limiting for a number of reasons. Generally speaking, you don’t walk into a room in the dark and get your phone out to turn the lights on. So that makes Hive Active Lights currently better for routine lighting, rather than your main bedroom light, for example.

• Smart lighting solutions: Here are seven options to choose from

You can have the standing lamp or side lamps in a room on all the time and controlled via a timing schedule, which is an attractive option. But for your main ceiling lights it’s currently not as attractive as the range of solutions that Hue offers with the tap and dimmer switches. 

What you can do, however, is setup your lights to turn themselves on and off while you’re away on holiday so the house looks occupied, as well as tying in with Hive’s other devices, like the motion sensor or door/window sensors. 

At £19 the standard white 9W LED Hive bulb at is pretty cheap. The cool to white bulb is £29 and the colour bulb is £44. Compare that to Hue, priced at £14, £24 and £49 for comparable products, and it’s all closely price –  just the Hue currently has a lot more on offer in its ecosystem. 

Hive Review: Hive sensors

Hive currently offers two sensors: a door or window frame sensor; and a motion sensor. These are fairly standard offerings for smarthome systems and you’ll get similar from Panasonic or Samsung SmartThings within those systems too.

The sensors can be used as a soft security system, alerting you when your front door is opened, for example. If you’re still in Spain and someone opens your front door, you might be concerned about that.

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Equally, when you’re quaffing sangria on the beach and motion is detected in your garage, that could be a cause for concern. Alerts can be delivered through the app, but you also get the option to create recipes in the IFTTT sense so that actions can result from a detection. 

Hive sets up a number of options for you around your system so that, for example, you can open your front door and have the lights turn on, which is pretty smart. Or you can have the motion detector turn on a light or a Hive Active Plug, to switch on a conventional light, for example. 

Setup of the sensors is incredibly easy. You just have to slip in the batteries and sync them to the app. The battery power means you can easily place them wherever you like, with sticky pads making for easy mounting. The only thing you need to ensure is that they are within range of the Hub.

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We’ve found both the frame sensors and motion sensor to work well, but they do highlight a current omission from Hive’s portfolio: a home camera. However, with IFTTT support there’s the potential to expand the remit of Hive outside of the current system that is offered, although we can’t profess to have tried it all out. 

Hive review: Hive Active Plug

One of the simplest devices in the Hive system is the Active Plug. This is essentially a plug that offers remote on and off controls. That’s useful for a number of reasons. Within the Hive system, as we’ve mentioned, you can set up trigger actions – motion detection turns on a light, for example. 

The Active Plug can also be controlled with on and off switching from your smartphone, as well as offering a large push-button on/off switch on the top, so you don’t have to use your phone to turn it on.

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That makes it ideal for anyone who worries about leaving the house with the hair straighteners left on. Now you can call up the app and cut the power to your GHDs, rather than worrying that you’ll burn the house down, or more importantly, burn out your straighteners.

Hive Active Plug connects into the system the same way that everything else does, meaning you can do things like connect something like a coffee machine to come on with a timer – or perhaps when you get out of bed in the morning.

It’s perhaps a little chunky, but like devices from Belkin’s WeMo, it does exactly what it says on the tin, with the advantage of offering seamless integration with Hive’s other devices.

Hive review: The Hive app

There have been a number of changes to the Hive app over the past few years as the system has evolved. The landing view gives you direct access to the different devices around your house, with the option to rename things, which is handy if it’s a bigger system.

The recent addition of recipes allows for custom use of the devices you have, but currently isn’t freeform. It adapts based on the devices you have, covering notifications, turning on plugs or lights based on detection from the motion or door sensor. You can’t, for example, turn on the heating from a door sensor, but then why would you?

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The app also lets you manage things like geolocation, letting you ring fence your house, with alerts telling you that you’ve left the house with the heating set at 25 degrees. Conversely, you get the same option on return.

The app also offers a holiday control mode. This will allow you set dates that you’re away so the heating goes into frost protection mode and you’re not wasting energy. What holiday mode currently doesn’t offer is integration into things like lighting. Having a sensible random lighting routine triggered by holiday mode would be a really handy addition.

Overall the app is stable enough and fairly easy to use. As we said that the start of this review, we’ve found connectivity to be getting more and more stable as Hive matures and with the expansion into a bigger system, we’ve had no problems connecting to or controlling more devices.

