
How do you move out of a smarthome? - edent
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/11/how-do-you-move-out-of-a-smarthome/
======
titzer
I just. don't. get. it.

All of this home automation and internet of things hype is going to end in
tears. Computers are just. not. secure. They're not even necessary in these
applications. I don't want tech that includes massive amounts of software
doing the job of simple things. It just is not necessary. I'll walk over to
the lightswitch and turn the lights on. I'll set the thermostat and use its
old-school timers to save energy. I don't need it internet-enabled (and
hackable). I don't need WiFi-enabled smoke alarms--especially if they have a
damn microphone inside! (and yes, Nest smoke alarms have a microphone built-in
for self-testing!?) I don't want to talk to Google or Amazon and ask them
questions. I just don't need their services, and I sure as hell don't want
them listening all the time. We seem to be in some kind of insane tech bubble
where we need to put gluttonous software literally everywhere, often for
nebulous gains. And if you aren't scared by pervasive surveillance, fine. Just
imagine Russian script kiddies chuckling over your miserable sex lives. Or
imagine how well your stupid internet-enabled doors and teddy bears will work
in a cyberwar with Russia.

I leave my smartphone at home these days. Partly because I know what it is
doing, and partly because I don't know what it is doing. Partly because I just
want my old life back. I take walks and see cool things without needing to
tweet about it or even take pictures. I am trying to get away from this
madness.

(But here I am on hackernews, being a Luddite, oi.)

[edit: maybe my fears of downvoting were overblown.]

~~~
tradersam
Y'know, after a decade on Internet forums, I've found saying "I know I'm going
to get downvoted, but—" usually leads to downvotes, while simply stating your
position gets judged on actual merit rather than self pity.

Just my ฿ 0.0002.

~~~
patorjk
I would actually speculate that it's the opposite. Though not exactly the
same, 2 of my 3 most upvoted comments on reddit (465 and 510 votes) contain
edits where I ask about why I'm getting downvoted. As soon as I added that
question in, the voting seemed to switch directions. It's like people took a
second more to think about the comment rather than just acting on emotion. I
think that's why the saying has survived and you see it so often. Obviously
this is just anecdotal, but I think there's some neat psychology happening
when someone brings up upvotes/downvotes. It'd be interesting to do an
analysis to see how those words effect a comment's score.

Edit: Just realized that the parent of the comment I'm replying to is the top
comment on this post, so that's another piece of anecdotal evidence.

~~~
kelnos
For what you've described, I agree: if you write a post, get downvotes, and
then add an edit wondering about the downvotes because you're genuine about
your position and are looking to engage, people tend to start engaging in kind
and upvote you at least to neutral.

But I think the parent is talking about the habit of many who are about to
post a counter-groupthink or controversial opinion to lead off with "I know
I'm going to get downvoted for this, but...". My feeling there is that people
generally view that as a sort of flippant disregard/dismissal of the community
moderation process, so it basically _invites_ downvotes.

------
wyldfire
> do we hand over all the cloud passwords as well? Or do we factory reset
> everything and let them go through the dull process of setting up new
> accounts?

Wow, I hope this is rhetorical. No, you never give anyone your password for
anything. Yes, you absolutely let them go through the dull process of setting
up new accounts.

> When I move into a house, do I want to spend the first day looking up
> manuals online to try and work out which buttons to hold down in order to
> claim the devices as my own?

 _shrug_ , yeah, why not? That's the kind of stuff I would do anyways. Moving
into a new home requires all kinds of "oh, ok, that's how that works" kind of
discoveries. "Hmm, the breaker panel says '#5: kitchen' but that one also
apparently has the garage lights. But not the garage door opener, for some
reason."

> not be able to easily set the heating until they've moved in ... the epitome
> of "first-world problems"

I will concede that this is truly a PITA and a drawback of modern life.

Computers are so cheap that we can "afford" to put them everywhere. Hopefully
the next generation of these devices will have sane fallback/factory reset
modes that behave like their ancestor devices until they've been
setup/enabled.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _A bit of a faff - and possibly annoying to the new occupiers to not be able
> to easily set the heating until they 've moved in, configured the WiFi, and
> registered for an account._

I would argue that that's a failure of the thermostat. It absolutely needs to
have a dumber fallback mechanism, not just for new residents, but for the
current ones. (What if my internet goes down? What if the cat pees on my
router?)

