
The Internet of Way Too Many Things - prostoalex
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/allison-arieff-the-internet-of-way-too-many-things.html
======
antr
I just bought a home, and just started a considerable renovation. I'm putting
in new water pipes, new electrical wiring, etc. I thought of putting "smart"
devices (i.e. switches, alarms, thermostats, etc.) given the "advantages"
these promise.

After considerable research, it's not worth the hussle or money. Let's put
aside the fact that these are considerable more expensive, and won't breakeven
in years (some devices smart devices simply don't breakeven).

The main reason I decided not to have any of these installed was due to how
cumbersome they are to operate. Each appliance/brand has their own app/portal,
which does not connect to other brands, making it impossible to have an
overview of your "smart home". Even more scary, some of these devices are
operated by startups, god knows, if they will be alive next year. Good luck
getting that app to work with iOS 10! It's a true headache, it's even a
headache for contractors, who have no clue how these work. It's going to take
some time (and education) to have an OS that makes a smart home smart...

and don't get me started on the smart baby monitors, etc... if my siblings an
I were brought up just fine in the 80's without being in a "smart onesie", I'm
sure we can do just as fine today.

~~~
hessenwolf
[http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=infant-child-and-
teen...](http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=infant-child-and-teen-
mortality)

Looks to me like infant mortality (under age one) has halved between 1977 and
2013. I understand the argument of "it worked fine for me", but, well, on a
portfolio basis, you and I were dying a bit faster back then.

Outpatient care is a big field these days. Something that, with extremely
little effort, can reduce the odds of death or disability, is quite tempting.
A smart nappy/diaper with a disposable nutrition-analysing smart-chip is not
that far off.

~~~
antr
Maybe you are right... but a onesie that "knows that when a baby wakes up, the
parents will, too -- so it turns on lights and music and even makes the
coffee." ... is of no use to fight infant mortality.

~~~
robmcm
Mimo monitors breathing, temperature and sleeping position. All of these are
factors in cot death according to easily searchable research.

~~~
tptacek
There is no evidence I've found that _any_ monitoring device improves SIDS
outcomes, and there is evidence that it doesn't. Forget about the smart
onesie: it's difficult to justify even classic baby monitors as a medical
intervention.

The decline in SIDS over the last 2 decades tracks the education of parents
not to put infants to sleep on their stomachs.

~~~
crazypyro
Small note, but there are other major factors in the decline of SIDS besides
just not putting infants to sleep on their stomach, although they generally
all stem from the idea of educating new parents about basic safety procedures
that are not always intuitive.

------
rollback
Commentary about the silliness of the avalanche of IOT devices being created
right now aside (99% of consumer internet startups are based on dumb ideas and
fail, but that doesn't mean there is no market or trend!), it's inevitable
that this stuff is going to get traction in the market and it's a vast market.
I doubt it's going to happen based on a bunch of edge-case $99 devices though.

The big trend here is the cost of wifi enabled microprocessors dropping down
to nearly nothing. Last year we were excited about raspberry pi dropping
prices down to $30 for sensor-enabled hardware on the network.

This year you can buy a wifi-enabled microcontroller for _$3_ (search
esp8266). And that's not even in volume. At that price, pretty much anything
consumer electronics companies build can be addressable on the network.

Add to that voice control, which is crude but usable and built into every
phone already and improving quickly. The idea of walking into your house and
looking for a light switch is going to feel like walking up to your TV to
change the channel did 30 years ago when the remote went into wider use.

I find the economic arguments about not saving money using IOT devices a
little amusing, on HN especially. My guess is that almost everyone reading
this forum spends a shitload of money buying techno gadgets for reasons beyond
"it saves me money."

~~~
jhallenworld
Well here is an interesting argument for voice control: it's more hygienic.
All touch points are potential sources for disease. On the other hand, maybe
we are increasing allergies by making the environment too sterile.

What hygienic technology will replace touch screens?

~~~
mreiland
Is that actually a problem?

That sounds like a made up solution. For the vast majority of people, simply
touching something that someone else in your home has touched isn't going to
cause you any sort of problems.

~~~
octo_t
Possibly not in the home, but in the office or public places? Definitely.

~~~
oblio
Yet we use public transportation in many parts of the world and few bad things
have happened. We use door handles everywhere. Etc.

~~~
Zigurd
Door handles are a big problem in hospitals. I'd take the bet that they are a
bigger problem in public places than is generally acknowledged.

~~~
JupiterMoon
Interestingly this is actually a solved problem that we have forgotten the
solution to. Copper naturally kills most pathogens. Brass door handles
therefore act to prevent touch based spread of pathogens -- but plastic is
cheaper.

