Three Smart Home Innovations That Arrived in 2024

Having covered smart homes in the past, it’s easy to see why more people are opting for these convenient time-savers in the home. That said, the field is anything but static.

Every year, new innovations get released and new combatants enter the market with their own take on trendy smart technologies. 2024 is no different, so let’s check out three of the year’s biggest innovations.

The Google TV Streamer Launched

In September 2024, the Google TV Streamer box hit the market. This is a handy device that functions a lot like a Chromecast, enabling Google TV’s slick streaming service which includes movies and TV, but also YouTube functionality. However, the Streamer box has Gemini AI integration and four times as much storage capacity as the Chromecast.

Google knows that smart TVs are becoming the nerve center of the modern smart home, so they’ve given users a more powerful device worthy of supporting their TV habits. The box also has Google search functionality, so users can find other content online.

This means smart homeowners can access online platforms and services through their TV, or other connected devices. That can include other video-sharing websites, retail platforms, or even interactive activity sites like iGaming.

Searchers can use the internet to find Paddy Power Games online casino games like slots, spinning wheels, table games, and even streamed game shows with an interactive twist. Through search, there’s no end to the entertainment that a Google TV Streamer box can find and cast to other devices in your home.

As for its set content, the Streamer boasts 700,000+ movies and shows at launch, through collaboration with YouTube TV and Netflix. Gemini’s influence can’t be overstated – it makes the box smarter than usual when it’s curating suggestions for your next watch.

More generally, Google has made it clear that AI integration is coming to every corner of its ecosystem. In their blog, they previously described how Gemini levels up smart home devices in the summer before the Streamer box’s release.

LG’s ThinQ ON Introduced Their AI Agent

As Google continues to refine its smart home ecosystem, LG has been busy crafting its own smart home hub – the ThinQ ON. This new hub can integrate more platforms and other appliances into the LG ecosystem. LG has learned the same lesson that Matter and other standardizations taught smart home providers years ago – interoperability is the future of the smart home.

The ThinQ ON is a smart speaker that includes voice control, generative AI integration, and multiple protocols all in a small package. It includes standards like Matter and Thread, and Zigbee wireless meshing that should help support home automation in the future.

Like all smart speakers, LG has created a charismatic assistant known simply as the AI Agent. A small, two-legged AI Agent droid was unveiled at CES 2024, as LG announced its hopes of creating the “Zero Labor Home.”

No such droid is part of the ThinQ ON package, but its brain is powering this speaker and can help automate your daily life. For example, instead of tapping on your phone to turn your smart thermostat on at a certain time of the day, the AI Agent should learn from your behavior and do it, without any input from you.

Philips Hue Entered Home Security

For serious smart home advocates, the name Philips Hue is probably associated with smart lighting. Their selection of lamps, light strips, and bulbs all function using the Hue Bridge (which also uses Zigbee networking) to link room lighting together. Then, as usual, you can control them using an app, your voice, or automated settings.

Those lights work using a lot of sensors and a rigid adherence to user command, so it’s little surprise they’re expanding into security camera tech too. Their line started with the secure contact sensor, a wireless white slice of plastic that can be connected to any light and mounted at pretty much any door, window, or entryway.

From there, it’ll let you know whenever somebody crosses it. Multiple cameras, including a joint floodlight camera, have also been released as part of their security line.

Those are just three eye-catching innovations from the smart home industry this year. As 2025 approaches, we can expect even more innovations coming over the next year and beyond.