My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago.
Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million mansion and when he wanted to show the camera team his 100k home cinema room they couldn't see anything because his smart lighting system was stuck in an update loop and nobody had a clue how to fix it. In the interview he said it's not a big deal because he doesn't like to have the lights on when watching a movie anyway. L.O.L.
If I had a 100k cinema room then it would be certainly be a big deal to me if I can't even see where the heck I'm walking.
In my entire life I never thought "damn, how nice would it be if I could turn on the lights in my bedroom from downstairs on my phone". It's just not a problem which I think people have, but somehow the consumer industry has convinced so many fools to buy cheaply fabricated, badly secured, even worse programmed and often not long supported smart home devices which add absolutely no benefit to anyone's everyday life and cause lots of problems.
By the time I find my phone lying around in my lounge, unlock it through Face ID or finger touch, open up the home app, find the home device which I want to control, then make whatever change I wanted to do I am much faster to just get my arse up from the couch, walk over and turn it on/off with a normal hand movement. On the way I can also grab a beer from the fridge and then continue watching the telly and laugh about some fools who spent 100k on a home cinema without lights.
This is the exact kind of comment that would make it to the top because it just empowered everyone that DOESN'T have one such system. It's filled with finger pointing. Most of the replies basically point out yeah, I hate IoT lights, but this use case is good... It's not genuine to dismiss the entire enchilada because YOU don't have it. In 5 years when all the crap is worked out and you eventually buy a system with extra security at your door or backyard, or a something to that effect I'd like you to come back and admit it.
> In 5 years when all the crap is worked out and you eventually buy a system with extra security at your door or backyard, or a something to that effect I'd like you to come back and admit it.
I heard this same song and dance 5 years ago. The problems with the "IoT" market are foundational. Most IoT devices are not designed to be used for extended periods without internet access and a continuous stream of updates. The former means that, in general, they are only as reliable as your internet connection (including that crappy modem/router the ISP gave you). The latter means that unlike traditional home hardware, once you install "smart" devices you're at the mercy of the business plans of the vendor. So even if you get something set up that works acceptably, it will last 5 years tops (see Nest) before the vendor's priorities change.
Finally to address the "extra security" comment. Security from what? The developed world is objectively safer than ever, why would I invest in "solutions" to problems invented out of whole cloth? The paranoia of people installing cameras all over their own home (often cameras whose footage they have no real control over) astounds me. We're more mistrustful of our own neighbours than the companies that are actually exploiting our privacy and manipulating us psychologically for profit.
>Most IoT devices are not designed to be used for extended periods without internet access and a continuous stream of updates.
But you could design one with a manual fallback option. Doesn't seem foundational to me. Nothing about an IoT design prevents one from doing that.
>The latter means that unlike traditional home hardware, once you install "smart" devices you're at the mercy of the business plans of the vendor. So even if you get something set up that works acceptably, it will last 5 years tops (see Nest) before the vendor's priorities change.
Yes, that is the downside of dealing with any service oriented business, in any domain. But again, you can have a manual fallback option (as I think most devices do FWICT)
>Finally to address the "extra security" comment. Security from what?
I suppose it depends on what you consider security. For an intruder alert system, you'd need something that can transmit a notification to someone. An IoT device seems like a good option, but I guess you could also use a device that can send a text over a cellular network.
I personally have no use for anything IoT, but I think its premature to go completely in the other direction and say that IoT is completely useless. What we're seeing with so called "disruptive" technologies is that things get worse (or sometimes a lot worse), before they get better.
> But you could design one with a manual fallback option. Doesn't seem foundational to me. Nothing about an IoT design prevents one from doing that.
Certainly I could (or at least someone with the engineering skills could), but the actual IoT companies don't. My impression of IoT devices (do not want) is based on what actually exists, not on what could theoretically exist.
>Certainly I could (or at least someone with the engineering skills could), but the actual IoT companies don't.
That is incorrect. There are several IoT products with manual fallback options on the market. I don't even know why you're disagreeing to be honest. You don't like IoT devices, I got that part.
> There are several IoT products with manual fallback options on the market.
Name three.
Also, "manual fallback" is a cop-out. When I want manual operations, I don't go looking for home automation. The "smart" features should be available without Internet. There's nothing technically difficult about this, but it isn't being done because of abusive business practices.
This is the crazy thing. IoT is actually advertising with a requirement, not a feature. Since when has "needs internet access to function" become a selling point?
>Since when has "needs internet access to function" become a selling point?
That is a good question. I don't know. But I'd say it became a selling point after the internet became ubiquitous and reliable enough in the eyes of consumers. Otherwise people would be complaining about 'needs internet access to watch a movie/make a video call/play a game/push source code/order food/call a taxi/etc/etc/etc".
It's not even a matter of "safe". I live in a neighborhood that is seen as very safe. Yet, we had a burglary two houses down not too long ago. And they happen frequently enough to myself. I've had plenty stolen. Without a camera, there's ~0% chance of anyone being caught.
I ended up buying a camera for peace of mind and for checking in on my place to see who's entering my residence area. Sometimes it's genuinely helpful.
If you're frequently having things stolen, you don't live in a "very safe" neighborhood. I've lived in working class neighborhoods most of my life, and the only thing I've ever had stolen from me was a bike that I left on my front porch when I was a kid. The only thing the people I know have had stolen is stuff like car stereos or GPS devices back before most people used their phones. Just small crime of opportunity stuff, no breaking into people's homes.
I've lived in a variety of areas across the west coast. In all of them, rural to dense city environments... things were stolen. I've had multiple bikes stolen, my car, my backpacks, my eye glasses (yes - that is weird), and more... And they were all in a variety of areas. I still classify many of those areas as "safe" and so do many reports but theft still happens.
Almost nowhere is "safe" from thieves. If you live in a "nice area" like any of the more expensive neighborhoods/cities in the bay area then you're very prone to burglary because go figure you likely have expensive stuff that's good for stealing. Unless you have really good defense mechanisms to detour/stop thieves (or just nothing worth stealing) then you're going to get stuff stolen.
> Without a camera, there's ~0% chance of anyone being caught.
If you're only interested in recording what happened (as evidence) an IP camera can run on PoE to a laptop or mini-pc on a UPS, and record for as long as you want, even in the case of a power outage if you include a UPS (an old laptop works well in this case - you can potentially just run the PoE switch/injector on the UPS and let the laptop run on its battery).
No internet connection required. No "service" to stop working. No "API" to become deprecated.
But then they can also steal the laptop or mini-pc that is recording. It's also a PITA to setup and manage yourself. I'd rather pay the $50/yr that I do and just have someone else do it. I'm done with the bradlys-as-a-service thing. It'd be another thing adding heat to my living environment as well.
It's been useful for other things like checking in on. Where/when packages are delivered, when the landlord showed up, when a neighbor came over to tell us something but we didn't hear them knock on the door, finding out my smoke alarm was going off for no apparent reason, etc.
They can also cut the copper/fiber/coax coming into your house. If the NVR/whatever recording your video isn't in a super obvious place it will take a thief longer to find that then it would be for them to clip your connection to the net.
This misses the actual advantages that a managed service provides, like the fact you don't have to worry about the stuff you mentioned. Does your solution scale to multiple cameras? Will you get push notifications when movement is detected while you're on holiday? What if that very laptop is stolen? Would be ironic.
I'm not saying your solution is bad, my house has the same thing (with 4 cameras around the house), but most people don't want to spend time managing yet more stuff, and debugging their camera system if something goes wrong.
Why do you think you live in a very safe neighborhood? I guess perception can be a funny thing but I'm thinking this is the same as Mercedes-Benz owners saying their cars are above average reliability when the service records disprove it.
Seems like “victim preparation” to me. How about a deterrent?
My neighborhood has had thefts too. I assume my two dogs barking have been enough to keep them at bay. It wouldn’t surprise me if statistically this holds true elsewhere. Low hanging fruit and all.
Have you considered a motion sensor tied to a speaker that plays dogs barking/rustling?
Dogs quiet up as soon as you feed them some tasty treats.
We already have a couple fake cameras on the property as deterrents that were installed by the landlord. I just happened to install a real one because I wanted a little evidence collection since I've been a victim of theft more than once in the bay area.
The idea that the police will take your webcam still and nail a suspect is pure yarn. Have you filed a police report when you were robbed? All the police will do is take your statement, maybe send a forensics crew to dust for prints in a day or two, and the buck stops there unless they happen upon your stuff in an unrelated incident. No manhunt is being started because your laptop was stolen.
The best piece of mind isn't a webcam and paranoia of people you don't recognize in your neighborhood, its a list of your valuables and appropriate renters/homeowners insurance to replace whatever might have been stolen.
I can buy the notion that smart devices are dumb for a litany of reasons. But the notion that security cameras are dumb, regardless of whether or not they're smart, is absurd. Most people use it to try to find/deter package thieves. Many people park their cars out front and want to be able to identify a license plate in case of a hit-and-run. I use security cameras to check on my pets and to make sure the dog walker isn't stealing anything. I also once found out my landlord was illegally entering my apartment.
You live in fantasy world if you think nothing bad will ever happen to you just because you have high regard for your neighbors.
People aren't dismissing it because they don't have it, they're dismissing it because the UX is terrible, it's too high maintenance, and the future of any individual solution uncertain.
In some ways it's like pre-iPhone mobile apps. They absolutely did exist, but were mostly too much hassle until they could be seamlessly downloaded from the App Store, sandboxed, and held to quality standards. We're still in the Symbian era of home automation.
(My wife worked at a home automation / security company about a decade ago. It had basically all the same problems back then too, but for a couple of years I had an internet-connected doorbell)
As a counterpoint, yet completely anecdotal, point of view, I've had none of the issues you describe.
Once I install a Z-wave light switch and add it to my hub (a very simple process) there is virtually no maintenance. I rarely use the phone app to control things but I reliably get push notifications for things I want to know about (forgot to lock the front door, garage door being opened unexpected, door unlocked by specific people, etc.).
Most of my interaction happens via Alex and it basically just works.
How many people in your house know how to operate your (presumably non-smart) AV system, with its receiver and four different remotes? When someone new comes over, how long would it take them to figure out how to watch a movie?
There's a TV remote and a satellite remote. Press the "Netflix" button on the TV remote.
(Having said that, I failed to watch a DVD at the weekend; the Xbox wouldn't play it as it was region locked, then I realised that I'd not hooked up the DVD player in the six months since buying the television, and it flaked out trying to play on my laptop.)
None of this makes me think that a "home automation" system will be any more convenient or reliable. I've only just made my peace with the "smart TV". I wanted a dumb TV, but will admit that the smartness has mostly delivered. It even seems to have HDMI-CEC that works with the satellite box from a different manufacturer. It still occasionally nags about updates or informs me that something it shipped with no longer works or requires a new EULA.
I have dealt with the complexity of "AV recievers", whatever they are exactly, by not knowing why I might need one and not having one.
The one feature I may end up building is the ability to listen to the TV in the kitchen, which I may do by running thirty feet of wire.
Woah, that is a right. I'm thinking now of such common phrases when you visit someone's house: "Can you turn on the TV?",
"How do you change the volume?",
"Which remote do I use?".
Recently my sister's response was, "Actually, you use the X-box controller." What a future we live in.
I don't have a smart home device and I won't buy it in a few years. And the simple reason is that there is no regulation for bad behavior. These companies keep getting away with massive privacy violations. We can dig into the big companies but at this time, that point has been beaten to death.
When there is better regulation and the software engineers are being jailed for violations of privacy, I will trust the system and buy it. Until then, I simply don't trust it. And won't buy it.
I don't hate the lights. It's great innovation. I am amused at the fact that you can turn off your ac from work in case you forgot. But privacy. Privacy is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. And I'd like it to be addressed before I let the companies run my data on aws.
