
Automate Your Home With Your Own Personal SkyNet  - jamesbritt
http://wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/02/skynet/
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jsilence
I like the very thought of home automation and the principle of 'automate
everything' and as such "kudos to the developers". For my own part I have
occasionally thought about what I would like to automate in my environment and
came up with ... nothing.

Once I read an article about a guy who used a Kinect to determine where he is
located in his room and then let the system switch the lights accordingly.
Quite nice, but not really essential or saving time. And my appartment is
different so I'd need at least three Kinects (living room, hall, kitchen),
which is too much of an effort just for light switching.

Maybe I am simply uninspired. I thought 'well, where are the things I do
repeatedly where automating would save me a little time and effort?'. I came
up with errands where stuff has to be done. physically. cleaning, laundry,
dishes, trash. I purchased a Deebot D76 vacuum cleaner and it was quite nice
for a while. But the bearings get dirty pretty soon and the batteries wore out
very fast. The second set of batteries is done with again and I'm not sure
whether I'll replace them. This thing never got to the point of 'fire and
forget'.

Other than switching the lights I can't imagine anything that would be of
utility for my beyond gadgetery and 'wow teh awesome!'.

My home does not have any automatable security systems, no electric shades,
nothing that would follow a simple logic of 'if this then that'.

Please help. I'd love to live in the future, but I don't know how.

~~~
jamesbritt
I feel your pain :)

This is somewhat like what I face with things like the Leap Motion or the
Kinect. There are clever things you can do with them but rarely are they
better than what you would do without them; truly practical use cases that
justify the time and expense to implement and maintain are hard to come by.

For the IoT, if you have a garage then you might want to turn on/off house
lights or adjust the thermostat when a car enters or leaves. Or have a way to
detect if a room has been empty for X minutes (I'm thinking sonar to tell if
extra mass is in the space; Kinects are overkill) and automatically turn off
lights.

I'd like to be told when I'm running low on milk and eggs.

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jonheller
Link to the Skynet code mentioned:
[https://github.com/skynetim/skynet](https://github.com/skynetim/skynet)

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jamesbritt
If you're in or near Phoenix AZ come by the IoT meeting on the 2nd Monday of
each month. [http://www.meetup.com/iotphx](http://www.meetup.com/iotphx)

It's run by Chris Matthieu and a lot of fun.

And, of course, come by HeatSync Labs in Mesa.

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ar7hur
And don't forget the Wit Speech API if you want to be able to talk to your
Skynet-automated home! [https://wit.ai/blog/2014/02/12/speech-
api](https://wit.ai/blog/2014/02/12/speech-api)

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asmithmd1
Imagine some commercial product like a light switch using this. I connect the
device to my WiFi network (using morse code to enter SSID and password I
guess) The switch connects to SkyNet and gets assigned a UUID and token. How
do I get that info so I can connect my new light switch to my Twitter or
Facebook account?

~~~
jamesbritt
Depending on how you've set up Skynet (presumably running your own local
instance) you should be able to view the device listings of all things
connected.

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bharatFNS
SkyNet wants me to command it using my smartphone. But I don't always have my
phone on me when at home. Can another way be worked out. Perhaps making it
thought-controlled or something, so I can simply lay back and have fun?

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kevinsimper
Can take it serious when the man is holding a LED 2x16 saying "Hello World,
via Skynet".

Ohh, we got a badass over here!

~~~
thechut
Not sure why you are getting downvoted (other than typo). I thought the same
thing, this doesn't seem to be much in terms of actually connecting things.

If you want to see a similar technology that actually works and is starting to
be widely implemented check out AllJoyn and the AllSeen alliance[1].

1: [https://www.alljoyn.org/](https://www.alljoyn.org/)

~~~
jamesbritt
I'm puzzled why you suggest Skynet does not actually work.

Here's an example of using it to control AR drones via a Leap Motion:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iJYeK6wFBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iJYeK6wFBs)

During a recent hackfest we used Skynet to control a wearable computer over
Bluetooth low-energy; the device could be controlled via Twitter, SMS, and a
Web page.

Sorry if that picture failed to impress but the relative ease with which these
connections could be made is indeed pretty bad-ass.