~~~
mschuster91
I think it's not the price but the looks. Copper tends to oxidize and form an
ugly green-ish hue of copper oxide, while proper plastics or other non-
biocidic metal will not degrade in looks.

~~~
ars
Brass works fine too.

------
Animats
I went to an Internet of Things meeting in SF about two years ago, and it was
about like this. A Samsung executive was touting an Internet-enabled
refrigerator, which was basically just a refrigerator with a tablet built into
the door, with no special sensors, costing more than a refrigerator plus a
tablet. I asked him why they'd built the product, and got an honest answer. He
said the market was three types of people:

\- People who just had to have the latest thing - early adopters. \- People
who like to show off their houses to other people (the granite kitchen counter
crowd) \- People who just like to buy expensive stuff and will buy the most
expensive thing.

I talked to a HVAC engineer there. The room we were in was an old industrial
building in SF. It had skylights with chains and toothed pulleys for opening
them, openable windows, curtains for both, ceiling fans, both spotlights and
light cans, a video projector and powered screen, and a standard HVAC system
controlled by a standard thermostat. Controlling and coordinating all that
would be a good "internet of things" application. He pointed out that
companies which installed that sort of thing wanted it to work, and not
generate service calls. Engineering, installing and connecting all the motors
and sensors to run that room properly would be a big job. Motorizing the old
skylights alone would need custom engineering.

That's the problem. Internet of Things stuff that's actually useful requires
more than buying some plastic gadgets. Just an HVAC system for the home able
to open and close windows would do more for heating cost and air quality than
Nest's gadget, which, in the end, just turns heat and A/C on and off.

~~~
elsewhen
what do you mean by "granite kitchen counter crowd"? is it the case that
granite counters are not particularly functional and primarily there for show
(i'm genuinely asking).

~~~
ghaff
Granite looks great, at least initially, but is expensive and can have issues
with discoloration, cracking, etc. Corian-type materials are probably more
practical. Granite isn't a terrible material but it is often the choice for
kitchen remodels done mostly for show.

------
netcan
I'm reminded of the online coke machine:
[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt)

I'm also (many times a day) reminded of some Douglas Adams bits.

 _1\. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary
and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2\. Anything that 's
invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and
revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3\. Anything invented
after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”_

And this (though you should read the full thing):

 _Another problem with the net is that it’s still ‘technology’, and
‘technology’, as the computer scientist Bran Ferren memorably defined it, is
‘stuff that doesn’t work yet.’ We no longer think of chairs as technology, we
just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out
how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would
often ‘crash’ when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as
trivial and plentiful as chairs_...

So, since Douglas was writing (a) a lot more of us are operating in the 15-35
category where technology is cool and (b) a lot more of the stuff around us is
technology in the sense that it doesn't quite work yet. It's become pretty
much standard in startup-technology land to make the case that some technology
"tick all the boxes," saving time, money and generally being ultilitarian and
awesome. people who want to buy tecnology because its cool, play along. They
need some way of justifying an internet-of-things coke machine, which they
want because it's new and exciting.

Internet-of-things is still at the stage where we're throwing things against
the wall. Most of it is not useful, or barely useful and the people who buy
it, do so because they want to... for fun.

That doesn't mean none of it is useful or that some generally useless thing
isn't useful for you, it just means you have a two legged chair.

~~~
Kenji
_> Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs..._

Nonsense. A modern CPU has so many parts, no single human can understand its
circuitry. And the complexity is ever increasing. The chair comparison is
extremely poor; we live in an environment that is ever increasing in
complexity and even today, most people don't understand the array of modern
technology they're surrounded with and I don't see that trend stopping. You
grow up with chairs; you know how a chair works and could build one. You grow
up with x86 CPU? Ha, try to build one.

~~~
ibopm
You'd be surprised how hard it is to create your own safe and reliable chair
from scratch. I certainly don't think "most people could build one".

~~~
Kenji
I've built a bench and stuff like that before. Very comfy and reliable for
many years now. And I don't have any formal training in woodworking. It's
really not that hard. However, even after years of formal training in
electrical engineering, you will struggle very hard to build a modern CPU. An
attempt to compare the difficulty of the two appears to be ridiculous (I have
also built a CPU, though only a very simple one on a FPGA. I don't even want
to imagine the amount of work and skill necessary to design a modern, say,
Intel CPU).

------
awjr
For anyone not familiar with the Hype Cycle
[http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hyp...](http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-
cycle.jsp) we're still in the "Peak of Inflated Expectations". I would have
hoped we'd have hit the "Trough of Disillusionment" by now but it seems to be
powering along quite nicely.

One of the big problems with IoT is the cost of the connectivity bit of the
hardware. You want these things to be low powered but that costs money. You
want these things out in the field, but providing constant power is a
nightmare.