As a software engineer, I don't software engineers should be immune from prosecution if they knowingly violate laws. Your manager telling you to do something (even under threat of firing) is not an excuse if you know that it's illegal. For example, the guy who wrote the software for Bernie Madoff's company knew that he was helping Madoff perpetrate fraud, and ended up in prison.[1]
I guess you also don't have a credit report after what happened to Equifax in 2017... In the meantime, for me my Vera works just great. Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty.
> I guess you also don't have a credit report after what happened to Equifax in 2017...
Not having IoT devices is an option. Not having a credit report isn't. (I don't just mean it in the sense that it's not practical; I mean it in the sense that, as far as I know, you can't stop this data from being compiled.)
> In 5 years when all the crap is worked out and you eventually buy a system with extra security at your door or backyard, or a something to that effect I'd like you to come back and admit it.
Honestly I change my mind much faster than 5 years. I have no issue to admit that I changed my mind over something. Personally I even like to be taught better by something or someone as I feel I've learned something then.
All in all my comment is very tongue in cheek, but I really mean everything I said, because that is just how I personally feel today. I don't see much value in smart home devices today. Not a big fan of the products which are on the market, not a big fan from my own experience using them when I did and not a big fan of all the big issues that people constantly report when relying on them.
I'm not Einstein who invented some physics law which will stand forever. I have a personal opinion which is relevant today. If things change tomorrow then there will be a new HN discussion and perhaps I'll have a new opinion which will be relevant tomorrow. I don't see anything wrong in voicing my thoughts on this topic today as it stands today.
> In 5 years when all the crap is worked out and you eventually buy a system with extra security at your door or backyard, or a something to that effect I'd like you to come back and admit it.
It won't be worked out in 5 years, because the issues with IoT aren't technological, but business. Go to a random Hackerspace and half of the people you find there could build better IoT devices (and many are). IoT's main issue is garbage products designed as vehicles to lock you into some vendor's "ecosystem". It won't get better until it all gets commoditized.
A light switch is not fundamentally broken, it doesn't need any improvement, besides maybe including a little LED in the switch itself so it's easier to find when the room is dark. But no internet connection is required.
10 years won't change that.
And a lock, that depends in some way on internet access? You can FUCK RIGHT OFF.
Our dimmer switches (which are all slowly blowing out - maybe too much current? I don't know, I didn't install them) include this, but I've never seen it on other switches.
Weirdly some wall outlets have a little clear plastic section that looks like it should have a light behind it... but nothing. Asked a local 'builder' (I won't say electrician, because that doesn't exist here) and he had no idea what it's for either.
Interesting; neon bulbs have the advantage of working on (US) line voltage without anything else needed, sticking an LED in there requires more stuff. Both could have been squashed in the US market due to Federal energy regulations. Or that clear section could be for the GFI version of the outlet, the few years old one in my bathroom has a tiny clear window for a green light when it's not tripped.
If you want a security system, don't buy one that is glued to the side of an insecure IoT system.
I like convenience as much as anyone, but you may want to consider that it's paid for by continuous monitoring by someone whose business model is to manipulate your future behavior.
It will never be worked out. Desktop computing is how many decades old? And it’s still crap. Basic Windows desktop functions still have intermittent problems (that missing file issue in Windows 10). Computer controlled consumer stuff will never reach the reliability and predictability of dumb consumer electronics.
How many times has your toaster deleted your toast because Microsoft pushed a bad update?
(I had an Ecobee that just decided to try and freeze my family for funsies on a winter day when I was at work. Threw it out and replaced it with a dumb thermostat.)
Like twice in the 25 years I've been driving. Are you really trying to suggest that the failure rate of tires is comparable to that of computing devices? I lose one device or other about once every 4 months or so.
Honestly, I think that smart home stuff is really cool, and also that I don't want anything (okay, much) from the current spread of commercial offerings.
What I do want to do is put a ESP board with an IR receiver and a servo on a lightswitch in my basement so that I can turn on and off the lights without moving from the couch.
Smart home stuff is really cool, if you build it yourself. Other than that it just feels like keeping up with the Joneses, with the notable exception of the disabled, for whom mass-produced smart home stuff must be a Godsend. So I guess all the geek/tech-posturing does have an upside.
If your threat profile includes the kind of targeting that criminals with radio jamming hardware imply, you need a lot more than the $100 WiFi system you can get off the shelf on amazon.
And then what are the other options? It’s not that hard to build/buy cell jammers either.
No, this is the kind of comment that appeals to people who understand that making simple things more complicated is not always desirable, needed or beneficial. If you want to buy a robot that can pick up your beer, twist off the cap, and pour it into your glass, more power to you! If you want to pretend that having such a robot is at any way optimal then you deserve to be ridiculed.
They had x-10 in the 90s, maybe earlier. Never saw the need, but my place was small. Could see the use if I had a mansion. But that is selling to the 1%, not a huge market.
That said, I sort of liked the nest demo where it shows you traffic and weather in the morning before work. Might be useful if I still was still in the rat-race, but it's on my phone already, so meh.
So you're defending companies selling shitty products with the excuse of "in several years it won't be all garbage!"? Fuck that. For the price this iot garbage goes for I'd better damn well have a functional product for several years. Corporate shilling. I'll never understand it.
I, for one, am enjoying my 'smart home' setup, where I can say "Alexa, turn off the TV", "Alexa, turn on Chromecast" and "Alexa, set the bedroom temperature to 72", regardless of which floor of the house I'm on.
I'd rather fiddle with updates and setup once in a while (I have never had to reconfigure the devices in 2 years), than look for that goddamn remote between couch cushions, press the power button and possibly switch audio and video inputs, especially if I'm on the second floor and someone forgot the TV on on the first floor. I would hate to make that trip downstairs, annoyed and grumpy.
> I would hate to make that trip downstairs, annoyed and grumpy.
My grandma always said "What you don't have in your head you must have in your legs".
My calculation is simple: Where do I expect to waste more time in my life? Periodically configuring/updating smart home devices, getting to the bottom of issues if something doesn't work as expected, or once in a while walk the stairs an extra time because I left the TV on.
So far I don't forget to switch off my TV often enough to justify the human effort of smart home devices. Maybe one day when I become older and more forgetful and not turning of TVs and lamps becomes a habit then I might re-evaluate my decision.
I have spent a non-negligible amount of my life looking for remotes. But the really big waste is the amount of time fiddling with 5 remotes trying to figure out how to get the f-ing AV system working.
I have a magnificent non-smart home theatre on my property, set up by one of the other co-owners. He's pretty much the only person that knows how to use it; the last time I tried, I had to call him. This stuff is a disaster. Over in my house it's "Hey Google, play some music".
I replaced my 60s-era manual mercury switch thermostat with a Nest. It's way better! More accurate, accepts voice commands, tells me the temperature, can be turned on before I get home, and can be turned off remotely when I left for vacation and forgot (yes, I've done this). Call me a very satisfied customer.
I'll take the smart home, thank you. If that makes me dumb, fine. I don't want to have to be a genius just to watch a movie.
Combine the AV system with the variety of places on might have audio or video, and it is even more confusing.
I'd like to see a web site or an app that lets you input what you've got and how it is connected, and then answers questions about that setup for you.
For example, I'd be able to tell it that I have:
Denon AVR-1913 receiver
Comcast X1 cable box
Sony BDP-S390 Blu-Ray player
Nintendo Switch
Samsung 55U7000 TV
I'd be able to tell it that the receiver is connected to all the rest by HDMI, and that the TV also has an optical audio connection back to the receiver.
I'd also be able to tell it that I have an iMac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch 4, Surface Pro 4, and a Windows 10 desktop. I'd be able to tell it that I have WiFi that the all of those are on as is the Nintendo Switch, and an Ethernet that the iMac, Windows desktop, receiver, cable box, Blu-Ray player, and TV are on.
Finally, I'd be able to tell it that I have an iTunes library on the iMac, an iTunes account, a Netflix account, Amazon Prime, and Spotify.
The site would then answer questions based on that. Typical questions might be:
"I bought movie X from iTunes. How the heck do I watch it on my TV?"
"I don't own a copy of X. What are my rental/buying options using the services I currently have?"
"I have a photo gallery on the iMac. How can I view the photos on my TV? When doing so, how can I control the viewing while not at the iMac?"
"I want to listen to music while sitting on the couch. The music comes from a playlist on my iMac, and I want to be able to play/pause, and to skip tracks. How can I do this?"
Ideally the site should also be able to suggest improvements. For example, for the setup described above it might suggest that I connect the Comcast X1 directly to the TV, because they both support 4K. The receiver does not, and so my current setup can't do better that 1080p.
Not the world's best UI for configuring, but when done, it works, and you define "Activities", like you described.
And at the start it does exactly that: "What devices do you have?" "When you watch TV do you control volume through TV/STB/AV receiver?" "What inputs on what devices are used?"
Periodically? I've spent DAYS of my life wrestling with my Harmony Home Hub. It's only worth it because my A/V cabinet is off to the side of the room with opaque doors, otherwise I'd just juggle the 5 remotes.
I have a very basic SmartThings setup to play with, and, same deal, days of my life for something that basically doesn't ever work. Every time I open the app I'm supposed to enable 2fa or sign up for a Samsung account instead, the prox tags never stay paired (and the batteries die almost immediately), the batteries on the sensors die constantly, and the actions only mostly work. It thankfully doesn't do anything that important to me, it's more of a silly side project I messed with a few times, but I've gone no further because it doesn't solve any actual problems, but it sure creates a bunch.
I definitely am not interested in getting into the business of figuring out whether I want to have light switches or smart bulbs that can change color, and how to ensure the SWITCH is on so that the BULBS always have power and can be activated via an app, or whether I need to now glue on a wall control, all so that I can.. have the same functionality it used to have.
I was pretty skeptical before trying it. I found that you don't spend much time configuring things and it's actually quite nice to just go to bed saying "Alexa, turn off living room". Not life changing, but definitely worth the investment. If something fails, you're no worse off than you were before. Also, smart sockets and switches are great items for a Christmas/birthday/wedding/etc registry/gift-list.
The key is the voice control. Trying to do it via an app, a remote, or even remembering the switch UI isoften too heavy-weight. Being able to say just "Alexa, living room 50%" is very nice. Same thing with being able to turn off my bedroom ceiling lights without getting out of bed. Sure, is it required? No. Can I get up? Sure. Was it worth $50 for the smart switch? For me, yes.
Turning off the lights is negligible to your overall health. Automating it (or not) will not affect your obesity or other health outcomes. There are lots of reasonable arguments against IoT switches; this is not one of them. Let's move on.
> If something fails, you're no worse off than you were before.
Well, you are already horizontal. In fact it's worse, because unless every single light source is hooked up, you now spend twice the mental effort.
Past:
1. Turn off everything
2. Go to bed.
Present:
1. Turn off everything that is dumb. Only dumb thing.
2. Ensure smart things are ON (physically have power) otherwise you won't be able to voice control them.
3. Go to bed.
4. HEY GOOGLE! GOOD NIGHT! to turn off everything and hope for the best.
You’re really stretching to make this sound tedious and error prone. Obviously you don’t have to wait until you’re in bed but moreover in 2 years I haven’t once had to get out of bed to manually turn off a light. If you like physical switches, more power to you, but stretching like you’re doing to vindicate your preference is just bizarre.
> Periodically configuring/updating smart home devices, getting to the bottom of issues if something doesn't work as expected
Only people who don't use smart home devices think the experience is even remotely like this. Worse case scenario for any smart home device malfunction is flipping a switch on and off. You're just imagining problems that don't exist.
The drive to get that extra bit of efficiency, eventually, for what is a time-wasting activity such as watching TV, is something that most people lack.