~~~
subway
You should probably start by changing the litterbox...

More seriously though, this is a major pet peeve of mine. Many of these
devices will also become completely unusable when the manufacturer decides to
terminate the service. This is a big reason why I hesitate to pay for products
that don't adhere to open standards, and allow for local/offline use as a
primary mode.

~~~
mcguire
I was just reading a review of a sous vide stick the other day that mentioned
that issue. Fortunately, it supported Bluetooth...

~~~
Chaebixi
Even Bluetooth is a no-go. What happens if the control is app no longer
available or drops support for your model? Something like a sous vide stick
should have control buttons.

Ditto for stuff like Roombas. I've noticed all the new ones have their
schedules set via an app. WTF? My current one has buttons and that works just
fine. I'm seriously thinking of getting a spare now.

Smartphones are great solution for controlling a lot of things, but it seems
like we're in a place where people stupidly think it's the solution to control
all things.

~~~
subway
I think Bluetooth could be doable; assuming their use of the protocol is well
documented and open to 3rd party implementation. For a lot of these devices,
the API could be described in AT commands (flung over any of several bluetooth
profiles) pretty easily.

~~~
photojosh
These devices use Bluetooth Smart/LE (as opposed to traditional). It provides
functionality more akin to RPC and Pub/Sub. But yes, it's easily implemented
if documented, I've done a device to replicate another vendor's protocol for
some basic IO.

------
nathantotten
I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave
light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before
we listed the house. The reality is that most people will just be confused by
this sort of stuff and you aren’t going to get any extra money when you sell
your house. It’s a pain, but assuming you don’t move very often it’s worth it.
Now I have all the things in my new house and it’s setup just the way I like.

~~~
jasonkostempski
I would consider it to devalue the home. I don't ever want that kind of thing
in my house but, even if I did, I'm not going to trust anyone to properly
transfer whatever cloud access they have to things in my home, so it will all
have to be removed anyway.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
If your house uses good standard local communication protocols, like Z-Wave,
ZigBee, or Insteon, you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just
buy a new hub device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to
it. Doesn't matter what the other person has in their account at that
juncture.

That being said, if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it'd
be a "if you want to pay x on top of the already agreed upon price for the
property, I'll leave it", where x is the cost for me to just buy new modules
for my new place.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just buy a new hub
> device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to it._

That sounds like a pain in the ass.

> _if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it 'd be a "if you
> want to pay x on top of the already agreed upon price for the property, I'll
> leave it_

I don't want to buy new crap to deal with the crap you left behind. I'd argue
that you ought to pay me for dealing with some arbitrary hardware that I've
now inherited. This is the equivalent of leaving some finicky boiler system
whose spare parts can only be ordered from a single factory in Germany.

~~~
maxerickson
_I don 't want to buy new crap to deal with the crap you left behind. I'd
argue that you ought to pay me for dealing with some arbitrary hardware that
I've now inherited. This is the equivalent of leaving some finicky boiler
system whose spare parts can only be ordered from a single factory in
Germany._

In context they are also more or less offering to remove it for free. I expect
that includes putting conventional fixtures in (depending on the terms of the
sale, but why bother trying to insist that the house doesn't come with light
switches).

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Indeed, an option like that would be purely: If you're going to want these, I
can save myself the effort of swapping them if you want to buy them off me.
Otherwise, I'll either reinstall the original equipment or buy new equipment.
(New dumb light switches for my old condo cost me $1.95 a pop.)

