The Smart Home Concept | EGO Home

A smart home is a residence that uses internet-connected devices to enable the remote monitoring and management of appliances and systems, such as lighting and heating.

The EGO Home concept started from the wish to gather existing Smart Home solutions and also revolutionary ones under the umbrella of one app.

Taking the concept of Smart Home to another level and grouping switches, sockets, surveillance webcams, thermostats, motion and contact sensors and also sirens for alarm systems to be used seamlessly with only one app makes the deployment of Smart Home solutions much easier.

Smart home pros and cons

One of the most touted benefits of home automation is providing peace of mind to homeowners, allowing them to monitor their homes remotely, countering dangers such as a forgotten coffee maker left on or a front door left unlocked.

Smart homes are also beneficial for the elderly, providing monitoring that can help seniors to remain at home comfortably and safely, rather than moving to a nursing home or requiring 24/7 home care.

Unsurprisingly, smart homes can accommodate user preferences. For example, as soon as you arrive home, your garage door will open, the lights will go on, the fireplace will roar and your favorite tunes will start playing on your smart speakers.

Home automation also helps consumers improve efficiency. Instead of leaving the air conditioning on all day, a smart home system can learn your behaviors and make sure the house is cooled down by the time you arrive home from work. The same goes for appliances. And with a smart irrigation system, your lawn will only be watered when needed and with the exact amount of water necessary. With home automation, energy, water and other resources are used more efficiently, which helps save both natural resources and money for the consumer.

However, home automation systems have struggled to become mainstream, in part due to their technical nature. A drawback of smart homes is their perceived complexity; some people have difficulty with technology or will give up on it with the first annoyance. 

Here, the EGO Home concept takes the role of simplifying the installation and usage of smart home devices by providing:

·         No new wiring through walls needed (e.g. KNX protocol);

·         No extra connection protocol (e.g. Zigbee);

·         No HUB/Central Unit needed;

·         No different apps for every type of device used;

The only thing that your EGO Home products need is you home WiFi connection.

Another major issue is smart home security. A 2016 NTT Data Corp. report found that 80% of U.S. consumers are concerned about the security of their smart home data. If hackers are able to infiltrate a smart device, they could potentially turn off the lights and alarms and unlock the doors, leaving a home defenseless to a break-in. 

All the commands the user sends to the EGO Home devices are delivered through your WiFi connection to the closest Tuya server.

Achieving ISO27001 information security certification and the assessment on 'IoT Trusted Authentication' by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Tuya has one of the safest connections and data storage solutions.

In addition to security, many smart home opponents worry about data privacy. The NTT Data report found 73% of consumers are concerned about the privacy of the data shared by their smart home devices. While smart home device and platform manufacturers may collect consumer data to better tailor their products or offer new and improved services to customers, trust and transparency are critical to manufacturers building trust with the users of their smart products.

Tuya, our service provider of the cloud and data transfer part from our EGO Home app to the device in your home complies totally to the new GDPR laws, as follows:

·         Privacy in design

We consider how to minimize the collection of data that is only necessary for our products during the design of our product to ensure that we do not excessively collect and process users' personal information. Besides, the technical personnel will take proper measures to secure the personal data of our users during the development and implementation of the system, such as: encryption storage of sensitive data, setting up strict access authority to ensure the safety of personal data of our users. Measures above have been strictly implemented into the design and development process of our products. Each product has undergone rigorous review before publishing.

·         Privacy Policy

We are completely transparent about the collection and use of users' personal data. We have clearly stated in Tuya’s Privacy Policy that what kind of user data we collect, the purpose of the collection, the storage period, and ensure that the data is used within the user's expectations.

·         Support for User Rights

We put premium on users’ individual rights to ensure that users can access the data collected by us and can properly modify the data. When users do not demand for our service any more, they can delete their individual data through the App. More info can be found here https://en.tuya.com/privacy.