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I halfway agree with your comment. I think smart home technology is still in the realm of tinkerers right now, and investing in an ecosystem requires a lot of f

by chomp 7y ago

I halfway agree with your comment. I think smart home technology is still in the realm of tinkerers right now, and investing in an ecosystem requires a lot of forethought. I replaced all of my dumb light switches with zwave light switches, but the nice thing is that they still act as light switches. I bought dumb IP cameras that can stream RTSP instead of going to someone's "cloud". I feed all of this into a homeassistant server that, when it goes down, I shrug because this is a fun hobby of mine, not anything I expect to actually work. When people ask "wow how can I make my TV do that trick" or "that is cool, what do I need to get started with home automation", I cringe a little because of how embarrassingly techy the industry still is. Even Control4, which is probably the premiere home automation ecosystem, requires a ton of upkeep to keep it running (though at least you can throw money down a hole to have someone fix it). Also with regards to your comment about turning on the lights to your phone, there's something magical about walking into the living room and saying "Hey Siri, good morning" and having your TV kick on, automatically start streaming the morning news, kitchen and living room lights turn on, and blinds open. There's nothing that really saves a ton of time in it, but it's just nice.

vbezhenar 7y ago
So the answer for your friends would be "ask that company and buy their premium support package". And "that company" will ensure that tech industry bends to ordinary people needs. I don't know about you, but that's the way things work around me. Ordinary people don't know how to work on computer. They learned few buttons and sequence to push those buttons, but if they pushed caps lock, they instantly lost. So they call support and that guy comes to them and pushes caps lock, so they can continue to work. It could work with smart home exactly similar. Some company installing devices and maintains them. If you have a problem, you just call them and they'll help you.
richk449 7y ago
> there's something magical about walking into the living room and saying "Hey Siri, good morning" and having your TV kick on, automatically start streaming the morning news Magical in the sense that hell is magical?
- chomp 7y ago
  I don't understand. What is wrong with using technology to curate our experience in our homes? You can make a nice experience for yourself without throwing privacy and security out of the window. It does take some network design and careful selection of devices (e.g. shunning Alexa and Google Assistant), but with the right setup you can do some very cool things while staying safe and not giving up your right to privacy.
- slantyyz 7y ago
  I would say the TV example isn't really a great example from the perspective of utility. In the dead of winter, it's still pitch black out when I take my dogs out first thing in the AM. The temperature can fluctuate quite a lot where I live, so I usually have two different winter coats. My winter "good morning" routine turns on my main floor lights and announces the outside temperature so I know whether or not to wear my heaviest coat. While it sounds like a small benefit, I find it very useful considering how groggy I am at that time.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    My former flatmate had some smart lights, and I wrote a little script that rigged them up to display the weather on a scale from deep blue to bright orange. The city I live in has very erratic weather, and my apartment stays pretty temperate regardless of the outside weather. This makes it fairly easy to absent-mindedly dress inappropriately and end up sweating or shivering on the walk to work. I generally get in the habit of checking the weather, but after a week of warm weather it's easy to forget, and the weather here is such that it might suddenly drop 15 degrees from day to day. Having this information in bright visual form makes it easy to notice when the weather is suddenly unexpectedly hotter or colder: It took me about ten minutes to set up, and is a small improvement to my life that's tailored to exactly how I live it. This, to me, is the advantage of the current era of smart home technology: incremental changes that can make little improvements to your day to day workflow. This thread is infested with an unfortunate combination of ignorance and lack of imagination (par for the course with HN...), where any evidence that smart devices don't fit into one commenter's workflow is evidence that it's useless for everyone (as the topvoted comment says, "smart people don't buy smart devices").

by chomp 7y ago

vbezhenar 7y ago

So the answer for your friends would be "ask that company and buy their premium support package". And "that company" will ensure that tech industry bends to ordinary people needs. I don't know about you, but that's the way things work around me. Ordinary people don't know how to work on computer. They learned few buttons and sequence to push those buttons, but if they pushed caps lock, they instantly lost. So they call support and that guy comes to them and pushes caps lock, so they can continue to work. It could work with smart home exactly similar. Some company installing devices and maintains them. If you have a problem, you just call them and they'll help you.

richk449 7y ago

> there's something magical about walking into the living room and saying "Hey Siri, good morning" and having your TV kick on, automatically start streaming the morning news Magical in the sense that hell is magical?

chomp 7y ago
I don't understand. What is wrong with using technology to curate our experience in our homes? You can make a nice experience for yourself without throwing privacy and security out of the window. It does take some network design and careful selection of devices (e.g. shunning Alexa and Google Assistant), but with the right setup you can do some very cool things while staying safe and not giving up your right to privacy.
slantyyz 7y ago
I would say the TV example isn't really a great example from the perspective of utility. In the dead of winter, it's still pitch black out when I take my dogs out first thing in the AM. The temperature can fluctuate quite a lot where I live, so I usually have two different winter coats. My winter "good morning" routine turns on my main floor lights and announces the outside temperature so I know whether or not to wear my heaviest coat. While it sounds like a small benefit, I find it very useful considering how groggy I am at that time.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  My former flatmate had some smart lights, and I wrote a little script that rigged them up to display the weather on a scale from deep blue to bright orange. The city I live in has very erratic weather, and my apartment stays pretty temperate regardless of the outside weather. This makes it fairly easy to absent-mindedly dress inappropriately and end up sweating or shivering on the walk to work. I generally get in the habit of checking the weather, but after a week of warm weather it's easy to forget, and the weather here is such that it might suddenly drop 15 degrees from day to day. Having this information in bright visual form makes it easy to notice when the weather is suddenly unexpectedly hotter or colder: It took me about ten minutes to set up, and is a small improvement to my life that's tailored to exactly how I live it. This, to me, is the advantage of the current era of smart home technology: incremental changes that can make little improvements to your day to day workflow. This thread is infested with an unfortunate combination of ignorance and lack of imagination (par for the course with HN...), where any evidence that smart devices don't fit into one commenter's workflow is evidence that it's useless for everyone (as the topvoted comment says, "smart people don't buy smart devices").