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That said, the app could be a little more intuitive, or a little more user friendly. Sometimes you have to head off into the settings to find something, while changing things like the heating schedule is a bit tedious – although the browser app makes things simpler.

As we said previously, we’d also like to see a little more information. If something isn’t going to work, we’d rather know in advance, so that we could do something about it. We’d even go as far as suggesting that there’s a soft reboot option added. If your thermostat has lost communication, a restart often fixes it and we’d really like to be able to do that remotely.

Verdict

Hive is making power moves to position itself as an all-inclusive smarthome system that’s primed for the UK market. With the familiarity of the British Gas badge on the box and an expanding collection of devices, it’s getting more compelling as an expanding ecosystem. 

The question is whether you want to put all your eggs in one basket. Hue currently offers a much wider range of lighting products, Nest offers cameras and smoke detectors in its system which are also very good.

This is the challenge that Hive will face: while we love the expanding options, there will also be independent market leaders, pulled together by services like Amazon Alexa, Google Home or Apple HomeKit that will allow you do a lot of the same. Amazon Alexa will already allow you control some Hive elements, but also works with Hue, so mixing and matching systems is already becoming easier. 

Hive keeps things in the family. It gives you a reliable name and there’s something decidedly British about the whole thing. What Hive really needs to do is to continue the aggressive expansion with more variety, to bring the sizzle of systems like Hue and Nest, so it stays ahead of the head of the smarthome curve.

Another Note 7 is involved in a fire in Kentucky

To add insult to injury, another incident where the Note 7 went up in flames has surfaced this late Saturday evening.

Michael Klering tells WKYT News in Lexington that he awoke early Tuesday morning to a hissing sound, and his bedroom was filled with foul-smelling smoke. He says his replacement Galaxy Note 7 was on fire. The phone, which he had for a week and said he assumed was safe, wasn’t plugged in or being used at the time.

Feeling ill later in the day he went to the emergency room. “I was vomiting black so it was very scary. It was a lot of black stuff and it didn’t look right,” Klering said. The hospital diagnosed him with acute bronchitis and the local fire department was contacted because this was a result of smoke inhalation. Klering produced the hospital records stating as such.

Image coutersy WKYT News

Klering says Samsung asked for the phone, but he declined. He did accept the request from Samsung that it be X-rayed. In the oddest twist of any incident yet, Klering then produced a text message he says was from Samsung that stated:

Just now got this. I can try and slow him down if we think it will matter, or we just let him do what he keeps threatening to do and see if he does it

Klering then decided to seek legal assistance and alert the press that it had happened. We’ve embedded the video showing the hospital records and text message below. It’s also worth noting that this incident happened before an incident on a Southwest plane during boarding and a child in Minnesota having her Note 7 overheat and burst into flames earlier Saturday.

Brain-like memory gets an AI test drive

Humanity just took one step closer to computers that mimic the brain. University of Southampton researchers have demonstrated that memristors, or resistors that remember their previous resistance, can power a neural network. The team’s array of metal-oxide memristors served as artificial synapses to learn (and re-learn) from “noisy” input without intervention, much like you would. And since the memristors will remember previous states when turned off, they should use much less power than conventional circuitry — ideal for Internet of Things devices that can’t afford to pack big batteries.

It’s still early days for this technology. If you wanted AI that could replicate the brain in its full glory, you’d need “hundreds of billions” of synapses (if not more). The far-simpler memristor array in this test was limited to looking for patterns. However, the Southampton group is quick to note that you wouldn’t need to go that far for narrower purposes. You could have sensors that know how to classify objects and identify patterns without human help, which would be particularly helpful in dangerous or hard-to-reach places. You might just see IoT gadgets that are not only connected to the outside world, but can make sense of it.

Via: ScienceDaily

Source: University of Southampton, Nature

Germany calls for a ban on combustion engine cars by 2030

Germany isn’t content with relying on financial incentives to usher in an era of pollution-free cars. The country’s Bundesrat (federal council) has passed a resolution calling for a ban on new internal combustion engine cars by 2030. From then on, you’d have to buy a zero-emissions vehicle, whether it’s electric or running on a hydrogen fuel cell. This isn’t legally binding, but the Bundesrat is asking the European Commission to implement the ban across the European Union… and when German regulations tend to shape EU policy, there’s a chance that might happen.