I've been looking at Automatic Number Plate Recognition networks using
Raspberry PI2s, transmitting only the number plate to do transit route
analysis. By the time you've added a battery, a GSM module,and a solar
charging panel, it's suddenly become a £150 piece of hardware.

IoT is so so interesting, but I think the hype around it is driving money into
the domain and people are just ramming the devices anywhere they can.

~~~
nacnud
Interesting - what software are you using to do the recognition (if I may
ask)?

~~~
awjr
This at the moment
[https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr](https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr)

If you give me a vehicle database, I can tell you how many red cars are used
on a route :) The more interesting calculations are based around CO2
emissions. I have the make and model and average speed between two points. I
know roughly your emissions outputs.

Accuracy is an issue but as long as ALL your ANPR devices read a number plate
exactly the same it doesn't make too much of an issue.

------
Duhck
As someone actively working in the smart home space, I refrain from calling
our business IoT for exactly this reason. I've even challenged the team to
stay away from smart home. We do very little "smart" home stuff and instead
rely on cleverly designing a set of devices that don't require an application
or future technology (AI, voice control) to work properly. They also don't
take up space in your home and combine the functionality of two or more
devices into one.

I'd like to think I've been a bullhorn for the "IoT is stupid" movement, but I
think the author did a great job of calling it out as well.

~~~
azatris
Hi :-)

This is very interesting. What exactly are you doing then? Designing
(software, hardware, both?) _dumb_ devices for home?

~~~
rm445
Parent poster's bio link points to
[https://www.hellotwist.com/](https://www.hellotwist.com/) which does multi-
room speaker systems.

What I was going to say before thinking to check the link, is that there must
be a wealth of applications available to the instrumentation engineer, using
modern microcontrollers without making the full step to Internet of Things.

The smoke alarm with the "I'm cooking for the next ten minutes" button. The
simple alarm clock that knows weekends from weekdays, or even your work
shifts. The thermostat with a few dozen more available states than the
traditional ones and a sane interface. Electric showers that deliver a
pleasant showering experience. Smart dumb devices.

~~~
meowface
Twist seems like a pretty clever idea, especially by integrating it all into
the lightbulb.

Can anyone think of potential downsides to this approach? Other than the audio
probably not being of very good quality compared to a serious speaker system.

~~~
Duhck
We've used a really high quality audio driver and have some future products
that'll help round out the system (aka subwoofers).

For reference here is the data sheet of speaker we use:
[http://www.baysidenet.tv/catalog/pdf/Peerless/30n18al04-04.p...](http://www.baysidenet.tv/catalog/pdf/Peerless/30n18al04-04.pdf)

We also have a half a dozen other products designed to fit into this form
factor, all of which provide a superior lighting experience to what is
available on the market today.

~~~
meowface
I'm sure it's good, but I don't think you'll win the audiophiles over.

------
roymurdock
I work at a market research/consulting firm that specializes in the embedded
devices market. This means we cover any semi-specialized device with a CPU
that is not a desktop, laptop, or tablet.

The consumer-facing home IoT stuff (Nest, smart-fridge, smart-car etc.) gets a
lot of press because it's exciting and it appeals to the least common
denominator - anyone from an electrical engineer to a nanny can see how these
devices might affect their lives.

Most of the (pretty astronomical) growth of the embedded device market is
driven by the applications of industrial connectivity. Think aerospace &
defense, automotive, medical, municipal, retail automation. The industries
that don't make for sexy headlines.

Ultimately, I believe the entire IoT movement is going to contribute
substantially to the economy in the form of cost-savings. Companies will be
able to access and analyze a lot more data which will hopefully enable leaner
operations due to process refinement and resource conservation. It's a good
time to be in the security and analytics business.

While cost savings are great for the bottom line, we also need to find a way
to create new markets and generate new, useful products. Hopefully the
government has invested enough in R&D to enable the next internet to begin to
take root sometime soon, whatever that may be.

From my perspective, it would make sense that virtual reality would be a huge
paradigm shift in the way that we create and consume information, which seems
to be an underlying theme driving many advances in technology and overall
quality of life.

IoT seems to be the maturation of internet connectivity - what's next in the
world of technology?

~~~
jkaunisv1
On a similar note, I was really impressed by Microsoft's team that manages
this for their whole campus. There was an article a while back that described
the challenges they faced, like heaters and AC in the same building competing
to keep temperature within a certain range, and the huge benefits they
realized when they hooked it all up to a central sensor/management system.

------
Nickersf
The Internet of things is starting to look like 'Sky Mall'. Time will show if
the concept gains traction with the majority of people. At this point I don't
see the single mom working in food service for minimum wage buying her
children electric onesies.