> It's just not a problem which I think people have, but somehow the consumer industry has convinced so many fools to buy cheaply fabricated, badly secured, even worse programmed and often not long supported smart home devices which add absolutely no benefit to anyone's everyday life and cause lots of problems.
This. Every time I hear a friend or someone on a podcast talking about their smart home they talk about how now they just need to find a new smart hub/lightswitch/integration service and everything will come together and nirvana will be achieved. Life's too short to spend that kind of time and energy on turning lights on and off.
I had a very high maintenance roommate and friend who is really into the easy smart-home devices. My understanding is he just likes the world to bend to his will as he maneuvers around in life. The doors unlock automatically, Nest changes our home temperatures as we walk in, "hey Siri, change lights to dance party", "play top radio". "What's the news today".
Even though he earned a degree in computer science, he wasn't very interested in the hacker/tinker/development side of things.
> My understanding is he just likes the world to bend to his will as he maneuvers around in life.
That would be cool, I'd like that too. Problem is, this only exists in a) marketing material, b) sci-fi movies, and c) if you do everything yourself. In the IoT industry, competition itself is ruining most of the "smart" devices' utility. They won't be useful until apps, hubs and devices are completely independent and commoditized, and you could argue they might not be useful to regulars even then (cue the long discussion on why stable society is incompatible with interesting life).
I halfway agree with your comment. I think smart home technology is still in the realm of tinkerers right now, and investing in an ecosystem requires a lot of forethought.
I replaced all of my dumb light switches with zwave light switches, but the nice thing is that they still act as light switches. I bought dumb IP cameras that can stream RTSP instead of going to someone's "cloud". I feed all of this into a homeassistant server that, when it goes down, I shrug because this is a fun hobby of mine, not anything I expect to actually work.
When people ask "wow how can I make my TV do that trick" or "that is cool, what do I need to get started with home automation", I cringe a little because of how embarrassingly techy the industry still is. Even Control4, which is probably the premiere home automation ecosystem, requires a ton of upkeep to keep it running (though at least you can throw money down a hole to have someone fix it).
Also with regards to your comment about turning on the lights to your phone, there's something magical about walking into the living room and saying "Hey Siri, good morning" and having your TV kick on, automatically start streaming the morning news, kitchen and living room lights turn on, and blinds open. There's nothing that really saves a ton of time in it, but it's just nice.
So the answer for your friends would be "ask that company and buy their premium support package". And "that company" will ensure that tech industry bends to ordinary people needs. I don't know about you, but that's the way things work around me. Ordinary people don't know how to work on computer. They learned few buttons and sequence to push those buttons, but if they pushed caps lock, they instantly lost. So they call support and that guy comes to them and pushes caps lock, so they can continue to work. It could work with smart home exactly similar. Some company installing devices and maintains them. If you have a problem, you just call them and they'll help you.
> there's something magical about walking into the living room and saying "Hey Siri, good morning" and having your TV kick on, automatically start streaming the morning news
I would say the TV example isn't really a great example from the perspective of utility.
In the dead of winter, it's still pitch black out when I take my dogs out first thing in the AM. The temperature can fluctuate quite a lot where I live, so I usually have two different winter coats. My winter "good morning" routine turns on my main floor lights and announces the outside temperature so I know whether or not to wear my heaviest coat.
While it sounds like a small benefit, I find it very useful considering how groggy I am at that time.
My former flatmate had some smart lights, and I wrote a little script that rigged them up to display the weather on a scale from deep blue to bright orange.
The city I live in has very erratic weather, and my apartment stays pretty temperate regardless of the outside weather. This makes it fairly easy to absent-mindedly dress inappropriately and end up sweating or shivering on the walk to work. I generally get in the habit of checking the weather, but after a week of warm weather it's easy to forget, and the weather here is such that it might suddenly drop 15 degrees from day to day. Having this information in bright visual form makes it easy to notice when the weather is suddenly unexpectedly hotter or colder: It took me about ten minutes to set up, and is a small improvement to my life that's tailored to exactly how I live it.
This, to me, is the advantage of the current era of smart home technology: incremental changes that can make little improvements to your day to day workflow. This thread is infested with an unfortunate combination of ignorance and lack of imagination (par for the course with HN...), where any evidence that smart devices don't fit into one commenter's workflow is evidence that it's useless for everyone (as the topvoted comment says, "smart people don't buy smart devices").
Honestly, I was skeptical of smart home stuff for the longest time. I picked up some Wemos (a mistake, I am now primarily on ZWave) and used them mainly to turn lights on and off while on vacation to make it look like I was home.
It wasn't until I got an Amazon Echo before I got any real value from my Wemos other than what I mentioned above. Since then, I've gotten into Zwave and invested more into smart home products. I admit that it's not life changing, but stuff like being able to check lock status, etc. has, as you say, made life incrementally better.
I don't understand. What is wrong with using technology to curate our experience in our homes?
You can make a nice experience for yourself without throwing privacy and security out of the window. It does take some network design and careful selection of devices (e.g. shunning Alexa and Google Assistant), but with the right setup you can do some very cool things while staying safe and not giving up your right to privacy.
This is pure FUD. I'm disappointed that it's got so many responses on HN instead of being down-voted in exchange for a better anti-IoT argument at the top instead.
But hey, sure, let's go through this:
- I don't care about some dude you saw on TV. A single anecdote means nothing. Even less when it's someone not representative of the population.
- A strawman convenience is another terrible argument. Sometimes it matters that you don't have to leave the room to fiddle with a device. Sometimes you're talking to someone and ask them "are you cold?" and would like to just make it warmer without leaving them.
- Being able to monitor your house's status remotely is helpful.
- Switches and light bulbs are low investment, low risk purchases. If they don't work, you have a simple fallback and it didn't cost much. The industry's developing and it'll take time, but it's generally fine because most of this stuff is such low risk.
Nope, your comment is just rationalization disguised as exasperated criticism.
When a given product/technology just fundamentally doesn’t work, or even worse is a security nightmare, you don’t get to write it off as a risk that didn’t cost much. Especially since that last part isn’t true in most cases.
I'm frankly stunned that somebody could, with a straight face, turn to somebody else and say "No. You are wrong. That thing you like isn't actually worth it."
I refuse to talk to the Siris, Alexas, and Hey Googles in this world. I simply don’t want to talk to a computer, not even on my phone. I visited my friend at home the other day, and every couple of minutes he would interrupt our conversation to shout some command to some voice assistant. It was frankly very annoying.
Everyone has different use cases. Some people just want to show a cool thing off to their friends, or even to prove they can do something at that scale. Silly? Perhaps, but who am I to judge their hobbies?
Personally, I do find things like HVAC automation nice. If I forget to turn the thermostat down when I leave for a trip, I can do so remotely and that is real savings. Everyone has their use cases though.
Absolutely agree with the HVAC automation. I love being able to remotely change settings and glean a little bit of data from my home when I'm away from home. The only other super tempting "smart home" products I'd be tempted to use would be electrical monitoring sensors to analyze phantom power usage and identify when devices are turning on and off throughout the day.
I just can't see the potential. Increase the complexity of the system and you increase the risk of failure, and when things are failing at home, that means you've got more housework to do. Who wants that?
I spent a bunch of money replacing every light bulb in my house with an LED so that I'd never have to deal with burnt-out light bulbs again. That was a use of improved technology that simplified my life.
If you hook your household devices up to the internet and make them dependent on external services they will always be prone to breaking. If I get some fancy internet-connected light bulb and have to spend even so much as ten minutes, ever, in its lifetime, figuring out why it stopped working, then it has already become a worse value proposition than the passive, non-internet thing it hoped to replace.
Yeah, the first mistake was _and make them dependent on external services_. An internet-connected light bulb's failure mode should be "temporarily become a regular light bulb".
I mostly agree. Why do I need WIFI on my lights, coffee maker, or dishwasher?
A thermostat is my personal exception though. Being able to program it on my phone is a huge UI improvement over prior thermostats. Also, being able to change it without getting out of bed in the middle of the night is a bonus.
I just don't understand why programming a thermostat needs to bring Google into the loop? It's not needed. My data should stay with me if I so desire (without needing extensive mistake-prone config).
They've had programmable thermostats for years. Having your house cool down at night/when you are at work is not a new concept that IoT suddenly made possible.
I only recently, as in two weeks ago, purchased my first home automation product in the form of a few Philips hue bulbs. Not so much for the automation aspect, but the ability to control the color temp and brightness. The automation will be nice when I take my next vacation and want to give the appearance of someone being home during that time. As for what happens when the WiFi goes down or the bridge fails, simply power cycling the lights returns them to a default color/brightness state like a normal bulb.
I also like smart thermostats. Similar to a remote autostart for my truck in the winter snows, which warms up the engine and the cabin, being able to turn on the AC before I get home from work (or heater) from my phone is a perk.
>> Why do I need WIFI on my lights, coffee maker, or dishwasher?
Well, you don't. WIFI is definitely one way to go, but Z-wave is a better way, imo.
Here's a use case for me -- I think last year DHH did a podcast where he talked about air quality and the effect of CO2 on cognitive function. After listening to it, I got a CO2 detector and wired it to a Pi. I had it set up to fire a webhook to IFTTT to turn on my HVAC fan via a NEST connector when a certain CO2 threshold was hit in my bedroom (it would get quite high overnight).
I have since found out that my ensuite bathroom fan is more effective than the furnace fan in lowering the CO2 in my bedroom, so having a smart wall switch on my ensuite fan allows me to automatically turn it on or off based on the air conditions.
Yikes. I mean sure, your points on why you don't see their value are valid. But calling people not smart because they enjoy being able to automate their homes is a leap and a half.
It's like you're purposely describing the least useful application of smarthome devices.
Setting up geofence triggers, time/event-based triggers, etc. is the real power of smart devices. I have automations set up so if I arrive home when it's dark, lights in my house turn on automatically so I don't have to fumble for light switches. I have motion sensors so if I walk into rooms, the lights turn on automatically and then turn off after I leave. I can set up schedules to turn lights on and off while I'm not at home so my house looks occupied.
Also, with Apple Homekit, there is a control center widget so you just swipe up, tap home and your "favorite" devices are very quickly accessible from anywhere in the world.
I use astronomical timers for outdoor lighting and indoor night lights. The rest of your uses look more like “because I can” and are not filling an actual need.
Besides, my pets jumping on and off furniture would trigger those senors more than I care to admit.
Lighting hardwired to a stuck system and touching physical controllers (phone or otherwise) as you describe is one possible setup. On the contrary, I just have some table/floor lamps with smart outlets between their plugs and the outlets that can be quickly removed in case of failure, and touching my phone is only in case of voice (Google Home Mini) failure. Neither of which fail often, like much less than once a year. The convenience when half asleep is great.
I totally agree, and it's hilarious how many engineers fall for this Smart home BS.
We are all supposed to be keeping K.I.S.S. in mind because we're engineers.
Smart home crap is the complete opposite of K.I.S.S.
Smart home setups are the guy on your group who wants to write a java program dependent on spring to solve a problem that a shell one liner can solve. Smart Homes are prepping the space shuttle to go down the block to the drug store.
Rarely do we ask ourselves how short-term conveniences may harm us in the long run. Chores are important. Discomfort is important. Mild annoyances are important. Physically moving is important. Focusing on unexciting things is important.
This is funny because we lost the remote controller for the soundbar I have for my TV about a month ago, so now we get up and turn the volume up and down. It was slightly annoying at first, but now nobody cares. Eventually the remote will show up, but nobody cared about having to get up and change the volume enough to find it.
One of the kids probably took it outside with them and left it laying around the farm somewhere. To be honest, it's probably done us more good than we'd care to admit. The TV isn't quite so convenient, with the smart TV, without the remote it's all but impossible to drive.
