19 ms·

The smart home is flailing as a concept

155 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

analog31 5y ago
Businesses can adopt "smart" technologies because the decision makers are spending someone else's money, either on the initial outlay or on future maintenance / obsolescence. At work, the army of maintainers are your colleagues. At home, the maintainer is you.
anm89 5y ago
I couldn't agree more. There is no magic feature that is going to make me want a smart home. The whole concept sounds like a nightmare on so many levels. - higher maintenance - loss of privacy - loss of ownership of things in my home - reliance on subscriptions
- nousermane 5y ago
  It's funny how first item on your list of drawbacks (higher maintenance) was already there with first-wave of home automation, back in last century [0]. Current iteration not only fails to solve that problem, it also brings 3 additional problems. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.10
  - anm89 5y ago
    Yeah the 'better' it gets the more layers of code, abstractions, and networked system are required to work in perfect harmony for my home to not start creating problems in my life. Every extra feature is a regression.
- White_Wolf 5y ago
  if it's full offline with no subscriptions or internet connectivity - I'm up for some. If it needs any kind of connectivity or it comes as a service - no way in hell I'm exposing my family to the risk of not being able to flush a toiled one day because of a tweet or god know what.
  - jmkni 5y ago
    > If it needs any kind of connectivity or it comes as a service - no way in hell I'm exposing my family to the risk of not being able to flush a toilet one day because of a tweet or god know what. That sounds like the plot to a Black Mirror episode
  - mauvehaus 5y ago
    The problem is twofold: 1) People don't understand and don't want to have to understand how WiFi, servers, clients, protocols, GUIDs, etc work so they can up a standalone system. Manufacturers create systems requiring internet connectivity so they can abstract away some of the complexity from the end users. Unfortunately, that means when stuff fails, it's totally opaque, as described in TFA. I mean, shit, most people couldn't wire a lamp correctly or change a tire [citation needed, but you get my point]. 2) Rent seeking and data mining. Why let the customer pay for the lightbulb once and use it forever when you can make them pay for a monthly subscription and sell the usage data? And then you can force an upgrade when you deprecate the service before the light bulb burns out. Win/win! Remember: when somebody says "internet of things" what you should hear is "billions on unpatched, unmaintained Linux devices sold by companies whose core competencies aren't securing computers racing each other to the bottom".
    - White_Wolf 5y ago
      to be entirely honest I see the IOT part as a blessing and a curse. I can see what potential benefits IOT devices could bring but the risks of all these outdated devices in my home scare the hell out of me. I know it sounds like paranoid talk but my whole life is digital these days.
    - durbleflorp 5y ago
      Okay, but neither of those problems are actually an issue with smart homes as a concept, they're mostly issues with the way profit motive drives behavior in a capitalist system. The first point is confusing because the majority of tools people use today they can't repair themselves. That's what happens as technology advances, you need specialists to understand each system. If you look at things like earthships that are built to manage a lot more factors than a typical home, it becomes pretty clear how useful automating some of those systems and allowing them to share data could be. If you had good open standards for the tech and were actually trying to make things that improved people's lives or saved energy rather than mine data or recurring revenue, you could make some cool shit. Really the complaint should be about the way these products are developed and marketed, which is hardly unique to this sector.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  What's really sad is that there's no need for any smart home concept to result in a loss of privacy. However people are cheap, and its difficult to impossible for somebody selling a self-hosting smart home appliance that you just plug in to your wall to outcompete somebody who is practically giving away the hardware to make the money on your data or on subscriptions over time.
- vwelling 5y ago
  A lot of off-the-shelf consumer smart home products do suffer from the drawbacks you've listed, but they do not generally apply to the smart home concept. My home is automated using components that use the KNX standard, and although the initial investment is higher than a conventional electrical installation, I'd argue maintenance is actually simpler and cheaper – as pretty much all of it is in the software. Additionally, there's quite a few benefits: - It's all wired, so it's been rock solid; - It's vendor agnostic; - It's entirely local, so there's no subscriptions or even an internet connection dependency; - There's a ton of gateways available that allow me to interface with non-KNX products; Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. It is just a matter of convenience however, it's hardly a must-have.
  - fy20 5y ago
    I'm building a house at the moment and will go the KNX route. It really does seem great, it's just pretty much unknown outside of Germany for residential use. The way communication works is each device has a number of inputs and outputs that have defined data types (there are one hundred or so in total). When programming devices you just tell them which channel (group address) the inputs and outputs (group objects) should be linked to. Inputs can be linked to any number of channels, but outputs can only be linked to 1. Some devices have basic logic units if you want to do more complicated things. The group address is 16 bits, so there's lots of room for flexibility. For example, if you have a switch and the on/off output is linked to channel A, when you switch it on, it would send a 'switch on' message on that channel. If you have a light actuator (in simple terms, a programmable relay) that listens on channel A, when it receives that message it would turn the light on. If you want to add another switch at the other end of the hallway, you only need to program that switch to send the on/off output to channel A - the other devices don't need to be reprogrammed. Devices are certified (which is one reason why they are quite expensive compared to consumer smart home devices), but that means they are guaranteed to work together regardless of the manufacturer. The protocol itself hasn't really changed over time (there are a few minor new features which are not backwards compatible) so if you have a installation from the early 00s, you can buy new hardware today and know it'll work without issues.
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- bishoprook2 5y ago
  >There is no magic feature that is going to make me want a smart home. Imagine the fun when it all goes obsolete in five years, a controller board dies with no replacement available, all for very little advantage. Maybe this is Peak Technology. Sticking a computer and communications network on things that gain little from the addition. The one exception I might make is low-cost surveillance cameras, but of course it took the industry about ten seconds to add subscriptions and spying-on-you to the business model.
  - foobarian 5y ago
    It's bad enough that LED lights exploded in variety and change early and often. I had one of ten, 20-year lifespan ceiling flood lamps go dark, and of course the replacements don't exist because these particular lamps were only made during a 1-2 year window. To add insult to injury the fault is not in the actual light emitting element but (of course) in the driver.
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      > the fault is not in the actual light emitting element but (of course) in the driver.... Being over-driven. Big Clive loves to tear down LED bulbs to examine the driver boards. Often shows you ways to drop the current to sustainable levels and get back your 20-year lifespan LED bulbs (caveat, at lower power levels). https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom More specifically, example: https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4 https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Yeah, I consider "smart home" to be one of those complexity feith driven developments. Switches are simple, understandable, minimally-abstracted interfaces that almost never fail. Why would I want to add a several computers and some software to that? That just brings a whole bunch of new failure modes to the table for a miniscule gain in convenience.
lqet 5y ago
In our apartment, we have the following smart features: * Multiway light switches [0], which allow switching lights on and off from several different locations. * A boiler, which heats water up automatically should it become too cold. This covers lighting, heating, and supplies water at arbitrary temperatures between around 15 and 60 degrees celsius on demand, at several locations. The features do not require internet connectivity, are vendor-independent and have zero privacy issues. In the last 30 years since their installation, they have not once failed. I am at a complete loss why this should not be smart enough. The technical overhead some people introduce into their lives just to avoid pressing a button to turn of the light is mindblowing to me. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiway_switching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiway_switching
- sn41 5y ago
  For some reason, last year I tried to rederive the circuit diagram for 3 way switches. I failed. It's actually a very clever idea, and higher numbers are fun to think about independently.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    There's two way, three way, and four way, and four way can support arbitrary numbers of "ways" - because a path is always found on one flip of the switch and not on the other.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      No, GP is responding to the 'multiway switching' link in the top-level comment. This is about where, in the UK and I'm sure most developed jurisdictions, stairs for example must have a both on and off control at both ends - regardless of the state of the other switch. If they were simply in parallel as you describe, you could find yourself in the situation of going upstairs to turn it 'off up there', (because it'd need to be 'off everywhere' to be off) then realising it was already 'off downstairs' and falling back down. If they were simply in series, you could find yourself unable to turn the light on without first going downstairs at speed in the dark, because it's 'off there' no matter what you do upstairs.
