We're always looking for new technology, and last week we had chance to meet up with a UK tech start-up - Musaic.
Musaic is a new kind of HiFi system made up of wireless speakers that you place around your home, designed from the ground up for sound quality and ease of use. Currently this market is served by the likes of Bose and Sonos, however, Musaic is approaching this from a different angle.
Musaic's aim is to make the Hi-Fi system part of the connected home, making it easy to control the system and your home from a single app.
High-End Hi-Fi
Firstly, Musaic is designed for True Hi-Fi sound quality. Each unit has been designed in London by some of the Hi-Fi industry's leading experts. It works with your home Wi-Fi to play music from your mobile devices, your Mac or PC, plus internet based streaming services such as Grooveshark, Aupeo, Rhapsody, Napster, SomaFM, Murfie and TuneIn. It can play almost any file type - including 24-bit files to satisfy the true audiophiles amongst you.
The Musaic units can be use separately around the home, each playing their own music or they can be combined so that you have the same music playing throughout the house.
But that's only half the story
Part of the Smart Home
Musaic has been designed to work with your home automation devices.
Right from the start, Musaic has been working with LightwaveRF. The Musaic players can control LightwaveRF lights and power sockets, creating the perfect ambiance to listen to music.
Choose the music, choose the lighting mood and then kick back and chill!
It's not just LightwaveRF, it will soon be expanded to work with Z-Wave and other home automation technologies. This means the system can be fully integrated into your smart home.
Musaic uses a technology technology called AllJoyn™ - a common language for the Internet of Everything. AllJoyn is the open source project that lets the compatible smart things around us recognize each other and share resources and information across brands, networks, and operating systems. Musaic are also founder members of the Allseen Alliance together with Qualcomm, HTC, LG, and Cisco...
As seen on...
Kickstarter![Kick Starter]()
Musaic are currently gathering funding on Kickstarter.
They already have fully working prototypes - we've seen them and they work beautifully.
They are well on their way to meeting the Kickstarter target, which will be used to take the Musaic players into production for an expected shipping date of August.
You can take part in the Kickstarter campaign by backing the Musaic project and making a pledge.
At Vesternet we're pretty taken with Musaic. We're always getting requests to integrate multimedia with home automation, and Musaic is a nice step in that direction. We're going to work with Musaic in testing the later prototypes and help them integrate it with Z-Wave and other home automation systems.
We'll keep you posted on the progress.
Mark