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I just bought a home, and just started a considerable renovation. I'm putting in new water pipes, new electrical wiring, etc. I thought of putting "smart" devic

• awjr 11y ago
  I remember when we bought our new house and the neighbour had an electric cat flap installed into the wall cavity (battery was still accessible). Then it broke. They had to cut it out and replaced it with a standard flap mounted externally.
• s_baby 11y ago
  I would still run cat6 as if I was going to use smart devices. You're already inside the walls.
  • antr 11y ago
    All rooms will have gigabit ethernet sockets :-)
    • ccozan 11y ago
      May I suggest adding also USB plugs to be able to load your devices without extra bulky part?
      • ars 11y ago
        People suggest this a lot, but it only makes sense aesthetically (and even then only sometimes). From an environmental point of view it doesn't make any sense to do this.
        • icebraining 11y ago
          Isn't the draw negligible nowadays? Even my cheap unbranded USB chargers remain at room temperature when nothing is plugged in. And you could always get sockets with switches.
          • ars 11y ago
            It costs resources simply to make the device. They tend to cost much more than the simple bricks, which means they use more resources than the simple bricks. And unlike the bricks which you have approx 1 per device, with outlets you need too many of them.
            • icebraining 11y ago
              I don't agree that being costlier means they use more resources, but no argument about needing more chargers this way. On the other hand, you could buy a single beefy converter (something that could manage a few amps) and then pass 5V DC cable along the regular AC wiring. Not sure about the efficiency of that, though.
  • legulere 11y ago
    Empty conduits seem like a better idea than cables. Tech changes way to fast to put cables directly into the wall (except for 110/230V~ power which seems to stay stable until now)
    • gwern 11y ago
      I don't know about that. Cat6 Ethernet started being manufactured in... what, 2001? 14 years ago? And few consumers have yet to find its support for 10GB Ethernet to be limiting or an issue. I can't think of what other cabling you might need to run, so if you're putting in conduits, it sure seems like a good idea to put in that Ethernet.
      • detaro 11y ago
        Except a lot of the automation devices don't use Ethernet, but other bus protocols, and maybe central low-voltage power. Which you might be able to send over Cat6, but I wouldn't bet on it, especially if you want to get it professionally installed.
        • CydeWeys 11y ago
          I'd be very surprised if the standard IoT ecosystem that ultimately wins out doesn't use standard 110 V lines already in the walls for power and WiFi for data. Realistically I am not seeing it being worth it for the average person to spend many thousands of dollars to rewire their entire homes when the alternative is to simply get much cheaper devices that use the wireless network you already have and plug into the wiring and outlets you already have.
• hessenwolf 11y ago
  http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=infant-child-and-teen-mortality http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=infant-child-and-teen... Looks to me like infant mortality (under age one) has halved between 1977 and 2013. I understand the argument of "it worked fine for me", but, well, on a portfolio basis, you and I were dying a bit faster back then. Outpatient care is a big field these days. Something that, with extremely little effort, can reduce the odds of death or disability, is quite tempting. A smart nappy/diaper with a disposable nutrition-analysing smart-chip is not that far off.
  • antr 11y ago
    Maybe you are right... but a onesie that "knows that when a baby wakes up, the parents will, too -- so it turns on lights and music and even makes the coffee." ... is of no use to fight infant mortality.
    • tinco 11y ago
      That's not all it does, you just picked out the ridiculous part. If you'd quote the entire piece on that onesie you'd see that it actually has a bunch of features that very well might reduce infant mortality. The author also invokes 'helicopter parenting' as if it applies to taking care of babies. Helicopter parenting is when parents disrupt other caregivers during the care for their child, it has nothing to do with being sure about whether your baby is dying. I am confident parents themselves can configure and determine when and when not to wake up when their baby is awake. As a non-parent, do parents really drink coffee in the middle of the night when their baby wakes up? That seems like a terrible idea..
      • tptacek 11y ago
        The article addresses this point directly, but because you aren't a parent, it may have gone over your head. The real problem with a smart-onesie isn't simply that it's useless, but that infants are restless, and any signal this device carries will be overwhelmed by the noise. When you're the parent of an infant, your #2 goal (after "keep the baby alive") is "ruthlessly attend to your own rest needs".