I agree with this mostly, but I do vaguely pay attention to the space in case there is some smart home application that does end up proving truly useful. I haven't seen anything yet that is compelling to me but it could happen!
Useful home automation mostly involves robots of one kind or another. Stuff you might pay a person to do because it's so time consuming and tedious. Cleaning, washing & putting away clothes, lawn care, maybe cooking. Basically anything rich people tend not to do themselves, brought within the reach of the working class by robots.
The problem is all the solutions so far kinda suck, and most are still expensive. If they weren't, absent regulation killing the spyvertising industry (oh please oh please oh please), guaranteed to be spyware wholly dependent on sending everything you or they do to "the cloud", I'd say Asimo-style general purpose home robots can't get here soon enough.
Light switches, coffee makers, thermostats? Anyone who cared could already get 95% of the way to as-good-as-IoT with motion sensors and timers on existing, cheaper, out of the box solutions, without all the spying and "I'm sorry I can't reach my server so even though we're on the same local network and I'm more powerful than a late 90s desktop PC I still can't talk to your smartphone because I am a piece of absolute garbage."
If you're looking to IoT devices to fill your life with meaning and purpose, yes, you'll be disappointed. If you want meager quality of life improvements and aren't overtly trying to have a bad experience (as you describe in your last two paragraphs), you'll probably be pretty happy with your purchases.
My wife and I use smart sockets and switches to turn on and off lights by voice command rather than walking around to every lamp and hunting around for the switches as we used to do. Was it a massive time savings? No. Did it change our lives substantially? No. Was it a small quality of life improvement? Yes. And yeah, there are issues--Alexa gets confused when you try to change the label associated with a device. But the issue was easily fixed and we were no worse off than we were before the purchase.
Ignoring your insults, I think there are many valid use cases for smart home devices.
For example, automatically turning lights on and off on a schedule, changing light color to red at night, being able to casually set reminders without bothering with a phone, controlling your TV without needing your phone (e.g. for netflix), being able to change temperature on a schedule, all kinds of things.
Just because they occasionally have bugs for some people doesn't mean they are entirely useless. Many people (myself included) have few to no problems with their smart home devices.
"It's just not a problem which I think people have, but somehow the consumer industry has convinced so many fools to buy cheaply fabricated, badly secured, even worse programmed and often not long supported smart home devices which add absolutely no benefit to anyone's everyday life and cause lots of problems."
I'm not a big fan of smart devices, but I've had several issues that were solved very conveniently by smart devises.
The temperature in my second floor bedroom and my first floor living room is usually totally different. The thermostat is in the living room. So all too often we'd be laying in bed and the temperature is wrong. So now you have to walk down stairs, adjust it and hope you got it right. We never bothered doing anything like turning on the vegetation function for 30 minutes. Nest thermostat was a total game changer. Sometimes it does annoying stuff and isn't nearly as smart as I'd like it to be, but it's so much better than the old thermostat.
Similarly I have ceiling fans with light bulbs. You can turn the whole thing on and off with wall switches, but only control lights and fan with a strong that hangs from the fan. Unfortunately the builder or previous owner put these in a room with cathedral ceilings. So I'd need a ladder to control these properly. I put smart lightbulbs in and now at least those can be controlled independently.
Ecobee was (I think) the first one to have remote temperature sensors, and now Nest has them, too.
Yes, they're (still) smart devices, but this can work without the smart functionality. The sensors detect which room humans are in, and adjusts so that the thermostat controls the heat to get the OCCUPIED room to the desired temperature. So, no 'device with an app' required (eg, this could be replicated without internet functionality).
Most fans these days ship with wireless remotes. Even my wall switch is a wireless remote. So the light and fan can be controlled separately -- no IoT required here as well.
Smart homes are indeed mostly build out of supporting laziness, but there are ways to avoid some of these problems.
If you've already sold your soul and have a home device with speech control, it's actually pretty easy to go and get a smart outlet device to control some lights. A single phrase without any screen or authentication and you're controlling your lights. If it breaks or gets outdated, you can always take it out in 10 seconds. Basically, if you do go for a smart home, keep it dumb and overridable.
I think it's more about managing expectations. I for one have not had a scenario where I haven't been able to turn on/off the lights because of a service outage... because I'm not dumb and I don't buy smart bulbs. I replace switches that can work independently from their smart features.
I'm at the point where living without smart lights is very inconvenient. I was at my parents the other day carrying a heavy can of garbage through their completely black basement. Instead of just being able to tell my voice assistant to turn on the basement lights, I had to fumble around to find the right switch that actually lights the room.
As far as being on topic with Nest... I've never "gone cold". The device works fine without their service and I would say works better than most other thermostats when it comes to actually performing the task of a thermostat.
>I was at my parents the other day carrying a heavy can of garbage through their completely black basement. Instead of just being able to tell my voice assistant to turn on the basement lights, I had to fumble around to find the right switch that actually lights the room.
That's a highly specific scenario that I personally would solve with a motion sensor light if I felt it was likely to happen often.
This is overstating the case a bit, imo. There are plenty of smart home devices that are either objectively terrible or worse relative to their "dumb" alternatives–I'd happily concede that this is the majority of the smart-home market. But there are some genuinely good products mixed in there too.
In the same way that dishwashers and washers/dryers have endured while other 70s smarter-home tech didn't [0], I would guess that some modern automations that actually provide value (e.g. robot vacuums) will continue on even as the hype dies down.
Por que no los dos? Why not have perfectly functional on their own devices that can also be software addressed? Got that in my house and I'm a happy camper, when I have renters they don't even notice/have to use the smart features!
You're talking about a consumer luxury product as though it's being marketed as a food staple or some other necessity. It's not. People get these things because they think it'll be more convenient than the alternative.
As a comparison, I didn't really consider typing in my phone pin every time I wanted to unlock my phone a disaster. But now that I've got Face ID and it works reasonably well (yes I know not everyone feels that way) it'd be annoying to go back.
You can critique the current implementations but when someone comes up with a good ecosystem to integrate with these products will gain steam.
It's not a binary thing, though. When my IoT smart lights don't turn on from a voice command, I can always walk over to the switch and flip them on. My IoT smart home makes things more convenient, not unusable.
I use Zwave smart switches in my shop, tied to smart power strips for various lighting, fans, and tools at different stations in the shop.
Instead of having to rewire switches physically everytime I move something, I can program different routines depending on my needs, and nothing is tied down in my shop, I can always reconfigure the layout to make it more efficient if need be.
It’s been a life saver and it’s saved my energy bill also.
I’m in there 10 hours a day sometimes, and I love the home automation stuff, I just use it not in the home.
to counter point this post and your assumption that I am not smart - I use of home automation and smart devices extensively. I use Alexa, smarthings, z-wave switches, and various things.
1) "Alexa, turn on kitchen". Turns on the various light switches that are collectively the kitchen.
2) all things turn off at 11PM during the weekdays. Make sure that the various lights that were on get turned off.
3) When turning on the basement light switch it automatically turns on the lights in the utility room where the laundry is.
4) When turning on the basement playroom light switch, in turns on "all the lights in that room", because that's the common use case.
5) outside lights come on and turn off automatically
6) Christmas tree lights outside come on and off on a regular basis.
7) Inside christmas lights come on and off
8) Front door opens automatically and locks automatically based on kids schedule.
9) Custom key codes for the front door for contractors
10) "Alexa, announce dinner". Announces dinner everywhere in the house. really useful.
11) Nest goes to eco mode when no-one is in the house.
12) Lights turn on automatically in the kitchen when you get home.
etc etc etc. It all works and doesn't require much work. The mobile based alerts are the weakest link in the system as they don't always work.
Thanks for calling me not smart. I live in DC but have a second house in the upper Midwest (close to family). An internet-enabled thermostat lets me keep an eye on the temperature remotely, and adjust it to cold and warm spells. It was -25F for a few days this past winter.
This was my experience with Philips Hue lights. They were cool for awhile, but light switches stay in one place, while my phone does not. I eventually got their wall mounted buttons, and ultimately replaced them all with normal bulbs.
I love having voice activated lights. I live in a loft where all the lights are upstairs to keep the cords away from my toddler. When we get home, instead of needing to go upstairs, I can turn on the lights from downstairs, and have also set it up to only work when you say “please” to teach her proper manners.
It's a sort of thing that you build when money is meaningless. And at that point you can still have very valid priorities - helping other people out, setting up charities, etc etc. Your house just happens to have a cinema room - it's no different "luxury" than having underfloor heating in your bathroom. It's comparably unnecessary, just on a different financial scale.
> it's no different "luxury" than having underfloor heating in your bathroom. It's comparably unnecessary, just on a different financial scale.
Underfloor heating is not unnecessary, in fact it is about 10% more efficient in operating cost[1] as it can operate at lower inlet temperatures (30-35 °C, compared to 60+ °C for conventional radiators). In addition conventional radiators are often placed on the outside-facing wall below a window, which means that much of the generated heat gets lost.
As for the installation costs, for new construction conventional radiators and underfloor heating are approximately at the same price level.
No, you want a heating in your home regardless, and if both options have the same cost, then it is not a luxury, it's standard (at least when compared to other modern countries, though)
If you were a billionaire, and 100k was 0.01% of your net worth? If someone owned a €300k home with neither mortgage nor investments, that’s the equivalent of €30.
I’m may not be impressed with their blasé attitude to money, but I bet I looked more wasteful than that to a Nairobi friend of my partner when I visited on a plane ticket that cost half their annual rent, £350.
We are all used to SaaS randomly getting obsoleted, but when you buy a physical device you kind of expect to own it forever. But no, cloud and IoT means even your physical stuff are SaaS products. Just stop buying the trash.
Can't help but quote: «“the "Internet of Things" won't work until the "Local Area Network of Things" works», seen here on HN [1].
There's significantly less money in it, though, and more hassle. It's not going to become popular enough until people get burned enough with vendors going out of business, or just stopping support, and making their convenient $199 gadgets obsolete.
In a sense, a large company like Nest pulling his off is a good thing: it sends the signal.
It's hard to decide which nickname is better between "the Internet of Things That Don't Work" and "the Internet of Someone Else's Things".
I can see a half dozen solidly practical uses for a smart home setup, mostly scheduling tasks to be done while I'm sleeping or not at home. Beyond that, I'd have a lot of fun just building silly hobby projects with cheap sensors, wifi-controlled lighting, etc. But I'm not going to touch any of it until I can get a system that's happy to run locally, and only calls out to the rest of the world when it actually needs to. At this point, I'm even going to hold out for adaptable integrations; if some service I'm talking to shuts down, I should be able to substitute another one honoring the same API. Anything less looks like a privacy, security, and ownership nightmare.
I would say that the Local Area Network of Things has existed for decades, but the intricacies of its deployment means that so far, it’s required a network admin to set up.
The most classical example of such “things” are softphones. They need their own vxlan and switch QOS policies and so forth, to function the way people expect phones to work (rather than flaking out when someone is torrenting.) Softphone deployments exist in plenty of enterprises, but have you ever heard of a SOHO deployment of softphones (where the phones are PBX extensions and can call each-other over the LAN; not where the phones are distinct phone-company DIDs sending IP packets through the gateway, out over the internet, and to the the phone company’s PBX terminus, just to talk to one-another)?
Until we get SOHO router-gateways smart enough to make such a SOHO softphone deployment “installation-free”, we’ll probably never see LANoT.
Internet routing in general used to require some solid engineering knowledge. Still, home routers that mostly work out of the box exist, and the learning curve is approachable for people with enough special needs not covered by the default settings. It took some protocols to be designed and widely deployed, from DHCP to mDNS and STUN. But this has been done, and it mostly works.
Running a RAID array was once as enterprisey as it gets. Now you can buy a RAID-ready box (something like Synology) and have a reasonable default configuration, or configure to your taste if you have a general knowledge of what you're doing.
