Your smart fridge can now warn you when you’ve spent too long in the shower

Samsung is integrating Kohler's Anthem luxury smart showers into its SmartThings ecosystem, allowing users to control the shower, adjust its temperature, set timers, and manage presets, as well as monitor water usage through SmartThings-compatible devices.

Kohler's Anthem smart showers can be operated using physical controllers mounted inside the showers or in a bathroom using the Kohler Konnect app on a smartphone or through existing integrations with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Home. This new partnership will expand the remote control options for Anthem installations to the SmartThings app running on Samsung smart TVs, hubs, and mobile devices. It will also allow the smart showers to be integrated into automated routines.

Unfortunately for people who dream of being able to turn on the shower from their fridge, Kohler's Anthem showers cost thousands of dollars for the hardware alone, not counting installation, plumbing, electrical, or tile work. The Anthem Plus shower controller system, which was introduced at CES 2024, is $2,800. This somewhat limits the impact of the partnership, as well as the potential to prank your housemates by changing the temperature of the shower from across the house while they're using it.

To help make users more aware of their water consumption and to promote "more sustainable water usage habits," the monitoring data collected by Kohler's Anthem smart showers will be incorporated into a new water layer coming to SmartThings Map View, which displays the location of smart devices in a 3D representation of a home.

The water layer feature, debuting in early 2025, will expand Samsung's efforts to make consumers more aware of how they're consuming resources in their homes. "As the relationship with Kohler expands, we're very excited about the map view. Water management and sustainability just fits very well with what we're trying to do overall with making the world a better place," says Mark Benson, head of Samsung SmartThings US.

Kohler's Anthem smart showers will be the first devices compatible with the new SmartThings Map View feature, but Benson says that other water-related smart devices will also be able to feed data to the water layer, giving consumers more insights into how they can be responsible about their water usage.