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I don't think you can compare anything Raspberry Pi with a polished consumer product. The ideal world does not exist for those who already spent $300 on the hub

I don't think you can compare anything Raspberry Pi with a polished consumer product. The ideal world does not exist for those who already spent $300 on the hub.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
In IoT, Raspberry Pi and a "polished consumer products" are two different categories. The latter usually looks pretty and comes in nice packaging, but it has little in terms of usefulness, adds some user-hostile features (like vendor's cloud dependance) and its actual hardware could be replicated by a hobbyist at 1/10 of the price with said Raspberry Pi and a short visit to Aliexpress. Sadly, companies learn that spending money on sales&marketing has better ROI than spending it on making an actually useful product. And it seems to me that startups are bigger offenders than established companies here.
- gh02t 11y ago
  Yeah, when I first started playing with smart home stuff I looked at commercial hardware and saw that a lot of it requires a subscription on top of steep up front costs. So I broke out my oscilloscope and soldering iron and made my own for a tiny fraction of the cost and have had great fun doing it. It used to be really hard to do this because wireless communication with hobbyist microcontrollers was either tedious or expensive (the old Arduino wifi shields were like $30-40). The RasPi and ESP8266 have really made things more accessible; you can build a central hub for $50 with a good wifi antenna and then something like a temp/light/humidity sensor is about $10. Or control lights with the $5 Sonoff switch from Itead (basically an ESP+relay on a well designed PCB, that is hobbyist friendly and lets you put your own firmware on it if you like). Or great free controller tools like Home Assistant and data management like InfluxDB and Grafana. It's a great time to be an electronics hobbyist. The rise of IoT and smart home applications have produced a surge of new and interesting products for hobbyists that didn't exist before, I'm guessing as a side effect of dissatisfaction with the state of commercial products.
  - Chris2048 11y ago
    Did you document your hobby activities?
    - gh02t 11y ago
      ...Eventually. I have notes, but a writeup is in my list of things to do.
      - Chris2048 11y ago
        Great :-) Do you already have a blog/etc you intend to put it on?
        gh02t 11y ago
        I'll probably do it on Github and post it here.
deciplex 11y ago
Nest isn't a polished consumer product unless your bar for "polished consumer product" starts and stops at the industrial design budget. If they didn't look nice anyone with sense would call these products what they are: trash. And, anyone who wasted money on one... did in fact waste their money. They can still get on board with a working, non-Nest solution at any time.
chris_wot 11y ago
Yeah, the article says the devices weren't fully operational when it was launched, and now never will be. If that's commercial polish, I'll stick with the Pi!
ocdtrekkie 11y ago
Unfortunately, this is a huge market gap nobody's currently filling. "I want an open source platform, but I don't want to put together my own wiring" is a surprisingly open field. I saw an advert for ONE such device that claimed to be fully open source, but you can't buy it yet, so that doesn't really mean anything yet.
- rimantas 11y ago
  Maybe that's because this demand is much lower than you imagine? Nobody cares about open source.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    We already have huge widespread popularity for things like the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino. The former is nearly a household name, even if people have no idea what to do with them. And even if you don't know what open source does, is, or means, the benefits of such a product will prove itself over on it's own.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Yeah, Open Source / Open Hardware in IoT is a step back in the direction of how things always were and how they are supposed to be - you buy the device, you own it. People understand that. They expect their washing machines and microwave ovens to work until the hardware itself breaks (let's forget for a moment about the sick practice of planned obsolescence). They expect to be able to repair them or find a third party that can. People don't have to understand "open source". They will understand the concept of "works until hardware dies", or "can be taken to a repairman for fixing", or "I can go to a mall and buy an extension from some random vendor and it will work".
      - tamana 11y ago
        People do NOT expect to repair their home appliances anymore. Repair costs more than replacement.
ploxiln 11y ago
It's funny, but that's true of other categories of "products" as well. Sometimes, you can't really buy things that work well. You have to learn and build yourself, or do without. Another example: security of computer systems. The common thing here is the widespread demand in addition to the widespread lack of expertise. This results in the market being filled with "products" and "solutions" which are poor quality, but out-compete things which are good quality. Because most buyers can't tell. So if you don't have the expertise to judge for yourself, you'll end up with junk. Sometimes, there isn't a big enough market of buyers with expertise for there to be any decent options available to buy. You just have to cobble it together yourself with hobbyist/non-vendor produced parts.
logicallee 11y ago
>I don't think you can compare anything Raspberry Pi with a polished consumer product. put it in a hummus tub :)
- KON_Air 11y ago
  and put a "300$" price tag on it to complete the illusion.