cprayingmantis 5y ago
I'm seriously considering getting rid of most of my smart home devices not because they suck but because the software to control it sucks. The Samsung Smart Things app used to be so responsive, I could turn devices on and off without much delay. Now when I open up the app I have to restart it wait for it to connect, then wait for it to find every device, then 20 seconds later I can push a button that does something. That's unacceptable.
- sithadmin 5y ago
  Several of my friends that used to be on the SmartThings bandwagon have migrated to self-hosted Home Assistant and are much happier. I haven't made the jump myself yet, but plan to soon.
  - belval 5y ago
    While I understand not everyone has time to tinker with it, to me Home-Assistant is really the only way to do smart homes in a way that brings value because of its flexibility with a real programmable interface. For example, I was able to code an action to start my espresso machine (which has a 20 minutes preheating time) by hooking it at the "first look at phone" event in the day. To me this is obviously something I would never agree to share with a company selling ads, but since it never leaves the premises it's pretty cool.
    - _huayra_ 5y ago
      While I'm on the HA bandwagon, I've recommended Hubitat to some less tech-tinkering-inclined family members with good success: https://hubitat.com/ https://hubitat.com/
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      Automating the coffee machine is amazing - it was my first foray into Home Automation. It saves time, it works great and can also be done before you get home at the weekends. The just-audible click at 6am followed by the sound of the boiler heating is very satisfying, even 5+ years after setting it up.
sigmonsays 5y ago
the entire architecture is awful. The smart home has all these smart devices calling out to cloud APIs for even the most basic functionalities that could be performed locally. The "Cloud" is used to turn on a light in the house. I'm not sure if they want to collect information but smart devices that operate locally have far less failure cases.
- ljm 5y ago
  You mean, I shouldn't be distributing my 'light switched on' and 'light switched' off events over a highly available kafka cluster hosted on another continent? What if I want to replay the entire history of my switch flicking?
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Are there any companies or projects working on a completely local “smart home” hub? I suppose most companies are care more about sucking up our data and providing a “service” with a monthly bill than about providing useful hardware. It feels like there’s a huge gap between the best possible smart home product and what’s actually available.
  - andylynch 5y ago
    This is what Nabu Casa is doing with home assistant. At the other extreme by size Apple’s HomeKit is local-first too and they play well together.
  - mason55 5y ago
    Home Assistant is the leader here. One of the largest projects on GitHub with a “local-first” philosophy. They have a cloud service for exposing your instance but you don’t have to use it. I’ve been using it for years and it’s matured quite a bit recently. Combine with Zwave of ZigBee devices and the only thing you need internet for is voice assistant if you want it (Totally not required)
  - patrickk 5y ago
    One of the best options is locally hosted Home Assistant. Local, private, and connects to an enormous number of devices and services.
kingofspain 5y ago
I have a semi-smart home in that I’ve got a few smart plugs connected with Alexa and it’s useful to turn on/off a bunch of lights at once - or have them come on in the evening while away. Other than that I’m not really sure what more I’d want. Maybe some kind of instant-disco lighting so I can rock out to Dire Straits?
- IshKebab 5y ago
  A smart thermostat is useful. I would also like smart curtains (I made a prototype that I hooked up to Google Home ok - "Hey Google open the curtains" works, but the actual physical bit is tricky). A smart lock would be very useful too, e.g. for granting temporary timed access to cleaners etc. But there's no way I trust any of the smart locks on the market with my home security. I have some smart scales too. They are pretty great. It isn't the concept that is the problem. It's the lack of standards and long term support. Non-smart curtains, scales, lights, locks, etc. essentially work forever, whereas I'd give smart versions 10 years tops. And I don't really want to lock my house into 5 different vendors' proprietary systems.
  - kingofspain 5y ago
    Yeah I feel the plugs are a good enough thing for now. If they are duff in ten years? So what - it was a £7 plug and I’ll get some more with a hopefully open standard by then. I’d never go all-in the way things currently are.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    > But there's no way I trust any of the smart locks on the market with my home security. The security provided by most door locks is completely illusory. You can break into most homes very easily. Most people have unsecured windows on the ground floor. Most locks are there as a way to signal that this door shouldn't be opened. It's mostly a psychological detterent. As long as your insurance is fine with your smart lock, it's probably not much worth than a dumb lock. The exception is of course the upper floors of apartment complex in large city in which case the five points locking system on your door is there to signal that it will me more time effective to break into your neighbor place. > It's the lack of standards and long term support Completely agree with that. All companies want to build a locked plateform. That's hindering the market growth a lot.
jasode 5y ago
Relevant past thread: "The 10 Reasons I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25099615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25099615 tldr: unreliable hardware + bugs ... results in endless hassles On the other hand, you have the ultra-high-end of smarthome tech with systems like Crestron. It seems ok but it's very expensive (million dollar mansions/estates budgets) and the custom programming is proprietary so the homeowners can't modify it themselves.
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paulryanrogers 5y ago
All I want is control of the televisions from my phone. No Samsung, I don't want them all on the same Wifi--it's not reliable. And by control I mean including turning them on / waking.
- kadoban 5y ago
  Logitech's Harmony can do that, I'm sure others as well. Full disclosure I've never used their app, only other pieces of that line. I think the whole line is discontinued now, but looks like you can still find them easily.
nickthegreek 5y ago
I have a bunch of philips hue lights, a nest thermostat and some blink cameras hooked up to both alexa and google hub and it all just works and has for years. I used to have problems when I was buying a bunch of cheap china mix and match products.
bob1029 5y ago
I always struggled with the UX around smart home. User story: It is 5AM and you are fumbling into the kitchen in the morning to make coffee and you cant see anything. You reach out to the wall and flip the light switch into the "on" position. Memories of smartphones and voice assistants are still vague concepts on your mental horizon. I feel like zero engineers in the smart home space have read the Don Norman book.
- andylynch 5y ago
  The first smart switch I installed was to preheat my coffee maker in the morning. Motion activated lights heading to the kitchen before dawn came soon after.
- hansvm 5y ago
  User story: It's 3AM. Your home confirmed with you yesterday that you want to wake up early for a flight whose confirmation it found in your email. The lights are gradually brightened and blue-shifted through till 4AM. While that's happening, at 3:50AM your coffee maker is preheated. An audio alarm gets you up at 4AM, and motion-activated baseboard lights guide you to the kitchen as you stumble around in your groggy state. A glow emanates from the cupboard door hiding your favorite mug. After your coffee is done, as you're rushing out the door you realize you can't find your keys -- panicking for a moment you ask your home where it last saw you carrying them, and it tells you they're on your bedside table. You head out the door and catch your flight. Everything mentioned above is pretty straightforward to rig together with off-the-shelf hardware and software, even if a little time consuming.
  - bob1029 5y ago
    Does complexity not enter into the equation? How long would it take to set something like that up and have it reliably go to plan every time? What if you feel like oversleeping and now your coffee is cold?
    - hansvm 5y ago
      > Does complexity not enter into the equation? Sure it does. There's a setup cost, and it's fully possible that it's not worth messing with something like that unless you enjoy tinkering (and the way I see the market moving it seems likely that smart homes will stay that way for awhile). The user story definitely exists though. > What if you feel like oversleeping and now your coffee is cold? In the outlined scenario, your snooze function would want to also turn off the lights, the motion-activated baseboard lights going to your coffee maker would work fine, and your coffee maker would still be preheated and have wasted a bit of power if you didn't have some kind of a timed cutoff or similar.
Joker_vD 5y ago
To this day I am baffled by the smart lighbulbs. So you take a LED light, strap a bulky AC/DC convertor to it, then also glue in a WiFi module, and also some microcontroller for managing all that stuff. Then you cram all that into E27 fitting and have problems with heat dissipation if your LED is actually about as bright as an old 100W lamp was: the capacitors give out after a couple of months of work so you have to buy a new lightbulb (and those things ain't cheap because of all of that additional stuff it has inside it). Obviously, a sane way to do things would be to have a single microcontroller/WiFi module mounted near/inside any of traditional manual light switches, have a single AC/DC convertor near your circuit breaker box, and have it power the whole lighting wiring (from which the microcontroller would draw too) with 9V DC, and now the LEDs inside the lightbulbs will have enough space to cool properly even with size-reduced fittings. But where is money in doing things the sensible way, right?