I suppose that LANoT is going to develop eventually into something easy enough to deploy, too.
Re softphones: since US cable providers effectively sell softphones as a part of the cable package, they have every incentive to prevent home routers from allowing to easily set it up for free. OTOH the QoS settings are there in the routers firmwares for that same reason, and desktop / mobile softphones (aka "internet messengers") can use that if they care enough.
The home phone example is a good one, because as you say the softphones are too much hassle - but in this one case, because you're connecting to the real regulated phone system, the ""cloud"" solution of using your cellphone to make a call across the house Just Works (+). All of the anti-competitive nonsense about not interoperating with different phones or deliberately obsoleting the service goes away. The hardware manufacturer and the service provider are separated, and you can choose a new service provider by swapping the SIM.
The tradeoff is that the quality is kind of bad and the ongoing fees comparatively high relative to IoT.
There's even the old DECT phones, if anyone's still using those.
(+ except where the internet companies have tried to break this by routing you through Hangouts or some other thing that isn't the phone system)
I believe Philips Hue also does this correctly. I don't own any of the Hue products, last I looked (a few years ago) they had an open API. Currently it looks like you have to sign up for a developer account, I don't know if this is purely for email marketing or if they have know restricted API access. The downside to Hue was always the bridge, which is what exposed the http API.
LIFX looks nice though. The UDP Lan protocol is really neat, and the documentation is better than I remember of Philips Hue.
I have a Hue setup, and you only need to signup for a developer account to use their cloud API. If you're on your local network, the bridge has a REST API exposed and you can just start issuing requests to it without any signing up for anything.
In my experience, when I researched some of the official forums some time ago, there was no public documentation of the protocols. I still have to use the Android app to onboard a bulb (which will fail if you forget to deactivate mobile data on your phone). Then, I was pretty satisfied using lifxlan in Python (https://github.com/mclarkk/lifxlan)
There is absolutely public documentation [1] and has been for years. I've used it extensively to help maintain a Go connector [2]. It's a binary protocol and it's just a matter of spraying your network with broadcast UDP packets.
Thanks, I need to go back and re-read those docs. My problem was with the onboarding. From a quick look your library assumes the bulbs are already onboarded, like the one in Python?
My former flatmate bought a nanoleaf Aurora, which we used primarily as a visualizer for our sound system. It had a pretty well-documented REST API though, and I did a couple nifty things with it
Ah, the “digital transformation”, where hardware becomes a service, and you lose control of it, and corporations extract an income stream from you ad infinitum.
While great advances come from availability of technology at a reduced up-front price, at what cost to the basic principles and advantages of ownership, privacy, cost depreciation, long term use of assets, etc. has our new world come?
This is a good reminder that “all magic, comes with a price”!
Microsoft used to run Zune ads to the effect that it "cost $30,000" to fill an iPod, while you could get everything you wanted on a Zune for just $15 a month! As many people pointed out, what this actually meant was that a permanent music collection for a Zune cost infinity dollars. Admittedly, at $15/month you could get 166 years of subscription for that $30k. Unless, of course, Microsoft shuttered the program - which they did within a decade. Meanwhile, my decade-old iPod nano still works fine and is still a pretty good music player to take on runs.
And really, that was the best case. Microsoft supported their legacy setup long after they stopped selling it, then finally offered refunds and support for importing playlists to Spotify. Newer, post-transformation services have dropped all pretense of guarantees or ownership; the Kindle Store revokes access to titles or whole collections so casually that the words "your library" are essentially a bad joke.
Even news has gone the same way. I had a very bad moment the first time I went to link someone to an article and found that the body had been completely rewritten with no editor's note (and not for correctness). News companies aren't profiting on the transition like music sellers did, but basic concepts like newspaper archives and the "paper of record" are thrown into doubt by the loss of ownership and content stability.
The story about farmers hacking back ownership of their tractors is surprising only because it's a bit ahead of the curve on hardware. We're still in the early days of this hardware-as-a-service transition, and it's going produce much uglier surprises than the ones we got with software.
The protagonist starts out by jail-breaking her toaster, which was designed on only toast authorized bread. However, the company that produced it went out of business (taken over by a hedge fund), and the authentication servers were shut down, so now the toaster couldn't toast anything.
All my smart home devices (excluding Alexa, one day I'll get around to setting up snips.ai, but for now at least it's only an extra interface and nothing I depend on) will keep working without internet – without a problem. The problem is with the always-on things. It's the same with computer games. But as long as people keep buying singleplayer games that require an internet connection and smart home devices that stop working without one, companies will keep producing them.
> But as long as people keep buying singleplayer games that require an internet connection and smart home devices that stop working without one, companies will keep producing them.
Wish it was that simple.
With IoT, companies practicing dishonest and abusive business practices, like tying appliances to their SaaS and turning them from products into services, can get VC investment and simply outmarket the honest companies. Meanwhile, society develops antibodies slowly, so regular people are mostly unable to tell they're being taken advantage of (though cases like this help build this awareness). Consumers don't "vote with their wallets" for perfect solutions, they choose from what's on the market - and the market is saturated with bad actors right now.
As for games, it ain't easy either. Games are not commodities. The choice isn't between buying single player games requiring Internet connection and single player games not requiring it. The choice is between buying such Internet-tied games and not buying the next installment of your favorite franchise at all; between accepting abusive levels of DRM and the fact you're only renting, or not participating in the gaming culture.
Initially Google said that Nest devices would no longer have 3rd party integration, you could only use them as part of the Google Assistant ecosystem.
Probably the 2 most common people that got screwed by this are people that use IFTTT and people that control their thermostat with an Alexa. Google is walking back some of their earlier statements and saying they may allow certain "trusted" partners to keep using the old API, so Alexa users may end up being OK. Another less common use case (but one that affects me) is using their developer API to take a bit more control over things. I use it to log temp/humidity data for my place, and to control my thermostat using Home Assistant.
They still work, there is also Works with Assistant (instead of works with Nest). Though the new API isn't as low level, so if you're doing DIY smart home some functionality isn't there.
I actually welcome some of these (one google account, instead of separate nest+google accounts) changes, as it will make things easier to setup for my parents, etc.
This is why I would never invest too much into Smart Home. While my phone may be expected to last for a few years only, I don't want my house deprecated because of a takeover/bankruptcy of a company.
I definitely would invest into Smart Home, but only if I can control it 100% from the server in my basement without the appliance having any internet access at all.
All my IoT devices are in a wifi without any internet access.
It's true that they're mostly proprietary, and Apple runs its own services, and I hate iTunes these days.
But—and I realize not everyone feels the same way—but at this time they are literally the only b2c company that has any credibility around privacy.
They feel to me—and again, not everyone agrees—they feel to me like the only hardware company that thinks of their users as their customers, and not as cattle to be sold to crapware vendors and search engine behemoths.
>but at this time they are literally the only b2c company that has any credibility around privacy
I can think of a few: Purism, System76, OSMC, Mycroft... they're smaller and less well-known than the big players of course, and they're not all perfect, but they treat their users as customers unlike many companies these days.
If I wouldnt be using Android Phones with custom Roms and no Google at all, I would proably also be using iPhones. I just try to stay all open source. I pay for my email, I have my own servers with services I use etc.
Devices that don't connect to a 3rd party servers in the first place aren't dependant on the good will of the manufacturer to remain privacy conscious.
Right now Apple makes buckets of cash from their hardware, but if they ever need to tighten their belt you can bet that the extra revenue from selling your data will be extremely tempting.
I don't touch 90% of WiFi smart devices unless they are Tuya controlled and even then I'm iffy. I vastly prefer z-wave/zigbee because if SmartThings goes belly up I can switch to Wink or any other compatible hub fairly easily. And while my Alexa devices are probably where I am "weakest" I have a lot of stuff running through HomeBridge and if I needed to I could move to HomeAssistant if I needed/wanted to.
Honestly? That would be awesome. I already have security cameras set up like that (although not wireless) - just home devices that do things for me and report back to a central server in my home. That server can connect to the internet (when I want it to), grab new firmware for the cameras, then disconnect and send out the firmware.
That's pretty much all I want from home automation as well. I see the value in being able to say "Alexa, turn down the lights" and having AWS do the voice recognition - but given that I can't trust services to stay more than a few years, I'm not going to invest in it.
Well, IoT never was a customer term, it was an industry term. And just because something keeps working without the internet doesn't mean it cannot benefit from connectivity.
Most things in your home don't need to know that much about things outside your home, or could have a well-defined standard API for getting that information from any source. If you could write wrapper scripts for obtaining weather information or traffic information, for instance, then you could have a self-contained system that required no monthly fees unless you opted to pay for high quality information, etc. but still gained all of the benefits of outside information, is high security, and would probably end up working even better. You could have default information endpoints for ease of setup, but why not make it all customizable? A good company with customer needs in view would be fully capable of making such a system.
In office buildings, devices already talk to each other using a network, so you don't have miles of cables from each switch to light or window-blind. In cars too, with CAN Bus.
Apple sells Apple Home Hub, I wonder if that's their "central control system" so that the Apple Home devices can be a bit dumber, but also it means there's a central firewall and system that can look for updates.
Also if you can install the "cloud-end" on your own device, when the company goes Nest, it means you can at least run an old version to keep your "IoT" gadget running, and it'll be running on the (hopefully) firewalled local hub.
Apple doesn't sell a "home hub" product. But their smart speaker (HomePod), TV set top box (Apple TV) and tablets (iPad) can all function as a gateway for HomeKit devices to be securely controlled from outside the LAN without the devices themselves having to be very smart or secure.
IIRC, there was AirPort, which was / is a wireless router that had options for things like storing device backups or similar.
Totally feasible to make a killer wireless AP that's Apple branded and connects better to the ecosystem, but that doesn't seem to be the direction Apple is going.
Yep, they had a range of WiFi routers, including one with a built-in harddisk for backups. They stopped updating them before they launched HomeKit though, so it never supported that.
It's a shame they stopped investing in them and missing the whole mesh Wi-Fi development. Also in this age where they're touting "privacy first" and iTunes is on the endangered list, not supporting iOS device backups over a LAN is a huge deficiency.
There are a few other products I use (for blinds, windows, heat), but you can often simply search the above two lists and read through the documentation whether they need internet (or "cloud") access or whether theyre totally local.
Worth noting - if you want cloud access, it's a paid subscription (reasonably priced) add on for Home Assistant, and it's free for OpenHAB.
I personally prefer OpenHAB over HomeAssistant, but the thing that annoys me about OpenHAB2 is that it doesn't have even rudimentary built in user management with authentication. The docs basically tell you to use something like Nginx to do that for you.
> Worth noting - if you want cloud access, it's a paid subscription (reasonably priced) add on for Home Assistant
if you want a super simple setup, they have manual guides for setting it up. And if you just want remote access and don't need Alexa/Google integration, it almost as simple manually.
Following a nearby lightning strike that destroyed our broadband router, I was pleasantly surprised to find that our Hive controllers still worked and scheduled water and heating correctly. Did also make me find the physical buttons for turning stuff on/off as well - though that didn't turn out to be necessary.
I'm mainly going for Z-Wave plus, using Home Assistant as controller for now (though still evaluating that).
My A/C is on Wifi though, and the cloudy controller web page is using a REST API (undocumented but simple enough to sniff and fake), so that's the only outlier so far.
I really want to love HA, but I find doing things in Node-Red so much quicker and easy to comprehend due to its visual nature. After a gap of about a year, I installed HA again a few weeks back and tried to setup geofencing using first bluetooth and then third party location services, but gave up due to the inconsistent determination of whether I was home or not. Using Node-red and a couple of tutorials I had things working very quickly. YMMV.
I'm doing this as well. Z-Wave+ and a Raspberry Pi for the hub for my first automation device, an RGBW LED strip for my home office lighting.
