The cleverest thing about Panasonic’s smart home solution is its name. Miraie in Japanese language means ‘The Future’ and it has an AI in it, which the electronics giant is smartly punning on. It’s also playing up the Made in India aspect of MirAIe (it has been conceptualized, and built from scratch right here) which joins Google Home and Alexa in giving customers intelligent living options.

Last week as it unveiled MirAIe, the Japanese firm gave a live demo of what all you can do right away with your Panasonic devices at home. Download the MirAIe app and if you have the Panasonic smart doorbell (costing ₹6,999) installed, you can see on the app who is at the door and if you are not at home get a recording. Install Anchor (a Panasonic company) smart switches and through the app you could regulate the electrical points at home. Ideally the home needs to be rewired for smart switches but Anchor has a retrofitted option as well that can be plugged on to your existing switches.

At the demo, one got to see how either through the MirAIe app or using Alexa or Google voice assistant, you can control your Panasonic air conditioner’s temperature, and also how the AC and fan talk to each other and work in tandem. You can control your home devices from another city even. What’s more you can feed your sleep and preferred temperature profiles so the air conditioner changes its setting automatically through the night. For instance, in the Indian context, you may start sleep at 23 degrees C but as night passes you might want it to move up to 26 degrees. The AC does that and as its temperature moves up accordingly the fan speed increases.

Compared to Panasonic’s futuristic smart living solutions in Japan where you have smart mirrors helping you with your outfit choices etc, MirAIe is more basic — but it is totally attuned to Indian needs, and the simplicity of use is nice. As Manish Sharma , president and CEO of Panasonic India and South Asia revealed it was built after consumer studies were undertaken to understand what Indian users were looking for. Comfort topped the Indian consumer’s demand, followed by convenience and connectivity.

Right now the devices do not have sensor activation that would allow them to turn off when someone leaves the room. But the app does send you notifications that hey, I have been running for four hours, do you want to switch me off? The cost of the intelligent air conditioner is not high either — it’s at an affordable price point of ₹35,990.

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The most exciting aspect of Panasonic’s smart home offering is digital warranties for all its appliances which will be integrated into your MirAIe app. You get notifications about maintenance visits, and there is even a self diagnosis capability. If your AC filters need cleaning, for instance, the app tells you. Also you can schedule visits for repairs or order spare parts in just a few taps — no bothersome calls to service centres.

Sharma also pointed out that MirAIe is a massively scalable platform — both vertically and horizontally. What we saw is just the start as the platform can be extended to mobility and workspaces. Going forward the connected home range will see the introduction of IoT-enabled washing machines, TVs, refrigerators, geysers, etc.

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