5 ms·

If you're hung up on the word "toy," another way of phrasing this is the next big thing will look like just a hobby to most people. Looking forward, smart home

If you're hung up on the word "toy," another way of phrasing this is the next big thing will look like just a hobby to most people. Looking forward, smart homes and 3D printing are 2 industries that fall in this bucket. Both feel like toys to the majority of the market right now, but have the potential to completely change how we live. 3D printing - low-cost manufacturing has completely revolutionized what's possible for startups, and developed a large hobbyist following, but we haven't scratched the surface of how they can change day-to-day life for everybody. Imagine what's possible once they support more material types (metal, electrical circuits, food, etc) and every home has one, like an oven. Smart homes - we just have fancy remote controls so far, but eventually we'll be living like Tony Stark with homes that constantly adapt to us without input. This is where we'll see the benefit of ambient computing present itself clearest. Imagine a home that helps you raise your child, keep your chores in order, or handle the repetitive tasks without requiring a primary care-taker to be responsible for keeping the home in order. disclaimer: I'm building Hiome (https://hiome.com https://hiome.com) to turn smart homes into more than just toys, so maybe I'm a little biased.

starpilot 7y ago
The thing is a hobby isn't too different from a business. They can even be hard to distinguish: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/hobby-or-business-irs-offers-tips-to-decide https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/hobby-or-business-irs-offers-ti... The next big thing will start out looking like a business! Wahey!
- guptaneil 7y ago
  I think cpsmith said it well in another comment on this page that we're talking about technologies, not individual companies[0]. Would other people (mainstream users) say the tech is for hobbyists? The examples I cited (desktop 3D printers and smart homes) are definitely considered hobbies today, regardless of whether anyone would classify Hiome as a hobby. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316776
bcrosby95 7y ago
Before smart homes are more than just a toy, they need to have functionality that is actually time saving. I've messed with smart home stuff and so far the only thing that has been useful beyond being a toy is our robot vacuum, which I'm not sure is really classified as a smart home thing. As someone that lives in California, something that could be an actual $$ and time saver rather than just a toy is if I could have a system that would open windows rather than turning on the AC when the outside temperature is low enough.
- guptaneil 7y ago
  I 100% agree! No denying there's still a lot of work, and, like usual, the transformation from toy to mainstream will take time and significant R&D.
- minitoar 7y ago
  which I'm not sure is really classified as a smart home thing. This is amusing to me, I think as soon as something becomes somewhat common it will no longer be classified as "smart home". Sort of like how the definition of AI is a moving target.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - bcrosby95 7y ago
    It's definitely a smart device. But to me a smart home has a central system that can monitor a variety of inputs and, in response, control a set of things to accomplish some goal. We have a robot vacuum and robot mopper. Me going over and pressing the robot vacuum button, then once its done, placing the robot mopper in position and pressing the start button, is using smart devices but isn't a smart home. If I can tell a central system to "clean the kitchen" and it starts the vacuum, and when that's done dispatches the mopper, that's a smart home. I know higher end iRobots can do this sort of thing in their dedicated app. And if you can control that via a smart home hub then that would be smart home functionality to me.
iamwil 7y ago
I was working on software in the 3D printing space back in 2012, and I too thought it was going to be something big that looked like a toy. However, I got out once I realized that speed of prints mattered a lot of consumers. And the current methods of consumer 3D printers were FDM (fused deposition modeling) and Stereolithography, which both had asymptotic limitation on how fast you can get a print to go. For FDM, there's a head you need to shunt back and forth. For Sterolithography, the consumer printers like Form 1 had a mechanical step between each layer. Unlike chips with Moore's law or LEDs with Haitz's law, 3D printers aren't going to get much faster. That's when I got out. So in order to get an order of magnitude faster print, someone needed to invent a completely different method--a step function. So I think it's not just that it's a hobby, but you might need another criteria, like there's at least a plausible incremental path to improvement along the parameter that the market would care about.
- greggman2 7y ago
  PDAs fit this IMO. We had newtons, palm pilots (Clie), Windows CE, devices (iPaq, Axim, ...), all of them were for geeks/hobbyists only until iPhone. Anyone carrying one was considered a geek out of the norm. Now you couldn't pry a smartphone from a non-geek's hands.
  - irrational 7y ago
    I was a geeky programmer (still am), but I had absolutely no interest in owning a cell phone or any other PDA until the first iPhone came out. I was floored by it. The touch screen, the built in useable web browser, the apps, etc. were so much better than what had come before.
  - tluyben2 7y ago
    I had palm pilots, Psions, a Newton (wow that thing was huge) and some Windows CE devices (HP all of them); I was considered a geek at first for that sure, but I didn't have to lug around an agenda and notebook (esp Psion replaced that in 1 device which was nice to use) and when 2g became a thing, I had Windows CE HP 'phones' (bulky, with keyboard and very fragile) but when on vacation I did all my company business on there (buying, selling, talking to developers, setting meetings, sending/receiving emails) while my colleagues had to go to internet cafe's or lug around laptops. But yeah, they were things for geeks, mostly impractical unless you really wanted to use them (which I did; I hate carrying crap around); iPhone changed that to making it easy to use. Ofcourse I bought that the moment it came out in my country (iphone 3g) and never looked back. That one is also still working by the way, not that I have any real use for it :)

