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I'm still not clear on what the value proposition is supposed to be here. I can understand why hardware manufacturers are excited about the idea of charging mor

I'm still not clear on what the value proposition is supposed to be here. I can understand why hardware manufacturers are excited about the idea of charging more money for their devices, and I can understand why software people are excited about the idea of muscling into the world of consumer goods by pushing software into ordinary household objects, but what good is any of this stuff supposed to do - even theoretically - for the people they are expecting to pay for it? Why would you want to take something as straightforward, reliable, and inexpensive as a thermostat and jam a bunch of complicated, fritzy, instantly-obsolescent Internet hardware into it? I don't understand, even in theory, what good this would do. Are there really people who want to futz with their thermostats all the time? I can't remember the last time I've looked at or even thought about the one in my house. And how am I supposed to trust these people? Nobody gets security right, hardware companies least of all; of course these gadgets are going to come encumbered with security holes, bizarre phone-home policies, "you must log in through our terrible cloud service" systems, and the most draconian license agreements possible guaranteeing that none of their many issues can be fixed. They're going to use these things as marketing opportunities, you just know it. How can they resist? And the implications once law enforcement agencies get their hands on the data streams!! Of course every new technology has some downsides compared to whatever it is designed to replace. I'm just baffled by the whole "IoT" phenomenon because the downsides are numerous and blatant, but nobody ever seems to talk about the upsides. The people selling this stuff appear to believe that the benefits are so obvious it's not necessary to mention them, but my imagination is not adequate to the task of guessing what they might be.