Even if I wanted to pay a subscription fee to some external service for my hub, the risk of service disruption, hacking of my network, and/or misappropriation of my personal data are just too high.
I've occasionally pondered screwing around with various wifi-embedded things like the Arduino, but then I think about how long the light switches have been in my house already, and I find myself wondering, will even Wifi last long enough? Will today's Wifi still be going in 40 years?
Dunno. Maybe. But for me to be interested in something it still has to be something that is going to pay back my fiddling in probably ten years, where I can expect to have to replace it, and I'm still not impressed by any of the the demos I've seen. I'm just not that inconvenienced by having to turn on lights.
According to Wikipedia Cat5e became the common ethernet cable around 2001, it's still in common use and capable of carrying gigabit, or over short distances even 10Gbit ethernet. Today at least in my bubble I see Cat6 and Cat7 deployed instead for 10Gbit and beyond.
I think everyone is getting at least 20 years out of their Ethernet connections, likely more. That's not as durable as electical cables but good enough for most cases (plenty of things need updates after 20 years in a building).
You can tie a new generation of wire to your existing wire in the wall already and pull the new wire through end to end that way to upgrade your connections behind the walls.
All the dot-com bubble era business ideas are new again.
- digital currencies
- smartwatches
- smart homes (Bill gates had his house 'smart homed' to the wazoo with tens of NT servers taking care of everything, like switching lights on and off)
Let's not panic too much here. A smart thermostat or garage door opener is modular, plug-in replaceable. The equivalent of a fancy toaster. You aren't locked in to anything.
1. It's noisy
2. The coupling and uncoupling effort is significant
3. The anticlimax of having to go down to the basement and empty out the canister after having completed vacuuming
1) Go with a cloud service using products exclusively made by a single major company, like Google or Amazon. This is simpler to setup and maintain but more expensive.
2) Go with an open source solution, like Home Assistant. Cheaper option with more control but requires a lot of time to learn, setup and maintain.
Both options should be considered safe at this point.
Edit: added emphasis on "made by" since many were missing that nuance. Buying a single brand of HA from a single company should be considered safe.
I'm not talking about buying compatible devices made by other manufacturers, this API issue shows is that isn't safe.
There's no safety going with products from a major company. They pivot all the time, not least Google. The only benefit is that one might get a refund when they do something egregious.
And in this case, Google just gave all their customers using the Nest API the finger. How is it safe to trust them going forward?
Irrelevant because you will always get screwed unless the company has a huge track record in backwards compatibility and very conservative slow changing management.
Get open source hardware and software that you can maintain yourself or suck it up and cough up the dough.
What are you talking about. This whole situation is a one great counterexample to your 1).
Making any company a single point of failure is a bad idea. You are basically giving up your freedom of choice for maybe some convenience, but don't confuse it with guarantee of sustained service.
Again, unless that company has a great track record, you'll probably get screwed rather quickly. Google is not such company, for example. Also, any startup is out of the question too; half-life of VC-backed SaaSes is on the order of a year or two.
IMO buying any hardware tied to a SaaS is a dumb idea.
3) Find a local home automation company and look at their offerings. There's a chance you'll find people willing to sell you actual products that are optionally Internet-connected, but not Internet-first, and are not tied to a garbage SaaS. They'll install and service them for you too. Key words here are "home automation"; I find looking for this phrase instead of "IoT" to weed out a lot of garbage.
Why is best not a good example? If you buy exclusively Google made products you're still fine.
Reread my original comment. I say you'd be safe if you buy products made BY a single company. This API effects those who bought things that are made by other manufacturers.
That's correct. If you would be pissed if it stopped working, don't buy it. Same for other "smart" products like smart watches. They have to have plastic bodies because they have radios. Because they have plastic bodies, expensive materials in the bezel or band make no sense. Their electronics and displays will be out of date within 3-5 years even if the OS continues to be supported. If you can't treat it as disposable, it's not for you.
My "smart home" is just installing IR blasters to control all my existing IR-controlled ceiling lamps and air conditioner units. In the worst case, I can always revert to using the IR remote controls (or wall switches).
They're firewalled to my LAN and integrated into iOS using Homebridge running on my Synology NAS.
I kind of like how Google is moving all the home related products to the Nest brand. We always talk about Google branding being the worst but I think this is actually a logical move to one brand for everything Home.
I also like that I'll be able to use my google login for my Nest products in the future, and the author even agrees that the Nest app is not great and the Google Home app is what I currently use anyway for my Nest products.
I feel like the only real downside of all this is the Works With Nest platform is dead? Looks like they're working with Amazon on Alexa integration so that is nice, hopefully that will be ready by the end of August and work with more companies about integration.
Yes, I agree. The brand consolidation is long overdue, as are any meaningful updates and fixes to the Nest app. Those are two definite positives of this move.
Moving to Google Accounts is more murky: I can definitely see and sympathize with arguments on the basis of Google's overall business model and how it seems off for an ad company to be creating products for the home. With that said, Nest accounts (like the app) are woeful and only support the weakest of 2FA methods. (And in fact, I had that break for me on their desktop site -- enter the 2FA, then infinite loading.)
And the definite downside everyone seems to agree on is that killing Works with Nest (especially on a, IMO, short timeframe) shatters the trust placed in that ecosystem. Clickbait comments are focusing on the short-term which is going to be messy and involve a lot of people ditching Nest, but (whether I agree with it or not) I don't see APIs which give direct device access like Works with Nest even being a thing in the future.
In a world where the WSJ is sounding the alarm at people adding benign add-ons to Gmail by their own hand, not to mention people blaming Nest for their own weak passwords, it may be that even basic security principles need to be re-examined and in a way "dumbed down." An example of this dumbing down is removing the ability to turn the recording light off moving forward.[1]
"Dumbing down" is a negative term, but I'm trying to apply it as neutrally as possible. It makes sense to Google to remove that ability, since any blowback would fall on them. I'm honestly surprised we haven't yet seen the headline "Google's Nest Cam recorded me even though it looked turned off," when the real story there would be an ex-SO or roommate opted to turn the light off and start recording.
Agreed. I don't personally have any Nest hardware in my home, but I do have the app on my phone for family members' home, and the app is definitely kind of meh at best.
For all the backlash Google has gotten lately, it really does seem like they're trying to be more open with their privacy controls lately (disabling the option to turn off the camera light), as well as encouraging more security.
Agreed with everything you said, especially the "dumbing down" of the access to some of these devices.
The entire Cambridge Analytica/Facebook debacle was possible because users granted certain apps access to their data in the first place. And with the Works With Nest program we have users granting access to their cameras/smoke detectors/thermostats and just assuming/hoping that everything will be OK. Just a matter of time until something goes wrong and Google is better off scrapping the old way and creating something new with more security - even if it means losing certain features that were possible before.
I think the more significant integration is on the development side. The cloud services will be integrated with Google's AI platform (and people), while the hardware will benefit from the Google Home team.
More people, know-how, and money are always good things for a product.
This article was a surprisingly difficult read. It felt like every other word was a brand name, and the underlying confusing naming scheme surely didn't help. On top of that the author flip-flops between the issues of Nest going away (loss of privacy, and product ecosystem) while excited about Nest functionality moving to Google Home (Google Nest?).
I think the main takeaway for me is that it'll probably be another decade until there's any stability to be found in the "smart home" ecosystem.
Of course, a decade is optimistic. You could have felt the same way and written the same thing a decade ago.
It's possible that there will never be any stability in the smart home ecosystem, and constantly buying and throwing away electronic junk is simply the norm.
God, yes, that's been annoying me a lot recently. Was a bird fined? No, Bird was fined. Do you want a smart home? Buy Smart Home! I find it much easier to read when brands and products aren't just random nouns.
It makes it tricky to even search for terms. I was trying to google something about Pocket a while back and man I nearly threw my computer at the wall trying to dig for a relevant result. I think a lot of companies unintentionally shoot themselves in the foot pulling their single word product name out of the dictionary.
I did quite a bit of experimentation with home automation systems (HomeSeer, Home Assistant, Domoticz and so on) and decided that the best (at least for me) and the most control giving solution is NodeRED - https://github.com/node-red/node-red.
You can create pretty complex flows with many already available nodes but if you want something custom - it's trivial either to add JS functions or to create your own node from scratch. Currently running it in a Docker container on an Intel NUC :)
The only downside is that it's not user friendly for non-tech people as you would still have to know few things such as what is HTTP server and how do devices talk to each other. It's not as easy as plugging in Google Home and just talking to it. But on the other hand, I only use my google home to:
1. Set timer when I am cooking
2. Send webhooks to my NodeRED to control things.
I don't have Nest currently, although I did use it several years ago, can't say it's very smart :)
I've been using Node Red for a few automation things too, basically as a self-hosted ifttt/zapier, and it's been working well. I would recommend it beyond home automation for the kinds of things that are "too small" to warrant their own code project and deployment setup but are still important enough to be automatic. This includes things like checking a webpage every 10 minutes and sending a text if it changes, or remapping webhooks between random services.
Exactly! My NodeRED besides doing some home automation actually does a lot more "ops" work for me:
1. Complex healthchecks for my side project webhookrelay.com (tests backend functionality every 30 seconds)
2. Normal HTTP healthchecks for all my websites - webhookrelay.com, keel.sh and few other backing services such as drone itself.
3. Updates homebrew formula hash when a new release is out (there's a super easy to use github integration that allows you to modify files)
4. Receives and processes emails from Mailgun about delivery failures.
So yeah, probably the best self-hosted IFTTT/Zapier out there :)
Another option: Use HomeAssistant for the user friendly interface (fancy buttons, value display, you-name-it), and use NodeRED for the logic. The HomeAssistant nodes are quite decent, it‘s how I‘ve set things up at home.
Which home automation platform you eventually ended up with on NUC? I recently bought NUC to do the same and I cannot decide between Home Assistant, openHAB so I am running them both and playing a bit with Hue lights/Belkin switch. I have not tried Domoticz - I know it's very lightweight but not too feature heavy. Eventually I want to replace Alexa, using Snips.
I have both NodeRED and Home Assistant but lately Home Assistant doesn't do pretty much anything anymore and everything goes through NodeRED :)
I also run more things on my NUC like drone.io build server to run my tests and few more things. I ended up just having a docker-compose file for all my things as opposed to installing services I use through things like HomeAssistant.
Curious, does anyone have a good manual thermostat that they like?
Part of the reason Nest has done so well is most programmable thermostats are horrible to use. I'm a product designer and I don't understand how the scheduling works.
Scheduling isn't something I really need for my studio. At night I turn the AC on, in the morning I turn it off. Don't really need to turn on the heat in the winter. I'd love is a quality manual thermostat—something like the Honeywell CT87K1004, but with a metal shell.
https://www.honeywellstore.com/store/products/the-round-non-...
Get a cheap Ecobee lite or one of the many long established manufacturers like Honeywell.
I really like Nest but after the Google acquisition I’m not confident in their products being supported. For me I don’t need smart scheduling. My wife works from home and I do a couple days a week.
The Ecobee 4’s I have are great and come with a couple room sensors. Had them for a few weeks now. I’ve briefly looked into the API and it looks like I could integrate it with my Raspberry Pi.
I have a Honeywell programmable/smart thermostat and am not particularly happy with it. The interface is confusing, and the smart functionality is limited and clunky.
I think there are some objects where adding computers can only make them worse to use. Stereo amplifiers, car interiors, and coffee equipment come to mind, and smart home stuff seems like it's just not a good experience ever.
There are some really nice vintage thermostats out there [1] [2]. As far as I can tell they're not a niche collectable so they're still pretty inexpensive too.
