We inched a little closer to that future today, as the makers of the Vinli connected car system have announced a new product called Vinli Home Connect — a cross-platform interface that allows vehicles to connect with domiciles.
Imagine you’re coming home from work, and your family’s trusted rig crosses some specified boundary — a driveway, a subdivision, a neighborhood gate — and when it does, the vehicle’s connected computer reaches out to the electronic brain at the center of your connected home. Depending on your preferences, the car could instruct the lights inside to turn on, the doors to unlock, the climate control to ramp up, or even the oven to preheat. In Vinli’s words, the house “wakes up.”
It works in the opposite direction as well; the company gives an example of a driver being the last to leave home, and when their car crosses the boundary, the security system automatically arms. Rather than acting on a timer, however, Vinli Home Connect prepares for the resident’s arrival ahead of time, and departure upon receiving notice, and acts accordingly, no matter when it happens to occur.
“We’re seeing this rapid growth of integrations being developed for the connected home and car markets, but this is creating a fragmentation problem and frustration for the consumer,” said Mark Haidar, founder and CEO of Vinli. “Our team has created an elegant, easy-to-use solution for connected homes in the U.S. and abroad, so consumers can seamlessly manage their network of connected home products and connected vehicles, all from a single source.”
Vinli Home Connect functions on top of the brand’s connected car platform, which is enabled by an OBDII connector that works on cars 1996 and newer. Homes equipped with connected systems like Nest, Icontrol Networks, and Samsung’s SmartThings are compatible for integration with the app.