dalke 11y ago
> Are there really people who want to futz with their thermostats all the time? Yes. I would regularly turn the heat down before leaving, turn it back up when coming home, and make it cooler before going to bed. I can see the In general though, I am also baffled by it, for the reasons you list. (Also, Amory Lovins, the Passivhaus movement, and others have convinced me that the real problem was the need to have a large furnace in the first place. There would be little call for an improved temperature controller if the heating bill were under 10% as large as they typically are now. But that's a different topic.)
- marssaxman 11y ago
  My thermostat already does exactly what you describe, and it has no internet anything; it's just a timer. I set it up once, a couple of years ago, and haven't touched it since.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Congrats. Mine didn't. I'm "not clear on what the value proposition" is in replacing "something as straightforward, reliable, and inexpensive as a thermostat" with a more expensive, error-prone timer-based thermostat with a additional fault modes.
    - marssaxman 11y ago
      I don't know either; it came with the house. It hasn't proven to be error-prone, though, probably because devices like it have been available off-the-shelf for thirty years.
      - dalke 11y ago
        The equivalent of the you of 30 years ago would have asked the same questions about the then-new programmable timer-based devices. The equivalent of you in 30 years might, on the other hand, consider secure network-controlled thermostats to be normal off-the-shelf technology.
        marssaxman 11y ago
        Sure, I'm aware of that process, but that's not really what I'm asking. Thirty years ago, were I feeling skeptical about programmable thermostats, I could have asked why such a thing would be worthwhile, and someone could have explained how I could save money on heating by having my house cool down while I was asleep and then warm up again before I got up in the morning. We could then have a reasonable conversation about the risks and benefits of the new technology, about whether this new ability justified the increased cost and decreased reliability implied by the added automation. With this IoT stuff, though, I feel like someone is trying to sell me glow-in-the-dark sunglasses, or an electric belt buckle. Okay, so you can embed a TCP stack and a terrible web interface in this gadget, that's great, but so what? What problem is it supposed to solve? I can't even have the conversation about whether this technology is worth its extra cost, because nobody within my filter-bubble is explaining what the potential benefit is supposed to be. I'm commenting about it here because I hope somebody can point me to wherever it is that people are talking about the potential benefits of IOT devices, which might even theoretically justify them, because right now all I see are lots of really obvious downsides.
anonyfox 11y ago
I agree with the view that the current IoT-stuff is mostly scam and utter garbage. No doubt. People are playing around and startups want to hit a homerun desperately. But these early stages won't last too long... Having said this, I can clearly see the obvious benefits of smart "stuff". Door Locks/Security, Fridges with automatic bookkeeping and groceries lists on the go, Pans that optimize your steak interactively, temperature/air management through orchestration of air conditioner/heater/windows, automatic Breakfast (orchestration of coffee machine, toaster, eggboiler, ... ), ... and so on, just a few things from the top of my head. Of course something like IFTTT helps a lot here in these early days to test workflows. But before there are rainbows and unicorns, we need to advance quite a bit more. Devices must be way cheaper commodities. Protocols and "Hubs" must be standardized, hardened and secured, something that only can happen with true OSS and the experience that comes from playing around right now. And last but not least: we need just a few years of waiting so that the younger more tech-savvy generation becomes a more dominant buying force. The IoT doesn't need a "killer app" or something like that... it will silently progress in to our life more and more.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  I guess what I'm hoping for here are some links to what Microsoft people would call "scenarios", little stories explaining how people would use these hypothetical IOT gadgets and how their lives would be made better as a result. I'm being completely literal when I say that my imagination is not up to the job: you clearly have some things in mind behind the references in your second paragraph there, but I don't know what you are envisioning. None of these tasks sound remotely complicated the way they are, and I really cannot imagine how stuffing a bunch of fragile, hard-to-maintain automation into the gadgets used to accomplish them could possibly make them any easier. Why is this hypothetical younger tech-savvy generation going to want IOT devices? What benefit are they going to be perceiving in them? What sci-fi are they going to be reading that gives them a picture of an IOT-enabled future they want to live in?
  - anonyfox 11y ago
    I'd say first and foremost it's exciting as a (purely virtual) software developer to actually do things in the real world through devices. Excitement drives hype, and so on. For the usage side, i think the actual useful stuff is when many of these devices are capable of interacting intelligently. For example take room air management: I want to sleep in cool conditions, wake up warmth, save energy while I'm at work, come home into a acceptable warm temperature, and whenever I'm home I also want to breath fresh air. This needs a interaction between the air conditionier, heater and windows, plus my smartphone to enable them learning my daily routine: wake up times through the week/weekend, when I leave, when I start to return home, when I arrive at home, when I go to sleep, and this cycles optimized through the seasons and outside weather conditions. Also I want to "fine-tune" this orchestrated system easily with my phone, not controlling every single device on its own. And finally: save energy whenever possible. Add in more family members ad their schedules. So basically we need a myriad of ensors/devices, plus some machinelearning that runs on dirt-cheap hardware, plus some kind of local cloud hub, which itself can be securely accessed remotely. I hope you get the idea
paulddraper 11y ago
My family and I travel frequently. Sometimes I forget to turn my thermostat down before I leave (though I remember a couple hours later, when it is too late). Even when I do remember, it's a little bit miserable for me and my kids to arrive home and everything is 48°F. A thermostat that I can adjust remotely would be awesome! I hope to get one soon.

dalke 11y ago

> Are there really people who want to futz with their thermostats all the time? Yes. I would regularly turn the heat down before leaving, turn it back up when coming home, and make it cooler before going to bed. I can see the In general though, I am also baffled by it, for the reasons you list. (Also, Amory Lovins, the Passivhaus movement, and others have convinced me that the real problem was the need to have a large furnace in the first place. There would be little call for an improved temperature controller if the heating bill were under 10% as large as they typically are now. But that's a different topic.)

