4 ms·

Speaking of logistical headaches, what happens with your system when the power goes out in a building?

by dangerwill 5y ago

__sy__ 5y ago
Right now we have a multi-protocol hub with cellular and battery back-up. So the short answer is... nothing?
- vsareto 5y ago
  How much is the technology around this mentioned in the lease agreement? My current complex specified that I had to supply internet and some other things for their smart hub service, although that turned out to not be the case (it's not on my network and works), but it was really weird to have that clause but it not match reality because I was effectively signing a document saying I was responsible for it.
  - __sy__ 5y ago
    is this with SmartRent? My hunch is that they're trying to lower their cellular data costs by having you connect their units to wifi. I had no heard of this being surfaced as a lease-agreement clause though. Fwiw, we haven't run into cases yet where landlords want to leave our hub inside a unit once it has been rented out. I think there are pros/cons to it from a security/privacy standpoint. It can also be very convenient and reduce certain OPEX costs (e.g. insurance). But there are horror stories out there of some of the cheap OEM hubs that get deployed [1] and we (Seam) would want to have a solid conversation internally first to see what's the right approach here. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/02/smart-home-hub-flaws-unlock-doors/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/02/smart-home-hub-flaws-unloc...
    - vsareto 5y ago
      Yeah, SmartRent Here's the wording if you're interested: https://i.imgur.com/qF22wG9.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qF22wG9.jpg Plus even though it says "If you elect to purchase..." half-way down, I basically had no option but to walk away from the lease entirely. They wouldn't remove them, turn them off and replace with a physical lock, or anything else.
- dangerwill 5y ago
  Nothing until the battery runs out. I'm just thinking of situations like Texas, the East Coast hurricane season, the West Coast fire season, etc where power cuts can last up to a week. Or what happens when GCP/AWS/Azure have a bad day and you lose connectivity with your API servers?
  - __sy__ 5y ago
    yeah the battery only lasts 24 hours, though I suspect we could eventually implement a low-power mode in our firmware to stretch that quite a bit. To be honest, I'm also not sure to what extend we want to over index black-swan events [1] as part of our product roadmap. Your second point about GCP/AWS/Azure going down is really valid. When we started the company, we saw a few off-the-shelf gateways that relied on a permanent MQTT connection to function correctly, and from our Sonder experience, we knew that this was a non-starter for some of our early customers. Instead, we ended up creating our own hub and we run a ton of logic that runs entirely locally. For example, if an Airbnb reservation comes in, the hub immediately receives the door lock programming instructions even if the reservation is far out in the future. Our hub doesn't program the lock yet, but when the reservation time window arrives, the lock gets programmed by the hub irrespective of whether the internet or AWS is up/down. [1] well at this point, it's questionable whether we should refer to, for example, wildfires as Black Swan events. But I think you'll agree that most people aren't interested in touring a new home or staying at an Airbnb when the town next door is on fire...
    - dangerwill 5y ago
      Oh does your company only work with short term rentals (airbnb) and showings? I checked your website and came away with the impression that you might have landlords installing these units on long term rentals as well as business locations potentially. That does lower the stakes here significantly than what I was thinking. And yeah props for that solution to intermittent connectivity issues :)
    - travoc 5y ago
      24 hour power outages are not a black swan event anywhere in the world.
EricE 5y ago
If you have a smart lock that doesn't require Internet connectivity then power or network availability is not an issue. From the OP: https://www.igloohome.co/en-us/ https://www.igloohome.co/en-us/ It's the most innovative approach to smart locks I have ever seen and for this one nugget along I'm very grateful for the link to the original story!
- __sy__ 5y ago
  Just a quick caveat that for non-consumer contexts, completely offline stuff doesn't cut it. The enterprise customers we have do want to get status reports for the devices (e.g. battery level, lock/unlocked status, which code was punched in...etc). There are good reasons for this, especially considering some operate fleets of 10K+ door locks across 3 continents.
  - EricE 5y ago
    Absolutely. For smaller/medium sites where you want some accountability but real time isn't required there are solutions out there like CyberLock - to get historical information you wait for keys to either check in as they charge or you can run around and touch the locks with a key and the system will do a status update. It's not as convenient as wired/connected systems, but it's also a fraction of the price too. You can pick what's more important - real time or price :)

Speaking of logistical headaches, what happens with your system when the power goes out in a building?