• guybrushT 11y ago
  One of the companies that is solving this very problem is Xiaomi. Their method is quite crude - that is, they make everything themselves. But the end result is that everything they make - from an air purifier to a TV - is connected and operated via a similar / familiar OS called MIUI. They give away their phones for very cheap, because the phone is the Trojan horse - it is the remote control for all the other devices it makes. Xiaomi is the largest and fastest growing IoT company on the planet, and worth keeping an eye out for.
  • freehunter 11y ago
    Yup, Xiamoi makes everything interoperable by making it themselves. And Apple makes HomeKit. And Google makes their own. And Microsoft makes their own. And HP makes their own. And... See the problem?
    • guybrushT 11y ago
      I do. And you are right. I think we will get to a place where one company does it right, before we agree on an interoperable standard.
      • krisdol 11y ago
        I'm cynica that will be the case. On the Internet TV front we have roku, apple tv, chrome cast, kindle fire TV-- all of them empty plastic boxes doing nearly the same exact thing, and yet there is no interop to speak of. It's just more walled gardens
        • narrowrail 11y ago
          I've been considering replacing my media PC with a Roku, so I'm curious why you would call them "empty plastic boxes" considering the Roku can stream from my local server and I block all outbound requests at my router (firewall). The advantage I see is the 5W power draw vs. my current 20W. I'm also unclear on what interoperability would mean for one of these devices. I don't think 2 Roku on the same network have any capacity to communicate either (maybe I'm wrong?).
• JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Run some plastic pipes with lengths of string inside them around -- then when you want to install new cabling you can easily drag the cabling through the pipes without damaging your walls.
• LordHumungous 11y ago
  I agree with you on everything except the smart onesie. If used intelligently it could be very useful. For example, if your kid's temperature drops every night and then they wake up then maybe they are cold. Or something.
• thecodemonkey 11y ago
  I've started working on exactly this problem. I don't think that sticking everything to a specific vendor is the right solution, and hoping that everybody is going to adopt the same standard is just not going to happen. I'm building a simple open source API that will connect all your devices together regardless of whether they have a fancy API or not. [1] I just started working on it so it's definitely far from done, but I think that this might be a step in the right direction. [1] http://github.com/hjem/hjem http://github.com/hjem/hjem
  • wpietri 11y ago
    It always concerns me when a programmer reads a customer problem and offers a technical solution. It could be that an open-source API really will solve the problems he mentioned, but if you want adoption, you'll need to get better at explaining how they customer's life is going to get better. If I say, "X is too much hassle" and someone replies with "Good news, I put a bunch of PHP up on Github", I'm not seeing less hassle. I'm seeing more hassle. Now I don't have to just worry about a half-dozen vendors, their possibly-janky products, and their willingness to spend 30 years supporting something that fell out of fashion. Now I can also worry about trying to glue all that together with somebody's hobby code that, if the average open source project is any guide, will be swiftly abandoned.
    • bitdivision 11y ago
      Well I don't think OP was trying to help everyone immediately, but he is at least making a start. The beta API someone threw up on github obviously isn't going to help the average consumer, but it might be the start of a community of enthusiasts. Maybe one day those enthusiasts build a robust system with wider adoption and a company behind it. If you want something that 'just works', then github is probably not the first place you should look.
      • wpietri 11y ago
        > If you want something that 'just works', then github is probably not the first place you should look. Yes, and that's my point. The expressed problem was that somebody renovating a home looked at a bunch of the options and said that they were too much hassle, too much risk. When somebody says, "This technology doesn't look like something I want to deal with for 20 years," it seems to miss the point to add, "Hey, here's some source code to something even less likely to last 20 years." I'm not saying it's bad to try write code for fun. I too have a GitHub repository with some dubious home automation code. [1] But as a developer, when a user talks about a problem, I think it's vital to truly listen to the problem and then only talk about a solution if it actually solves something for them. [1] Basically, redshift for my house: https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise
• tw04 11y ago
  That's why you make sure they use one of the standards based protocols, then buy something like a smartthings hub which is open enough that you can write your own apps if the vendor decides to abandon theirs. You don't need the vendor to update their app, you just need them to operate with the hub, and then talk to the hub directly to control the device.
  • BurritoAlPastor 11y ago
    Ah, yes. Not only do I pay $50 for my light switches, I also have to write my own interface before they behave differently from $10 light switches. What an incredible value proposition.
