Socket was the next iteration to the Castle project. After we realized how crucial and complicated the hardware aspect of Castle was, we decided to cut scope and just focus mainly on hardware. The idea behind this is a family of low-cost hardware modules that integrate seamlessly with your home and allowed you to control (and automate) it with modern smart home interfaces. A digital exeskeleton for your home, if you will.
While building castle, we learned how much waste there was realized how expensive some simple devices were. $50+ for a lightbulb? And you have to replace a perfectly good bulb for that?? What the heck, even???
On top of that, a lot of the control schemes didn't seem to make sense. How many people are modulating the dining room lights blue to green just to eat dinner? And, at least at the time, you still had to turn it on and off manually, using your phone, effectively (or rather, ineffectively) moving the light switch to your phone, which is helpful if it's in your hand, but if not, you're SOL.
For those reasons, we dreamt up Socket. Our idea was to build an adapter that we could augment existing lightbulbs with, allowing you to use your existing lights while also enabling smart home functionality. The second component there would be an intuitive sensing system that would turn on the light based on some presence sensor array and a rule engine, so that you would ideally never need to reach for your the phone or the wall switch just to accomplish something as simple as illuminating your way.
It was to be the first of many similar hardware modules (a TV operator, toaster/kitchen operator, etc.) that amplified what's already in your home and tying them together with an intuitive, autonomous control scheme, but ultimately, we stretched ourselves too thin and were unable to develop much hardware. For now, Socket is tabled, but we may very well resurrect the concept one day. I hear there's a lot of pain points with laundry machines...