At my old condo, one thing I left as a bit of a 'gift', was a extremely solid
dual-arm TV wall mount. It was cheap for me to repurchase for my new place,
and then they don't have the risk of screwing into the studs near but not in
the holes I had mounted mine or such concerns that might weaken their own
mount. I had all the hardware and instructions, which I left with it. This
might've been a less handy choice had either the condo been large enough for
other places for the TV to make sense or be appealing, or if the TV mount I
had installed wasn't sturdy enough to support all possible TVs one might be
bringing in.

------
friism
I have IKEA Trådfri (which is ZigBee-based). While the hub does connect to the
internet for software updates (using ethernet - no WiFi, and no WiFi password
to update), there's no "cloud" component. You can't create an "IKEA account",
even if you wanted. If IKEA went out of business tomorrow, my switches and
bulbs would keep working. I like that approach a lot.

It would be perfectly feasible to leave the IKEA hardware in the house if we
were to move.

~~~
shostack
How do you like the IKEA stuff? I've seen their lights that can shift through
daylight/evening hues and brightnesses and was tempted.

~~~
friism
Works great so far. The iOS app was janky at first (it would forget about the
hub it was connected to) but seems better now. I don't really use the app
though - a recent update added Alexa support, and that works great. I've
mounted the remote control on the wall and either use that or Alexa to turn
the lights on and off.

I don't want purple or green lights in my living room, so the fact that IKEA
bulbs are limited to warmth and brightness is fine for me (I like to just keep
them on "warm").

------
gwbas1c
I recently sold my home. I didn't take the plunge with smart switches, but I
had Nest thermostats and Nest smoke alarms.

I wish I either removed everything before putting my house on the market, or
excluded them all from the sale. The buyer was confused, and the Nest smoke
alarms needed to be replaced prior to closing.

The Nest smoke alarms were fine, but due to local fire codes, I needed to have
wifi running at inspection time and all of my smoke alarms had to be Nest. I
was replacing one a year and still had a few "dumb" smoke alarms in the mix.
Unfortunately, my realtor advised me poorly in this situation when I told him
my plan was to take the smoke alarms and thermostats with me.

~~~
junkcollector
Fire code requires that fire alarms be networked to alert people in all rooms
in the event of a fire. Older un-networked units are grandfathers until you
begin replacement. Wifi networking is allowed by the code, but for obvious
reasons, the inspector has to verify that it works and is set up correctly
which requires running wifi.

Personally I would not purchase a home that was configured with nest or other
home automation equipment for several reasons.

1) It's a huge security risk. When you buy a home the first thing you do is
change the locks because you don't know who the previous owner may have once
loaned keys out to. Now you have a bunch of computers in your house giving
remote access that may or may not be giving other people access and you can't
tell.

2) Most consumer home automation systems have incredibly bad failure states.
Those wirelessly networked alarms? When you cheap Chinese wifi router catches
fire from a faulty power supply the failure mode is that you die. That's a
pretty big oversight. Remember when NEST pushed an untested software update
remotely and caused dozens of houses in the Northern Midwest to lose heat in
the middle of winter and then be destroyed by broken pipes?

3) Vendor lock in. I don't want the previous owner to lock me into a line of
products. Period. I'm sure everyone here remembers when Phillips decided that
their smart light sockets would embrace DRM and only accept Phillips brand LED
bulbs. They backed down but it is bound to come up again. Not to mention
simple incompatibility between competing products and stacks.

4) It's just a damn pain to use most of the time for gain that can be measured
almost entirely in novelty factor.

~~~
0culus
Fire code where? Requirement to be networked is a new thing to me, at least as
far as single family dwellings go.

~~~
junkcollector
I've dealt with it in the state fire code for Massachusetts and Maryland. I
believe it is also in the New York and New Jersey code books. I'm unsure of
other states but, it is a relatively recent adoption in all of the
aforementioned states and I expect that it will be common in nearly all states
soon.

If it seems to be a bit much just be glad you aren't in Massachusetts where
they are currently trying to get arc flash rated 110V breakers added as a
requirement to the electric code.