starpilot 7y ago

The thing is a hobby isn't too different from a business. They can even be hard to distinguish: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/hobby-or-business-irs-offers-tips-to-decide https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/hobby-or-business-irs-offers-ti... The next big thing will start out looking like a business! Wahey!

guptaneil 7y ago
I think cpsmith said it well in another comment on this page that we're talking about technologies, not individual companies[0]. Would other people (mainstream users) say the tech is for hobbyists? The examples I cited (desktop 3D printers and smart homes) are definitely considered hobbies today, regardless of whether anyone would classify Hiome as a hobby. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21316776

bcrosby95 7y ago

Before smart homes are more than just a toy, they need to have functionality that is actually time saving. I've messed with smart home stuff and so far the only thing that has been useful beyond being a toy is our robot vacuum, which I'm not sure is really classified as a smart home thing. As someone that lives in California, something that could be an actual $$ and time saver rather than just a toy is if I could have a system that would open windows rather than turning on the AC when the outside temperature is low enough.

guptaneil 7y ago
I 100% agree! No denying there's still a lot of work, and, like usual, the transformation from toy to mainstream will take time and significant R&D.
minitoar 7y ago
which I'm not sure is really classified as a smart home thing. This is amusing to me, I think as soon as something becomes somewhat common it will no longer be classified as "smart home". Sort of like how the definition of AI is a moving target.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bcrosby95 7y ago
  It's definitely a smart device. But to me a smart home has a central system that can monitor a variety of inputs and, in response, control a set of things to accomplish some goal. We have a robot vacuum and robot mopper. Me going over and pressing the robot vacuum button, then once its done, placing the robot mopper in position and pressing the start button, is using smart devices but isn't a smart home. If I can tell a central system to "clean the kitchen" and it starts the vacuum, and when that's done dispatches the mopper, that's a smart home. I know higher end iRobots can do this sort of thing in their dedicated app. And if you can control that via a smart home hub then that would be smart home functionality to me.

iamwil 7y ago

I was working on software in the 3D printing space back in 2012, and I too thought it was going to be something big that looked like a toy. However, I got out once I realized that speed of prints mattered a lot of consumers. And the current methods of consumer 3D printers were FDM (fused deposition modeling) and Stereolithography, which both had asymptotic limitation on how fast you can get a print to go. For FDM, there's a head you need to shunt back and forth. For Sterolithography, the consumer printers like Form 1 had a mechanical step between each layer. Unlike chips with Moore's law or LEDs with Haitz's law, 3D printers aren't going to get much faster. That's when I got out. So in order to get an order of magnitude faster print, someone needed to invent a completely different method--a step function. So I think it's not just that it's a hobby, but you might need another criteria, like there's at least a plausible incremental path to improvement along the parameter that the market would care about.

greggman2 7y ago
PDAs fit this IMO. We had newtons, palm pilots (Clie), Windows CE, devices (iPaq, Axim, ...), all of them were for geeks/hobbyists only until iPhone. Anyone carrying one was considered a geek out of the norm. Now you couldn't pry a smartphone from a non-geek's hands.
- irrational 7y ago
  I was a geeky programmer (still am), but I had absolutely no interest in owning a cell phone or any other PDA until the first iPhone came out. I was floored by it. The touch screen, the built in useable web browser, the apps, etc. were so much better than what had come before.
- tluyben2 7y ago
  I had palm pilots, Psions, a Newton (wow that thing was huge) and some Windows CE devices (HP all of them); I was considered a geek at first for that sure, but I didn't have to lug around an agenda and notebook (esp Psion replaced that in 1 device which was nice to use) and when 2g became a thing, I had Windows CE HP 'phones' (bulky, with keyboard and very fragile) but when on vacation I did all my company business on there (buying, selling, talking to developers, setting meetings, sending/receiving emails) while my colleagues had to go to internet cafe's or lug around laptops. But yeah, they were things for geeks, mostly impractical unless you really wanted to use them (which I did; I hate carrying crap around); iPhone changed that to making it easy to use. Ofcourse I bought that the moment it came out in my country (iphone 3g) and never looked back. That one is also still working by the way, not that I have any real use for it :)