I believe older 87s had the metal shell. I know mine does, and it also has a vial of mercury inside. Wouldn't be suprised if it's older than I am, but it works perfectly though and I have no desire to change it. My downstairs thermostat is a digital programmable one (also honeywell). I've only lived in this place for a year, but it seemed to work fine and simply enough for programming schedules and temperatures. I only use either for heating, we don't use AC in the summer.
I've seen digital ones fail over time, and this one will too. It's always a matter of "when", not "if"; but, if the cost is low enough, that may not be a big deal (assuming it doesn't cause a fire on the way out).
Modern multi-stage Furnaces/ACs/heat pumps need intelligent thermostats to control them in the first place. When there is more control needed than simply on/off, if used with dumb thermostat (or, ironically, Nest) modern equipment is not going to work in the most efficient mode.
This is why modern home HVAC systems usually come with their own thermostats, and if you are looking to install new HVAC system, basically the only thing you need to consider is how well thermostat works - everything else is more or less the same.
Anyway, my Bryant thermostat works quite fine, and I consider it to be easier to use than Nest, which I had before.
I've been happy with my Carrier Cor thermostat. It's certainly not beautiful, but it is simple and functional. You can program min/max temperatures and start/end times for 4 parts of the day (morning, day, evening, and night). You can temporarily override the schedule, and you can set vacation temperatures.
I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems. I'm trying to understand what other people see in it. I have to wonder if it's driven by the amount of interest a person has in "tinkering" with technology.
I really like my automated curtains, get some benefits from being able to switch some lights on and off (make movement sensors work or not depending on the time the sun goes down/up and whether it's weekend or not, turn on outdoor lights at certain times depending on whether the sun is already up), and integrating the air conditioning controls with other devices is convenient and somewhat spiffy. Furthermore I like the advanced programability that having a powerful central system gives you, like having a house-wide 'nobody home/up/everybody asleep/on holiday' mode and having all components react to that, and how you can set advanced rule sets in code like 'if it's a weekday and the average temperature the last 5 days was < some threshold, turn the heater on a bit earlier in the morning'.
That said, I would never advise it for someone who doesn't like tinkering, or at least know how to tinker.
My system is 100% local, I use zwave, zigbee, and Home assistant. If the internet goes down nothing changes. If the Pi dies, the light switches work like one would always expect.
My favorite use case is simple, I walk into a room the lights turn on, I leave the lights turn off. I open the pantry door, light on, close it light off. I also enjoy getting in bed and the house shutting down, lights, security, temperature all tied to my wife and I just getting into bed.
Where people go wrong is buying light bulbs, well now you have to keep the light switch on 24/7 or the wifi bulk isn't on to know it shoudl be off? like WTH? Just automate the switch and use normal lights. Wifi anything (wemo, etc...) sucks and almost always requires cloud service, why reply on the company that sells a $5 bulb to stay in business? insane.
I can see some energy efficiency in the auto turn on/off.
Maybe we're using different terminology, but what do you use in lieu of light bulbs? (I call any of those tubular things, e.g. fluorescent lighting, light bulbs.)
Then you can program anything to turn the light on/off. Like for example I also turn off lights even if there is motion if the luminance sensors say it is plenty bright inside from the sun.
Or leave the shower light on when the humidity is really high and there is no detectable motion. I might not be moving enough in the shower but if the humidity is 90% you can assume the shower is on and I don't want to be left in the dark.
Another one of my favorites is in our kids play room. On a school night, if the xbox is on, and there is motion, Alexa will announce a warning about bed time, wrap up the game play. Then in a couple minutes the xbox turns off, and then Alexas tell them to brush their teeth, and eventually turns off the lights in the play room (they would never turn them off on their own). If the xbox turns back on, my wife and I get an alert on our phones so we can manage screen time.
> I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems.
I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems that communicate with someone else's servers.
But, having lights and temp auto controlled would be nice. But getting a system up and running that only runs on MY server is a little more tinkery than I have time for what with all the LeetCode I have to do to switch jobs.
My apartment came with a Nest thermostat for free, so maybe I'm not part of the enthusiast base.
I love the feature that automatically detects whether I'm at home and adjusts the setpoint. This uses a sensor in the thermostat, put it also uses my phone's location, so arguably it is a smart home feature.
I also how it integrates with my phone at bedtime and when I wake up. I have a Google Assistant routine set up to adjust the setpoint when I dismiss the alarm in the morning. I also have a routine set up for bedtime which adjusts the thermostat and tells me what's on tomorrow's agenda. I like this better than a programmable thermostat with a set schedule because I don't always sleep at the exact same time, and it's annoying having my place get too hot or too cold before I'm ready for bed, etc.
I can't think of too many other use cases that make sense to me, though.
I've got a few smart switches that adjust the lights at a specific time in the evening. It really helps my children transition into the evening routine. It also helps me not lose track of time so I can keep that evening routine.
the beginnings of a killer app for me can be seen in all those keep plants from dying apps, but they are still too unwieldy for me to consider them as something I'd actually want.
It used to be "Embrace, extend, extinguish"- Microsoft would promote a technology, then extend in their own way, then use that extension to kill off the competitors also using the same tech.
Now it's more like "Acquire, Advocate, Assassinate". Big companies buy small tech startups doing neat things for customers. They fund it, highly promote it, integrate it with their stack. Then they kill off the critical pieces that made the original company loved by their users.
They buy the devs, the tech, and the customers but kill the soul of whatever it was they acquired.
> Google's smart home strategy will now revolve around only the "Works with Google Assistant" program
This arguably makes more sense anyway, and I think it opens up some interesting possibilities that might not have been possible while Nest was a standalone entity.
Works With Nest means arbitrary third parties having API access to a Nest device. Any person could make a dev account and start logging data, sending commands, etc.
Works With Google Assistant means Google (and in this case, only Google, given the WwN sunset) having API access to whatever device, in this case a Nest device.
I'm expecting that the extra context available in the Assistant platform will yield integrations that are generally more useful, even if there are fewer of them.
As for tinkering... it's not that difficult to build a smart thermostat these days.
This is why we invested in Apple Home, since that is the least likely to go away completely off all the options. Any Google service other than Gmail and Google Maps may come and go so while they offer amazing features at the cost of invading your privacy, there is no guarantee they will there in the long term.
Airport stuff, Ping, Monster branded beats headphones, etc.
You can get support for mac/etc stuff for 5 years after purchase (which admittedly is nice).
However, before you decide that is awesome, things like the headphones were killed with no support regardless of purchase date.
Apple also refuses to call anything it stopped manufacturing "canceled" at all.
It deliberately tries to message this part, calling them "vintage" until they have been "not manufactured" (IE canceled) for at least 7 years. They are then called "obsolete".
This is messaging specifically used to try to confuse the issue, and is unfortunately likely effective.
Apple doesn't turn down a lot of open API's because they never have them in the first place, which i'm not sure is better.
(They do turn down existing closed APIs, and not uncommonly by force - saying if you want to put your app on the store, you must use new version of API x)
"Monster and Beats ended their partnership in 2012, and Apple didn't acquire Beats till 2014.
"
Oh well, did you remove everything on the list that Google shut down post-acquisition?
No?
Okay then.
"Yes, Ping got the axe, and my heart goes out to both of Ping's active users."
Would you change your tune if you discovered the canceled google products had less users than Ping?
Google isn't cancelling majority-user products either.
If the whole point is not to hurt the minority, you are just showing you aren't willing to apply the same standards.
This whole comment feels that way - a strong inability to apply the same standards to two companies.
Again, the Monster partnership ended pre-acquisition.
I’m not criticizing Google or defending Apple. I’m just saying, your examples weren’t very convincing. If that’s the worst of Apple’s product cancellations (including one claim which wasn’t even true), that’s way better than average.
So now it’s a sin to create a product and then stop manufacturing it? The only thing I would remotely agree with is Ping but that was a social network with user counts in the dozens.
Two examples are the Airport line of products and the iPods. While the iPod Touch is still made, nothing else is. That said, they still have received recent software updates, and I personally find Apple products more palatable than anything Google or Amazon.
I don't think iPods are a good example. To my knowledge, if you still own an iPod it still works. They didn't release an update that bricks them all, they just stopped making new ones, which is a totally normal thing for a company to do.
Edit: on a more serious note, what if you loved PPC development? Apple went x86 and now you can’t develop there. It’s my main fear whenever there’s talk of them using their ARM cores for a new laptop and macOS.
To be clear, I think they pulled that transition off really well, and suspect they could do x86 => ARM better than anyone (closed ecosystem, tons of LLVM people). It would still mean they were deprecating and cancelling x86 though (presumably with a Rosetta-like translator for a while).
Inbox by Google was never a separate service it was an alternative front-end UI, so I don't see how it would indicate a risk to Gmail the service (which has had many UI changes over the years, including a clumsy and incomplete incorporation of Inbox features.)
I guess we had different perception - it happens :).
Understanding that underlying infra, when you go deep enough, may have been shared between Gmail & Inbox, same is much the case for all email services anywhere; it IS the front-end UI, and featured enabled by it, that by and large makes an email product.
Marketing at the time seemed to indicate and place Inbox as a separate product, and more than one note from Google hinted that it would replace Gmail. In hindsight it obviously didn't happen, but many of us thought it presented a significant risk to Gmail; just as recently people were looking for "Inbox alternatives" due to its demise, at the time we were searching for "Gmail alternatives" due to potential replacement by Inbox (which I think was a brilliant idea and potentially implementation - but I'm too much of a control freak to utilize:).
I always wished that Apple bought Nest instead of Google. It just made more sense. Of course this would never happen because of Apple politics, which was the reason Tony Faddell was forced out in the first place.
This is similar to running a wireless network for yourself vs your non-tech family members. For family members, it is easy to just get Google Wifi/Eero, and have good wifi through the home. For your own home, you _may_ consider running OpenWRT, and creating a bunch of VLANs, etc.
In what world could Nest have been a profitable ongoing concern without being acquired by someone?
It’s hard enough going from startup to either IPO or a self sustainable “lifestyle business” for a software company. It’s almost impossible for a hardware company - see Eero.
It seems to me that they had managed to effectively own the top end segment of the home thermostat market in term of branding and product recognition. I don't see why that wouldn't have enabled a profitable, sustainable company.
The thing is that these days people start this kind of company with their exit in mind from day one.
How sustainable? There are only three ways to sell a thermostat.
- at the time a home is being built when it’s easy to get all sorts of add ons bundle through the builder. How many homes are being built in a year?
- as a self service after market upgrade to your existing thermostat. In the grand scheme of things, how many people are willing to do that?
-working with service companies or building out a network of installers.
Also, how often do you replace your thermostat?
Look at Roku, they knew from day one that money wasn’t ultimately going to come from hardware sells. Their business model was always ultimately to get a cut of subscriptions, sell ads, and sell viewing habits.
Plenty of thermostats are sold per year. Certainly enough to sustain the many existing vendors.
E.g. I'm in the UK. There are 25 million homes here and pretty much every home has a thermostat.
If I assume that a thermostat lasts 20 years so that about 5% must be replaced in a given year that means a market of 1.25 million thermostats every year.
Every DIY and plumbing supplies shop sells thermostats, so they must sell.
How many companies sustain entire businesses just based on selling thermostats? If Nest captured the entire market and sold $225 thermostats, that's less than a $300 million a year revenue in an entire year. That doesn't take into account wholesale prices. What does the net income look like?
As said the issue is that the aim always to exit. And also that they approach this as a Silicon Valley tech company and not as a "standard" company... So spending goes out of hands and it's a billion dollars or nothing.
Personally, at this point I refuse to use products and services made by startups unless I have no other choice. Seeking "an exit" is startup code word for "we don't give a flying fuck about customers and our products; it's only a vehicle to get us rich".
From a B2B side. I’ve been on both sides of a startup.