- gruez 5y ago
  >But where is money in doing things the sensible way, right? the non-cynical explanation is that the lightbulb socket is the form factor that is most easily used by the consumer. Some sort of setup involving changing the lightswitch or the bulb socket might be better, but would also require a bunch of work and risk (live wires!) to install.
  - vanviegen 5y ago
    That, and I want to be able to control lights that aren't on a wall switch and to independently control lights that are in the same group. We've been using about 50 Hue bulbs for years, without a single one going bust. But I'm sure you're able to buy cheap crap that is... well, crap.
    - Joker_vD 5y ago
      Yes, cheap crap is crap. But the problem with even non-cheap 1500 lumen bulbs (which I have 3 in my ceiling chandelier, and it's barely enough to make my room comfortably bright) is that they don't last too long because of overheating: each drains about 20W and apparently it's very hard to dissipate that much heat through the plastic fitting.
TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
I had a Nest thermostat before they were acquired. I liked it because the key feature I bought it for, the ability to automatically adjust the temperature, worked pretty well. I think that's the key for me personally: will this actually make things easier for me? I don't want a ton of notifications I have to respond to. Our older Logitech Harmony hub was useful for the same reason: it reduced multiple remotes to a single app that worked anywhere in the house via wifi.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
We don’t have any smart gadgets except old iPads. I set up one by our kitchen that is mounted near the refrigerator. The kids use it to see whats on the calendar, what chores they have in the reminder app, and what is for dinner (using a summary sheet in numbers that pulls from our meal plan). The reminder app is synced across all our devices, so we (parents) can add things when we are out and about. Also, the shortcuts app can automate adding repeated events. I can imagine a future where there are little displays near light switches that communicate such information in different rooms. We will likely do this with old iOS devices under the same appleID.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Highly recommend the movie ‘Brazil’ as a dystopian reminder of the humor that misuse of ‘smart’ home technology can bring to life.
alkonaut 5y ago
My smart home strategy is pretty simple: nothing that requires internet connection to work. Only local devices. WiFi where possible over anything low power (BT, Zigbee, ZWave), wired over wireless wherever possible (e.g 1-wire). Policy for anything I include is that it must fail like an escalator not an elevator - a dumb switch for example, not a light that can’t be switched on. This means smart lightswitches, not smart lights. It’s a lot of work to configure and maintain but tools like home assistant, proxmox and docker at least makes it somewhat manageable. It’s still a pain though, and it feels like a special kind of masochism to tinker with. I think it’s entirely possible that an average user who isn’t a programmer or willing to pull a neutral wire here and there could have a decent “smart home” set up by themselves some time within the next three or four decades…
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
My wife and I were constantly warring over whether our living/dining/kitchen window blinds should be open or close, and there were too many and the faux wood was too heavy to manipulate so much. To make things easy, we got Lutron motorized cellulars shades so we could just ask Siri to open or close whatever. Totally worth it. Since we had the shades, we also did our lights in that room, so now we can quickly put down all the shades and turn on all the lights. That being said, I can’t see doing it for any other room in our house. The bother factor just isn’t there like it was with our main open living space. Well, maybe the bedroom, we don’t open the shades very much even though I’d like to.
0xC0ncord 5y ago
I feel like the biggest problem I've had with smart home technology is that there is no out of the box standard for controlling or having access to all of your devices. Almost every device seems to require interacting with it with the vendor's own app or other utility, and so I've needed to install a multitude of at least 3 apps just to control the lights. So not only are vendors trying to compete with their smart devices, but additionally with the apps they've created to even use them, probably to see how much more money they can squeeze out of selling your personal information. Thankfully, there's Home Assistant[1], which is an amazing project that aims to bridge connectivity and control between all of these devices into a single centralized environment. Pair that up with Tasmota[2]-compatible devices and you can have a smart home that can be completely disconnected from the cloud and in your control. [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/ [2] https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ https://tasmota.github.io/docs/
Steltek 5y ago
For general consumers, I would agree. For geeks, I love my smart home with Home Assistant (thanks devs!). I was reluctant at first and thought I'd just dip my toe in to see what it could do. Now I'm regretting not diving right in. I love using a browser to manage Schlage keycodes instead of tediously punching numbers on each keypad. I love that my kitchen lights all come on at once instead of having to flip 5 switches all over the room. I love that I can turn on the outside lights when we're returning home late and even unlock the door as we're pulling into the driveway, so the little one can make it to the bathroom on time. I love that my outdoor lights react to both time and outdoor light conditions. I recently bought and installed an IotaWatt, an open h/w and s/w home power monitoring system. I haven't integrated it into HA yet but I guess I only care about having a dashboard widget. Everything is local and self-hosted. I don't have to worry about cloud rot, suspended accounts, or Internet outages. PS, if anyone knows how to control a Mitsuibishi hyperheat heatpump through HA, I'd love to know more. It's the big missing link in the system right now.
- splitrocket 5y ago
  If your Mitsubishi uses IR for it's remote, this probably would work: https://github.com/geoffdavis/esphome-mitsubishiheatpump https://github.com/geoffdavis/esphome-mitsubishiheatpump Or, you can use a Broadlink IR blaster to clone the remote. If your heat pump talks to MEL cloud (Mitsubishi's cloud thingy) then this should work: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/melcloud/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/melcloud/ I have yet to buy a "smart" device that I haven't been able to control through HA. The Broadlink RF/IR bridges even makes anything with a remote automatable. Seriously, If it wasn't for Home Assistant, the "smartness" of smart devices would be next to useless.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Check out https://github.com/SwiCago/HeatPump https://github.com/SwiCago/HeatPump (and derived projects) for your heat pump. I was just looking at this yesterday - unfortunately my units don't have the CN105/CN92 connector so I'm out of luck but if your unit is newer you should be fine!
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
Is the smart home really failing? Reading the article I realised I actually have plenty of "smart" home products. The catch is that they are not really smart but I like what they do. Small lamps which I can switch on and off directly from my phone without having to go through the room are nice. Being able to make the light warmer when I want is nice too. I have a smart thermostat which I motly use to warm my place the day before I get there when I am out for a long time. That's pretty enjoyable too. My scale graphs my weight automatically when I remember to use its "smart" feature. When I was paying attention to it, it was handy. I also like the fact that it's all piloted from my phone which I mostly always have and apart from the thermostat none of them require being online. At this point, the smartness is mostly just remote control and sometimes a feedback loop with a sensor. That's not very smart but I don't really need more.
- FooHentai 5y ago
  Sounds like discretionary adoption along the lines of a typical hype curve based on what you describe;- Initial optimism about a hyper integrated, seamless home full of intelligent devices that sync up and act as a cohesive whole. This gives way to eventually settling on reality where a few disparate clever devices deliver high value while being relatively low complexity and working mostly independently. I've struggled to find even that much value in smart products - we flirted with a Hue system but at literally 10x the cost of ordinary led lights we didn't get beyond a few bulbs before realizing it was a money pit with at best marginal benefits. We have a few nice nanoleaf feature pieces that run themselves on a simple schedule. I can't see much else making it's way into the place and creating additional headaches. I felt like a cynical old git shaking my head about new the work coffee machine having a touch screen and needing wifi to work, but seeing how often the same machine was 'down' waiting for a tech and the absurdity of colleagues who didn't quite know how to work around such an outage... This kind of stuff may be creating value for investors somewhere but in the long run there's little chance it's improving the lives of those it's being marketed to.
jansan 5y ago
In 1959 Westinghouse presented an amazing visionary concept for future living with their "Westinghouse Total Electric Home": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyrTgtPTz3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyrTgtPTz3M Many of the presented ideas are eubiquitous today, and in a luxury modern house, almost all of the presented features exist. I wonder if any vision for future living exists today that will turn out to be as prophetic as the Westinghouse Total Electric Home.
