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I think you're dead wrong on IoT being fad but agree on the popular consumer examples you've provided. There are some gems out there now, but most of the rest a

I think you're dead wrong on IoT being fad but agree on the popular consumer examples you've provided. There are some gems out there now, but most of the rest are worthless without the internet. These products will wind up getting skipped over eventually and companies will begin making their products more robust in order to maintain presence in the market. As (home) automation protocols settle down, devices will not need the Internet directly themselves, they'll communicate exclusively through a hub (like my house and Z-Wave, at the moment). These devices won't/don't need the internet to perform their basic functions, but you might lose some advanced functions without it, and that should be okay. The only IoT devices I have in my house that actually talk to the Internet are my home automation hub (for the app on my phone) and the Nest Cams I've got. Had I not gotten them for free I would be using something else not directly connected. I didn't perform some wizardry to make this happen, I know the space and learned what was available and how to piece it together. I bought half the stuff from Lowe's/Home Depot and the other half from Amazon. This is all consumer grade stuff, nothing fancy. When the internet goes out my whole house still works, but I lose fancy features like chained events (or scenes) and I can't use my phone to control the house. Everything else works just like the house should. That is where we will get to for everyone.

maxerickson 11y ago
I like to think of it in terms of garage door openers. Very few people will retrofit their garage door opener to be connected for $50. Almost everyone will have a connected garage door opener when there aren't any being sold that do not have connectivity.
- musesum 11y ago
  There have been burglaries in my neighborhood. The thief does a drive by with one code and sees which door will open. Then waits a few days to revisit the garage to steal bikes. I wonder what would be more profitable: Stealing the bike? Or: leaving a note that links to a personalized sales pitch, including a vid of their door being opened?
  - manyxcxi 11y ago
    Yeah, but that's a problem even without an internet connected opener. For example, my left most garage door opener happened to get onto the same frequency/code cycle as the neighbor across the cul de sac's door opener about a year ago and their opener opens/closes my door EVERY TIME. Mine is an old Craftsman piece of crap but it's the door I never use so I just leave it unplugged rather than trying to actually fix the problem. If instead of RF with half assed code hopping we could use more secure tokens through a gateway device that introduced very little lag, we'd have way more secure garage doors than what we have now. Unfortunately those Internet module additions to garage doors are just adding weak Internet security to weak garage door security.

maxerickson 11y ago

I like to think of it in terms of garage door openers. Very few people will retrofit their garage door opener to be connected for $50. Almost everyone will have a connected garage door opener when there aren't any being sold that do not have connectivity.

musesum 11y ago
There have been burglaries in my neighborhood. The thief does a drive by with one code and sees which door will open. Then waits a few days to revisit the garage to steal bikes. I wonder what would be more profitable: Stealing the bike? Or: leaving a note that links to a personalized sales pitch, including a vid of their door being opened?
- manyxcxi 11y ago
  Yeah, but that's a problem even without an internet connected opener. For example, my left most garage door opener happened to get onto the same frequency/code cycle as the neighbor across the cul de sac's door opener about a year ago and their opener opens/closes my door EVERY TIME. Mine is an old Craftsman piece of crap but it's the door I never use so I just leave it unplugged rather than trying to actually fix the problem. If instead of RF with half assed code hopping we could use more secure tokens through a gateway device that introduced very little lag, we'd have way more secure garage doors than what we have now. Unfortunately those Internet module additions to garage doors are just adding weak Internet security to weak garage door security.