The council also wants the European Commission to review its taxation policies and their effect on the “stimulation of emission-free mobility.” Just what that means isn’t clear. It could involve stronger tax incentives for buying zero-emissions cars, but it could also involve eliminating tax breaks for diesel cars in EU states. Automakers are already worried that tougher emission standards could kill diesels — remove the low cost of ownership and it’d only hasten their demise.

Not that the public would necessarily be worried. Forbes notes that registrations of diesels, still mainstays of the European car market, dropped sharply in numerous EU countries in August. There’s a real possibility that Volkswagen’s emission cheating scandal is having a delayed effect on diesel sales. Combine that with larger zero-emissions incentives and the proposed combustion engine ban, and it might not take much for Europeans to go with electric or hydrogen the next time they go car shopping.

Via: Forbes, Gizmodo

Source: Der Spiegel (translated)

Alleged replacement Note 7 catches fire in Minnesota

A report from St. Paul’s KSTP News says another replacement Galaxy Note 7 has been involved in an incident in Farmington Minnesota.

According to the report, Thirteen-year-old Abby Zuis was holding her Note 7 when she felt a strange burning sensation. She dropped the device which began smoking and melted the protective case. Images of the phone show the typical split body and rectangular burn markings we’ve seen from other Note 7 phones that have exploded. Thankfully, Miss Zuis was uninjured other than a small burn on her thumb.

Photo courtesy KTSP News

The girl’s father explains that they had originally purchased the phone in August and had exchanged it on September 21 in accordance with Samsung’s recall of the Note 7. He provided receipts of both transactions to KSTP news.

A Samsung representative told KSTP “We want to reassure our customers that we take every report seriously and we are engaged with the Zuis family to ensure we are doing everything we can for them and their daughter.” They then confirmed that the incident is under investigation.

This is the second high-profile case of a replacement Note 7 doing the very same thing they were all originally recalled for. A passenger boarding a flight from Lousiville to Baltimore had a similar incident with his Note 7 on Wednesday. An additional report from Taiwan says a replacement Note 7 had exploded.

We’re not sure what to make of this. We only hope any issues are resolved before anyone is hurt or any further property damage happens. Stay safe.

Thanks, Spencer, for the heads up!

Samsung Galaxy Note 7

• Galaxy Note 7 recall: Everything you need to know
• Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review
• The latest Galaxy Note 7 news!
• Here are all four Note 7 colors
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• Join the Note 7 discussion in the forums!

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Two more automakers can test self-driving cars in California

You might not have heard of Wheego and Valeo before, but they must be doing something right when it comes to self-driving vehicles. California has given them permission to test one autonomous car each on its roads, according to The Wall Street Journal. The state recently approved a bill that allows fully autonomous car testing — in other words, test vehicles will be allowed to drive around without a human operator. Wheego and Valeo, however, will have to work their way up to that point. Their cars still need to be operated by up to four human drivers.

Wheego Electric Cars sources its automobiles’ bodies from China and installs batteries and other components in the US. Valeo, on the other hand, is the North American division of a French automotive supplier of the same name. The WSJ didn’t talk about the vehicles these companies will be unleashing in California, but if everything goes well, we’ll definitely hear about them soon enough.

Since the Golden State has become the go-to place for self-driving automakers, these two are in good company. They’re the latest addition to the short list of 17 corporations with testing permits in California, which include names we’re sure you’re familiar with, like GM, Tesla, Google, Ford, Baidu, Nissan and Honda.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Maserati’s first electric car won’t be a Tesla rival

Italian supercar makers haven’t exactly embraced electric vehicles with gusto (the LaFerrari hybrid is about as close as you get), but that should change in the next few years. Ferrari’s sibling brand Maserati tells Car and Driver that it’s working on an electric vehicle that would be shown before 2020. And unlike other luxury car brands, Maserati doesn’t plan on eating Tesla’s lunch. It has to produce something “very different” to stand out, the company’s Roberto Fedeli says. Think of something more like the GranTurismo coupe (see above) than yet another upscale sedan.

Part of the challenge, Fedeli claims, is making a green machine that’s exciting to drive. Breakneck acceleration is the only really thrilling aspect of EVs right now, he says — the sheer weight of those lithium-ion batteries dampens the enjoyment on twisty roads. A Maserati would have to be lighter on its feet. Also, the automaker will have to find a way to give its car character without a roaring gas engine under the hood. In that sense, Maserati’s 2020 goal is realistic. It may not have much choice but to wait for battery technology to catch up to its ambitions.

Source: Car and Driver