Pretty much this. Even though I say this as someone who built a home automation system that can do this, it is a bit niche and more of a hobby than anything thats really practical to most people.
And then when I see hypothetical discussions about smart appliances ("a fridge that can automatically order food when you're low!", "a dishwasher that can tweet when the dishes are done"), the thing that I really want are open-source hackable everyday appliances, not feature-rich ones.
E.g., I want to be able to confidently replace a busted controller in my dishwasher without necessarily having to shell out $100 to maytag for one that was only produced for a single year.
Sadly, yes, this is a wish born out of experience.
Would it make sense to have single device with microphones that could detect specific sound (i.e. beep of dishwasher) and also could distinguish it from other specific sound (i.e. beep of washing machine) and than push this as a notification via whatever means (i.e. twitter)? With few microphones it could detect direction of sound and than it could learn which appliance makes which sound.
Not that I see a need for something like this, but existence of such device could deter a bit companies from shoving such things to every appliance.
A coworker (at my dayjob) and I were discussing this recently. Supposedly it already exists in products that detect smoke alarms or handclaps. I can conceive of ways to do it in software.
Part of the problem with IoT, as others have pointed out, is lack of a compelling use case for most of the products. I don't think this is a fatal flaw unless all of the also-rans and wannabes and opportunists suck all the air out of the market before someone with a compelling application (and decent reliability!) can gain traction in a non-privacy-invasive way.
actually the idea of my dish washer (and other devises) having both a built in microphone and also the capability to connect to beyond my home network is creeping me out. what does it record when? is it really only listening to the beep or recording other audio, etc ...
Yeah, I feel it too. At the same time I have my smartphone with me all the time... Somehow it gained my trust. My idea is for 3rd party device. I would not trust appliance makers with such things.
It is also a bit like uncanny valley. Because if we will at some point build general purpose robots they will have microphones and cameras. On path to this there is a point at which you must trust having microphone and cameras from less useful devices pointed at you. If not how can we have off-the-shelf general purpose robots at our disposal? It also creeps me out... How can we achieve this? Some can say we shouldn't.
And then when I see hypothetical discussions about smart appliances ("a fridge that can automatically order food when you're low!", "a dishwasher that can tweet when the dishes are done"), the thing that I really want are open-source hackable everyday appliances, not feature-rich ones.
E.g., I want to be able to confidently replace a busted controller in my dishwasher without necessarily having to shell out $100 to maytag for one that was only produced for a single year.
Sadly, yes, this is a wish born out of experience.