NotSwift 5y ago
I am a bit disappointed that no one has mentioned a big problem with all these machines: security. Most of these items were developed by companies with only limited experience in security. They offer a tempting attack surface for attackers. Once they are compromised they can be used to attack other devices in your network. Most of them run proprietary software, so it is not possible to verify its code. They require that the network is correctly configured which is not at all easy. There have already been a lot of incidents where surveillance cameras were exposed on the internet.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  Even if they do have security experience (i.e Google), I would expect that for many vendors security is WAY, WAY down the list. And security doesn't end when they ship the device, it also must be present throughout all updates, even when the device is no longer supported by the vendor.
mumblemumble 5y ago
This tweet pretty much sums up how it works in my social circle: https://twitter.com/TooMany_Monkeys/status/1120561634412584960 https://twitter.com/TooMany_Monkeys/status/11205616344125849... > Non-magic users: collect crystals, call their pet a familiar, draw pentagrams > Magic users:the most magical things I keep in my house are rocks, and I keep a hammer next to them in case they act up
uberman 5y ago
I think that the smart home is failing/will fail because people have a limit on how much they are willing to be tracked. Smart devices from TVs, to cameras to speakers to vacuums are reporting details of our lives that most people just don't want to give up. It used to be the case that people feared that the government could watch them through their TV or listen in via their phone. Now, those things seem like they are product features.
- laddershoe 5y ago
  Anecdotally: I don't have any smart home stuff, but literally every other member of my family does (parents, siblings, inlaws, etc). I've had numerous conversations in which they ask me why we accept an Echo or a Nest or something as a Christmas present, but my privacy concerns are always greeted with a blank stare. They just don't see it as an issue. To them, the (perceived?) issue is how hard everything seems to setup and maintain. I haven't tried connecting any smart stuff lately, so maybe it's really easy for all I know, but all that stuff seems really advanced to them and they seem kind of afraid of it.
- only_as_i_fall 5y ago
  I doubt it. Most people literally don't care if Amazon is recording all their conversations. Even more people don't care as long as nobody at Amazon is actually listening. Smart homes aren't super popular because of integration issues imo.
mabbo 5y ago
No company has successfully marketed an actual smart home system. Google Home and Amazon Alexa are, in reality, personal data collection systems that utilize convenience to get consumers to use them. The goal is not to help consumers, but to collect data. And from an economical perspective, this makes sense. There's great money in gathering massive amounts of person data about people. Who would have imagined 15 years ago that we'd let Amazon and Google know about what time we get up and go to bed, what time we use our microwave, what sports games we watch, when we call our mothers. I want something simpler, local-network-only. Not a 'smart' home but an obedient home. Ideally something like an Event Bus with a basic protocol for events and some safety controls to prevent chaos. But there's no economic incentive to build or sell such a thing.
- gdulli 5y ago
  I bought a house last year and the first thing I did was remove the Ring video doorbell. But if it hadn't been a company with an Amazon or Google type reputation I'd have at least tried using it for a while.
  - taeric 5y ago
    I would think the odds are much higher of a smaller company either a) selling your data to everyone that they can get money from, or b) just not having the tech skills to keep secure. Note that I am not criticizing you not wanting to use it at all. Just curious that if it was another name, you would have been ok with it.
    - JohnFen 5y ago
      I don't know about that. Amazon and Google have a decent track record of being bad about data privacy, and the size of a company by itself says nothing about that company's expertise.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      I think the point was that with Google or Amazon, you know what their real motive is. With another product, they might actually just be selling a security camera.
kbos87 5y ago
I don’t think many people make a decision to “smartify” their home at any one point in time. The reality is that it creeps in over time. If you are shopping for a mid to high end anything today - lighting to a dishwasher - some smart features are likely going to be standard on many models. People get these things home, probably try and like some of the smart features. But inevitably over time you discover how poorly integrated they all are with one another, you become frustrated when the smart features start chronically disconnecting, and suddenly it’s all more trouble than it’s worth. The only way out of this that I can see is the passage of time and steady iteration by device manufacturers, and real investment by a few platforms (eg Apple with HomeKit) to give us a decent front end and quasi home iPaaS. I worry they don’t have the incentive to keep investing.
qalmakka 5y ago
The smart home is a crappy idea because appliances, switches and fixed lights are supposed to last for decades before needing to be replaced. Companies have clearly shown close to no interest in maintaining and upgrading even reasonably recent devices - adding smart features to previously dumb devices is nice at first, but what about in five years when the software will start to rot and stop working, and probably become a serious privacy and security liability? Until this gets solved somehow smart features will always remain a marketing gimmick. There's no way around it. People accept replacing ageing phones and computers because their connectivity features are a large part of the reason they exist. This isn't true for a light switch, for instance, which is mostly seen as a way to turn lights off.
- newsclues 5y ago
  I think the technology is ready but it’s held back by business model incompatibility. The smart home should be an open source hub that integrates appliances, switches and lighting etc. But the business model requires vendor lock-in closed systems.
  - teeray 5y ago
    It would be nice for the building code to start dictating some interop standards for this stuff to overcome the natural tendency of the business to make this a winner-take-all market at the expense of the consumer. At first blush, it feels like it would be a little out of their wheelhouse, but it's not entirely unusual since it responds to consumer interests. For example, Energy Storage Systems (batteries) are a new-ish thing added to the code around 2014.
    - conk 5y ago
      Codes abs standards have working groups composed of industry, consumers and inspectors. New groups are created all the time to address new technology. Unfortunately the initial cost to set up is typically too high for most individuals leaving progress in building codes/standards up to corporations.
    - 5y ago
stuaxo 5y ago
I read this as "smart phone", but maybe that was hoping too much ?
splitrocket 5y ago
Do yourself a favor and read the writeup about the perfect home automation system by founder of Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io) https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016/01/19/perfect-home-automation/ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016/01/19/perfect-home-a... An app per device class/vendor is beyond useless. A centralized, single controller that mostly has no interface at all is the solution.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
I never wanted a smart home. I don't even want "smart" appliances. I want energy-efficient, reliable appliances and homes, with behavior I can predict, that don't spy on me, or rely on remote APIs, and have high usability factors. I don't mind remotes, and voice activation might be nice if I was disabled, but for the most part I'm happiest when my home and I don't get in each other's way.
at_a_remove 5y ago
I think this is a combination of various weaknesses acting in discord (rather than in concert) to create pure chaos. 1) Making the devices Internet-Must devices. Not only does this mean some dumb failure modes when your connection goes down -- and it will -- but temperature adjustments might be made based on far-away weather stations, processed through layers of averages and aggregators, instead of drawing from local sensors. 2) Not thinking about security (conflicts massively with #1). Security isn't as daunting if you are not hooked up to the Internet. It can still be an issue, but opening up your attack surface to "the world" only makes things worse. 3) Proprietary, and therefore incompatible standards. If I want X, but I already have Y, I hope to hell that YCorp has an X-like offering in their works. 4) Being more about data collection (see also Samsung's SmartTVs exfiltrating data, or Amazon Walk ... or maybe now Apple is dipping their toes into that with their CSAM "won't somebody think of the children?" business) 5) The general disposablity of today's electronics. This also plays into standards because it'll just burn out so why be backwards-compatible? Just make a new standard. And you're back to #3.
yalogin 5y ago
The biggest hindrance is showing value in upgrading to the "smart" devices. A light switch connected to wifi and a phone is just not needed in 99% of the cases. Operating it with a phone is just not incentive enough to replace it with something that is 10x more expensive than the original. Same thing with other "smart" items too, at least in my case. Something like a garage door opener is different because its relatively expensive to replace than fitting an adaptor to automate, and there could be more people needing to operate the garage door remotely. I don't see an explosive market there. The only easy market is the "scare" market which is what Ring exploited and pretty much rules the camera doorbell.
ctdonath 5y ago
