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> The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers... > The industry working group will take an open-source approach

> The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers... > The industry working group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol and increase compatibility for consumers. Curious if I as a hobbyist will benefit from this? Or if this will become a: it works perfectly, but only if all your devices connect to our certification servers kind of thing, like Chromecast is becoming.

Jonnax 7y ago
Perhaps. The Phillips Hue lights use an open standard, I bought a usb device that could talk it (ZigBee Light Link) but then it turned out that production devices used a master key. Here's a discussion of the master key being leaked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753 But I looked it it before that and never tried to look it up again. So likely so, and with today's encryption it probably won't get hacked for hobbyists to use/learn/play but of course I guess the argument is that the Hue Bridge and other devices will have an API.
- eecc 7y ago
  I can recall something along the lines: used to be like that with Light Link but as of Zigbee 3 it’s really interoperable all round (Hue hub registering third party devices and Hue lamps working with generic hubs.) I’m still looking for other devices to mesh into a ZB3 network: I’d love to see an Opentherm capable controller able to use any connected thermometer and heating element valves to modulate heat flux production and distribution around my flat. Might be overthinking though... it’s so well thermally insulated.
- exikyut 7y ago
  > This Tweet from @MayaZigBee has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder. oooooo. Also, using mobile.twitter.com (as linked) I see a single reply, if I delete `mobile.` I see no replies. Interesting.
mr__y 7y ago
My guess: first of all, "for security reasons" your DIY device will need to be certified, any existing SBCs will need to be replaced/extended to support new type of network and due to bloated protocol specs with a myriad of abstraction levels will render it almost impossible to implement it on your own and the open source library that can do that will implement the standard as specified whereas all proprietary solutions will have some quirks and little differences from official standard making it very hard to connect to anything from your open source lib. Also the sophistication of the new standard will exceed the capabilities of any arduino forcing you to replace any boards you have with new ones that have AVR uc with Connected Home hardware support.
- weberc2 7y ago
  > any existing SBCs will need to be replaced/extended to support new type of network and due to bloated protocol specs with a myriad of abstraction levels will render it almost impossible to implement it on your own and the open source library that can do that will implement the standard as specified whereas all proprietary solutions will have some quirks and little differences from official standard making it very hard to connect to anything from your open source lib. Whoa, is it really necessary to call BlueTooth out like that?
  - aequitas 7y ago
    BT v1 to v3 maybe, but BTLE/v4 solved a lot of the problems afaik.
    - weberc2 7y ago
      You're probably right. It's been a while since I had the misfortune of working with BT.
      - aequitas 7y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19958300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19958300
teekert 7y ago
I really hope they recognize the need that people want to keep their data on their lan. Actually that would be required by the GDPR if they won't let me sign anything. My derived data is my own people, it does not belong to who ever collects it. I.e. I just want a thermostat the is a big rotating button and speaks mqtt. It does not exist. If you want it to look good you end up with a Nest thermostat. Home Assistant needs to talk to the Nest online API, not to the device itself. Really annoying and unnecessary. I wish I could just pay 50$ more and get a Nest that does let me talk to it locally. Or whatever are they going to earn with my data? I'd probably pay it straight up.
- aequitas 7y ago
  If your device supports opentherm (which is not as open as you might think, btw) you might want to look into OTGW [0]. It probably works with Nest to if the Nest allows to run without internet at all. [0] http://otgw.tclcode.com/ http://otgw.tclcode.com/
  - teekert 7y ago
    My central heater is a simple on/off model. Nest will work offline with it but afaik you can't write target temperatures to it then.
    - aequitas 7y ago
      To bad, my old heater had opentherm, with the OTGW I could intercept the packets between the heater and thermostat, change values (eg: date/time), issue commands (set room temperature) and add missing functionality (outside temperature for heating curve), it was ideal in every way. But I moved and my current heater has a proprietary protocol over rs485 so its a no-go for the OTGW.
      - teekert 7y ago
        In the EU there are no systems without opentherm by law luckily. That does mean some systems are not available at all, so "luckily".
jdsnape 7y ago
Apple's existing standard (HomeKit) is relatively 'open' - the specification is published, and several open source implementations exist. I've used the Python one to implement automation on the smart-home devices I've built myself. However, you do need to be certified to distribute a product otherwise you get a warning in the app when you add the device. This seems like a fair compromise to me.
- aequitas 7y ago
  Seems fair indeed. I did a quick search and HomeKit seems to work without an internet connection (on lan at least, not remote), what's your experience with that?
  - jdsnape 7y ago
    Yeah, it works completely locally on the lan - there's a MDNS discovery and then pairing process between devices and the phone. You can access stuff remotely if you have an Apple device which is paired to the homekit stuff and connected to the internet (e.g. an Apple TV, we use an iPad which is always at home). I've deliberately designed my system to work offline as while our connection's pretty reliable I don't see why I should need an internet connection to turn on a light! :)
    - aequitas 7y ago
      > I don't see why I should need an internet connection to turn on a light! I hope manufacturers see it the same way. I don't mind devices having to be certified, I mostly want to buy hardware of the shelve anyways for safety and convenience reasons and build the controlling/automation part myself. So my biggest worries are not having a local API, data exposure and having to invest in a ecosystem and having the manufacturer brick it remotely, wasting my money.
      - mackey 7y ago
        At least for HomeKit, manufacturers have no choice but to support local network access to get certified. This has cause issues, especially with Cameras since HomeKit requires that camera streams not go through the cloud first.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Reelin 7y ago
Something tells me it won't work with privacy oriented systems like hass.io (https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio), but I'd be happy to be wrong.