On one side we were a small company with a large company as a customer who demanded that our code be put in escrow in the case we went out of business. The company did, but the customer hired me as a contractor because I was one of a few people in the world who knew how to develop on the proprietary platform. Even better, I was one of only three people in the world who knew how to modify the C++/MFC platform itself.
On the other side, I was the dev lead for a company and our business consisted of 60-70% of the vendors revenue. We had them put the code in escrow as part of our contract.
It probably depends on the countries but your thermostat is usually tied to your HVAC system, i.e. you usually change your thermostat when you change your HVAC, so it's more often than when homes are built.
So the best way to get volume is probably to partner with a HVAC maker.
> i.e. you usually change your thermostat when you change your HVAC
This isn't a technical requirement (in the US at least). Thermostat HVAC connections follow a simple wiring/control scheme, which is why smart thermostats can be retrofit at all.
That said, replacing an inefficient and poorly balanced HVAC system with a newer well designed one, and insulating a house to modern standards will save far more on operating costs than a smart thermostat, but it is orders of magnitude more expensive in upfront costs.
I don't think the fact that they got acquired necessarily tells you that much about whether they would have been profitable on their own.
Probably internet of things is a game Google don't want to be left out of, so they acquired one of the leaders. If this is the case, then it leaves open the possibility that Nest had a choice between profitable and more profitable.
They’ve also had rounds of VC funding. So basically, by definition they are looking for an exit strategy. Statistically, that’s not likely to be an IPO.
I got a Nest as a housewarming gift and was excited to set it up and play with it. I set it up in SmartThings, HomeBridge, IFTTT, and Alexa. That was about 2 weeks ago, now I'm considering returning it and going to with some zigbee/z-wave alternative.
This is 100% why I refuse to buy WiFi "Smart" devices. They are always a step away from being shutdown and no longer supported. Tuya devices are sometimes acceptable but normally only if someone has already cracked how to talk to them. My new Eufy RoboVac is in that category for me. I'm going to have to write the majority of the HomeBridge support for it but I know it's possible (and I LOVE Anker products).
This is 100% why I refuse to buy WiFi "Smart" devices. They are always a step away from being shutdown and no longer supported.
It is my understanding that HomeKit devices have to allow direct communication to HomeKit, meaning that $CHEAP_ASS_IOT servers can be taken down, but it will still work with HomeKit. (I did make an attempt to find a link to support this, but a few minutes didn't yield anything for/against.)
You'd still be relying on Apple for your UI. Which isn't bad but could be limiting. Better to go with a Raspberry Pi and home assistant, and add home kit as an option. Hell also add alexa and google while you are at it. You wouldn't be tied to anything.
Better to go with a Raspberry Pi and home assistant, and add home kit as an option.
Which I do have, but Home Assistant often relies on APIs that HomeKit doesn't. For instance, EcoBee thermostat: HA needs your creds to go through the EcoBee API that could be turned off in the future. HomeKit doesn't care, it talks directly to the thermostat. Now, get Home Assistant to speak HomeKitese and we have the best of both.
In summary, I'm much less concerned about Apple turning off HomeKit than I am about EcoBee getting bought, or otherwise deciding they don't want to support an API anymore.
I've never felt terribly inconvenienced by manually flipping light switches, pushing buttons on the remote, or fiddling with the thermostat. Voice control of these things introduces many new points of failure and aggravations without delivering an order-of-magnitude improvement to my daily life. I just don't find it worthwhile.
The day I can say "Google, fold the laundry" or "Alexa, make me a sandwich" and it actually does it, then I'll happily buy in to a smart home ecosystem. That's an order-of-magnitude improvement! Until then, I'm OK with the analog stuff that lasts for ages and breaks in fairly easy-to-understand-and-fix ways.
If there's anything to be learned from Nest, I think it would be interesting to se a full open source stack for things like Nest as well as Google Home / Alexa. If the NLP is right, the actual functionality is not hard to replicated means that third party integrations can be easily added/customized. Then you also eliminate the always on problem with everything going through your own servers.
What I'm imagining (all open source):
- Hardware Speaker/Microphone device (can be multiple developed of course on one standard)
- Device OS based on Linux
- NLP engine
- Easy Plug and Play Server Box
- Library / Packages for third party integrations (say Gmail et al, Spotify, Amazon, Weather.com)
- An open app store type system where all of these "skills" can actually be used with any device instead of only existing in one ecosystem
Does something like this already exist?
It would obviously take more technical know how, but I think done right it could really be a big step towards keeping the usefulness of assistants and smart home devices while building in control and security both in lasting time and attacks.
Forgive my laziness, but how does this play with third parties and where is it on the NLP/hardware front?
As much as I love the idea of going open source, the practicalities right now is using Google/Spotify/Weather/Netflix via voice control is the majority of my use cases an
I see now I'm talking less smart home and more smart assistant, so I guess this is verging off a bit from Nest's functionality. WebThings looks really good on first glance - the API seems well designed and intuitive and the gateway idea is exactly what I wanted. It seems like the NLP/Speaker to Gateway connection is needed still.
I really hope this also becomes something third parties support. I'm concerned that even if all of these pieces come together, Netflix/Spotify just say "lol no we're gonna only support Amazon/Google".
Check out the Respeaker Core v2. Right now there isn't much in the way of an end to end solution, but there are a ton of options to roll your own. And really, rolling your own is the only way to ensure privacy and longevity anyway.
Thank you! It looks like a good start but certainly lacks some of the features and I'd of course expect a more user friendly version will eventually be introduced as it matures. Nice to see people are working on it!
There's more details in other subthreads but basically the voice control and speaker aspect. i may just end up spending some time trying to build on these to make an end to end solution myself (if I ever find the time that is).
The meta-observation based on comments here is that smart home technology has bad coupling between volume customers and early adopters, who may be opinion leaders.
"Broken smart home" describes every smart home ever. If you don't believe that I have some used X10 light switches to sell you.
Smart homes are a mug's game, but some smart home devices, like smart speakers, sell well because they do enough straight out of the box and the simplest level of integration with other devices is simple enough.
If the EOL of Works With Nest troubles you, you are not the mass market. The mass market is delighted by being able to shout "Hey Google, where's my phone?" and save a few minutes of searching, and is unconcerned if in two years their Google Home Mini stops working.
I respectfully disagree. I think those that have lived in a surveillance state (which needs not be overtly totalitarian), are more keen to pick up on the non-advertised impacts of such technologies.
The Nest thermostat is really great, a huge leap over crappy manual thermostats and the expensive "high tech" ones that others in the traditional industry have tried to create (bryant, looking at you).
BUT when I purchased this, this is exactly what I was afraid of. I think this is a huge problem for the software industry in general: most companies don't last. As a customer you can't place your trust in them as they'll be gone in 5 years.
I didn't mean to provoke anyway by saying "crappy" ;-)
What I notice is that the nest does a really great job managing the temperature in my house and keeping it comfortable. It just works and it became a default expectation. We had to go back to the old thermostat after an issue with our furnace, after which I started getting a ton of complaints from everybody about too cold/too hot. It's a great example of a technology that works really well.
Having it turn off when I go to work and turn on when I'm on my home is awesome. I haven't done the math but I imagine that it saves a lot of energy vs running it 24/7, and HVAC is my biggest utility expense. I wouldn't be surprised if it also reduces wear and tear on the AC.
I bought two nest outdoor Cameras on the general recommendation that they were the best all around for the job. I have them hooked up to my home automation system so that they sync away statuses - now this is pretty much kaput.
How much would it possibly cost for Google to just keep the Works with Nest Apis on maintenance mode? I personally will never buy another Nest (or I guess Google Nest) product since apparently this is how they are treating folks.
> How much would it possibly cost for Google to just keep the Works with Nest Apis on maintenance mode?
The cost is basically infinite as Google is internally structured, maintenance on anything but a monster service is a career dead end. It would likely be worse for an acquired service like Nest, the experience gained wouldn't transfer over to Google's back end.
Home Assistant can interface with many different services. I use it with Z-Wave and the (undocumented) cloud API for my A/C, as well as pulling some data from weather services etc.
There are a lot of different Z-Wave devices for controlling lights, motors, heat, as well as sensors for motion, smoke, luminosity etc. Zigbee is another standard which can also be used with Home Assistant, which is mostly for lighting AFAIK.
The way Home Assistant is written it's relatively easy to write a new service which exposes devices that can control or sense. Sensor readings and control is unified, so you can mix multiple platforms in your automation. You could have a Z-Wave motion sensor trigger a Philips Hue (Zigbee) light if the weather service (HTTP) tells you it's past sunset.
HASS won't get you around this shutdown, but it is a great solution to avoid these kinds of things. local server, local communication is a requirement for all the devices I put in my smart home. HASS does not tie you down to any manufacturer, just make sure the devices you add have local control.
What I don't understand is... What's in this for Google? Why are they making such a radical, customer-hostile, partner-hostile change in direction? Strategically, this just seems all wrong to me, but there's clearly a Big Picture I'm not seeing.
Unless the service is monstrous like search or GMail, working on maintaining existing product infrastructure is a career dead end in the company, the game is to be part of a project launch. And Google's back end stuff constantly changes, so significant amount of maintenance is needed to keep anything running indefinitely, another reason for all the things they've killed.
Maybe the conversion of Nest's infrastructure was internally viewed as more maintenance than new project, so it didn't get much in the way of resources? Google palpably doesn't care about brand damage so that's not a consideration.
Good thing i never bought a Nest device. As with most "Google made" devices the lifespan and their commitment to support a product are abysmal.
Honestly we need to change the way we think about products - especially household products like those Nest was selling. No way can i save money with it if i pay 300$ and it gets killed after 2 or 3 years. And i'm not even talking about the environmental aspects.
The documentary about Dieter Rams makes me long for more designers who understand their responsibility.
What would you expect to happen. This was written the moment G bought it. Of course they are going to merge the platform into Google-Home. This was inevitable
Merging can be done without killing the existing API. I don't care if they stick "Google Home Assistant Plus+" in front of it as long as the API allows for interfacing with the hardware I purchased.
Instead, Google decided to go the full-Google kill-everything route.
I had this hope that the nest brand itself would survive and be as it was - with perhaps some products migrated into that brand. But that was misplaced hope.
This is still the Thread protocol under the hood, right? Are developers prevented from creating another platform based on thread (or openthread) somehow?
Seems like an opportunity to target people who don't want to move to Google. But, in reality, your average person won't really care. They'll just migrate over and not think twice.
Its an interesting move. Google has the muscle here to innovate on a good local area IoT protocol and get a large amount of devices using it. There's a slight chance it'll be opened up one day but I won't hold my breath.
You can't make this up. Google pushing for privacy and control in one breath, and the very next are merging Nest personal accounts and data into their massive architecture.
My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago.
Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million mansion and when he wanted to show the camera team his 100k home cinema room they couldn't see anything because his smart lighting system was stuck in an update loop and nobody had a clue how to fix it. In the interview he said it's not a big deal because he doesn't like to have the lights on when watching a movie anyway. L.O.L.
If I had a 100k cinema room then it would be certainly be a big deal to me if I can't even see where the heck I'm walking.
In my entire life I never thought "damn, how nice would it be if I could turn on the lights in my bedroom from downstairs on my phone". It's just not a problem which I think people have, but somehow the consumer industry has convinced so many fools to buy cheaply fabricated, badly secured, even worse programmed and often not long supported smart home devices which add absolutely no benefit to anyone's everyday life and cause lots of problems.
By the time I find my phone lying around in my lounge, unlock it through Face ID or finger touch, open up the home app, find the home device which I want to control, then make whatever change I wanted to do I am much faster to just get my arse up from the couch, walk over and turn it on/off with a normal hand movement. On the way I can also grab a beer from the fridge and then continue watching the telly and laugh about some fools who spent 100k on a home cinema without lights.