Yes, “why bother?” works for most. Those of us who do, or don’t, want “smart home” don’t need to justify it. For those who do . . . Should be simple installation matching existing patterns. Switch & outlet covers shouldn’t need to change, as there’s just enough failure to fit to make updates unworkable (haven’t seen any smart switches fit a 2-3 switch cover plate). Blend traditional operation with smart (smart wireless switch next to normal wired switch annoyingly interfere). Don’t compel grouping of lights (wife’s light must not be coupled with mine in automatons). Ensure sensible symbiosis (“on at sunset, off at 9pm” shouldn’t leave light on when sunset is 9:02pm). Stay on the right network (I have two). The problems are petty and easily fixed - yet nobody wants to solve them.
JohnFen 5y ago
I've had a "smart home" for about 20 years now, and it's been great! Definitely not a failing concept. But I wouldn't buy any of the modern "smart home/IoT" devices mostly because they're security nightmares, although tons of them have other serious issues as well. The way that most modern "smart home" equipment manufacturers design their devices is the failing concept, not smart homes in general.
DoubleGlazing 5y ago
The author is right the, most current home automation products suck. The stuff from big brand names is poorly supported, pricey and designed to suck your money away from you. The cheaper Chinese stuff requires the use of a cloud server located somewhere I don't know and it comes with god knows how many security holes. Plus, the build quality is ropey at best, I clearly remember that time a desk lamp controller in my children's room literally melted. There are a few devices on the market that don't rely on cloud servers. I have a few plug controllers that you can control via WebSockets or a REST API. I've been dabbling with them for a while and they seem pretty decent. It's just a pity there isn't any off the shelf home automation software that I could use to control them.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > off the shelf home automation software that I could use to control them. Home Assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io
  - only_as_i_fall 5y ago
    Home assistant is great, but I wouldn't really expect someone who isn't very good with technology to be able to use it well.
gr1zzlybe4r 5y ago
I don't own, but when I do I will go out of my way to try and buy unconnected devices. There is no physical device in my home that I want "as a service" in any way.
pcdoodle 5y ago
Insteon is pretty good (Wall switches, lamp dimmers and appliance modules). No central hub required. They form relationships with one another without a middle man. There's also a USB module if you like programming your own stuff.
indymike 5y ago
My house is a big, fancy container for people. Where it is nice, is where I can easily reconfigure it. Think moving furniture around, wall coverings and so on. Easy. Where it hardest to get right is where you can't easily re-configure and re-decorate. Bathrooms that are fixed by plumbing. Kitchens fixed by immobile cabinetry built around plumbing. Inflexible wiring. Smart isn't the problem. Flexible is.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
What problem is a smart home the solution for?
Causality1 5y ago
After what happened to Revolv customers when Google bought them I'm never going to spent more on a smart device than I would on a good lunch. Sure, I'll put some five and ten dollar smart switches on lamps but this whole home integration crap is for the birds.
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johnboiles 5y ago
HOME ASSIS TANT It's really the only thing that's good in the smart home world rn. It makes all sorts of otherwise crappy IOT hardware work decently together.
- johnboiles 5y ago
  Imagine this but with emoji claps in the spaces of the first line. I guess HN doesn't do emoji ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
yuy910616 5y ago
Fun story time - One time I woke up in the middle of the night. Not knowing what time it is, I shouted into the darkness "Hey Google, what time is it?" To my surprise, the machine reply in a excessively cheerful tone, "Welcome to what fruit are you" and proceed to give me a personality quiz. I wasn't able to get the time - but I found out that I'm a watermelon. So I think it is a mistake to call smart home a failure.
cratermoon 5y ago
Also smart home devices can and have been employed by domestic abusers against their victims. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54554408 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54554408 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200511-how-smart-home-devices-are-being-used-for-domestic-abuse https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200511-how-smart-home-d... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-devices-domestic-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-dev...
cratermoon 5y ago
All the comments here seem to be from and about people who own their homes. What about renters? https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/tenants-worry-smart-home-tech-could-be-abused-by-landlords/ https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/tenants-worry-smart-hom...
thehappypm 5y ago
By far my best experience with any sort of smart home device was for my apartment in Boston. My overhead light did not have a switch, and the previous homeowner used a pull cord. I replaced it with a Phillips smart LED that connected wirelessly to a physical switch that I pasted onto the wall. No electrician, and now my light has a switch. $30 well spent. I never did get around to connecting it to an app or anything like that. Oh, I also had a WiFi enabled outlet! That was a gift from my sister in law. I used it on an air conditioner -- if I remembered, I could turn on the AC an hour before I got home. I also have a WiFi enabled AC in my new home and can set each room's temperature individually by app. These things are useful and convenient but I'm not really going out of my way to set them up.
D13Fd 5y ago
I've had great success with smart switches/dimmers/outlets/locks, mostly because they allow you to set more complex schedules and timers. I rarely use the remote on/off capability, but just having a device that works on a schedule is really nice. Examples: - Our late-1980's house has a lot of accent lights scattered about. We never used them before because we had to flip a switch on each one. Now they come on automatically at dusk and turn off after we go to bed. It's nice. - Our TV speakers don't have a sleep mode. We use a smart outlet to power them down automatically at the times when we usually don't use them. - Our 2-year-old used to turn his very bright closet light on and stay up late in his room. We set a smart switch so that turns off after a couple of minutes. Now he sleeps much better. - Our kitchen lights were way too bright and people kept leaving them on, plus the two sides of the room were on different switches and one was brighter than the other. Now they come on at an even 20%/40% brightness unless double-clicked, and automatically shut off after a few hours if people leave them on. - Our garage door shuts itself if we forget to shut it. - It was too inconvenient to keep the busiest exterior door locked. Now the deadbolt locks automatically after a few minutes, and we can give out visitor codes the babysitter and for people who come in to work on the house etc. We put all this stuff on a separate WiFi network (to alleviate some of the possible security issues) to the extent it needs wifi. We have a mishmash of different things from different manufacturers, and no central hub. But things have been working really well for a couple of years now.
sheepybloke 5y ago
My issue with smart devices is that they aren't smart. They are just internet controlled devices that can you can control via an app. To me, smart devices are objects that have added value by doing a task more intelligently. Think like a thermostat that can learn your lifestyle and adjusts the temperature accordingly. Or like a microwave that sets cooking time based on what was put in it. These are smart devices, and honestly, I don't think there are actually many out there now.
teclordphrack2 5y ago
If it is cloud based and requires a connection to the outside world then it is not going in most peoples homes. These places have to start offering a DIY level of service where they just sell the physical device and software and then are no longer in contact with the customer.
robochat 5y ago
I guess that I have a smart home albeit a cheap version. I have used sonoff smart switches to give me remote control of my flat's electric radiators. This has given me extra control over their schedules than available using their in-built interfaces. Plus I can turn them on remotely if I am unexpectedly coming home so the flat is warm when I get back. I live in France and the radiators have a control pin that accepts various 230V AC waveforms (!) to set different functions but luckily simply on/off can be used to toggle between the radiators' high and low temperatures (that I set via each radiator's internal interface). It's crude but effective. I use an app to control the remote switches; I'm not totally happy about relying on a cloud based app but I can always bypass the remote control locally if there's an issue and in summer the radiators' are simply switched off so the risks are minimal.
robochat 5y ago
I've often thought that it would be good to have a app that could tell me that my doors and windows were shut and locked for when I suddenly can't remember if I actually did it. However the security implications of having such a system would worry me, particularly if it became popular. If hacked, it could tell thieves which houses had been accidentally left unlocked in an area, which could be worse than accidentally leaving a door unlocked all day. Also it might even make the company running the system liable for any thefts caused by hacks to their system and so it might be hard for a company to run such a system.
tintt 5y ago
Smart homes are so stupid today
taurath 5y ago
It’s also about the only thing holding up electronics retail. Half of Best Buy now is smarthome gadgets.
laacz 5y ago
I've said it multiple times, and I'll say it again. Smart home is a supplement. Your home should work in a way that when smart stuff fails, home won't fail. Take a light switch as an example. You have to be able to get up and manually switch lights on/off when an app or a smartswitch won't work. If smart heating won't work (sensors or smart regulators fail), heating should work anyway, it just wouldn't be as smart.