We should be working on improving existing technologies. Not dreaming up a
million more that all inherit the same flaws as the ones we already deal with.

~~~
Animats
Yes. And "Sky Mall" went bankrupt in January 2015.[1]

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-flight-catalog-skymall-
files-...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-flight-catalog-skymall-files-for-
bankruptcy-1422025308)

~~~
Nickersf
Ouch. Even as a kid I always wondered 'Who the hell shops out of these
catalogs, and who came up with these products?'

Sky Mall provided at least 30 minutes of trolling fun on a flight. :)

~~~
ghaff
Note that most of the products/catalogs still exist. Sky Mall was basically
just a catalog of catalogs that basically picked some of the more out-there
examples from a variety of companies in the Brookstone/Hammacher
Schlemmer/etc. vein. I've actually occasionally found useful products from
these companies but they're mostly just oddball stuff that's somewhat amusing
but not very practical.

------
Spooky23
Home automation always was and continues to be a puttering around hobby or
suckers game.

A friend bought a house that had a late 70s state of the art home system.
Central radio/vinyl/8track player, intercoms, and a broken CCTV setup. Also
cool stuff like central vacuum.

The big difference between that house and the modern gadgetry is that the 70s
stuff was hard wired and still works. None of the IoT crap that is on the
market now will be completely unusable in a decade.

~~~
adventured
My house also came with a 1970s central vacuum system (among other things).

It still works amazingly well for a system that is 40 years old. I've only
used it one time, just to test it out, because it's obnoxious to drag a long
hose around the house and connect up to each port. In my opinion the concept
was bad from the start because of that one thing.

------
thetruthseeker1
I want to bring an alternate viewpoint into the discussion. For some a product
like Leeo may sound superfluous and may not seem to justify the added value it
provides for the rise in cost(99$+). (Note there is some added value however
trivial it may be). For others they may say no to a product like
[https://nest.com/](https://nest.com/) or this
[https://on.google.com/hub/](https://on.google.com/hub/) based on their
financial flexibility and their lifestyle (which you may see as 'obviously'
needed).

I do think in this case, the best judge is the free market. If any product
maker provides added value at a price point where there will be enough buyers
and they see profit, their business will run successfully, else it will fail
like any other business. How can my opinion decide what is a good product, it
is the market that should decide it!

There are lot of independent products that solve mostly one problem - cars for
eg:

Every product design does not have to solve multiple problems, it is just that
the users need to feel that it justifies its cost based on the value it
provides.

~~~
georgemcbay
While I kind of agree with the author's position in general, I found the
singling-out of the Leeo (which I had previously never heard of and thus have
no horse in the race of its success) a bad example.

The way it is described in the article actually sounds pretty ideal to me in
that it is not trying to insert all sorts of "intelligence" into the simple,
well-understood solution that already exists in the form of a simple smoke
alarm. Rather, it is merely augmenting that solution in a way that is helpful
but less mission critical, without integrating extra "intelligence" in a way
that is likely to cause software-related problems.

See bradfitz's video for an example of how "intelligence" can hamper something
like smoke alarms if the entire system is integrated and "smart".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY)

------
OliverJones
Internet-enabled house jewelry? Feh. It will be fun for a week, then boring.

Here's what I want: stuff that will make me a better neighbor and citizen of
the world.

Specifically: Realtime smart energy and water consumption meters. Wouldn't it
be great to get some sort of alert if there was a pipe burst or even a water
trickle? Wouldn't it be fabulous to track electricity consumption? That could
generate the creation of sets of light bulbs each of which consumes a
different prime number of watts. Then your smart meter can say, "hey chump,
you left a light on in the attic. Turn it off."

Combined with a smart grid and demand-pricing of public utilities (yeah, fat
chance, I know), this kind of thing could make a dent in my carbon footprint.

~~~
tacon
About ten years ago I sat through a funding pitch for a monitor that detects
sudden changes in residential water flow rates. Cost was about $250/home, and
part of the pitch was that insurance companies would help cover the cost to
save catastrophic damage. Apparently washing machine hoses burst on a regular
basis, and such an event in an unoccupied home is very expensive. I haven't
heard anything about that problem/solution since.

~~~
mikestew
When our washer hose burst, and the adjuster said it's the most common
insurance claim, I asked why the insurance company doesn't just send out new
washer hoses every five years. Seems like it be more cost-effective than a
$250 device that I'm sure doesn't work as well as the maker claims.

And yeah, I previously never gave washer hoses much thought, either. Go change
yours this weekend. They're cheap, and a hell of a lot less trouble than the
alternative.

~~~
ghaff
Yeah, with respect to water, the simplest solution is probably to have valves
that you shutoff. I have them on both washing machine and [EDIT] dishwasher
but don't routinely close them. It probably should be part of my routine at
least when I go on trips.

