There is a lot of interest in the recently announced Home over IP project that seeks to unite all the home automation players, including Apple, Amazon, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance, with the goal of a single open-source protocol for home automation products.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything just worked with everything?

I want to think that the reason for this project is because all the big players took their swing and realized no single company can control this market. Apple has mostly ignored the hardware side of this entirely, and while I like HomeKit, its development is really slow. Stephen and I talk about HomeKit in the MPU episode dropping this afternoon.

At this point, we don’t know much about this Home over IP project. Maybe it is just in early exploration, or perhaps they already are working on a shared protocol. Regardless, I hope it takes off because I think everyone is tired of the “will this smart thingy work with my other smart thingies” game.