155 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

Businesses can adopt "smart" technologies because the decision makers are spending someone else's money, either on the initial outlay or on future maintenance / obsolescence. At work, the army of maintainers are your colleagues. At home, the maintainer is you.

anm89 5y ago

I couldn't agree more. There is no magic feature that is going to make me want a smart home. The whole concept sounds like a nightmare on so many levels. - higher maintenance - loss of privacy - loss of ownership of things in my home - reliance on subscriptions

nousermane 5y ago
It's funny how first item on your list of drawbacks (higher maintenance) was already there with first-wave of home automation, back in last century [0]. Current iteration not only fails to solve that problem, it also brings 3 additional problems. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.10
- anm89 5y ago
  Yeah the 'better' it gets the more layers of code, abstractions, and networked system are required to work in perfect harmony for my home to not start creating problems in my life. Every extra feature is a regression.
White_Wolf 5y ago
if it's full offline with no subscriptions or internet connectivity - I'm up for some. If it needs any kind of connectivity or it comes as a service - no way in hell I'm exposing my family to the risk of not being able to flush a toiled one day because of a tweet or god know what.
- jmkni 5y ago
  > If it needs any kind of connectivity or it comes as a service - no way in hell I'm exposing my family to the risk of not being able to flush a toilet one day because of a tweet or god know what. That sounds like the plot to a Black Mirror episode
- mauvehaus 5y ago
  The problem is twofold: 1) People don't understand and don't want to have to understand how WiFi, servers, clients, protocols, GUIDs, etc work so they can up a standalone system. Manufacturers create systems requiring internet connectivity so they can abstract away some of the complexity from the end users. Unfortunately, that means when stuff fails, it's totally opaque, as described in TFA. I mean, shit, most people couldn't wire a lamp correctly or change a tire [citation needed, but you get my point]. 2) Rent seeking and data mining. Why let the customer pay for the lightbulb once and use it forever when you can make them pay for a monthly subscription and sell the usage data? And then you can force an upgrade when you deprecate the service before the light bulb burns out. Win/win! Remember: when somebody says "internet of things" what you should hear is "billions on unpatched, unmaintained Linux devices sold by companies whose core competencies aren't securing computers racing each other to the bottom".
  - White_Wolf 5y ago
    to be entirely honest I see the IOT part as a blessing and a curse. I can see what potential benefits IOT devices could bring but the risks of all these outdated devices in my home scare the hell out of me. I know it sounds like paranoid talk but my whole life is digital these days.
  - durbleflorp 5y ago
    Okay, but neither of those problems are actually an issue with smart homes as a concept, they're mostly issues with the way profit motive drives behavior in a capitalist system. The first point is confusing because the majority of tools people use today they can't repair themselves. That's what happens as technology advances, you need specialists to understand each system. If you look at things like earthships that are built to manage a lot more factors than a typical home, it becomes pretty clear how useful automating some of those systems and allowing them to share data could be. If you had good open standards for the tech and were actually trying to make things that improved people's lives or saved energy rather than mine data or recurring revenue, you could make some cool shit. Really the complaint should be about the way these products are developed and marketed, which is hardly unique to this sector.
blacktriangle 5y ago
What's really sad is that there's no need for any smart home concept to result in a loss of privacy. However people are cheap, and its difficult to impossible for somebody selling a self-hosting smart home appliance that you just plug in to your wall to outcompete somebody who is practically giving away the hardware to make the money on your data or on subscriptions over time.
vwelling 5y ago
A lot of off-the-shelf consumer smart home products do suffer from the drawbacks you've listed, but they do not generally apply to the smart home concept. My home is automated using components that use the KNX standard, and although the initial investment is higher than a conventional electrical installation, I'd argue maintenance is actually simpler and cheaper – as pretty much all of it is in the software. Additionally, there's quite a few benefits: - It's all wired, so it's been rock solid; - It's vendor agnostic; - It's entirely local, so there's no subscriptions or even an internet connection dependency; - There's a ton of gateways available that allow me to interface with non-KNX products; Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. It is just a matter of convenience however, it's hardly a must-have.
- fy20 5y ago
  I'm building a house at the moment and will go the KNX route. It really does seem great, it's just pretty much unknown outside of Germany for residential use. The way communication works is each device has a number of inputs and outputs that have defined data types (there are one hundred or so in total). When programming devices you just tell them which channel (group address) the inputs and outputs (group objects) should be linked to. Inputs can be linked to any number of channels, but outputs can only be linked to 1. Some devices have basic logic units if you want to do more complicated things. The group address is 16 bits, so there's lots of room for flexibility. For example, if you have a switch and the on/off output is linked to channel A, when you switch it on, it would send a 'switch on' message on that channel. If you have a light actuator (in simple terms, a programmable relay) that listens on channel A, when it receives that message it would turn the light on. If you want to add another switch at the other end of the hallway, you only need to program that switch to send the on/off output to channel A - the other devices don't need to be reprogrammed. Devices are certified (which is one reason why they are quite expensive compared to consumer smart home devices), but that means they are guaranteed to work together regardless of the manufacturer. The protocol itself hasn't really changed over time (there are a few minor new features which are not backwards compatible) so if you have a installation from the early 00s, you can buy new hardware today and know it'll work without issues.
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bishoprook2 5y ago
>There is no magic feature that is going to make me want a smart home. Imagine the fun when it all goes obsolete in five years, a controller board dies with no replacement available, all for very little advantage. Maybe this is Peak Technology. Sticking a computer and communications network on things that gain little from the addition. The one exception I might make is low-cost surveillance cameras, but of course it took the industry about ten seconds to add subscriptions and spying-on-you to the business model.
- foobarian 5y ago
  It's bad enough that LED lights exploded in variety and change early and often. I had one of ten, 20-year lifespan ceiling flood lamps go dark, and of course the replacements don't exist because these particular lamps were only made during a 1-2 year window. To add insult to injury the fault is not in the actual light emitting element but (of course) in the driver.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    > the fault is not in the actual light emitting element but (of course) in the driver.... Being over-driven. Big Clive loves to tear down LED bulbs to examine the driver boards. Often shows you ways to drop the current to sustainable levels and get back your 20-year lifespan LED bulbs (caveat, at lower power levels). https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom More specifically, example: https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4 https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Yeah, I consider "smart home" to be one of those complexity feith driven developments. Switches are simple, understandable, minimally-abstracted interfaces that almost never fail. Why would I want to add a several computers and some software to that? That just brings a whole bunch of new failure modes to the table for a miniscule gain in convenience.

lqet 5y ago

In our apartment, we have the following smart features: * Multiway light switches [0], which allow switching lights on and off from several different locations. * A boiler, which heats water up automatically should it become too cold. This covers lighting, heating, and supplies water at arbitrary temperatures between around 15 and 60 degrees celsius on demand, at several locations. The features do not require internet connectivity, are vendor-independent and have zero privacy issues. In the last 30 years since their installation, they have not once failed. I am at a complete loss why this should not be smart enough. The technical overhead some people introduce into their lives just to avoid pressing a button to turn of the light is mindblowing to me. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiway_switching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiway_switching

sn41 5y ago
For some reason, last year I tried to rederive the circuit diagram for 3 way switches. I failed. It's actually a very clever idea, and higher numbers are fun to think about independently.
- bombcar 5y ago
  There's two way, three way, and four way, and four way can support arbitrary numbers of "ways" - because a path is always found on one flip of the switch and not on the other.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    No, GP is responding to the 'multiway switching' link in the top-level comment. This is about where, in the UK and I'm sure most developed jurisdictions, stairs for example must have a both on and off control at both ends - regardless of the state of the other switch. If they were simply in parallel as you describe, you could find yourself in the situation of going upstairs to turn it 'off up there', (because it'd need to be 'off everywhere' to be off) then realising it was already 'off downstairs' and falling back down. If they were simply in series, you could find yourself unable to turn the light on without first going downstairs at speed in the dark, because it's 'off there' no matter what you do upstairs.