~~~
brudgers
Arc fault protection for outlets in dwelling bedrooms was was new in the 2002
NEC. Back then, the only available solution was an arc-fault interrupt circuit
breaker. Arc fault receptacles are currently available in the market place...

...however, the code (at least back in 2002) specified protection of all
electrical _outlets_. Receptacles are plugged into outlets. So are hired wired
lights, smoke detectors, etc. An outlet is "A point on the wiring system at
which current is taken to supply utilization equipment."

This means that any literal reading of the code requires arc-fault breakers
from a practical perspective since even the outlet into which an arc-fault
receptacle is plugged requires protection upstream from the receptacle. On the
other hand, building departments often make code interpretations that are
politically expedient and that's why some jurisdictions may allow arc-fault
receptacles as a means of code compliance.

~~~
mindslight
Erm, receptacles _are a type of_ outlet.

AFAIK the code also requires the wiring itself in those places be AFCI
protected, since the (immediate) goal was to avoid smoldering fires in the
wall where people sleep. This would imply the simplest route is an AFCI
breaker for the whole branch circuit, although it was (is?) permissible to run
metal conduit up to the first receptacle and have that do the AFCI.

Would have loved for the NEC to require that the code on AFCIs was technician-
upgradeable and some general sense of open, but I'll just go back to banging
my head against the wall now.

------
mcculley
I am dealing with this right now. I am fixing up my house to sell. I moved out
of it into a new home a month ago. I disconnected the Internet connection at
the house I am trying to sell. I have a Wink Relay there and I deleted my
account from it before disconnecting the Internet. Now I can't use the
physical switches to control the lights they are connected to. The designers
of these devices are not thinking at all about the long term use cases.

~~~
maxerickson
Counterpoint is that buyers aren't either.

I think the underlying issue is that people don't see a huge amount of value
in a little bit of automation and balk at the prices, so the market consists
mostly of buyers that _really_ want to be able to do various automations.

------
crankylinuxuser
Well, you make it a stupidhome.

Switch outlets with $1.80 switches. Yank out pretty lights and put in simple
cheap hanger cans. Keep your dumb honeywell thermostat and reinstall the 4
wires. Buy dumb smoke alarms and litter them everywhere (they're cheap). Yank
out special outlets and put in el-cheapo outlets.

In other words, yank out and substitute the smart stuff back to cheap dumb
stuff that just works.

This isn't hard. It's a few hours to do this swap. And most of the mains stuff
can be picked up at Walmart or similar for cheap.

~~~
SnowingXIV
Yep. It's no different than my studio which I swapped out bunch of lights for
Phillips hue lights. They had some plug ones that I went to Home Depot and
spent like 1.50 on each adapter or something to make it work. When I leave,
I'm taking my bulbs with me and replacing them with basic ones.

Same with a nest thermo. Swap out for a honeywell done. These things are
pretty much low cost and minimal time commitment.

------
joekrill
Is this really a huge problem? How is this any different then, say,
disconnecting your utilities? What's the big deal with factory resetting
everything you're leaving behind?

~~~
tantalor
> do I want to spend the first day looking up manuals online

I don't see how this is different than learning how your 10-year-old garage
door opener or 20-year-old furnace works.

~~~
mikeash
The garage door opener works when you push a button. The furnace works when
you change the little numbers on the thermostat. If it doesn't work, you call
a garage door or HVAC company and they fix it. I think most people are barely
aware that these things even _have_ manuals, let alone actually sit down and
read them.

~~~
khedoros1
> The garage door opener works when you push a button.

