Home Connect
Home Connect “The Internet and apps can revolutionize the home appliance world. Delivering benefits for our customers is at the heart of our research.”[1] This was how Home Connect Project Manager, Dr. Claudia Häpp, described the future potential of connected home appliances in the 2012 Business Report. Just one year later, BSH presented the first Home Connect appliances at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Fair (IFA) in Berlin.
Digital Transition in the kitchen
Appliance connectivity continued to advance at a rapid pace. The experts at BSH promoted the topic consistently and ensured through a host of innovative developments that the smartphone would become the control center of the connected home. The Corporate Digital Transition department was newly established in 2015 as part of BSH/NextLevel. “Mario Pieper and his team are making “digital” the corporate language,” wrote the employee magazine inform.[2]
In 2017, Home Connect was responsible for creating a completely new sense of everyday. From the washing machine to the oven through to the coffee machine or vacuum cleaner: Home Connect allows all appliances to be controlled with ultimate ease. The Home Connect App provides customers with constant access to all of the important information they need and allows them not only to switch their appliances on and off, rather also choose programs, adjust timers, set appliances to energy-saving mode and much more.
Yet Home Connect also offers a host of other possibilities thanks to a network of partners from a wide range of fields. “Alexa, tell the Home Connect coffee machine to prepare a cappuccino.” That’s how the Siemens EQ.9 Connect fully automatic coffee machine can be voice controlled via Amazon Alexa, for example. Other Home Connect partners range from the HelloFresh delivery service to the SMA Solar Technology App for optimizing solar electricity consumption through connected appliances. The Home Connect ecosystem is being continually expanded and extended by new ideas. Remote error diagnostics of the connected appliances by customer service offers another significant advantage.
Cutting-edge technology for BSH naturally also means meeting the highest requirements in terms of data protection and security. Encrypted communication between smartphone and home appliances is just as much a given as having the system tested by TÜV Trust IT.[3]