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You're view seems too informed by your technical background. I can't imagine a rise in home servers to facilitate IoT as most customers will never have that lev

You're view seems too informed by your technical background. I can't imagine a rise in home servers to facilitate IoT as most customers will never have that level of interest in IoT products unless this is a type of product installed and maintained by a trained technician. Most applications don't justify that level of involvement. This is the primary reason for doing compute and data storage away from the edge device. The edge device has to be dead simple that someone with hardly any technology background can place it and set it up. The customer just doesn't care enough to spend much time with any one IoT device. These class of devices are by and large adding only marginal value to the customer's life. Every detail they have to think about when working with the device becomes an impediment to their using the device at all.

zeveb 9y ago
> I can't imagine a rise in home servers to facilitate IoT as most customers will never have that level of interest in IoT products unless this is a type of product installed and maintained by a trained technician. Why not? With the demise of Moore's law and the rise of zero-moving-part computers, as well as the existence of container technology, it will soon be possible to install a single compute node in a home and have it be dependably useful for over a decade. This node will be able to run all of the computing jobs necessary in a home, from the thermostat to the lighting to the TV to web browsing and games-playing (and even running web and email servers — or social networking services!). It would be easily serviced by a dedicated technician (as e.g. hot-water heaters and furnaces are today). Not being forced to run cloud services saves device manufacturers money. Not requiring cloud services means that devices will continue to work usefully without Internet connexions. Not using cloud services means that user data is more private and secure.
- johnhenry 9y ago
  Hold up... when did Moore's law meet its demise? I've heard that the conjecture is failing as we run into certain physical limits of making computer parts smaller, but I think what you've written indicates the opposite?
  - zeveb 9y ago
    > Hold up... when did Moore's law meet its demise? Transistor count & speeds have stagnated since around 2012–2015, and it looks like we're close to some hard limits.
  - bobcostas55 9y ago
    Sandy Lake. In the 6 years between the 2500K and the 7600K they've managed to increase performance by about 20% (total, not annually). Same # of cores, same price.
crdoconnor 9y ago
>The edge device has to be dead simple that someone with hardly any technology background can place it and set it up. This is the main thing preventing adoption of home servers. They're a royal pain in the ass to set up and use right now. Smartphones were kind of like this too before the first iPhone. There's nothing except that really preventing their widespread adoption. It's just that nobody's designed a really great one yet. >most customers will never have that level of interest in IoT products This was also the prevailing attitude about smartphones before the first iPhone.
- photojosh 9y ago
  > This is the main thing preventing adoption of home servers. I don't agree. There'd be someone at least even tackling the problem, if there was actually a value proposition in it. The closest I can think of is Synology NASes, I suppose you roll the edge gateway into one too and that's your home server? Thinking about what I use my home server for: media library, and backups. Both of those have been (mostly) supplanted by streaming and online services respectively, so I'm struggling to justify the home server even for the electricity to run it... but it is shortly to become an "IoT" gateway too (running Homebridge) since I agree with the top comment that it's best when as little data as possible leaves my local network.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    There's a bit of a chicken/egg problem. If there were a thriving app ecosystem for home servers there would be a lot more demand for them and vice versa. There are tons of apps which would simply be better on home servers because the advertising imperative is gone so once the ecosystem was kickstarted it would gain its own momentum. E.g. a locally run open source 'facebook' could have its feed tailored by the users and it could have privacy settings that are designed to put the users in the driving seat rather than features designed to foment addiction, oversharing and selling eyeballs. For people who take a lot of digital photos and videos, local backup/data sync is simply always going to be faster than equivalent online services, so there's an 'in' to the chicken/egg problem. I think the fact that this hasn't happened yet is because hardware companies tend to suck at software, software companies tend to suck at hardware and hardware companies that don't suck at design are pretty rare.

zeveb 9y ago

> I can't imagine a rise in home servers to facilitate IoT as most customers will never have that level of interest in IoT products unless this is a type of product installed and maintained by a trained technician. Why not? With the demise of Moore's law and the rise of zero-moving-part computers, as well as the existence of container technology, it will soon be possible to install a single compute node in a home and have it be dependably useful for over a decade. This node will be able to run all of the computing jobs necessary in a home, from the thermostat to the lighting to the TV to web browsing and games-playing (and even running web and email servers — or social networking services!). It would be easily serviced by a dedicated technician (as e.g. hot-water heaters and furnaces are today). Not being forced to run cloud services saves device manufacturers money. Not requiring cloud services means that devices will continue to work usefully without Internet connexions. Not using cloud services means that user data is more private and secure.

johnhenry 9y ago
Hold up... when did Moore's law meet its demise? I've heard that the conjecture is failing as we run into certain physical limits of making computer parts smaller, but I think what you've written indicates the opposite?
- zeveb 9y ago
  > Hold up... when did Moore's law meet its demise? Transistor count & speeds have stagnated since around 2012–2015, and it looks like we're close to some hard limits.
- bobcostas55 9y ago
  Sandy Lake. In the 6 years between the 2500K and the 7600K they've managed to increase performance by about 20% (total, not annually). Same # of cores, same price.

crdoconnor 9y ago

>The edge device has to be dead simple that someone with hardly any technology background can place it and set it up. This is the main thing preventing adoption of home servers. They're a royal pain in the ass to set up and use right now. Smartphones were kind of like this too before the first iPhone. There's nothing except that really preventing their widespread adoption. It's just that nobody's designed a really great one yet. >most customers will never have that level of interest in IoT products This was also the prevailing attitude about smartphones before the first iPhone.

photojosh 9y ago
> This is the main thing preventing adoption of home servers. I don't agree. There'd be someone at least even tackling the problem, if there was actually a value proposition in it. The closest I can think of is Synology NASes, I suppose you roll the edge gateway into one too and that's your home server? Thinking about what I use my home server for: media library, and backups. Both of those have been (mostly) supplanted by streaming and online services respectively, so I'm struggling to justify the home server even for the electricity to run it... but it is shortly to become an "IoT" gateway too (running Homebridge) since I agree with the top comment that it's best when as little data as possible leaves my local network.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  There's a bit of a chicken/egg problem. If there were a thriving app ecosystem for home servers there would be a lot more demand for them and vice versa. There are tons of apps which would simply be better on home servers because the advertising imperative is gone so once the ecosystem was kickstarted it would gain its own momentum. E.g. a locally run open source 'facebook' could have its feed tailored by the users and it could have privacy settings that are designed to put the users in the driving seat rather than features designed to foment addiction, oversharing and selling eyeballs. For people who take a lot of digital photos and videos, local backup/data sync is simply always going to be faster than equivalent online services, so there's an 'in' to the chicken/egg problem. I think the fact that this hasn't happened yet is because hardware companies tend to suck at software, software companies tend to suck at hardware and hardware companies that don't suck at design are pretty rare.