The problem is that as soon as you introduce control systems, you also
introduce new failure modes. What happens when the smart thermostat crashes in
winter which probably happens more frequently than a really dumb mechanical
one? Of course, it's not like your heating system can't shut down for other
reasons as well.

It's hard to figure out how to plan for rare failures. Ultimately you probably
want someone who checks in on your house because smart systems can only handle
so many eventualities. But that's may be costly.

------
srj
FWIW I find the Whistle to be a good product. I can easily find out when our
dog walker dropped our dog off, and therefore how long she has been alone. At
the risk of stating the obvious: just because the author doesn't have the
problems that these devices purport to solve doesn't make them superfluous.

~~~
liquidcool
Agree, we use it to coordinate dog care between housemates, but if they
stopped all work on networking with dog owners and just made the damn thing
sync more often, I'd be thrilled. I hate walking the dog at 1AM because it
took 3 hours to upload the data so it looked like he never went.

------
larrys
There is plenty of merchandise that people buy that they don't need and can do
without. Many of the products in the article are just technology variations
and extensions of the type of products that sold for years in Sharper Image,
Brookstone or Skymall. (Or on infomercials) [1] Just something attractively
priced, that if marketed correctly, will find a small or maybe even a large
market because it's in front of people and an impulse buy (as opposed to
buried on a shelf at a Walmart. Focus people and single out the product in
other words.

[1] There was a commercial last year that I watched for a striped screw
removal tool. The price was attractive and I thought "hmm you never know when
you might need this". I then searched Amazon and found and purchased the most
highly rated product of that category (wasn't going to order from an
infomercial). I knew this product existed prior to that of course (my Dad used
them when I was a kid) but until I saw the infomercial I had no motivation to
seek this particular tool out. After seeing the infomercial I wanted one so I
bought it. It actually did come in handy when having to pull a stripped screw
from a washing machine.

~~~
shostack
I'd love to point to this post for all the snarky comments people make about
how advertising doesn't work on the HN crowd ;)

------
SandB0x
It's been posted before but on this topic check out

[http://weputachipinit.tumblr.com/](http://weputachipinit.tumblr.com/)

------
edgyswingset
Some of these products strike me as being created because one of the owners of
the startup thought it was cool, not because they went out and actually tried
to identify peoples' household problems and figure out ways to solve them.

~~~
pdkl95
That may be true for some, but I suspect most of these internet-based devices
are little more than an excuse to get on the surveillance-as-a-business-model
bandwagon. All you need is a clever excuse to gather a new type of data that
isn't currently being collected, and you have something to sell to "big data".

Fortunately, even the non-technical people I know have started to wake up to
these scams, and are now avoiding any "smart" product.

------
erikb
There are always two kinds of developments. One is where you have a huge
problem and people try different things to solve it. The other thing is where
you have new capabilities and don't know yet what to do with it yet. One is
not worse than the other. Given some time there will be reasonable usecases.
Think back to the first iPhone and Android. Nobody really knew what to do with
a smartphone yet. Now everybody has at least one and uses it way too often.
Internet of Things are just one of the next areas. Let's just calm down and
let the market work out what's reasonable.

------
Zigurd
Home automation is the least likely IoT category to succeed, at first, anyway.
The low hanging fruit is in things like public infrastructure monitoring by
instrumenting the municipal maintenance and transit fleet. Many enterprises
are going to find they can do with a lot fewer desks if they instrument their
work environment and spread workers out into co-working spaces.

The people instrumenting these environments are also more-capable of
calculating the benefits. Without analysis, it's just shiny toys.

------
jedberg
> I asked a young man working at the Target store how visitors felt about
> their every action being tracked and he said that they’d come to accept it.
> And that was that.

I think this is completely true. I've done research in this area, and people
under the age of about 22 have no concept of privacy whatsoever (it should be
noted that these people were 12 when Facebook started and basically hit their
teenage years just as Facebook opened up to the general public).

Here is one of the anecdotes I collected: when one of them arrived at college,
she posted a picture of her school ID and her key and said, "I've arrived!". I
pointed out that with just the info in the photo someone could make a copy of
the key and get into her dorm room. She said, "eh, that won't happen".