    • tw04 11y ago
      That would be the case in the most extreme circumstances. And likely in those circumstances, you'll make money. Much like the general Linux ecosystem, someone else has the same problem, is in college/has no kids/has a ton of spare time, and has already written the program for you. Out of my entire household, I've written one app ever, and it was because I wanted an alert on my sump pump based on an amperage draw on an outlet... and even that was based on someone else's code. I just changed the amp draw variable.
      • nitrogen 11y ago
        What outlets do you use for monitoring current draw?
        • tw04 11y ago
          I haven't seen anything commercialized yet. As far as I know the only way to do it at this point is to still build your own. There are lots of options, but for something simple you can go with something like this: https://learn.adafruit.com/tweet-a-watt/ https://learn.adafruit.com/tweet-a-watt/
    • plonh 11y ago
• tw04 11y ago
  That's why you make sure they use one of the standards based protocols, then buy something like a smartthings hub which is open enough that you can write your own apps if the vendor decides to abandon theirs. You don't need the vendor to update their app, you just need them to operate with the hub, and then talk to the hub directly to control the device.
• speleding 11y ago
  I renovated my house a few months ago and also had to decide whether or not to go "smart" on the lighting, switches thermostat, etc. Did a lot of research and came to the same conclusion that there was little benefit and large chance that I would have obsolete technology next year. However, I did go for an electronic doorlock (with finger print reader) and after just a few months I can not imagine ever going back to having regular keys again. If you have a family with small kids and cleaning ladies that need to come and go this saves so much logistic hassle. No need to wait for a delivery man, just give him a temp code to put it in the hall, etc. There are definitely a few great IoT things, but just like we once imagined a PC would be used to store recipes, we just have to find out what the truly useful IoT things are.
  • _asummers 11y ago
    In general, fingerprints should not be treated as a password or key. They unfortunately are being used as such by Apple and Samsung and these fingerprint locks. A key is something you keep private, but you leave your fingerprint on everything, including the doorknob you're trying to keep locked. Additionally, once compromised, the key cannot be revoked. I don't doubt it is much more convenient, but I would personally never trust the security of my home to one. The one area that electronic locks clearly win out on is with auditability. You can show when the door was opened and by whom, if they each have separate keys. And when a key is lost, that specific key can be revoked, rather than changing the entire lock.
    • adventured 11y ago
      The only type of people that door locks keep out, are mostly honest people. That's why fingerprint locks are mostly about convenience, not drastically boosted security. If you have a normal door lock, a professional thief of the sort that would be able to (or try to) steal + use your fingerprint is already a threat. It's no worse than the ways a pro can break into your house without a fingerprint lock. If someone has procured your finger print, and is now targeting your house, you've got much bigger problems than what a key lock can prevent. It means you're being specifically targeted, they've cased you and your house.
    • 11y ago
• joshstrange 11y ago
  I agree with nearly everything you have said except for: > and don't get me started on the smart baby monitors, etc... if my siblings an I were brought up just fine in the 80's without being in a "smart onesie", I'm sure we can do just as fine today. I even agree that the baby monitor mentioned is a little over the top (I don't care for the lights/music/coffee aspect) but it's important not to write things off just because "I was raised just fine without X". That logic doesn't hold for most things. And for high-risk babies that onesie is probably multitudes of times cheaper than expensive medical equipment to do the same level of monitoring. (Sad Personal Anecdote Below) My youngest sister died when she was very young (<2 mo old) due to a medical condition (birth defect). Now this isn't to say that this product would have saved her life. In fact I'm nearly 100% positive it wouldn't have. My parents were already awake due to me waking up from a bad dream and so my mom caught her stopping breathing probably almost immediately and we lived next door to a doctor who was over within minutes before she was rushed off to the hospital. She still died but I can't help but think that while she couldn't be saved there are other babies and young children out there that could be saved from such a device. Also there is nothing to say that constant monitoring wouldn't have caught signs of this a little earlier allowing my parents enough time to get her to professionals. All I'm saying is don't write off this just because you "got by fine without it".
  • cortesoft 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
    • joshstrange 11y ago
      I'm not sure how this plays in at all... Could you please expand on that?
      • zck 11y ago
        I'm not the person you responded to, but survivorship bias is what you were originally responding to -- a claim like "we survived without the baby monitor, so it's unnecessary" falls flat because the people that didn't survive without it aren't here to tell you it would've saved them.
