Renault Partners With Otodo
Renault and Otodo now lets you tell your house and everything in it what to do and when – even when you are driving.
Our homes are connected to the internet, and they are increasingly smart. What is not so smart is that each smart device or system has its own remote control or knob or switch to turn them on and off or set a timer to do so. Enter Otodo, a French tech company that created a hub that can talk to all the devices and systems in your house that can be connected. No matter what the brand or which technology is used, your Otodo Hub speaks fluent WiFi or BlueTooth or infrared. And this is all controlled by an app on your smartphone. It can automatically detect how to connect to everything in your home and bring smart capacity to even the dumbest connected item. It can even scan the barcode on the packaging to determine how to connect to a new device.
But what if you are driving? Speaking to your house can be as lethal as texting while driving. So Renault and Otodo have teamed up to solve this problem.
Our cars are smart and increasingly connected. The Otodo platform will live on your Renault’s infotainment screen, with pre-set options you can easily select. There are the basic ‘Leaving Home’ and ‘Arriving Home’ options. The first will turn off lights and aircon and other things an empty house does not need. The other will tell your house to welcome you home again. You can customise what these setting do.
You can create scenarios. Press a button and the aircon goes on, the pool cover is withdrawn and the herb garden is watered for seven minutes. The possibilities are endless – almost everything you would normally have to do when you get home can get going before you get there.
This is obviously technology on the edge of development. It will be available in Renaults with the latest Easy Link system, something that we in South Africa are still waiting for.
But it will come. Hopefully, by then you can tell your Renault to light the fire in the braai so the coals are ready when you get home…
In the meantime, you can enjoy driving the Renault cars currently available and let the house look after itself.
