Qualcomm is showing off an Internet of Things platform for the smart home at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.
The company’s Smart Home Reference Platform is designed around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 212 processor, and the company says it offers a range of capabilities suited to smart home applications. For example, it features hi-fi audio offering 24-bit, 192 KHz playback, a 1280×800 display interface, and processors including a quad-core 1.3 GHz ARM7 CPU and a Qualcomm Adreno 304 GPU for powerful computing.
Perhaps most notable, though, is the platform’s use of voice biometrics. Users can wake up the system by saying designated keywords, and the platform features Fluence Pro voice command technology. With its three microphones, it can suppress noise and echoes, and can even track the user’s position relative to the device.
As the smart home concept begins to take shape alongside the Internet of Things more broadly, Qualcomm’s Smart Home Reference Platform may be an indication of the important role that voice-based technology could play in user interaction – after all, most of these devices won’t sport traditional interfaces like keyboards. If it proves a hit, Qualcomm’s concept may be emulated by other companies seeking to find a place in the smart home of the future.
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January 7, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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