~~~
hoka
Another common one: people posting that they're going on vacation or posting
pictures from vacation while still on it. Sure, your friends might not break
into your place, but what if their laptop gets stolen and the thief sees
you're not going to be home for a week?

~~~
narrowrail
I have never locked the door to my house in the 3 years of living where I do.
I also commonly leave my keys in the ignition. I live in a small town and made
that choice for such reasons, but if you are willing to give up on employment
choices it is viable.

------
baldeagle
My favorite question for any smart home product is "what happens if company X
goes out of business?" Had to learn to ask that the hard, expensive way but
now all my connected things have the ability to run off the local grid.

------
dgallagher
I walked through Target's Open House in SF a few weeks ago; I'd recommend
visiting if you're in the area. It's pretty slick product display space. Each
"room" has a projector which gives an overview of four or five products in a
room, and how they tie together in your life. One of the rooms had a Kinect
mounted above next to the projector; not sure what it was being used for.

The main lobby has a couple long tables with all of the products on display
which were demo'd in the rooms along with some interactive Surface-like table
which detects if you get near it and moves floating sprites around. They had
displays on the wall listing the most popular products, and a few sales people
to answer questions. IIRC there were approx 40-50 products displayed. Kudos to
Target for setting the space up.

Everything being sold felt they'd fit perfectly inside of a Brookstone, or
Sharper Image when they still had retail stores. Most of them were "vitamin"
products rather than "aspirin", which gives way to some of Allison Arieff's
criticism in the article: "What the products on display have in common is that
they don’t solve problems people actually have."

That's very fair to say. There were a few items which did solve real problems,
like Nest which can help reduce heating costs, but most things sold didn't fit
into that category. Many were "neat" things which you could entice someone
with disposable income to splurge on.

------
joshvm
Refuel looks like it would be much better pivoted towards the beverage
industry. The BBQ going out is not a problem, beer running out is a party-
killer. It looks for all the world like a WiFi-connected scale that tells you
when the weight of the tank is getting a bit light.

We're poking fun at these, but this just caricatures the entire bay area
startup scene. There are so many companies solving rich-people-problems that
really shouldn't exist or at least are highly unlikely to scale.

~~~
tonyarkles
Funny enough, the Refuel immediately jumped out at me as a product that would
be super useful for me. Not because I care a lot about being able to BBQ
without running out of fuel, but because I have a propane-heated cabin in the
middle of nowhere. Being able to look at the weather forecast and the amount
of propane in the tank would make planning a lot easier.

There's also a few different people that share the place, so we don't always
know what the other people have done/how much they've used.

Of course, there's no wifi at the cabin, but there is a nearby 3G tower... If
I could remotely monitor both the propane tank and the water tank, that'd be
awesome!

~~~
cwilkes
Why not have a second tank? Then if the first one is empty use the second and
refill the first. That's pretty much guaranteed not to fail, unless you have
someone that doesn't fill the tank. But that's s different problem. That's
what I do at home and it is only for the occasional grilling, not anything
like "we can't eat / have heat unless this works"

------
michaelsbradley
The _Industrial_ Internet of Things (IIoT) is also in the works, with
standards efforts kicking into high/er gear.

The two big contenders seem to be the American-led effort/s that has come
together for IEEE P2413[1], and the German-led effort known as Industrie
4.0[2].

See also: _Industrie 4.0 vs. the Industrial Internet_ [3].

[1]
[https://standards.ieee.org/develop/project/2413.html](https://standards.ieee.org/develop/project/2413.html)

[&]
[http://www.industrialinternetconsortium.org/](http://www.industrialinternetconsortium.org/)

[&] [http://industrial-iot.com/2015/09/ieee-pursues-standard-
refe...](http://industrial-iot.com/2015/09/ieee-pursues-standard-reference-
architecture-for-the-internet-of-things/)

[2]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattform_Industrie_4.0](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattform_Industrie_4.0)

[&] [http://www.zvei.org/en/subjects/Industry-40/Pages/The-
Refere...](http://www.zvei.org/en/subjects/Industry-40/Pages/The-Reference-
Architectural-Model-RAMI-40-and-the-Industrie-40-Component.aspx)

[3]
[https://www.mapi.net/research/publications/industrie-4-0-vs-...](https://www.mapi.net/research/publications/industrie-4-0-vs-
industrial-internet)

~~~
Animats
Most factories have had in-house networks for decades. Ordinary CAT-5 cable
works quite well in electrically noisy industrial environments, because it's a
differential signal on twisted pair. In industry, the big problem is getting
all the gear to interoperate.

There's also what's called "machine to machine communcation", much of which
takes place over low-cost wireless pager networks. Many industrial air
conditioners, elevators, and vending machines are regularly sending their
short, boring, but important messages to a server. There's even M2M over
Iridium two-way satellite paging, for oil wells and such. That works anywhere
you can see the sky.

~~~
michaelsbradley
You're right, of course. However, the IIoT / Industrie 4.0 is about taking it
all to new levels of interoperability and integration.

See: [http://www.mmsonline.com/articles/7-things-to-know-about-
the...](http://www.mmsonline.com/articles/7-things-to-know-about-the-internet-
of-things-and-industry-40)