What button? I've got a detached garage, so it doesn't make sense to have a
button inside. And when the previous residents were (apparently) evicted, they
took various keys, remotes, etc with them. I most certainly had to buy a
remote and find my garage door opener's manual to get it working. Damned if I
was going to pay a garage door repairman to come out and hit a few buttons for
me.

~~~
mikeash
This scenario is covered under "If it doesn't work, you call a garage door or
HVAC company and they fix it."

Your typical HN reader is probably willing and able to reprogram the thing on
their own, but this is not normal.

~~~
khedoros1
You say it's covered; I disagree, which is why I responded. HVAC? Maybe; it's
sometimes hooked into the gas lines, with wiring through the walls and such. I
feel like it's condescending to assume that most people would be unwilling or
unable to pair a remote with a garage door opener, though.

~~~
mikeash
"Condescending" may very well be accurate, but that doesn't make the statement
wrong.

~~~
khedoros1
Doesn't make it true either, and you're the one making the claim.

~~~
mikeash
Sure. I'm just describing what I've observed. If you don't think it's correct,
that's fair. I'm just pointing out that whether or not it's condescending is a
completely different question. I'll happily admit that I have a really bad
attitude toward the general population's technical literacy or willingness to
RTFM.

------
sowbug
Another modern-technology problem: how do you pass on your cryptocurrency
wealth when you die? Wills, trusts, estate law, and legal force are
meaningless if you've forgotten to provide your private keys to next of kin.

~~~
WorldMaker
You can print out private keys (and passwords, etc) and put them in Trust. If
you are feeling paranoid that you can't _trust_ your Trustees, you can use
something like Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm [1] to give individual
Trustees only a portion of the private keys (or passwords, etc).

I explored at one point if there was a market for an app to automate that last
part, but so far such noodling keeps winding up at a less generally useful
Keybase.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing)

~~~
sowbug
Trust is only part of the problem. It's also competence on the part of the
recipients to combine the Shamir parts, correctly pick Segwit vs Legacy
chains, not send BCH to a BTC address, not email their private keys to the
Geek Squad, and then not get it all swiped on their malware-infested PC.

~~~
WorldMaker
The joke answer is "At that point, what do you care, you're dead?"

The long answer is that's all part of setting up a Trust for your estate,
picking Trustees that can execute your Trust responsibly/competently when the
time comes, and picking recipient heirs as well that can benefit from your
property. All of that is a long conversation to have between you and your
lawyer and your heirs.

(In that way, Shamir's Secret Sharing is simply a modern
technical/mathematical equivalent to bequeathing your heirs a puzzle box with
a safety deposit key in it. If your heirs can't solve the puzzle box, do they
deserve the contents of that safety deposit box?)

That said, there probably is a role for some of the cryptocurrency exchanges
to play as possible Trustees in an estate, just as banks large and small play
into many estates for the transfer of wealth. It could be a feature the
exchanges could offer whereby they help liquidate a cryptocurrency as a part
of executing a Trust.

(I would also not be surprised if there was at least one person building a
Rube Goldberg machine in Ethereum smart contracts where on proof of their
death the contracts execute transactions to an exchange sell order with
forwarding instructions to Western Union telegraph the money to a loved one's
postal address.)

------
creep
This might be a little tangential, but as interesting as the idea of a
smarthome is, I'm not sure I'll ever buy into it. I've never tried it, so
can't speak to the benefits, but on this topic I'm always reminded of how my
mom decided on buying a 2004 Honda Civic in 2008. She wanted manual locks and
windows, to minimize the possible failure scenarios, and I can understand why.
Sure, it's a pain in the ass to manually roll the window down, but she'll
never have to worry about it going wrong.

Moving out of a smarthome seems like a pain. I can imagine in the future that
smarthome companies will roll out better authentication and setup processes,
but in my paranoia I can imagine too many security issues that will arise. I
don't want my home to be a gateway for breach in another dimension. I'm okay
to turn the light on myself when I enter a room, set the thermostat, and water
my own plants. I don't see a need for improvement there.