cprayingmantis 5y ago

I'm seriously considering getting rid of most of my smart home devices not because they suck but because the software to control it sucks. The Samsung Smart Things app used to be so responsive, I could turn devices on and off without much delay. Now when I open up the app I have to restart it wait for it to connect, then wait for it to find every device, then 20 seconds later I can push a button that does something. That's unacceptable.

sithadmin 5y ago
Several of my friends that used to be on the SmartThings bandwagon have migrated to self-hosted Home Assistant and are much happier. I haven't made the jump myself yet, but plan to soon.
- belval 5y ago
  While I understand not everyone has time to tinker with it, to me Home-Assistant is really the only way to do smart homes in a way that brings value because of its flexibility with a real programmable interface. For example, I was able to code an action to start my espresso machine (which has a 20 minutes preheating time) by hooking it at the "first look at phone" event in the day. To me this is obviously something I would never agree to share with a company selling ads, but since it never leaves the premises it's pretty cool.
  - _huayra_ 5y ago
    While I'm on the HA bandwagon, I've recommended Hubitat to some less tech-tinkering-inclined family members with good success: https://hubitat.com/ https://hubitat.com/
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    Automating the coffee machine is amazing - it was my first foray into Home Automation. It saves time, it works great and can also be done before you get home at the weekends. The just-audible click at 6am followed by the sound of the boiler heating is very satisfying, even 5+ years after setting it up.

sigmonsays 5y ago

the entire architecture is awful. The smart home has all these smart devices calling out to cloud APIs for even the most basic functionalities that could be performed locally. The "Cloud" is used to turn on a light in the house. I'm not sure if they want to collect information but smart devices that operate locally have far less failure cases.

ljm 5y ago
You mean, I shouldn't be distributing my 'light switched on' and 'light switched' off events over a highly available kafka cluster hosted on another continent? What if I want to replay the entire history of my switch flicking?
elliekelly 5y ago
Are there any companies or projects working on a completely local “smart home” hub? I suppose most companies are care more about sucking up our data and providing a “service” with a monthly bill than about providing useful hardware. It feels like there’s a huge gap between the best possible smart home product and what’s actually available.
- andylynch 5y ago
  This is what Nabu Casa is doing with home assistant. At the other extreme by size Apple’s HomeKit is local-first too and they play well together.
- mason55 5y ago
  Home Assistant is the leader here. One of the largest projects on GitHub with a “local-first” philosophy. They have a cloud service for exposing your instance but you don’t have to use it. I’ve been using it for years and it’s matured quite a bit recently. Combine with Zwave of ZigBee devices and the only thing you need internet for is voice assistant if you want it (Totally not required)
- patrickk 5y ago
  One of the best options is locally hosted Home Assistant. Local, private, and connects to an enormous number of devices and services.

kingofspain 5y ago

I have a semi-smart home in that I’ve got a few smart plugs connected with Alexa and it’s useful to turn on/off a bunch of lights at once - or have them come on in the evening while away. Other than that I’m not really sure what more I’d want. Maybe some kind of instant-disco lighting so I can rock out to Dire Straits?

IshKebab 5y ago
A smart thermostat is useful. I would also like smart curtains (I made a prototype that I hooked up to Google Home ok - "Hey Google open the curtains" works, but the actual physical bit is tricky). A smart lock would be very useful too, e.g. for granting temporary timed access to cleaners etc. But there's no way I trust any of the smart locks on the market with my home security. I have some smart scales too. They are pretty great. It isn't the concept that is the problem. It's the lack of standards and long term support. Non-smart curtains, scales, lights, locks, etc. essentially work forever, whereas I'd give smart versions 10 years tops. And I don't really want to lock my house into 5 different vendors' proprietary systems.
- kingofspain 5y ago
  Yeah I feel the plugs are a good enough thing for now. If they are duff in ten years? So what - it was a £7 plug and I’ll get some more with a hopefully open standard by then. I’d never go all-in the way things currently are.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  > But there's no way I trust any of the smart locks on the market with my home security. The security provided by most door locks is completely illusory. You can break into most homes very easily. Most people have unsecured windows on the ground floor. Most locks are there as a way to signal that this door shouldn't be opened. It's mostly a psychological detterent. As long as your insurance is fine with your smart lock, it's probably not much worth than a dumb lock. The exception is of course the upper floors of apartment complex in large city in which case the five points locking system on your door is there to signal that it will me more time effective to break into your neighbor place. > It's the lack of standards and long term support Completely agree with that. All companies want to build a locked plateform. That's hindering the market growth a lot.

jasode 5y ago

Relevant past thread: "The 10 Reasons I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25099615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25099615 tldr: unreliable hardware + bugs ... results in endless hassles On the other hand, you have the ultra-high-end of smarthome tech with systems like Crestron. It seems ok but it's very expensive (million dollar mansions/estates budgets) and the custom programming is proprietary so the homeowners can't modify it themselves.

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paulryanrogers 5y ago

All I want is control of the televisions from my phone. No Samsung, I don't want them all on the same Wifi--it's not reliable. And by control I mean including turning them on / waking.

kadoban 5y ago
Logitech's Harmony can do that, I'm sure others as well. Full disclosure I've never used their app, only other pieces of that line. I think the whole line is discontinued now, but looks like you can still find them easily.

nickthegreek 5y ago

I have a bunch of philips hue lights, a nest thermostat and some blink cameras hooked up to both alexa and google hub and it all just works and has for years. I used to have problems when I was buying a bunch of cheap china mix and match products.

bob1029 5y ago

I always struggled with the UX around smart home. User story: It is 5AM and you are fumbling into the kitchen in the morning to make coffee and you cant see anything. You reach out to the wall and flip the light switch into the "on" position. Memories of smartphones and voice assistants are still vague concepts on your mental horizon. I feel like zero engineers in the smart home space have read the Don Norman book.

andylynch 5y ago
The first smart switch I installed was to preheat my coffee maker in the morning. Motion activated lights heading to the kitchen before dawn came soon after.
hansvm 5y ago
User story: It's 3AM. Your home confirmed with you yesterday that you want to wake up early for a flight whose confirmation it found in your email. The lights are gradually brightened and blue-shifted through till 4AM. While that's happening, at 3:50AM your coffee maker is preheated. An audio alarm gets you up at 4AM, and motion-activated baseboard lights guide you to the kitchen as you stumble around in your groggy state. A glow emanates from the cupboard door hiding your favorite mug. After your coffee is done, as you're rushing out the door you realize you can't find your keys -- panicking for a moment you ask your home where it last saw you carrying them, and it tells you they're on your bedside table. You head out the door and catch your flight. Everything mentioned above is pretty straightforward to rig together with off-the-shelf hardware and software, even if a little time consuming.
- bob1029 5y ago
  Does complexity not enter into the equation? How long would it take to set something like that up and have it reliably go to plan every time? What if you feel like oversleeping and now your coffee is cold?
  - hansvm 5y ago
    > Does complexity not enter into the equation? Sure it does. There's a setup cost, and it's fully possible that it's not worth messing with something like that unless you enjoy tinkering (and the way I see the market moving it seems likely that smart homes will stay that way for awhile). The user story definitely exists though. > What if you feel like oversleeping and now your coffee is cold? In the outlined scenario, your snooze function would want to also turn off the lights, the motion-activated baseboard lights going to your coffee maker would work fine, and your coffee maker would still be preheated and have wasted a bit of power if you didn't have some kind of a timed cutoff or similar.

