
Amazon Is Winning the Battle for the Home Operating System - kiyanwang
https://hackernoon.com/how-amazon-is-winning-the-battle-for-the-home-operating-system-d794ab48fb82
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SubiculumCode
I do not want a centralized, home assistant that controls and monitors
everything unless it is open source software hosted on my own computers that
stores data on my own servers, without sending to 3rd parties.

~~~
bgun
Are you working on making this a reality? Or do you know of people who are,
that you can share with us?

Because complaining about, or refusing to buy, Amazon's or Google's offering,
is not furthering your desired outcome. The only way to beat them is to
actually make what you describe more useful and user-friendly than what they
are offering.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
If parent’s desired outcome is to not own a closed source centralized home
monitoring system, refusing to buy Amazon or Google’s offering is in fact
ensuring their desires are satisfied.

If parent said they really wanted a home assistant, but felt a conflicted due
to their desire for it to be open source, they’d have an issue.

Personally I just don’t adopt this tech. I used to be an early adopter but I
don’t really need more efficient ways to buy Amazon stuff and the Spotify app
already makes a great music remote for my home stereo.

~~~
SubiculumCode
Indeed, I have very little desire for the tech anyway...but if I were to go
that way, I'd want to own the data.

I'm curious about what recording everything in my home, and then seeking legal
protections on it as my intellectual property (e.g. copyright) could benefit
me. Could I sue spying apps as copyright infringement?

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Brendinooo
Winning battles, sure.

Winning the war? Way to early to tell, right?

"This year 35.6 million Americans will use a voice-activated assistant device
at least once a month."[0] That's just over 10% of Americans, and quite
frankly I'm surprised it's that high. Once a month is a pretty low bar to
clear anyways.

While I don't doubt that some set of devices in this category will someday
saturate American homes, I highly doubt they're going to look like today's
Echo. I just don't think that, in 2017, it's solving a problem in a compelling
enough way to buy it to augment your smartphone, Roku-esque digital media
player, or stereo system.

Amazon has built a good foundation for itself, but I think it's useful to
remember just how immature this market is.

[0]: [https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Alexa-Say-What-Voice-
Enabl...](https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Alexa-Say-What-Voice-Enabled-
Speaker-Usage-Grow-Nearly-130-This-Year/1015812)

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empath75
If you're comparing Apple and almost any competitor on the basis of _market
share_ , Apple is going almost always going to look like a loser.

Re-do this analysis and look at _profit margins_ instead, and see how Apple
looks.

~~~
xanderstrike
Why on earth would a consumer care about profit margins?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
A consumer might not care about profit margins per se, but a producer will.
Hence why most money-making apps are built for iOS first before being ported
over to the less-profitable Android.

An incentive structure like that means that the Apple ecosystem will typically
have the first-and-best development support.

That is why a consumer might care.

~~~
euyyn
None of that has anything to do with Apple's own profit margins.

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ElijahLynn
If I can't have a custom name for your Home Operating System then that is a
big fail to begin with. I have 2 Homes and man that is annoying having to say
Google to activate it. They want branding and recognition that it is Google
but I think that will hurt in the long run.

~~~
ChrisAntaki
How would you prefer to activate the Homes, out of curiosity?

~~~
Crespyl
Ideally a custom codeword or name, but subjectively, names like "Alexa",
"Siri" or words like "xbox" are easier to say as part of a command.

"Hey Cortana" isn't as bad as "Ok Google", but has a similar problem.

"xbox do the thing"

"alexa do the thing"

"hey siri do the thing"

"ok google do the thing"

There's something in the mechanics of saying "ok google" that makes it feel
kind of awkward.

That's aside from the fact that having the brand name be a required part of it
that rubs me the wrong way.

~~~
euyyn
You can say Hey Google and it works the same. I only say it that way, I prefer
it much better.

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wslh
I wonder: how far, quality wise, are open source alternatives for speech
recognition and synthesis? Not saying this is the only feature required but it
is a starting point. I have playing with Google APIs and they are great but
would be greater to to not rely on an external API.

~~~
roel_v
Not very good, unfortunately. There is pocketsphinx which sort of works but
not nearly as well as the online ones, and some other research projects that
are very hard to even set up.

A while ago there was an article on here about a free (but not open)
recognition engine that worked on a raspberry pi, but I forgot the name - the
founders were hanging around here back then, maybe they can chime in? I
haven't had a chance to try it though.

~~~
confounded
Kaldi _can_ produce excellent results, but is a pain to build, configure, and
train.

