Roku Partners with Walmart on Line of Smart Home Products

Roku is expanding into smart home products in partnership with Walmart. Roku Smart Home features security cameras, smart lights, video doorbells, and voice-enabled smart plugs. A new Roku Smart Home mobile app and subscription-based security camera service will help keep everything running. The move makes Roku an upstart competitor to Amazon and Google in the connected home space. Roku Smart Home offerings are compatible with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa in addition to Roku Voice. Roku TVs and streaming players will display video feeds from the Roku security cameras.

“This is just the first step for Roku Smart Home,” a Roku spokesperson told TechCrunch, indicating more products to come.

With the Roku TV platform already in “tens of millions of households,” according to a Roku announcement, “branching further into the smart home category is a natural extension of our business,” says Roku Devices president Mustafa Ozgen. Roku Smart Home products will be available beginning October 17 exclusively at Walmart’s nearly 3,500 stores, with select products available now at Walmart.com and Roku.com.

“The two companies partnered up in June to allow consumers to purchase items while streaming on Roku devices,” TechCrunch reports. The Roku smart devices were developed in partnership with Wyze Labs.

They are certified by the ioXt Alliance, a global standard for IoT security. The Roku Smart Home lineup offers two-factor authentication, user data encryption, secure boot, and numerous other advanced security capabilities. The concept behind Roku Smart Home in partnership with Walmart is to make it easy and affordable “for consumers to connect their home and enjoy a smart home experience,” the companies said.

Roku Smart Home cameras start at around $27, which are “more affordable options than the $100 Google Nest wired camera,” TechCrunch writes, detailing various models and configurations, from a “battery-operated outdoor camera with 110 degree view and 6 month battery life for $74” to an Indoor Camera 360 for $40 that “tracks motion by panning and tilting the camera.”

The cameras and the video doorbell include 1080p HD video, “person detection, motion and sound detection, night vision, two-way audio, cloud storage, as well as instant notifications and a loud siren,” says TechCrunch.

The launch includes a Roku Smart Home mobile app for iOS and Android, as well as a camera subscription plan that includes cloud video recording history, smart alerts and package delivery notifications, among other features. Users can “control everything using a new Roku Smart Home app for Android and iOS devices,” CNET writes, noting that “voice controls via Google Assistant and Roku Voice with Alexa are coming in November.”

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