4 ms·

As much as I dislike using "standards" to solve problems -- I think if there was something like the following it would do well: 1) create a standard that does

by xt00 7y ago

As much as I dislike using "standards" to solve problems -- I think if there was something like the following it would do well: 1) create a standard that does all of the normal things you would want an IOT device to do 2) turn it into a microservice that runs on standard platforms like AWS/GCP/Azure 3) User buys the hardware, and then essentially pays monthly for the services to the cloud services (potentially thru some kind of wrapper service that makes it easier for them to interact with) So in the future, you would be able to have something like a vanilla version of what Nest cameras, wemo switches, and random leak sensors and whatever all provide, but you are both the producer and consumer of the data with a cloud service in the middle. Yes, of course the cloud people could spy on you. But its different when you don't have to sign some agreement when you "login" to setup your nest sensor that says you agree to them selling your data.

frandroid 7y ago
This is how it should work, and it is exactly NOT how it will ever work, because it turns the manufacturers into commodity providers with very low profit margins. Whereas if they keep the software and the hardware integrated and inseparable they can charge higher margins, and eventually integrate these items in their ecosystem (à la Apple and Google), in which both the user and the company benefit from collective synergy/network effects.
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  It already does work that way. There are countless zwave and zigbee products out there from companies who don't want data centers. And there are lots others that are Alexa compatible.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    Yes. All the companies that are heavily pushing cloud based IoT stuff are doing it because they think they can make more money via lock in and spying on people than traditional home automation suppliers.
telemterioc 7y ago
Sounds a lot like the OS/drivers thing :) You buy a webcam/printer which has a driver, but use it with apps made by others. So I guess we need to invent "cloud drivers".
- xt00 7y ago
  whoa interesting idea... so you have your online IOT "OS" / "dashboard" thing that runs on a cloud provider and you install a driver for your new hardware that you just bought at the store.. and "buh dunk" your new hardware shows up and you see your face showing up on the webcam stream.. cool!
  - tda 7y ago
    That sounds like home assistant icm with esphome. I flash all iot devices I buy with a firmware I trust (or at least is under my control) which is surprisingly easy to do with esphome. I pass a yaml file and a USBtty device to a docker and out comes a new firmware flashed to any of the hundreds of esp32 or esp8266 based iot devices. I have power metering wifi sockets and home brewed breadboards with sensors and 16A/240V power switches all flashed with a firmware the manufacturer has nothing to do with.
    - o-__-o 7y ago
      > all flashed with a firmware the manufacturer has nothing to do with I’m as DIY as you can get, and That does not sound like something I want controlling my power socket while I’m not home
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Personally, I'm worried about plugging DIY hardware to mains. Software though, I don't expect a typical IoT vendor to write anything but total garbage that's more oriented on spying than on working. I'd happily replace it with OS firmware.
        7y ago
sp332 7y ago
Adafruit IO has a very customer-friendly model where you own your data and the client libraries are open source. https://io.adafruit.com/ https://io.adafruit.com/ Not all of the server features are open source, but there is an API-compatible version here that should let you self-host if you want. https://github.com/adafruit/adafruit-io-node https://github.com/adafruit/adafruit-io-node
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Yes, Adafruit sets a proper example here. They do everything just right.
cortesoft 7y ago
Those types of devices exist... they are just not very popular because not many people can or want to run those cloud services.
droithomme 7y ago
In my personal opinion, which I am fully aware that IoT entrepreneur types will be threatened by, it is absolute madness to upload sensitive personal data such as is collected by IoT devices to servers that you do not personally control completely yourself and which is end to end encrypted if it is not on-site.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  You are not the only one. Firewalls cut down on some leakage, but most are inherently not able to function without their cloud master. Sadly the easiest was to secure these devices is with a hammer.
ryandrake 7y ago
Why does there even need to be a cloud service? Why does my lightbulb need a cloud service? My thermostat? My security camera? If these so-called smart devices really need some service running another computer (rather than the computer on the device itself), why can’t it be my own computer on my LAN, behind my “no uploading” firewall rules? I had a dropcam for a while. Infuriating device. It records video, uploads it to its cloud service, then when I want to watch the video, the player downloads it back from that service through my same internet connection! what kind of bonehead decided that was a good use of my bandwidth? Why can’t I just connect locally directly to the device and stream video from it? It’s as if someone said “well we have lots of cloud engineers here, so we obviously need to write a cloud service!” without regard to whether it was needed. Or more cynically, they said “We could make it stream video locally but then we couldn’t offer a monthly cloud service for sweet recurring revenue.”
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  I don’t think anything in our society stops from creating an organisation which could be responsible for creating open standards of running all of these cloud services ourselves. Apart from nextcloud, self-hosted social networks and sandstorm - what else is there that solves similar problems? So the question is why does it not exist yet?
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Something like https://iot.mozilla.org https://iot.mozilla.org ?
- hos234 7y ago
  Think of it this way - Megacorps once upon a time realized they had a lot of lavatories not really being used. So they decided to start renting them out. That became a profitable business. Thanks to how Corporate Robots are programmed, the moment a profitable business is spotted, the next move is to Scale up. They got a bit carried away thanks to Moores law making lavatory building cheap, especially if you buy a million at a time and so now we have town sized constructs of just lavatories. And all those lavatories need infinite quantities of piss and shit to justify their existence. Conduct hackathons. Fund incubators. Hire the best and brightest and it's possible to get populations to ramp up piss and shit generation. It then takes armies of sales and marketing drones zigzagging the planet day and night incentivizing orgs and people to ditch their own loos. The stagnating transport industry (Big Telco) woke up when they noticed people taking shuttles to Mega Loo Plaza and started competing with each other to upgrade their own transport infra all over the world. A confluence of all these factory take us right back to where we started. A lavatory excess. But don't worry the Corporate Robot class is on the case. The goal is to get people to piss and shit 24x7 to utilize that excess (you will notice people who produce a lot piss and shit are encouraged). And things seem to be going well. And ofcourse you can use your own loo at home. They are very cheap these days.

