In Silicon Valley, the house next door might not be full of techies, but it could be stuffed with tech products.
Up in the East San Jose hills, where suburban developments give way to isolated homesteads, Netgear rents a house where it tries out equipment to make sure it's ready for market. Nestled into a residential neighborhood in Menlo Park, startup Plume rents a new two-story house to test its Wi-Fi system. On Communications Hill in San Jose, KB Home has a model house to show off the smart home products customers can get preinstalled. And startup Abode uses three homes rented by its co-founders as its labs.
"This is where the sausage gets made," said Plume CEO Fahri Diner. "This is literally our test house."
Plume CEO Fahri Diner shows off one of the company's Wi-Fi "pods" at the Menlo Park home the startup rents to test its products. Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group
Take Netgear. The Wi-Fi router maker rents a 2,500 square-foot, two-story home in the hills east of San Jose's Alum Rock neighborhood. From the outside, the mauve-colored house looks unremarkable, except for the large plot of land it sits on.
But inside, along with furniture like couches, tables, chairs and beds, the home is full of routers, televisions, computers, tablets and smartphones. Those devices are used to test and measure the signals coming from Netgear's Wi-Fi devices. Pretty much all of Netgear's Wi-Fi products, except for its lowest-end devices, get tested at the house — sometimes multiple times — before they head to store shelves, said Mark Merrill, the company's chief technology officer.
Mark Merrill, Netgear's chief technology officer, stands among some of the equipment his company tests at a house it rents in t he East San Jose hills. Dan Honda/Bay Area News Group
"We wanted a place where we could do real-world testing without too much interference," Merrill said.
Plume took the opposite approach: it wanted its equipment to compete with other signals. The company's Wi-Fi devices are controlled from cloud servers that are programmed to switch channels on the fly depending on demand and interference, said Diner, its CEO.
It also wanted a house close to its Palo Alto headquarters; it previously had a larger home it used in San Mateo.
Plume's been testing its Wi-Fi system in the house since late 2015, soon after the home was built. It has set up loads of equipment — some $20,000 worth of smart televisions, game consoles, computers and smart home gadgets — to test and stress the home's Wi-Fi network.
"We wanted to make our system very resistant and consumer tolerant," Diner said.
Another startup, Abode, has a different spin on the Valley-home-as-tech-lab trend. The company, which offers a smart home and house security system, uses the homes rented by its founders to test out its equipment. In an older, two-story Mission-style home he rents in Saratoga, co-founder Chris Carney has set up automatic door locks, sensors that can tell if windows or doors are open, security cameras that start recording if they sense motion, and an Amazon Echo.
The home is one of three that double as residences and test labs. Each one, intentionally, is a different kind of space in a different location. Co-founder Brent Franks has a loft in San Francisco, while their third co-founder, Andy Fouse, has a home in a rural area near State College, Pennsylvania.
Brent Franks, co-founder of Abode, inside the Saratoga home rented by his partner Chris Carney that's used to test the gadgets from the smart home product maker. Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group
Part of the reason Carney chose the Saratoga house was to be in an area where cellular coverage was spotty, Franks said. Abode's system uses a cellular connection as a fallback way to connect to the internet and to determine a house's location, and the company wanted to test how its system would handle the challenge, he said. Carney also wanted a larger house where he could install lots of different home automation products and connect them to Abode's main "gateway" gadget, Franks said.
"We had to figure out how to adapt our service for urban versus non-urban environments," Franks said.
Like Abode, KB Home's house is filled with smart home equipment. But in its case, the house, which is right next to a new development on Communications Hill, is more a showcase than a lab.
Starting last fall, the home builder began offering to install home automation products that are compatible with the Home app on Apple's iPhone and iPads in the south-central neighborhood in San Jose and another one in Fremont. The model home it uses to demonstrate the products includes an automatic door lock, remotely controllable window shades and lights, a smart thermostat and a baby cam.
At least in Plume's case, it appears that tech products make for good neighbors. People who live near the company's house had no idea it was being used as a test lab and had few complaints.
"They don't make any noise at night," said George Smith, a primary care doctor who lives right across the street. "They're not a problem."
Tech companies occupying houses that might otherwise be available for families could be courting controversy, given the sky-high rents and home prices in Silicon Valley. But they're likely having a minimal effect on the housing market, said Chris Trapani, founder and CEO of the Sereno Group, a Bay Area residential real estate firm. Trapani said he hadn't heard of other companies using houses as test labs and doesn't believe the practice is widespread.
"Of all the reasons why inventory is low, that's probably no. 37," he said.
Source: This article was curated form the original written by Troy Wolverton for Business Insider and can be read here: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/24/the-neighbors-next-door-may-surprise-you/
Up in the East San Jose hills, where suburban developments give way to isolated homesteads, Netgear rents a house where it tries out equipment to make sure it's ready for market. Nestled into a residential neighborhood in Menlo Park, startup Plume rents a new two-story house to test its Wi-Fi system. On Communications Hill in San Jose, KB Home has a model house to show off the smart home products customers can get preinstalled. And startup Abode uses three homes rented by its co-founders as its labs.
