Refrigerator talking to TV! Is it possible?

Have you ever imagined your equipment and home appliances exchanging information with each other without any manual intervention? It is going to be possible with Google’s Android enabled appliances making them as Intelligent Home Appliances. For example, a pop-up message is displayed on your television screen indicating that the dish-washing soap is about to finish. Upon pressing a button on your television remote control you will be able to continue the current dish-washing run and let you fill the soap post completion of the current cycle. Same goes with a rice cooker which can provide information about the type of rice is being used and you could set the cooking instructions accordingly with a touch of a button on your remote control. It can also give you the count on number of times the refrigerator door is opened and how much electricity is consumed throughout the day.

Google’s Android software, the most widely used smartphone operating system making waves in the equipment and appliance manufacturers by interconnecting them using gadgets controlled via the Internet. They will be called Intelligent Home Appliances.

Intelligent Home Appliances using Google Android
Intelligent Home Appliances

Android is an easy to use platform that helps appliance makers like Philips and Samsung to produce the Intelligence Appliances to add the kind of features and benefit from these internet connected devices. The good thing is that the platform is free, which makes it more easy for these manufacturers to build the Intelligent Home Appliances.

“Android is sitting pretty in this space to take more share from the incumbents,” said IDC analyst Al Hilwa. “The fundamental advantage with Android is that the vendor can take a bigger chunk of the software and own it.”

Intelligent Home Appliances Journey

Panasonic Corp. has started selling Intelligent Home Appliances last year, from microwaves to air conditioners, controlled by smartphones and providing information to users. The SR-SX2 Android-controlled rice cooker allows users to search recipes on their Android phones and then transmit them to the cooker.

It has been a goal of many manufacturers to build more intelligent, connected appliances. With recent efforts to take Android beyond phones and computers will show them right path towards achieving the goal of manufacturing Intelligent Home Appliances. Devices capable of receiving and transmitting information over the Internet and interacting with each other  will double to almost in 2015 from more than 1.8 billion units and more than $1 trillion in revenue in 2011, according to IDC.

With the falling prices of various electronic equipments, it is prudent for the manufacturers to take advantage and connect most of the appliances and equipments. While Android’s allows manufacturers for easy adoption, the manufacturers need to do more work to use the technology and build the Intelligent Home Appliance. We will see the technology submerged into with home appliances in a year or two.

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