Trunetto's creators perspective on Tolan, Her’s Samantha, and the missing layer in smart homes: presence. Why today’s systems still feel like remote controls, and what’s coming next
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Short version: Tolan is the first time in ages I’ve seen “AI presence” feel real. And it immediately highlighted what’s missing in smart homes today: context. Not more devices. Not more apps. Presence.
Last night my wife said, casually:
“Have you heard of Tolan?”
I hadn’t.
She showed me. A visual AI presence. Conversational. Expressive. It didn’t feel like a chatbot doing customer support. It felt… present.
I watched for about 30 seconds and said:
“That’s Samantha from Her. Just visual. Without the ability to act.”
And that sentence hasn’t left my head since. Because that’s the gap. And that gap is exactly where the smart home industry is about to change.
We Built Control. We Didn’t Build Presence.
Her didn’t predict shiny gadgets. It predicted presence. Samantha wasn’t impressive because she could fetch information. She was impressive because she understood context: tone, mood, timing, behaviour.
She didn’t sit there waiting like a fancy remote control. She anticipated.
Now compare that to your smart home:
“Turn on the lights.”
“Arm the system.”
“Show the driveway camera.”
“Set the temperature.”
That’s not intelligence. That’s command-and-control with a nicer UI. We’ve built houses full of connected devices, but we haven’t built awareness.
Tolan Proves Something the Smart Home Industry Keeps Ignoring
Tolan doesn’t lock your doors. It doesn’t adjust your thermostat. It doesn’t trigger “lockdown mode” because you said something ominous while holding a kitchen knife and staring into the middle distance.
But it does something more important than most smart home platforms have managed:
It maintains continuity.
It feels like it remembers the vibe of the conversation. It doesn’t reset the relationship every time you close the app. It feels like presence, not a tool.
And that’s what smart homes are missing. Most systems are stateless. They respond. They don’t interpret. They execute. They don’t remember.
Why Most Smart Homes Still Feel Dumb (Even When They’re Expensive)
We’ve had voice assistants and app-controlled everything for years. We’ve got “AI” in cameras, smart thermostats, motion-based automations, and dashboards that look like spaceship controls.
And yet most homes still require constant input, because the architecture is command-based. If you don’t tell it what to do, it waits. It doesn’t understand the household rhythm. It doesn’t adapt to mood. It doesn’t recognise the difference between “normal quiet” and “something’s off” quiet.
That’s why even advanced setups still feel mechanical. The house is connected, but it isn’t aware.
The Missing Layer: Environmental Awareness
Here’s where it gets interesting.
Imagine your home noticing deviation without turning into a paranoid weirdo:
You arrive later than usual.
Your movement pattern is off.
You skip the normal lights you always turn on.
The front approach camera sees a second figure linger too long.
A presence-based system wouldn’t wait for you to say “do a security thing.” It would quietly:
soften interior lighting (visibility without glare)
increase exterior illumination in key zones
tighten perimeter monitoring sensitivity (without spamming your phone)
prioritise verified alerts
Not dramatic. Not “sci-fi panic room.” Just calm, contextual adjustment. That’s the difference between control and presence.
Security Is Where This Changes First
This is the most Trunetto part of all of it: security.
Most security systems today rely on you selecting modes: Home, Away, Night. You decide the posture. You choose the rules. And if you forget, well… good luck.
Presence-based security flips it. The system doesn’t replace you, it supports you. It recognises patterns and escalates calmly when something deviates.
And just to be clear: we’re not talking about an AI that “guesses crimes.” We’re talking about an AI that recognises your household’s normal rhythm and flags what’s genuinely abnormal.
We’ve Been Chasing the Wrong Metric
For years, the smart home industry sold progress as:
more devices
more integrations
more compatibility badges
more ecosystems
But nobody wakes up craving more integrations. People want less effort. Less thinking. Less friction. More calm.
That’s what Her understood. That’s what Tolan hints at. And it’s what smart home platforms still mostly miss while they argue over standards and slap “AI” on motion detection.
The Home Is the Final Interface
Phones were the interface. Then wearables. Then voice.
The home itself is becoming the interface now. Not the app. Not the dashboard. The environment.
Lighting. Temperature. Security posture. Soundscape. Notifications. The future smart home won’t feel “smart.” It’ll feel steady. Because the intelligence will be ambient.
Presence is the product.
But Should We Even Want That?
This is where it gets uncomfortable, and it should.
Do we want an AI that detects emotional shifts? An AI that adapts lighting based on stress? An AI that escalates monitoring because it detects behavioural anomalies?
That sounds brilliant. It also sounds intimate.
The line between convenience and intrusion is thin. The difference is consent, transparency, and control. “Presence” without boundaries becomes surveillance with a friendly face.
Where We Actually Are Right Now (The Honest Bit)
Right now, we’re still dealing with:
cameras that go offline because Wi-Fi coverage is bad (and people blame the camera)
ecosystems that barely talk to each other
voice assistants that misunderstand basic commands
automations that break after updates
We’re not at Samantha. We’re not even close. But the direction is clear: the companies that win won’t be the ones with the most devices. They’ll be the ones who reduce friction invisibly.
If you’re dealing with camera placement or network stability today, these two Trunetto guides help a lot:
When my wife showed me Tolan, I didn’t think “that’s cool.”
I thought: that’s what our homes are missing.
Not intelligence. Continuity.
Smart homes reset every time you open an app. The future smart home remembers. It understands enough context to remove friction without being asked. It makes the environment feel calmer, not more complicated.
Maybe the Smart Home Just Needs to Feel Human
There’s a line from Daft Punk that keeps circling back into my head:
“We are human after all.”
Smart homes right now are brilliant at being robotic.
They execute. They trigger. They notify.
They don’t really understand.
But homes aren’t data centres.
They’re where we decompress.
Where we argue.
Where we laugh.
Where we pace the kitchen at 1am thinking about life.
The next evolution isn’t about making homes act more like machines.
It’s about making them respond more like environments designed for humans.
Not emotional manipulation.
Not overreaching surveillance.
Just contextual calm.
Maybe the future of smart homes isn’t louder alarms or brighter dashboards.
Maybe it’s subtle.
Maybe it’s the system that notices tension in your routine and softens the edges.
Maybe it’s the house that reduces friction instead of adding features.
And maybe — just maybe — that’s something Trunetto ends up exploring properly.
Not because we’re chasing hype.
But because if technology is going to live inside our homes,
it should remember one thing:
We are human after all.
Want more like this? The Trunetto troubleshooting hub is where we keep the practical fixes and real-world guides: Trunetto Troubleshooting Hub.
