
Was It Too Soon to Be Sustainable? - prostoalex
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/garden/was-it-too-soon-to-be-sustainable.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000
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vosper
TLDR; Their mistake was building a gigantic house, based on emerging
sustainable-energy tech, whilst in their 70s.

Any two of these things might have been reasonable, though I feel that the
sheer size of the house is ultimately the problem - it's going to be a lot of
work to maintain a house on this scale in the best of circumstances.

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CptMauli
Nothing of the mentioned tech is bleeding edge. At least in Germany everything
of the mentionend installations you could have installed without a raised
eyebrow twenty years ago. The only thing which changed is the price of PV,
which really came down over the last 10 to 15 years.

And with the blinds, not to automate this is foolish, because this is
something which has to be done constantly. Unlike snow and dirt which only has
to be removed occasionaqlly.

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bryanlarsen
They were too ambitious and used bleeding edge tech. A great many software
projects have foundered for the same reason.

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nicolasehrhardt
Well, isn't it what Nest and others are promising? Having a house that can
operate itself. Hopefully they'll work toward more standardization of solar
panels console and heater so that they no longer have to be operated by
humans.

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lisper
> there is plenty of free power

But there isn't. Maintenance costs are still costs. TANSTAAFL.

~~~
twoodfin
I'm also skeptical that the power is really "free". It's not as if the power
company is making a market decision to buy the excess electricity produced by
their solar panels: Vermont state law requires it[1]. While their net
consumption may equal or exceed their net production, that doesn't mean the
net value of the electricity they produce and consume is 0. The electricity
they're "feeding" back into the grid at 10am may not be worth what they're
pulling out at 7pm after the sun sets.

[1]
[http://publicservice.vermont.gov/topics/renewable_energy/net...](http://publicservice.vermont.gov/topics/renewable_energy/net_metering)

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sarahjj
It is easy to just add retrofit items to your rooms, for automating blinds you
can use solutions like www.igg.me/at/R/x/9152529 or similar, but automation is
not what adds value it is making your office smart.

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rjbwork
They need to invite some undergrad CS/EE/ID majors to unleash their talents on
their property for a summer or something. Would make a great research project
and be a great boon to the student's talents and the couple's property and
lives.

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revelation
These people are crazy. Right up there with all those nutjobs that buy up huge
amounts of land, plant useless weeds on it and then spend all summer going up
and down the plot of land to rid it of the excess weeds like caveman. /s

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Pxtl
Home automation tech might be able to help with those blinds, but then you're
adding more moving parts.

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pp19dd
On suggestions for automating the blinds: it almost begs that a homeowner
should be an engineer.

Back in '01 I went to a job interview at a home automation company. At the
time, there was some major hype surrounding the industry and I was very
interested in the topic. The meeting was in a fancy conference room showcasing
their flagship product: a touchscreen built into the wall that controlled some
lights and such. More than anything, it was internet access built into the
wall, showcasing things like Netflix and videoconferencing.

I showed up to the interview completely unpresentable: jeans, tshirt,
sneakers. Everyone there wore suits and ties. The CEO interviewed me and told
me upfront that I was not the right person for this job. He still went through
the motions of asking me some questions and then gave me advice on my future
endeavors. Just before kicking me out the door, he hesitated and then asked me
what I knew about home automation.

I told him about my window shade controller that I built using some NPN
transistors, a free H-bridge sample that I got from National Semiconductors,
and a worm gear salvaged out of a dead VCR. For a U-joint connecting the motor
shaft and the shade hook, I used a small length of duct tape. Wiring was CAT-5
(for signal and power), rotational position sensor was a bent contact switch
and software was written in C running under Linux. Hardware interfacing was
done via parallel port, since you can have 8 outputs and 2 inputs via any
printer port (memory little rusty, but I had a few spare ISA cards that gave
me additional I/O ports). A cron job opened the shades in the morning so I can
wake up to sunlight, and closed them in the evening for privacy.

He chuckled, disbelieving that I could have pulled off such a project. So, I
gave him a live demonstration -- using his product, I pulled up the control
panel webpage (you guys remember days of dyndns?) where he could see a live
webcam with timestamps pointed at a window, and demonstrated the "close" and
"open" shade operations while he watched. He hired me on the spot.

Fast forward to a year or two later: "home automation" as an industry was
apparently never into automating homes. Instead, they went for very expensive
home theater setups with glittery control panels and a couple of remotely
controlled light switches as an afterthought. We had so much technical
capability, but instead settled for very artificially-priced gimmicks ($10k
for a "base model".) I asked my boss why our price sticker was so shockingly
high for something that does next to nothing, and his reply made all the sense
in the world: "Because that's not the market we're aiming for."

In other words, the home automation industry of 2000s was aiming for the
comfortably wealthy segment, who could afford these prices built into their
mortgage for a prestige label ("home automation"). The companies built up
partnerships with home builders, but only cooperated on the cosmetic level of
home automation without doing any actual home automating. IMO, if you are
doing any serious home automation, the best time to build the technology in is
while the house is being constructed, and these industry behemoths ruined the
name for anyone doing serious house integration.

Nest seems like a great leap forward, but mostly the leap is in the interface.
Arrays of confusing buttons got replaced with a knob. Instead of entering the
secret handshake to select Tuesday morning, you can just turn the knob down on
a Tuesday morning. However, that's not home automation quite yet: that's
airconditioning automation. For a whole system to work in concert, a
thermostat would work in a designed unison with window shade controllers, with
temperature sensors, with wall sensors, with air pressure sensors, with charge
level indicators from the solar array and ... things I never even thought
about. Designing homes with all of these subsystems in mind would be a forward
stride.

~~~
timcederman
Netflix and videoconferencing in '01?

