Velux, your roof window is now connected.

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Velux, does it sound familiar to you? It is normal, this year, the company that makes roof windows has passed its 75th anniversary. This Danish firm is well known all around the globe, so much that it has become an eponym, in other words, when we talk about roof windows, we don’t say “roof window” but “Velux”. This situation naturally creates a monopoly and often can be understood as a must have even if there is no real improvement (compared to competing brands). This last part was the case for Velux for a long time, because a roof window is a roof window, but this year, at the 2017 CES in Las Vegas, new technologies allowed them to offer something that will change this monotony.

Our homes are becoming more and more connected thanks to new technologies. Heaters, shutters, sockets, lights are now “connected”. Velux Active with Netatmo, is the Velux part in those products. The Danish company has been working with Netatmo, a French company specialized in new technologies, to develop a new, efficient and healthy roof window. All of that is possible thanks to 3 sensors.

One for the humidity that will know when to open windows to evacuate humidity, the second one is for the temperature to keep the right temperature in every room during day and night and the last one is for Co2 and particles to reduce the pollution inside the living place if there is a need for it.

According to Velux’s Vice President “In a close future, your home will take care of your health providing you the quantity of natural light and fresh air that you need, when you need it”.

Here is how it looks like on video :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7m93zxQmpA

Interesting, don’t you think? Moreover, it will be possible to connect it to your smartphone or tablet and to control all of it :

In addition to that, it will in integrate with all the features that you can find in Velux products like the automatic window closing when it is raining, and others.

VELUX ACTIVE with Netatmo was awarded two prestigious CES 2017 awards in the Smart Home and Eco-design & Sustainable Technologies categories.
We don’t have the price at the moment, but the availability is expected during the 1st semester  of 2018.

Nevertheless, the increasing popularity of connected devices at home can be scary for many people, because today, everything can be in your house, your alarm, your TV, your cooling system, even your washing machine. Companies claim that all the systems are protected and secure, but what if a situation like in Mr.Robot happens?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAj8zHOEfiI

Here it is less interesting to have all of this because you cannot even use your house normally.

And the problem is, that many people are not aware of the power of the internet and how easy it can be to hack. Here is a survey of the cybersecurity knowledge in the US from a 1055 people sample.

If you don’t trust surveys and you live in an apartment where you can connect to numerous wifi networks, just have a look at how many of them have the name that is on the router, which by consequence means that they probably haven’t changed the password as well.

To conclude, in my opinion, it is good to have all those features in our houses, it can definitely increase the comfort in our life, but if you are not into technology, you are not friendly, your neighbours don’t like you, and you don’t know how to change your wifi password, you should probably stay with the classical way of using those products. If you want this, then you have to be attentive and aware of what you are doing and what are the risks.

 

Sources :

What the Public Knows About Cybersecurity

http://www.velux.fr/a-propos/innovation/velux-active-with-netatmo

https://www.netatmo.com/en-US/partners/velux

One thought on “Velux, your roof window is now connected.

  1. Myriam Kijowski-Tran says:

    Remi,

    After reading your article that give me the want to change my window. Knowing that we are living in Warsaw which is on of the most polluted city in Europe, make me think about solutions to face this pollution. I was thinking of a machine that can clean the air inside the house but smart window could even be a better investment. Moreover all the informations would go directly to my smartphone, which would give me an instant look at my flat condition when I’m out of it. It would facilitate my life, and improve the condition of the place where I live (most important for maybe most of the people on the planet). The hack and security threats could be still very low, that is why I would not be afraid to start to use this new technology right now. Only few people in Warsaw are using smart devices for their smart homes. Which lead to even less people that know about this technology. People who want to hack other people do it through high number used technology. I think that when this technology will be democratically used, the threat will be higher. But before that, we still have some time.

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