Jonnax 7y ago

Perhaps. The Phillips Hue lights use an open standard, I bought a usb device that could talk it (ZigBee Light Link) but then it turned out that production devices used a master key. Here's a discussion of the master key being leaked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753 But I looked it it before that and never tried to look it up again. So likely so, and with today's encryption it probably won't get hacked for hobbyists to use/learn/play but of course I guess the argument is that the Hue Bridge and other devices will have an API.

eecc 7y ago
I can recall something along the lines: used to be like that with Light Link but as of Zigbee 3 it’s really interoperable all round (Hue hub registering third party devices and Hue lamps working with generic hubs.) I’m still looking for other devices to mesh into a ZB3 network: I’d love to see an Opentherm capable controller able to use any connected thermometer and heating element valves to modulate heat flux production and distribution around my flat. Might be overthinking though... it’s so well thermally insulated.
exikyut 7y ago
> This Tweet from @MayaZigBee has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder. oooooo. Also, using mobile.twitter.com (as linked) I see a single reply, if I delete `mobile.` I see no replies. Interesting.

mr__y 7y ago

My guess: first of all, "for security reasons" your DIY device will need to be certified, any existing SBCs will need to be replaced/extended to support new type of network and due to bloated protocol specs with a myriad of abstraction levels will render it almost impossible to implement it on your own and the open source library that can do that will implement the standard as specified whereas all proprietary solutions will have some quirks and little differences from official standard making it very hard to connect to anything from your open source lib. Also the sophistication of the new standard will exceed the capabilities of any arduino forcing you to replace any boards you have with new ones that have AVR uc with Connected Home hardware support.

weberc2 7y ago
> any existing SBCs will need to be replaced/extended to support new type of network and due to bloated protocol specs with a myriad of abstraction levels will render it almost impossible to implement it on your own and the open source library that can do that will implement the standard as specified whereas all proprietary solutions will have some quirks and little differences from official standard making it very hard to connect to anything from your open source lib. Whoa, is it really necessary to call BlueTooth out like that?
- aequitas 7y ago
  BT v1 to v3 maybe, but BTLE/v4 solved a lot of the problems afaik.
  - weberc2 7y ago
    You're probably right. It's been a while since I had the misfortune of working with BT.
    - aequitas 7y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19958300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19958300

teekert 7y ago

I really hope they recognize the need that people want to keep their data on their lan. Actually that would be required by the GDPR if they won't let me sign anything. My derived data is my own people, it does not belong to who ever collects it. I.e. I just want a thermostat the is a big rotating button and speaks mqtt. It does not exist. If you want it to look good you end up with a Nest thermostat. Home Assistant needs to talk to the Nest online API, not to the device itself. Really annoying and unnecessary. I wish I could just pay 50$ more and get a Nest that does let me talk to it locally. Or whatever are they going to earn with my data? I'd probably pay it straight up.

aequitas 7y ago
If your device supports opentherm (which is not as open as you might think, btw) you might want to look into OTGW [0]. It probably works with Nest to if the Nest allows to run without internet at all. [0] http://otgw.tclcode.com/ http://otgw.tclcode.com/
- teekert 7y ago
  My central heater is a simple on/off model. Nest will work offline with it but afaik you can't write target temperatures to it then.
  - aequitas 7y ago
    To bad, my old heater had opentherm, with the OTGW I could intercept the packets between the heater and thermostat, change values (eg: date/time), issue commands (set room temperature) and add missing functionality (outside temperature for heating curve), it was ideal in every way. But I moved and my current heater has a proprietary protocol over rs485 so its a no-go for the OTGW.
    - teekert 7y ago
      In the EU there are no systems without opentherm by law luckily. That does mean some systems are not available at all, so "luckily".

jdsnape 7y ago

Apple's existing standard (HomeKit) is relatively 'open' - the specification is published, and several open source implementations exist. I've used the Python one to implement automation on the smart-home devices I've built myself. However, you do need to be certified to distribute a product otherwise you get a warning in the app when you add the device. This seems like a fair compromise to me.

aequitas 7y ago
Seems fair indeed. I did a quick search and HomeKit seems to work without an internet connection (on lan at least, not remote), what's your experience with that?
- jdsnape 7y ago
  Yeah, it works completely locally on the lan - there's a MDNS discovery and then pairing process between devices and the phone. You can access stuff remotely if you have an Apple device which is paired to the homekit stuff and connected to the internet (e.g. an Apple TV, we use an iPad which is always at home). I've deliberately designed my system to work offline as while our connection's pretty reliable I don't see why I should need an internet connection to turn on a light! :)
  - aequitas 7y ago
    > I don't see why I should need an internet connection to turn on a light! I hope manufacturers see it the same way. I don't mind devices having to be certified, I mostly want to buy hardware of the shelve anyways for safety and convenience reasons and build the controlling/automation part myself. So my biggest worries are not having a local API, data exposure and having to invest in a ecosystem and having the manufacturer brick it remotely, wasting my money.
    - mackey 7y ago
      At least for HomeKit, manufacturers have no choice but to support local network access to get certified. This has cause issues, especially with Cameras since HomeKit requires that camera streams not go through the cloud first.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Reelin 7y ago

Something tells me it won't work with privacy oriented systems like hass.io (https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio), but I'd be happy to be wrong.