Another home automation hub is going to enter the game this spring.
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$299
Yes, but it's also a touch screen and hand gesture controller. I am not saying it's a cheaper alternative.
It's pretty. I'll give them that!
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I’ll order one. Looks sharp!
The display on the first picture looks a lot like the Google Home Hub screen . . .
Interesting reading their press releases. They are talking about releasing their own speaker ($179) and their own touch controlled dimmer ($129).
While I have need to switch to something else right now, I will say that if it supported multiple displays that would be pretty attractive to me. I already have 2x wall mounted tablets that could easily be replaced with these.
Apparently they are backed by Luminance Brands (https://www.luminancebrands.com/), a lighting company. I didn't recognize the name and I don't see any familiar brands on their web site. Are they a big player in the lighting market?
Like virtually all unreleased products the information missing from the site tells a lot more about the product than what they've chosen to share. For example, I could not find any mention of automation, rules building, etc. In fact, I couldn't even find the work automation anywhere on the site. The word "control" is used.. A lot. It's even the name of the product.
So is it just a hub for "control", or will it be able to "automate"?
They talk about security in terms of supporting multiple different devices and systems. Again, does it actually have any security functions, or is it just a pretty wrapping on other manufacturers products?
In my opinion this is all just way too much fluffy hype with little substance.
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I enjoyed their bit about how quickly they could integrate 3rd party products. Sounds like they have never waited for Google to approve an integration . . .
I've seen a lot of their ads on Facebook lately and their comments indicate that they are focused on the control type of devices and they've explicitly stated that they are not working on monitor devices at the moment. So they'll control your lights or thermostat, but they don't have any plans for sensors and security stuff in the short term.
They also took an interesting approach with the launch of the product:
- $1 million in seed funding (reference)
- Crowdfunded Investments via Start Engine (reference)
- Recently opened up preorders (reference)
So lots of upfront funding without having shipped anything yet.
Either way, it looks pretty - they definitely have some good designers on the team! Hopefully they've got some good engineers on the team too if they want to be successful!
Scant supported device list. No automation. And they're already taking pre-orders. Vapor.
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I was pretty shocked at how small the currently supported device list was. I’m on mobile right now and didn’t see any mention of a user-accessible API to write drivers either, but maybe I missed something there.
Window dressing sells, it doesn't sustain. I suppose for a small group of people who want a simple plug-in-play type control system it may find a niche. However, it looks to me like another Nucleus... They're still around but nobody talks about them anymore.
Hence the second part of my comment that you quoted! 
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Nothing wrong how they fund themselves.
In fact seems quite the norm nowadays in Europe for tech HW products.
I was even yesterday at a Angels round and when in the past you would get at most 50k investment I saw a company with no product, no MVP, no sales, not even a website getting over 125k in investment for 10% shares. That's a 1.25 Million investment 
On another note the feeling I have is that this product will have issues with brand Atmos is a registered trademark of Dolby.
Additionally it seems an aggregator of services, almost a IFTT hw version.
They support "a wide variety of cameras and thermostats (including SmartThings)"? I confess that I haven't used the platform much since I switched to Hubitat, but I'm pretty sure SmartThings is not a thermostat. 
But assuming they mean ST-compatible thermostats, I have to then ask what their product actually does. Is it another dashboard-style "wrapper" around SmartThings that just allows another way to control those devices? (It seem surprising since they claim to support ZigBee and Z-Wave, among other protocols, presumably on-board and not via another hub.) Or do they really not understand what they are advertising? Or are they claiming that they'll have ST-like device compatibility (an impressive feat in the Zigbee world, with Hubitat being the only system I'm aware of to be in even the same league here)?
So many questions, such little technical documentation. Though of course I felt the same way about Hubitat when it was new...
This thing looks like a fancy dumb aggregator of controls.
They are also miss leading in their comparisons because the Echo Show v2 has Zigbee.
I didn’t dig far enough into it passed the home page because honestly at that price range it’s a waste.
