This new privacy-first smart home hub only listens when you're touching it

IFA was packed with new smart home technology this year, with some interesting ideas coming from Aqara, the company responsible for many sleek products, such as Smart Lock U200. Along with its extensive rollout of cameras, sensors, locks, and home security devices, the company also revealed a tiny little device that addresses a different type of security concern.

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The Voice Mate H1 is a small puck that uses voice commands and connects with the Hub M3 — Aqara’s flagship smart home hub. Crucially, the Voice Mate H1 only listens to you when you’re holding it. Instead of passively waiting for a “wake phrase” like “Hey, Siri” or invoking “Alexa” by name, the mic doesn’t activate until you pick it up and the light turns green. 

The puck has sensors that can tell when it is picked up and which then let you initiate commands to change settings, lock or unlock doors, or activate scenes. The device doesn’t need to be in any particular location, as it communicates with the hub via your home network, following the company’s “continuous connection” ethos. 

You can make simple commands like “Close the curtains”, while complex ones like “Turn off the lights in the living room when you detect no presence for 30 minutes” invoke the large language model (LLM) to set up the prescribed condition or scene. 

However, the diminutive stature of the device also raises questions: the most obvious of which is, what happens when you lose it? Assuming the dog doesn’t get hold of the puck first, speaking with the Voice Mate utilizes Aqara’s custom Copilot AI to take action on your devices or troubleshoot via the app (it can’t reply with audio, as there’s no speaker on the Hub M3 or the puck). Additionally, the LLM uses the cloud but doesn’t store data locally. 

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Aqara first announced its AI-powered smart assistant at CES this year, and it’s currently only available on a handful of devices. When I spoke with Aqara’s reps at its demo booth (which was more like a full-blown prop smart home), they told me the company is going in this direction in the longer term. 

Full voice integration with all devices in your home via a sophisticated LLM that can perform any action on your behalf sounds good, but we’ll have to wait and see how the technology rolls out. Some additional security concerns come with the puck acting as a “key” to access all your smart home’s voice-activated features, but we’ll need to go hands-on to test the device further. 

The puck’s battery life is supposed to last for “over a year” since it only uses power when you hold it. But, once again, we’ll delve into battery issues once the device is available. 

In terms of connectivity, the Hub M3 supports all of Aqara’s Matter-compatible Zigbee products, while also functioning as a Matter bridge. Aqara clarified that the Voice Mate H1 might not work with everything as it’s still new technology. Along those lines, the Voice Mate H1 is not on the market yet, as it won’t be available until later this year or early 2025. 

Aqara dropped a handful of other smart home devices at IFA Berlin this year, including its first-ever outdoor smart home camera with impressive true-color night vision, local storage, end-to-end encryption, and cloud syncing. 

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The company also showed off its new smart garage door controller (that in the future will supposedly open automatically when it detects your car) and even a smart valve controller that can manually shut off a butterfly valve if it detects moisture.