Above: This living room and kitchen at a model home at the Promenade at Communications Hill in San Jose by KB Home features smart devices that can be controlled using a smartphone or tablet.
From San Jose to San Francisco, companies that are inventing the future are increasingly turning to houses to test and show off their products before they are rolled out to consumers nationwide."This is where the sausage gets made," said Plume CEO Fahri Diner. "This is literally our test house."
Plume CEO Fahri Diner shows off one of the company's Wi-Fi "pods" at the Menlo Park home the startup rents to test its products. Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group Take Netgear. The Wi-Fi router maker rents a 2,500 square-foot, two-story home in the hills east of San Jose's Alum Rock neighborhood. From the outside, the mauve-colored house looks unremarkable, except for the large plot of land it sits on.
But inside, along with furniture like couches, tables, chairs and beds, the home is full of routers, televisions, computers, tablets and smartphones. Those devices are used to test and measure the signals coming from Netgear's Wi-Fi devices. Pretty much all of Netgear's Wi-Fi products, except for its lowest-end devices, get tested at the house — sometimes multiple times — before they head to store shelves, said Mark Merrill, the company's chief technology officer.
Above: This nursery at the Promenade development is outfitted with temperature and carbon monoxide sensors.
The location of the company's San Jose house, which it first started renting more than four years ago, is no accident. Netgear was looking for a place that was close to its North San Jose headquarters so its engineers could easily swap out equipment or make adjustments. But it wanted a location where it wouldn't have to worry about competing with signals from nearby houses.Mark Merrill, Netgear's chief technology officer, stands among some of the equipment his company tests at a house it rents in t he East San Jose hills. Dan Honda/Bay Area News Group "We wanted a place where we could do real-world testing without too much interference," Merrill said.
Plume took the opposite approach: it wanted its equipment to compete with other signals. The company's Wi-Fi devices are controlled from cloud servers that are programmed to switch channels on the fly depending on demand and interference, said Diner, its CEO.
It also wanted a house close to its Palo Alto headquarters; it previously had a larger home it used in San Mateo.
Plume's been testing its Wi-Fi system in the house since late 2015, soon after the home was built. It has set up loads of equipment — some $20,000 worth of smart televisions, game consoles, computers and smart home gadgets — to test and stress the home's Wi-Fi network.
"We wanted to make our system very resistant and consumer tolerant," Diner said.
Another startup, Abode, has a different spin on the Valley-home-as-tech-lab trend. The company, which offers a smart home and house security system, uses the homes rented by its founders to test out its equipment. In an older, two-story Mission-style home he rents in Saratoga, co-founder Chris Carney has set up automatic door locks, sensors that can tell if windows or doors are open, security cameras that start recording if they sense motion, and an Amazon Echo.
The home is one of three that double as residences and test labs. Each one, intentionally, is a different kind of space in a different location. Co-founder Brent Franks has a loft in San Francisco, while their third co-founder, Andy Fouse, has a home in a rural area near State College, Pennsylvania.
Brent Franks, co-founder of Abode, inside the Saratoga home rented by his partner Chris Carney that's used to test the gadgets from the smart home product maker. Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group Part of the reason Carney chose the Saratoga house was to be in an area where cellular coverage was spotty, Franks said. Abode's system uses a cellular connection as a fallback way to connect to the internet and to determine a house's location, and the company wanted to test how its system would handle the challenge, he said. Carney also wanted a larger house where he could install lots of different home automation products and connect them to Abode's main "gateway" gadget, Franks said.
"We had to figure out how to adapt our service for urban versus non-urban environments," Franks said.
Like Abode, KB Home's house is filled with smart home equipment. But in its case, the house, which is right next to a new development on Communications Hill, is more a showcase than a lab.
Starting last fall, the home builder began offering to install home automation products that are compatible with the Home app on Apple's iPhone and iPads in the south-central neighborhood in San Jose and another one in Fremont. The model home it uses to demonstrate the products includes an automatic door lock, remotely controllable window shades and lights, a smart thermostat and a baby cam.
At least in Plume's case, it appears that tech products make for good neighbors. People who live near the company's house had no idea it was being used as a test lab and had few complaints.
"They don't make any noise at night," said George Smith, a primary care doctor who lives right across the street. "They're not a problem."
Tech companies occupying houses that might otherwise be available for families could be courting controversy, given the sky-high rents and home prices in Silicon Valley. But they're likely having a minimal effect on the housing market, said Chris Trapani, founder and CEO of the Sereno Group, a Bay Area residential real estate firm. Trapani said he hadn't heard of other companies using houses as test labs and doesn't believe the practice is widespread.
"Of all the reasons why inventory is low, that's probably no. 37," he said.
Source: This article was curated form the original written by Troy Wolverton for Business Insider and can be read here: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/24/the-neighbors-next-door-may-surprise-you/