by xt00 7y ago

frandroid 7y ago

This is how it should work, and it is exactly NOT how it will ever work, because it turns the manufacturers into commodity providers with very low profit margins. Whereas if they keep the software and the hardware integrated and inseparable they can charge higher margins, and eventually integrate these items in their ecosystem (à la Apple and Google), in which both the user and the company benefit from collective synergy/network effects.

anon1m0us 7y ago
It already does work that way. There are countless zwave and zigbee products out there from companies who don't want data centers. And there are lots others that are Alexa compatible.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  Yes. All the companies that are heavily pushing cloud based IoT stuff are doing it because they think they can make more money via lock in and spying on people than traditional home automation suppliers.

telemterioc 7y ago

Sounds a lot like the OS/drivers thing :) You buy a webcam/printer which has a driver, but use it with apps made by others. So I guess we need to invent "cloud drivers".

xt00 7y ago
whoa interesting idea... so you have your online IOT "OS" / "dashboard" thing that runs on a cloud provider and you install a driver for your new hardware that you just bought at the store.. and "buh dunk" your new hardware shows up and you see your face showing up on the webcam stream.. cool!
- tda 7y ago
  That sounds like home assistant icm with esphome. I flash all iot devices I buy with a firmware I trust (or at least is under my control) which is surprisingly easy to do with esphome. I pass a yaml file and a USBtty device to a docker and out comes a new firmware flashed to any of the hundreds of esp32 or esp8266 based iot devices. I have power metering wifi sockets and home brewed breadboards with sensors and 16A/240V power switches all flashed with a firmware the manufacturer has nothing to do with.
  - o-__-o 7y ago
    > all flashed with a firmware the manufacturer has nothing to do with I’m as DIY as you can get, and That does not sound like something I want controlling my power socket while I’m not home
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Personally, I'm worried about plugging DIY hardware to mains. Software though, I don't expect a typical IoT vendor to write anything but total garbage that's more oriented on spying than on working. I'd happily replace it with OS firmware.
      - 7y ago

sp332 7y ago

Adafruit IO has a very customer-friendly model where you own your data and the client libraries are open source. https://io.adafruit.com/ https://io.adafruit.com/ Not all of the server features are open source, but there is an API-compatible version here that should let you self-host if you want. https://github.com/adafruit/adafruit-io-node https://github.com/adafruit/adafruit-io-node

jacquesm 7y ago
Yes, Adafruit sets a proper example here. They do everything just right.

cortesoft 7y ago

Those types of devices exist... they are just not very popular because not many people can or want to run those cloud services.

droithomme 7y ago

In my personal opinion, which I am fully aware that IoT entrepreneur types will be threatened by, it is absolute madness to upload sensitive personal data such as is collected by IoT devices to servers that you do not personally control completely yourself and which is end to end encrypted if it is not on-site.

angry_octet 7y ago
You are not the only one. Firewalls cut down on some leakage, but most are inherently not able to function without their cloud master. Sadly the easiest was to secure these devices is with a hammer.

ryandrake 7y ago

Why does there even need to be a cloud service? Why does my lightbulb need a cloud service? My thermostat? My security camera? If these so-called smart devices really need some service running another computer (rather than the computer on the device itself), why can’t it be my own computer on my LAN, behind my “no uploading” firewall rules? I had a dropcam for a while. Infuriating device. It records video, uploads it to its cloud service, then when I want to watch the video, the player downloads it back from that service through my same internet connection! what kind of bonehead decided that was a good use of my bandwidth? Why can’t I just connect locally directly to the device and stream video from it? It’s as if someone said “well we have lots of cloud engineers here, so we obviously need to write a cloud service!” without regard to whether it was needed. Or more cynically, they said “We could make it stream video locally but then we couldn’t offer a monthly cloud service for sweet recurring revenue.”

heavenlyblue 7y ago
I don’t think anything in our society stops from creating an organisation which could be responsible for creating open standards of running all of these cloud services ourselves. Apart from nextcloud, self-hosted social networks and sandstorm - what else is there that solves similar problems? So the question is why does it not exist yet?
- icebraining 7y ago
  Something like https://iot.mozilla.org https://iot.mozilla.org ?
hos234 7y ago
Think of it this way - Megacorps once upon a time realized they had a lot of lavatories not really being used. So they decided to start renting them out. That became a profitable business. Thanks to how Corporate Robots are programmed, the moment a profitable business is spotted, the next move is to Scale up. They got a bit carried away thanks to Moores law making lavatory building cheap, especially if you buy a million at a time and so now we have town sized constructs of just lavatories. And all those lavatories need infinite quantities of piss and shit to justify their existence. Conduct hackathons. Fund incubators. Hire the best and brightest and it's possible to get populations to ramp up piss and shit generation. It then takes armies of sales and marketing drones zigzagging the planet day and night incentivizing orgs and people to ditch their own loos. The stagnating transport industry (Big Telco) woke up when they noticed people taking shuttles to Mega Loo Plaza and started competing with each other to upgrade their own transport infra all over the world. A confluence of all these factory take us right back to where we started. A lavatory excess. But don't worry the Corporate Robot class is on the case. The goal is to get people to piss and shit 24x7 to utilize that excess (you will notice people who produce a lot piss and shit are encouraged). And things seem to be going well. And ofcourse you can use your own loo at home. They are very cheap these days.