~~~
Animats
That says: _“actively drive the reshaping of industry, as it combines aspects
of the physical, virtual, IT and cybersystem worlds to help create a new
working environment of integrated productivity between worker and machine. It
represents a highly dynamic point of achievement, where every company, whether
large OEM, major tier supplier or small job shop, can benefit from the
technologies and the communication platforms emerging in the market today,
some at the speed of light.”_

Is there a non-bullshit version?

~~~
michaelsbradley
You can read more about the reference architecture model for Industrie 4.0
(RAMI 4.0), published by ZVEI:

[http://www.zvei.org/Downloads/Automation/5305%20Publikation%...](http://www.zvei.org/Downloads/Automation/5305%20Publikation%20GMA%20Status%20Report%20ZVEI%20Reference%20Architecture%20Model.pdf)

Interestingly, they've settled on OPC UA as _the_ standard for the
communications layer.

The reference architecture (IIRA) for the American-led effort can be
downloaded from the Industrial Internet Consortium:

[http://www.iiconsortium.org/IIRA.htm](http://www.iiconsortium.org/IIRA.htm)

Last year, the OPC Foundation seemed to be "lobbying" for OPC UA to play a
similarly key role in IIRA as it now has in RAMI 4.0, but that did not come to
pass.

I expect that IEEE P2413 will use IIRA as a starting point. Perhaps OPC UA
will be "blessed" as one of several options for the communications layer, but
we'll have to wait and see.

See:
[https://standards.ieee.org/news/2015/iic_liaison.html](https://standards.ieee.org/news/2015/iic_liaison.html)

------
tajano
I'm glad the "Internet of Things" is being held to task by a mainstream media
outlet. The Internet of Things is just a marketing term being pushed onto
consumers by Cisco, Qualcomm, Google, etc., because selling more radio chips
and putting more sensors in the home directly benefits these companies.

But it's offensive marketing because these companies haven't even bothered to
frame the issue in terms of solving people's real-world problems. You want to
sell an overpriced thermostat or smoke detector? Fine, but don't tell me it's
a revolution.

A lot of smaller players are getting swept up in the hype, and wasting time
and money thinking consumers will jump at the opportunity to pay 10X the price
for something that interacts with their phone. Prove me wrong, but I'm not
buying it.

------
jsprogrammer
>Like you, I once had many products that each fulfilled a separate function: a
landline, a cellphone, a camera, a video recorder, a stereo, a calendar. Now,
I have one product that does all of those things — a smartphone. _This level
of product integration was a revolution in product design._

Is the smartphone really a revolution in product design or just the
inevitability of technological convergence? There is essentially no
fundamental difference between products listed. Sure, the user function may
differ, but the actual implementations are all based on the same phenomena:
stored information manipulable through electromagnetic fields.

How early on was a device like the modern smartphone conceived? I'd wager not
long after the discovery of silicon transistors.

------
at-fates-hands
Two points that jumped out at me:

>> _Privacy and Security. Every one of these items is connected to the
Internet_

And we've seen how this has been handled by companies recently. Their idea of
security is somewhere between non-existent and EPIC FAILURE status. No thank
you. I have enough problems trying to lock down my Windows PC.

>>> _I asked a young man working at the Target store how visitors felt about
their every action being tracked and he said that they’d come to accept it.
And that was that._

Maybe the young man's generation has accepted it, but those of us who have
seen first hand what can happen when data gets in the wrong hands, it's not
even remotely ok.

To smooth over this point just confirms PT Barum was right all along.

------
dmschulman
Like a lot of tech products I think these devices have a niche appeal, despite
the fact that of these doohickeys are answers in search of a problem people
will buy these products (Target hosted this expo after all).

Unlike a selfie stick or edible gold pills however there is a deeper ethical
issue inherent in selling products that transact so much data about your life
(and metrics about your family and home) for the purpose of creating
marketable data sets about every mundane aspect of living. Not to mention how
vulnerable a person or family becomes once these devices are integrated into
their house, children, car, BBQ, etc since so little attention is given to
making these devices secure.

------
dmritard96
As someone who is building IoT devices (www.flair.zone), I would say that many
of these complaints resonate with me. There have been two motivating factors
behind what we are doing: Building the Internet of Useful Things and not
building the Internet of Expensive Things. So far that has worked well for us
and we haven't even launched officially.

Nest (as a company) is an interesting case to examine with respect to this
article. The thermostat in it of itself was a much needed upgrade for some and
dropcam has a ton of potential for more complete automation triggering, but
the protect was pretty marginal value add if you ask me. Fires just aren't
that big of a problem statistically and while a smoke alarm that can call the
fire department is great in theory, in practice people are leery of false
alarms when it could be incredibly expensive. And the 'works with nest'
integrations are fascinating: its largly a bunch of companies that want to be
associated with Nest and its percieved superiority from a
brand/acquisition/something(?) perspective and then integrate these super low
value add enhancements. Like the Whirlpool integration: '[if we know when you
are getting home, we can refresh your clothes so they stay wrinkle free]'.
Such a ridiculous proposition for an integration.

Leeo was particularly crazy. It was a case of 'top tier founders' that all the
VCs in the valley love with 30M in investment before leaving stealth mode.
Everyone assumed they must be onto the next big thing but it was in fact a
giant let down. I am sure the pitch was great: we are going to put a
microphone in each room and have voice command in every room but somehow they
lost sight and it just became a smoke alarm relay. The other angle maybe was
that they could convince insures to subsidize them like (GE/Wink)? I would
love to see the total number of dollars invested into residential smoke
detectors by consumers annually, the number of house fires in the US/World
(and aggregate damage/loss of life) all compared to the stealth mode
investment of this company...The internet of things will happen and some
devices will add substantial value by better managing energy adding real
convinience but the author correctly found some really questionable value add
and called it out.