• germinalphrase 11y ago
  Can anyone speak to the difficulty of homebrew automating some very simple processes? For instance, I have no interest in buying into an ecosystem or any sort of smart appliance - but I would love to have low-watt floor lights turn on as I half-asleep stumble to the kitchen for a glass of water at 3am. I want my idiosyncratic needs to drive 'smart' home additions - not the shared needs of target population Y. Is there a community around this sort of thing I could link up with?
  • tdfw 11y ago
    I think the safest way to go is to purchase products with open standards, namely Z-Wave and Zigbee. They're open protocols that can be used with any number of HA products; SmartThings, Wink, Vera, etc. You can purchase Z-Wave thermostats from Honeywell, switches from Leviton, locks from Schlage and so on. I use OpenHAB in my home, which is an open-source home automation server. It can run on anything from a RPi to a blade with just a few necessary additions (namely a Z-Wave dongle and some sort of network connection.) OpenHAB requires a fair bit of programming knowledge and the learning curve can be steep for some, but overall it's very functional. A few things I do in my house: - When the garage door opens and it's after sunset, the hallway lights turn on and set themselves to 50% brightness. - When I start watching a show on PleX, the living room lights fade out. If the show is paused, they'll come up enough for me to navigate around and refill my drink. - When both my girlfriend and I are gone from the house, the A/C shuts off. When it detects we're within 1/2 mile of the house, it'll come back on so it's comfortable when we arrive. There's a million other things you can do with OpenHAB. It has hundreds of "bindings" to different HA products and supports HTTP endpoints, etc. Proprietary standards are bound to go away eventually, but open standards with open-source software will always be around.
  • tmuir 11y ago
    A great place to start is Node-Red: http://nodered.org/ http://nodered.org/ Its a node.js browser based programming environment that allows you to connect anything to anything. You can run it on any desktop platform, as well as Beaglebone, Raspberry Pi, etc. There are all sorts of nodes for networking, such as push notifications, social media, protocols like MQTT, or XMPP. You can make system calls, which means you can kick off python, bash, C, or other scripts/programs. That means you can cURL anything, and process it however you want. If you're on a Beaglebone or Raspberry Pi, this also means you can access GPIO/ADC/PWM/whatever you have drivers for. There is also an interface for Arduino, but this requires a PC to run the actual server, and the Arduino is just a peripheral. The embedded linux boards can run the entire thing by themselves.
• detaro 11y ago
  Yeah, and the more long-term players in the automation space give you reliable parts with long-term availability from different sources... but they are even more expensive, don't integrate well with fancy gadgets (apps) and, biggest show-stopper, don't make the configuration tools easily available, so you need to call a tech for nearly everything instead of doing it yourself, which is stupid for a private home.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• Joeri 11y ago
  There is a standard for home automation with thousands of devices in the market. It's called KNX. The problem is that setting up a KNX network is extremely technically involved, and the nice looking devices cost a lot of money. I looked into a smart doorbell for our new home. The KNX system cost nearly ten times what the ring video doorbell cost and required me to put in KNX wiring. So I got the ring doorbell, even though it's a closed system.
  • CydeWeys 11y ago
    It sounds like KNX isn't good enough then, and may never be if the standard truly does require special wiring. Another standard with cheaper devices and that operates over standard WiFi would probably have a much better shot.
    • Joeri 11y ago
      KNX can be used over wifi, it is both a protocol and a wiring standard. Many KNX devices are not wifi-enabled however, which means you still have to use some wiring to connect things. I agree KNX is not good enough, even if it's the only home automation standard worth anything. The biggest problem however is not the wiring, which is preferable to wifi due to the reliable connectivity, but the consortium-made KNX ETS software. You use that software to change the configuration of your devices, it has no alternatives, and it is absolutely horrible. Anyway, if all those IoT smart home vendors would just implement KNX support, and a group of open source developers would get together to build some proper management software to replace ETS, it would stand a chance. It at least has the benefit of being an ISO standard and having lots of device choice in the market.
