CES 2018 – Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF)

Interoperability is one of, if not the biggest, challenges to adoption of home automation (HA) in the non-geek market. In order to get to this segment, or most people, we need to solve the “how do we get devices to talk to each other” problem. The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) is trying to solve exactly this via an open source implementation as well as a certification process.

Being open source, and network driven (with support for events or polling), means that it’s not just a playground for the big guys either, we DIYers will have a chance to tuck in as well. It also hits most of my personal “must haves” as well with a LAN usage model as well as UI completely driven by the controller. Normally this is about the time when I would start to get worried about the lack of enthusiasm from the major companies, but with LG, Haier, and Samsung (who made a 2020 all in commitment) as well as Comcast (who is making a major push in the HA market as well as being one of the two presenters I met with) I think it’s possible (fingers crossed) that we might actually get that best-of-breed interoperability that we all really, really want.