~~~
webXL
Leeo is for people who don't see a need to replace their existing smoke/CO
detectors and just want some peace of mind when they're away, but the pets
aren't. I bought one used for $70 because I think it definitely has a place in
a "smart"/monitored home. Just like dropcam. Heck, dropcam should be able to
listen for your smoke detector. Might justify some of its cost.

------
11thEarlOfMar
This is why we started EarthData.io. It hasn't flown due to me failing to
raise money, but I still believe that the premise of every 'thing' accessible
to every 'app' in 'near-real-time' where this all heads.

As long as the connected devices are all connected via their own, standalone
cloud, whether it's proprietary, open source or purchased, we're not going to
see the true value of IoT and the ROI of connectedness will be squelched. Yet
this is how the device manufacturers still view connected devices: A marketing
lever to lock their customers into their hardware.

------
salgernon
About 15 years ago I was working with a developer that was adding scripting
support to their hardware / software combination - an X10 module controller.
He was expounding on the greatness of his smart home system, for example, the
lights would go out when he got into bed. I asked him what he would do if he
wanted to read in bed. He seemed genuinely confused and replied that the bed
was ONLY FOR SLEEPING.

All the automation, setup, scheduling and monitoring we are building now needs
to be able to deal with people not being consistent. cf self driving cars.

------
analog31
I'm excited about IoT, and have ordered some ESP8266 development boards to
play with.

With that said, don't get me wrong, but some of this stuff has to be failsafe,
and making it smarter, makes it more complex. More like software, if you will.

I don't know if there are enough engineers out there, with the knowledge,
discipline and experience designing failsafe products, to support the entire
IoT industry.

------
jordanpg
I'm pretty underwhelmed by the IoT myself, but I don't see what the author's
goal is here.

Is it not obvious that if things are too expensive or not that useful, folks
won't buy it?

Does the IoT really raise that many _new_ issues concerning integration,
usability, sustainability, and privacy? I haven't studied it, but my intuition
is: not really.

------
bedhead
When I saw the Kolibree, the "smart" toothbrush, I realized we had passed the
inflection point on the declining marginal utility curve for this stuff. Too
much of IoT are solutions in search of problems. It's not too long before we
see app-controlled "smart" implantable uterine devices.

------
oneJob
It's gonna be like "Beauty and the Beast" up in here. You have far too many
opinions Cogsworth!

------
nicolsc
Lot of useless gadgets here .. but the Internet of Things is(will be..) much
more than consumer-facing objects.

The iceberg analogy never gets old ;)

Industry, Agriculture, Logistics, Cities, etc .. all have a lot to get even
more smarter.

Most IoT stuff won't be about pet tracking or fancy BLE devices talking to
your smartphone.

~~~
bronson
You're redefining "IoT" to include industrial controls, which have been around
for 75+ years.

------
tfranco
And in 2007, this was the cover of the economist:
[http://ubikwitus.blogspot.pt/2007/05/economist-covers-
coming...](http://ubikwitus.blogspot.pt/2007/05/economist-covers-coming-
wireless.html)

------
egypturnash
There sure are a lot of stupid smart devices, yeah. There's a few useful ones
out there, too. Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") has not been
revoked by the magical act of putting sensors in things.

------
huuu
It's the Internet of Way Too Many Insecure Things That Never Get Updated that
worries me most...

When your house has one door and two windows it isn't very hard to lock your
house. Having gadgets you forgot about is another story.

------
dalacv
I'm reminded of the 'Home of tomorrow'

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4)

------
einrealist
Everytime I hear "Industry 4.0" in Germany, I cringe!

------
known
Sounds like [https://www.shodan.io](https://www.shodan.io)

------
raspasov
100x the self-emptying dishwasher : ).

~~~
awjr
I know somebody that bought two dishwashers and took the clean stuff from one,
used it and filled up the other.