~~~
wslh
Couldn't building, configuration, and training be done separately and the
results distributed? Or is the data for training publicly available?

Sorry, but I feel that the community can do a big catch up in this area.

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Rooster61
This might be an ignorant question, but what is the difference between these
systems and the fact that your phone's microphone is always listening for the
same audio cues that set off these home devices? A microphone is always on you
either way.

Don't take this the wrong way, I wouldn't be caught dead with one of these
where I live, but I've always wondered why people can loathe these devices and
yet still have smart phones. Genuine curiosity.

~~~
basch
or laptops. or tvs. or cars. or public streets.

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grandalf
I recently reached the conclusion that Samsung SmartThings gear is junk, so
I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Several of the sensors corroded
inside the box (copper battery contact on PCB interacted with the metal in the
battery casing), and many of the devices lose contact with the hub even though
it's only 20 or 30 feet away.

Any suggestions for things like sensors, smart switches, etc.? What is the
most open and reliable platform?

~~~
timemct
I've found Home Assistant [0] to be a solid project that works swimmingly on a
raspberry Pi 3. For sensors, the Aeotec (by Aeon Labs) Z-Wave sensors [1] have
been reliable for me. The Z-Wave stick I use is from Z-Wave.Me [2] and seems
good, too.

[0] [https://home-assistant.io](https://home-assistant.io) [1]
[https://aeotec.com](https://aeotec.com) [2]
[https://www.z-wave.me/index.php?id=28](https://www.z-wave.me/index.php?id=28)

~~~
grandalf
Looks really interesting. I'm not sure where the breakdown in my SmartThings
setup is happening -- might be the hub or might be the remote devices.

Do you know if Home Assistant can interact directly with sensors, etc.,
without requiring the branded hub itself?

~~~
timemct
I haven't used a SmartThings hub, however their documentation [0] states that
they're using Z-Wave, so if you go that route with Home Assistant, I'm willing
to bet that it'll play nice with what you already have as far as sensors go.

[0] [https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-
us/articles/204392790-...](https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-
us/articles/204392790-Z-Wave-general-info)

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RestlessMind
Some gaps in this analysis:

1\. Amazon is offering a lot of devices, but it can also lead to fragmentation
of user experience. The article is already touting new Echo as good for music,
Echo Show for TV, Echo Connect for communications etc. So now a user is
supposed to buy all those devices? Isn't a single powerful device better than
having multiple ones attacking different use cases[a]?

2\. Not a single mention of "Search" \- Google Home handily beats Amazon Echo
there due to integration with Google Assistant. And I believe "general purpose
search" would be a major category of usage of such devices.

[a] Unless the strategy is to throw the kitchen sink at home devices and see
what sticks.

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euyyn
The Google Home has supported multi-room speakers for a while (if not since
the beginning), being able to use any Cast-enabled speaker. So that's not an
advantage Amazon has; rather it's catch-up.

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r00fus
Has Amazon changed it's approach and actually started publishing sold numbers
of Echos?

It's always fun to compare sold-through vs. channel sales.

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shmerl
_> Each of these companies want to create the standard by which home
entertainment, home communications and home automation evolve._

Good luck expecting them to come up with a standard... First they'll push all
kind of lock-in, and only years later will wake up to work on some standard.

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hitekker
My parents are buying a home in a new active adult community and the builders
recently "partnered" with Amazon, and started advertising their houses as "Wi-
Fi Certified" and "integrated" with Alexa.

I'm hoping it's just marketing fluff.

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Pica_soO
I cant wait for the first smart home virus. "Im sorry Frank, i cant let you
out, until you transfered those Bitcoins."

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kobeya
Serious question: do any of these devices do local inference without streaming
audio to some server somewhere?

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bhouston
Google Home is quite good though.

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apris23
I have a google home and in 6 months it is definitely going to take over alexa

~~~
billchristian
How so? What do you use your Google Home with that you cannot with an Amazon
Echo? Curious as I have both and found little differences outside of answers
to questions.

~~~
ceve3
I had an Echo since shortly after it was introduced, and purchased a Home when
it came out. I found quickly that the Home surpassed the Echo for most general
inquiries. For all of my home automation, music playing and alarms, they are
very comparable. The Echo seems to have slightly better speakers and
microphone, but not enough to make me stick with it. I now have 3 Google
Home's throughout the house and I find them much better at responding to
natural language (e.g. "Hey Google, can dogs eat mango?").

