Membership will contribute to HGI’s work to build a successful Smart Home ecosystem

25 April 2013 HGI, the leading global organisation for publishing requirements for the Smart Home, welcomes the EnOcean Alliance as a new Associate Member.

The EnOcean Alliance is a non-profit organisation with an established ecosystem and experience in the building automation sector, more than 250,000 equipped buildings and 300 member companies. The common ground is EnOcean’s energy harvesting wireless technology which uses motion, light or differences in temperature to transmit wireless signals. This eliminates the need for batteries in sensor devices, making them maintenance-free.

“HGI is the key global organisation taking on the challenges facing service providers and vendors for the delivery of new Smart Home services. Part of HGI’s work is to specify the required capabilities for interconnects among the Home Gateway (HG) and a range of Smart Home devices, and to enable applications to address those devices. The EnOcean Alliance is one of several organisations with whom HGI is already cooperating to complete these key work items. As an Associate Member of HGI, the officials of the EnOcean Alliance will now directly contribute to our members’ discussions on interconnect requirements and device abstraction, and we welcome them to HGI,” says Duncan Bees, Chief Technology and Business Officer, HGI.

“In the past few years we have seen an emerging demand for energy-saving abilities combined with comfort and security functions in residential homes. Due to this demand, telecoms providers, power utilities, and consumer companies have all entered the smart home market,” says Graham Martin, Chairman of the EnOcean Alliance.  “There is no other organisation than HGI which offers such a long-time experience in the connected home. HGI’s perspective is that of the broadband service providers and the device, technology, software, and system vendors that together realise Smart Home systems. We are proud to be part of this and are looking forward to a lively exchange with other HGI members.”

HGI’s work began with the HG in 2004 and has evolved with the HG as it becomes a key part of the new Smart Home service platform. HGI continues to set the industry benchmark for HG requirements and HG testing, including QoS, diagnostics, next generation access topologies within the home, software modularity, and other key areas.

For further information about HGI visit http://www.homegatewayinitiative.org/ or for EnOcean Alliance go to www.enocean-alliance.org.