I don't think you can compare anything Raspberry Pi with a polished consumer product. The ideal world does not exist for those who already spent $300 on the hub.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

In IoT, Raspberry Pi and a "polished consumer products" are two different categories. The latter usually looks pretty and comes in nice packaging, but it has little in terms of usefulness, adds some user-hostile features (like vendor's cloud dependance) and its actual hardware could be replicated by a hobbyist at 1/10 of the price with said Raspberry Pi and a short visit to Aliexpress. Sadly, companies learn that spending money on sales&marketing has better ROI than spending it on making an actually useful product. And it seems to me that startups are bigger offenders than established companies here.

gh02t 11y ago
Yeah, when I first started playing with smart home stuff I looked at commercial hardware and saw that a lot of it requires a subscription on top of steep up front costs. So I broke out my oscilloscope and soldering iron and made my own for a tiny fraction of the cost and have had great fun doing it. It used to be really hard to do this because wireless communication with hobbyist microcontrollers was either tedious or expensive (the old Arduino wifi shields were like $30-40). The RasPi and ESP8266 have really made things more accessible; you can build a central hub for $50 with a good wifi antenna and then something like a temp/light/humidity sensor is about $10. Or control lights with the $5 Sonoff switch from Itead (basically an ESP+relay on a well designed PCB, that is hobbyist friendly and lets you put your own firmware on it if you like). Or great free controller tools like Home Assistant and data management like InfluxDB and Grafana. It's a great time to be an electronics hobbyist. The rise of IoT and smart home applications have produced a surge of new and interesting products for hobbyists that didn't exist before, I'm guessing as a side effect of dissatisfaction with the state of commercial products.
- Chris2048 11y ago
  Did you document your hobby activities?
  - gh02t 11y ago
    ...Eventually. I have notes, but a writeup is in my list of things to do.
    - Chris2048 11y ago
      Great :-) Do you already have a blog/etc you intend to put it on?
      - gh02t 11y ago
        I'll probably do it on Github and post it here.

deciplex 11y ago

Nest isn't a polished consumer product unless your bar for "polished consumer product" starts and stops at the industrial design budget. If they didn't look nice anyone with sense would call these products what they are: trash. And, anyone who wasted money on one... did in fact waste their money. They can still get on board with a working, non-Nest solution at any time.

chris_wot 11y ago

Yeah, the article says the devices weren't fully operational when it was launched, and now never will be. If that's commercial polish, I'll stick with the Pi!

ocdtrekkie 11y ago

Unfortunately, this is a huge market gap nobody's currently filling. "I want an open source platform, but I don't want to put together my own wiring" is a surprisingly open field. I saw an advert for ONE such device that claimed to be fully open source, but you can't buy it yet, so that doesn't really mean anything yet.

rimantas 11y ago
Maybe that's because this demand is much lower than you imagine? Nobody cares about open source.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  We already have huge widespread popularity for things like the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino. The former is nearly a household name, even if people have no idea what to do with them. And even if you don't know what open source does, is, or means, the benefits of such a product will prove itself over on it's own.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Yeah, Open Source / Open Hardware in IoT is a step back in the direction of how things always were and how they are supposed to be - you buy the device, you own it. People understand that. They expect their washing machines and microwave ovens to work until the hardware itself breaks (let's forget for a moment about the sick practice of planned obsolescence). They expect to be able to repair them or find a third party that can. People don't have to understand "open source". They will understand the concept of "works until hardware dies", or "can be taken to a repairman for fixing", or "I can go to a mall and buy an extension from some random vendor and it will work".
    - tamana 11y ago
      People do NOT expect to repair their home appliances anymore. Repair costs more than replacement.

ploxiln 11y ago

It's funny, but that's true of other categories of "products" as well. Sometimes, you can't really buy things that work well. You have to learn and build yourself, or do without. Another example: security of computer systems. The common thing here is the widespread demand in addition to the widespread lack of expertise. This results in the market being filled with "products" and "solutions" which are poor quality, but out-compete things which are good quality. Because most buyers can't tell. So if you don't have the expertise to judge for yourself, you'll end up with junk. Sometimes, there isn't a big enough market of buyers with expertise for there to be any decent options available to buy. You just have to cobble it together yourself with hobbyist/non-vendor produced parts.

logicallee 11y ago

>I don't think you can compare anything Raspberry Pi with a polished consumer product. put it in a hummus tub :)

KON_Air 11y ago
and put a "300$" price tag on it to complete the illusion.