__sy__ 5y ago

Right now we have a multi-protocol hub with cellular and battery back-up. So the short answer is... nothing?

vsareto 5y ago
How much is the technology around this mentioned in the lease agreement? My current complex specified that I had to supply internet and some other things for their smart hub service, although that turned out to not be the case (it's not on my network and works), but it was really weird to have that clause but it not match reality because I was effectively signing a document saying I was responsible for it.
- __sy__ 5y ago
  is this with SmartRent? My hunch is that they're trying to lower their cellular data costs by having you connect their units to wifi. I had no heard of this being surfaced as a lease-agreement clause though. Fwiw, we haven't run into cases yet where landlords want to leave our hub inside a unit once it has been rented out. I think there are pros/cons to it from a security/privacy standpoint. It can also be very convenient and reduce certain OPEX costs (e.g. insurance). But there are horror stories out there of some of the cheap OEM hubs that get deployed [1] and we (Seam) would want to have a solid conversation internally first to see what's the right approach here. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/02/smart-home-hub-flaws-unlock-doors/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/02/smart-home-hub-flaws-unloc...
  - vsareto 5y ago
    Yeah, SmartRent Here's the wording if you're interested: https://i.imgur.com/qF22wG9.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qF22wG9.jpg Plus even though it says "If you elect to purchase..." half-way down, I basically had no option but to walk away from the lease entirely. They wouldn't remove them, turn them off and replace with a physical lock, or anything else.
dangerwill 5y ago
Nothing until the battery runs out. I'm just thinking of situations like Texas, the East Coast hurricane season, the West Coast fire season, etc where power cuts can last up to a week. Or what happens when GCP/AWS/Azure have a bad day and you lose connectivity with your API servers?
- __sy__ 5y ago
  yeah the battery only lasts 24 hours, though I suspect we could eventually implement a low-power mode in our firmware to stretch that quite a bit. To be honest, I'm also not sure to what extend we want to over index black-swan events [1] as part of our product roadmap. Your second point about GCP/AWS/Azure going down is really valid. When we started the company, we saw a few off-the-shelf gateways that relied on a permanent MQTT connection to function correctly, and from our Sonder experience, we knew that this was a non-starter for some of our early customers. Instead, we ended up creating our own hub and we run a ton of logic that runs entirely locally. For example, if an Airbnb reservation comes in, the hub immediately receives the door lock programming instructions even if the reservation is far out in the future. Our hub doesn't program the lock yet, but when the reservation time window arrives, the lock gets programmed by the hub irrespective of whether the internet or AWS is up/down. [1] well at this point, it's questionable whether we should refer to, for example, wildfires as Black Swan events. But I think you'll agree that most people aren't interested in touring a new home or staying at an Airbnb when the town next door is on fire...
  - dangerwill 5y ago
    Oh does your company only work with short term rentals (airbnb) and showings? I checked your website and came away with the impression that you might have landlords installing these units on long term rentals as well as business locations potentially. That does lower the stakes here significantly than what I was thinking. And yeah props for that solution to intermittent connectivity issues :)
  - travoc 5y ago
    24 hour power outages are not a black swan event anywhere in the world.

EricE 5y ago

If you have a smart lock that doesn't require Internet connectivity then power or network availability is not an issue. From the OP: https://www.igloohome.co/en-us/ https://www.igloohome.co/en-us/ It's the most innovative approach to smart locks I have ever seen and for this one nugget along I'm very grateful for the link to the original story!

__sy__ 5y ago
Just a quick caveat that for non-consumer contexts, completely offline stuff doesn't cut it. The enterprise customers we have do want to get status reports for the devices (e.g. battery level, lock/unlocked status, which code was punched in...etc). There are good reasons for this, especially considering some operate fleets of 10K+ door locks across 3 continents.
- EricE 5y ago
  Absolutely. For smaller/medium sites where you want some accountability but real time isn't required there are solutions out there like CyberLock - to get historical information you wait for keys to either check in as they charge or you can run around and touch the locks with a key and the system will do a status update. It's not as convenient as wired/connected systems, but it's also a fraction of the price too. You can pick what's more important - real time or price :)