------
Klathmon
This is why I set a few "ground rules" before I started adding home automation
stuff to my house.

1\. Everything must be reversible, preferably within a short period of time.
If I replace the doorbell or locks with smart ones, I keep the old ones in
storage. If I replace light switches, I make sure to document the way the
wiring worked before I touched it, and keep everything so I can put it back
if/when I move. I had a house with 14 light switches, 2 door locks, a garage
door opener, 3 cameras, 7 door and window sensors, like 4 or 5 outlet
controllers, and a thermostat all upgraded to "smart devices" in my house, and
it took me about 5 hours to set everything back to the way it was before i
added anything.

2\. Everything should work exactly the same as it did before being "smart-
ified", and should never stop working because of a network being down, or a
power outage reset it. This means light switches still need to look and act
like light switches, in 100% of cases. A thermostat should still work without
WiFi, the TV remote should always be able to control the TV, the door should
be able to be opened with a key, etc... When my nephew comes over and likes to
switch the lights on and off really fast when he can sneak over to it, I
shouldn't need to "reset" anything or have it be in a weird state because of
that.

3\. Rely on external servers as little as possible. If the internet is down,
but my local network is up, my whole system should run at least 90% as well as
it does with the internet.

Following those few ground rules meant that it cost more to do the whole
system, and there were some things I could not upgrade to "smart devices", but
it made the whole process much more fullproof, and it was significantly easier
when we went to leave (just had to mention that the smart home stuff was not
included in the sale of the house).

Light switches were "automated" by putting small z-wave switches in the
electrical box of each switch (leaving the original switch showing and acting
the same way it always did), z-wave plugs and power strips were used to turn
on/off various things if needed, smart lightbulbs were avoided at all costs,
the thermostat was reliant on a 3rd party network for the remote switching,
but still worked 100% of the time by adjusting it on the wall. Door locks,
garage door controllers, doorbell, etc... They all worked completely on their
own, and then had the extra "smart" functionality layered on top.

I hear the sentiment that all IoT stuff is garbage, and I have to completely
disagree. The cheapest item in the category is probably garbage, but that's
common with just about every other area. If you spend the money, if you
actually do a little research, there are many options out there which are
secure, reliable, and actually built to last.

~~~
ttflee
So, Liskov substitution principle does apply to intelligent stuff.

~~~
Klathmon
That's a very interesting way of looking at it. I never thought about it that
way before, but that's exactly what I'm talking about.

For example, I have a google home. Google home relies on an external server to
work, but that's okay, since it's not really "replacing" anything, only adding
a new "class" of device.

But it's not okay for a door lock to not take a standard key (or in my case,
the door lock needed a number pad), just to get "smart" functionality.

------
myrandomcomment
The issue here is the fragmentation in the authors system. While not as
feature rich as the flavor of the day automation toy, I did my full house with
Insteon. If I move, I would just change the email on the account to the new
user and hand them the password and leave the $100 controller hub with them.
Simple.

------
strictnein
Some property disclosure forms are now requiring that these items are
documented. Example:

[http://transitionrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RE-
Pr...](http://transitionrealty.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RE-Property-
Disclosures.pdf)

Line 183-184 "Are there any items or systems on the property connected or
controlled wirelessly, via internet protocol (“IP”), to a router or gateway or
directly to the cloud?"

------
timthorn
The Quentin in the comments is the chap behind the Trojan Room Coffee Pot, for
those up on their Internet history.

------
elihu
I remember in one of Vernor Vinge's science fiction novels, whenever one
space-faring civilization managed to capture a warship of another unfriendly
civilization, they usually just melted it down for scrap metal because there
was no way to trust all the embedded automation.

------
Mister_Snuggles
This is one thing that worries me as well. Fortunately, none of my smart home
stuff is cloud connected.

Most smart home problems that tend to be solved by using a cloud service could
be solved just as well by using a VPN. I do this with my Hue and my Wifi
cameras, both with great success.