• grey-area 11y ago
  While smart devices are inchoate at present, and likely to be difficult to get right (I see why you're not interested right now), I think it's a mistake to dismiss the concept based on current tech. Long term probably most of the devices/materials we own will be networked in some way, acting as sensors, reacting to local conditions by changing, updatable with software. That's all a bit fuzzy, but specifically things like heated floors and lighting which sense presence, windows which react to lighting conditions or insolation requirements, voice controls, panels which turn into display surfaces or speakers and a desk which could charge and update objects wirelessly when placed on it would all be very useful and far more powerful if driven by software which was updatable. Software will eat the world, one object/material at a time. I don't know if the revolution will be in one OS which runs your home (though corporations would love to sell you that), it might be more in our tools, clothes and structures gradually becoming networked and part of a global computer. Specific operating systems seem to me to be declining in importance as the network grows and a constellation of devices which talk to each other arises. There are of course potential downsides like security and privacy but I think those will be outweighed by the obvious benefits. Do we need any of this? No, and our ancestors lived without it. Will we want any of it? Probably, if on balance it improves our quality of life.
• ballsohardy 11y ago
  i think we are in the trough of disillusionment with regards to IoT devices
• alkonaut 11y ago
  > After considerable research, it's not worth the hussle or money. Agree. There is no point in making a 75% smart home. A 10% smart home is fine, it feels like a nifty gadget here and there. It can be clever to automate just a few things, maybe get a nest or make it possible to start watering plants remotely when on holiday. But the dream of the full smart home isn't here yet. If you have 9 lights switchable on your phone, that tenth light just feels like a hassle. If you try, you end up spending more time fiddling with your smart stuff than you would ever spend walking to light switches. I have a shortlist of demands for "smart home" things (specifically the simplest things like switches and other fixtures). 1) It should be as reliable as a regular dumb switch. It can't work 99% of the time, or take 100ms from switching to lighting. 2) It should require no extra cabling. If I can run ethernet over my power lines already, surely I should be able to reliably route around some smart home packets too- 3) It should work as far as possible with existing fixtures. I don't want to replace my switch, I just want to add a smart relay behind the switch. Switches are pieces of interior design, I don't want to be limited to a choice of 2 colors of extremely expensive "smart switches". 4) I don't want any products backed by a single/small company. It should be a reasonably big consortium or an open standard. Z-wave checks that box, barely (and it fails horribly at item 1). If I were to build a house today I would probably try to make some good decisions in "dumb" power cabling such as trying to put all lighting together behind some central master relay to be able to do the hotel style switch-all when leaving, and also put Cat6+PoE sockets everywhere (both high and low on walls) as to be able to put sensors (motion, smoke, whatever) without ugly cable routing or using wireless. > if my siblings an I were brought up just fine in the 80's without being in a "smart onesie", I'm sure we can do just as fine today That's really the same argument as "we were brought up in asbestos houses with smoking people and we're fine..." isn't it :)
  • rsl7 11y ago
    I thought I'd done my research when I built a dedicated movie theater in my basement, around 2004 or 2005. I hung a decent projector from the ceiling and wired DVI through the walls and ceiling. What I should have done was put an accessible conduit so it was replaceable. because.. only a few years later the projector was destroyed in a lightning storm, which also took out a fridge, toaster, a bunch of GFI outlets, router, etc.; and by that time, decent 1080p projectors were affordable ... and were all HDMI. so - conduit for those cool hidden in-wall wires like HDMI for your wall-mounted TV, etc. - whole house surge protector Your PoE idea is pretty good, ethernet has been around and will be for a while, and wireless will never really cut it all the time.
• jsingleton 11y ago
  I think there needs to be some sort of open source implementation against an open standard. These look interesting and MQTT is pretty popular. https://home-assistant.io https://home-assistant.io http://www.stavros.io/posts/messaging-for-your-things http://www.stavros.io/posts/messaging-for-your-things
• fabiandesimone 11y ago
  What about doing it with Z Wave enabled devices. I'm thinking of starting 'automating' my home and everything points to having a Vera Light and Z Wave stuff.
  • fr0styMatt2 11y ago
    I've started down that road with Philips Hue lights. Admittedly expensive, but nice and I can build up the system over time. They're Zigbee and Philips are very very open with them. Incidentally they do the best warm-white I've ever seen in an LED bulb, which is nice. I'm actually looking at one of the Hue Tap switches now; they're a battery-less switch (kinetic power) with three buttons (I think) that you can customize. So I can, for example, put one in my bedroom and have a button on it that turns all the lights off in the house for when I'm about to go to sleep, etc. No need to run cables through walls and have switches where you want.