marssaxman 11y ago
My thermostat already does exactly what you describe, and it has no internet anything; it's just a timer. I set it up once, a couple of years ago, and haven't touched it since.
- dalke 11y ago
  Congrats. Mine didn't. I'm "not clear on what the value proposition" is in replacing "something as straightforward, reliable, and inexpensive as a thermostat" with a more expensive, error-prone timer-based thermostat with a additional fault modes.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    I don't know either; it came with the house. It hasn't proven to be error-prone, though, probably because devices like it have been available off-the-shelf for thirty years.
    - dalke 11y ago
      The equivalent of the you of 30 years ago would have asked the same questions about the then-new programmable timer-based devices. The equivalent of you in 30 years might, on the other hand, consider secure network-controlled thermostats to be normal off-the-shelf technology.
      - marssaxman 11y ago
        Sure, I'm aware of that process, but that's not really what I'm asking. Thirty years ago, were I feeling skeptical about programmable thermostats, I could have asked why such a thing would be worthwhile, and someone could have explained how I could save money on heating by having my house cool down while I was asleep and then warm up again before I got up in the morning. We could then have a reasonable conversation about the risks and benefits of the new technology, about whether this new ability justified the increased cost and decreased reliability implied by the added automation. With this IoT stuff, though, I feel like someone is trying to sell me glow-in-the-dark sunglasses, or an electric belt buckle. Okay, so you can embed a TCP stack and a terrible web interface in this gadget, that's great, but so what? What problem is it supposed to solve? I can't even have the conversation about whether this technology is worth its extra cost, because nobody within my filter-bubble is explaining what the potential benefit is supposed to be. I'm commenting about it here because I hope somebody can point me to wherever it is that people are talking about the potential benefits of IOT devices, which might even theoretically justify them, because right now all I see are lots of really obvious downsides.

anonyfox 11y ago

I agree with the view that the current IoT-stuff is mostly scam and utter garbage. No doubt. People are playing around and startups want to hit a homerun desperately. But these early stages won't last too long... Having said this, I can clearly see the obvious benefits of smart "stuff". Door Locks/Security, Fridges with automatic bookkeeping and groceries lists on the go, Pans that optimize your steak interactively, temperature/air management through orchestration of air conditioner/heater/windows, automatic Breakfast (orchestration of coffee machine, toaster, eggboiler, ... ), ... and so on, just a few things from the top of my head. Of course something like IFTTT helps a lot here in these early days to test workflows. But before there are rainbows and unicorns, we need to advance quite a bit more. Devices must be way cheaper commodities. Protocols and "Hubs" must be standardized, hardened and secured, something that only can happen with true OSS and the experience that comes from playing around right now. And last but not least: we need just a few years of waiting so that the younger more tech-savvy generation becomes a more dominant buying force. The IoT doesn't need a "killer app" or something like that... it will silently progress in to our life more and more.

marssaxman 11y ago
I guess what I'm hoping for here are some links to what Microsoft people would call "scenarios", little stories explaining how people would use these hypothetical IOT gadgets and how their lives would be made better as a result. I'm being completely literal when I say that my imagination is not up to the job: you clearly have some things in mind behind the references in your second paragraph there, but I don't know what you are envisioning. None of these tasks sound remotely complicated the way they are, and I really cannot imagine how stuffing a bunch of fragile, hard-to-maintain automation into the gadgets used to accomplish them could possibly make them any easier. Why is this hypothetical younger tech-savvy generation going to want IOT devices? What benefit are they going to be perceiving in them? What sci-fi are they going to be reading that gives them a picture of an IOT-enabled future they want to live in?
- anonyfox 11y ago
  I'd say first and foremost it's exciting as a (purely virtual) software developer to actually do things in the real world through devices. Excitement drives hype, and so on. For the usage side, i think the actual useful stuff is when many of these devices are capable of interacting intelligently. For example take room air management: I want to sleep in cool conditions, wake up warmth, save energy while I'm at work, come home into a acceptable warm temperature, and whenever I'm home I also want to breath fresh air. This needs a interaction between the air conditionier, heater and windows, plus my smartphone to enable them learning my daily routine: wake up times through the week/weekend, when I leave, when I start to return home, when I arrive at home, when I go to sleep, and this cycles optimized through the seasons and outside weather conditions. Also I want to "fine-tune" this orchestrated system easily with my phone, not controlling every single device on its own. And finally: save energy whenever possible. Add in more family members ad their schedules. So basically we need a myriad of ensors/devices, plus some machinelearning that runs on dirt-cheap hardware, plus some kind of local cloud hub, which itself can be securely accessed remotely. I hope you get the idea

paulddraper 11y ago

My family and I travel frequently. Sometimes I forget to turn my thermostat down before I leave (though I remember a couple hours later, when it is too late). Even when I do remember, it's a little bit miserable for me and my kids to arrive home and everything is 48°F. A thermostat that I can adjust remotely would be awesome! I hope to get one soon.