The challenge with a VPN is setting it up. Router manufacturers generally
either offer OpenVPN, which requires a 3rd party app, or PPTP, which is
horribly insecure. A router that could generate a secure IPSec configuration
and push out a profile for the smartphones would make it a lot more usable.

Even then, it's still probably going to be more work than using a cloud
service.

Maybe IPv6 will solve the problem as all of these things can have publically
routable addresses. What could possibly go wrong?

------
dennyis
When I installed smart stuff in my home I kept the originals. When I sold
earlier this year I switched everything back out before I listed it. It was
worth the hassle to me. No one pays extra because the Nest thermostat is
installed vs $30 basic. And I’m going to want to install another Nest in the
next home so...

I haven’t installed any smart outlets but I would consider doing the same.
Most of these jobs are super easy, and if you can’t handle it a $20/hr
handyman certainly can.

------
woolvalley
You move out by changing the passwords & account email addresss, leaving the
hubs and giving them the hubs. And tell them to change their passwords.

It's like giving the keys to the house and suggesting they change the locks
after they move in.

I know what this guy described is a more involved process, but most smarthome
cloud accounts are about as simple as an email & password change.

Most smart home stuff should work fine if there was no hub controlling them,
like with light switches and electric shades.

------
bingobob
Google's Weave has ideas of ownership & security on a devices unsure where
its. we could see a day where a house of infrastructure devices gets handed
over as part of the sale with this type of system.

Andrew Warren video talking about these features
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thUJARumXWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thUJARumXWE)

------
hutzlibu
Hui, I really hope, that once I will buy a house, the whole automation
thing/IoT will be standardized. And I controll everything with one app, tied
to the (small) house server.

And the new owner just gets control over the system and controll everything.
No cloud/account nightmare like described here ...

------
jbb67
I am slowly making my home "smarter" but only installing things that don't use
the internet or require or use an external service or account.

Secondly for everything i install I write a document on how it works, how to
override it or bypass it if it breaks, and how to remove it when I move out.

------
fuzzieozzie
All internet connected devices in our home are identified by a special "home"
email, and info. No personally identified info -- just house identified info
(of course not with the house address!)

I wonder how many license agreements I did not follow by doing this?

~~~
poppop22
What do you mean? How do you do this?

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fuzzieozzie
All devices/services have their own "identity" that belongs to the house
(basically the house has its own email address). When we move we simply need
to hand over that identity to the new home owner.

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j45
I am setting everything in my home up with it's own email account and gear.

Additionally - use something like a raspberry pi or an appliance that will
remain with the home. If I decide to rent it out, or leave it behind, its not
tied to me, but is still manageable.

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pjc50
I suspect that eventually this kind of thing will start being specified in the
conveyancing, and the lawyers will take the accounts through their custody
just as they do the keys and deeds.

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gnu8
Do the next resident a favor and burn it to the ground.

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igloofoo
As fast as possible

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z3t4
You want both dumb and smart, or better _automated_ systems.

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growt
1\. Say: “open the (pod-)door hal!“ ?

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cliftoncburton
Whether you're moving out of a smart home or moving into one there a few
things you'll want to keep in mind to ensure it's a smooth transition.

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trisimix
Why are you leaving your shit?

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jrs95
Use lots of thermite to ensure any local data has been deleted ;)

~~~
megaman22
I was going to say burn it down, and make it look like an electrical thing...

~~~
jasonkostempski
Rig the Nest smoke alarms to start the fire for maximum irony.

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erikb
Answer: Open suitcase. Insert 5 t-shirts, 2 trousers, 7 units of underwear of
preference, 7 pairs of socks. Close suitcase. Repeat the same with laptop into
backpack. Open door. Move out. Done.

~~~
huhtenberg
You should try getting a cloud-connected suitcase and some underware with its
own app, then we'll talk.

~~~
erikb
Answer: Don't do that.