Joker_vD 5y ago

To this day I am baffled by the smart lighbulbs. So you take a LED light, strap a bulky AC/DC convertor to it, then also glue in a WiFi module, and also some microcontroller for managing all that stuff. Then you cram all that into E27 fitting and have problems with heat dissipation if your LED is actually about as bright as an old 100W lamp was: the capacitors give out after a couple of months of work so you have to buy a new lightbulb (and those things ain't cheap because of all of that additional stuff it has inside it). Obviously, a sane way to do things would be to have a single microcontroller/WiFi module mounted near/inside any of traditional manual light switches, have a single AC/DC convertor near your circuit breaker box, and have it power the whole lighting wiring (from which the microcontroller would draw too) with 9V DC, and now the LEDs inside the lightbulbs will have enough space to cool properly even with size-reduced fittings. But where is money in doing things the sensible way, right?

gruez 5y ago
>But where is money in doing things the sensible way, right? the non-cynical explanation is that the lightbulb socket is the form factor that is most easily used by the consumer. Some sort of setup involving changing the lightswitch or the bulb socket might be better, but would also require a bunch of work and risk (live wires!) to install.
- vanviegen 5y ago
  That, and I want to be able to control lights that aren't on a wall switch and to independently control lights that are in the same group. We've been using about 50 Hue bulbs for years, without a single one going bust. But I'm sure you're able to buy cheap crap that is... well, crap.
  - Joker_vD 5y ago
    Yes, cheap crap is crap. But the problem with even non-cheap 1500 lumen bulbs (which I have 3 in my ceiling chandelier, and it's barely enough to make my room comfortably bright) is that they don't last too long because of overheating: each drains about 20W and apparently it's very hard to dissipate that much heat through the plastic fitting.

TYPE_FASTER 5y ago

I had a Nest thermostat before they were acquired. I liked it because the key feature I bought it for, the ability to automatically adjust the temperature, worked pretty well. I think that's the key for me personally: will this actually make things easier for me? I don't want a ton of notifications I have to respond to. Our older Logitech Harmony hub was useful for the same reason: it reduced multiple remotes to a single app that worked anywhere in the house via wifi.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

We don’t have any smart gadgets except old iPads. I set up one by our kitchen that is mounted near the refrigerator. The kids use it to see whats on the calendar, what chores they have in the reminder app, and what is for dinner (using a summary sheet in numbers that pulls from our meal plan). The reminder app is synced across all our devices, so we (parents) can add things when we are out and about. Also, the shortcuts app can automate adding repeated events. I can imagine a future where there are little displays near light switches that communicate such information in different rooms. We will likely do this with old iOS devices under the same appleID.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Highly recommend the movie ‘Brazil’ as a dystopian reminder of the humor that misuse of ‘smart’ home technology can bring to life.

alkonaut 5y ago

My smart home strategy is pretty simple: nothing that requires internet connection to work. Only local devices. WiFi where possible over anything low power (BT, Zigbee, ZWave), wired over wireless wherever possible (e.g 1-wire). Policy for anything I include is that it must fail like an escalator not an elevator - a dumb switch for example, not a light that can’t be switched on. This means smart lightswitches, not smart lights. It’s a lot of work to configure and maintain but tools like home assistant, proxmox and docker at least makes it somewhat manageable. It’s still a pain though, and it feels like a special kind of masochism to tinker with. I think it’s entirely possible that an average user who isn’t a programmer or willing to pull a neutral wire here and there could have a decent “smart home” set up by themselves some time within the next three or four decades…

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

My wife and I were constantly warring over whether our living/dining/kitchen window blinds should be open or close, and there were too many and the faux wood was too heavy to manipulate so much. To make things easy, we got Lutron motorized cellulars shades so we could just ask Siri to open or close whatever. Totally worth it. Since we had the shades, we also did our lights in that room, so now we can quickly put down all the shades and turn on all the lights. That being said, I can’t see doing it for any other room in our house. The bother factor just isn’t there like it was with our main open living space. Well, maybe the bedroom, we don’t open the shades very much even though I’d like to.

0xC0ncord 5y ago

I feel like the biggest problem I've had with smart home technology is that there is no out of the box standard for controlling or having access to all of your devices. Almost every device seems to require interacting with it with the vendor's own app or other utility, and so I've needed to install a multitude of at least 3 apps just to control the lights. So not only are vendors trying to compete with their smart devices, but additionally with the apps they've created to even use them, probably to see how much more money they can squeeze out of selling your personal information. Thankfully, there's Home Assistant[1], which is an amazing project that aims to bridge connectivity and control between all of these devices into a single centralized environment. Pair that up with Tasmota[2]-compatible devices and you can have a smart home that can be completely disconnected from the cloud and in your control. [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/ [2] https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ https://tasmota.github.io/docs/

Steltek 5y ago

For general consumers, I would agree. For geeks, I love my smart home with Home Assistant (thanks devs!). I was reluctant at first and thought I'd just dip my toe in to see what it could do. Now I'm regretting not diving right in. I love using a browser to manage Schlage keycodes instead of tediously punching numbers on each keypad. I love that my kitchen lights all come on at once instead of having to flip 5 switches all over the room. I love that I can turn on the outside lights when we're returning home late and even unlock the door as we're pulling into the driveway, so the little one can make it to the bathroom on time. I love that my outdoor lights react to both time and outdoor light conditions. I recently bought and installed an IotaWatt, an open h/w and s/w home power monitoring system. I haven't integrated it into HA yet but I guess I only care about having a dashboard widget. Everything is local and self-hosted. I don't have to worry about cloud rot, suspended accounts, or Internet outages. PS, if anyone knows how to control a Mitsuibishi hyperheat heatpump through HA, I'd love to know more. It's the big missing link in the system right now.

splitrocket 5y ago
If your Mitsubishi uses IR for it's remote, this probably would work: https://github.com/geoffdavis/esphome-mitsubishiheatpump https://github.com/geoffdavis/esphome-mitsubishiheatpump Or, you can use a Broadlink IR blaster to clone the remote. If your heat pump talks to MEL cloud (Mitsubishi's cloud thingy) then this should work: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/melcloud/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/melcloud/ I have yet to buy a "smart" device that I haven't been able to control through HA. The Broadlink RF/IR bridges even makes anything with a remote automatable. Seriously, If it wasn't for Home Assistant, the "smartness" of smart devices would be next to useless.
Nextgrid 5y ago
Check out https://github.com/SwiCago/HeatPump https://github.com/SwiCago/HeatPump (and derived projects) for your heat pump. I was just looking at this yesterday - unfortunately my units don't have the CN105/CN92 connector so I'm out of luck but if your unit is newer you should be fine!

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

Is the smart home really failing? Reading the article I realised I actually have plenty of "smart" home products. The catch is that they are not really smart but I like what they do. Small lamps which I can switch on and off directly from my phone without having to go through the room are nice. Being able to make the light warmer when I want is nice too. I have a smart thermostat which I motly use to warm my place the day before I get there when I am out for a long time. That's pretty enjoyable too. My scale graphs my weight automatically when I remember to use its "smart" feature. When I was paying attention to it, it was handy. I also like the fact that it's all piloted from my phone which I mostly always have and apart from the thermostat none of them require being online. At this point, the smartness is mostly just remote control and sometimes a feedback loop with a sensor. That's not very smart but I don't really need more.

FooHentai 5y ago
Sounds like discretionary adoption along the lines of a typical hype curve based on what you describe;- Initial optimism about a hyper integrated, seamless home full of intelligent devices that sync up and act as a cohesive whole. This gives way to eventually settling on reality where a few disparate clever devices deliver high value while being relatively low complexity and working mostly independently. I've struggled to find even that much value in smart products - we flirted with a Hue system but at literally 10x the cost of ordinary led lights we didn't get beyond a few bulbs before realizing it was a money pit with at best marginal benefits. We have a few nice nanoleaf feature pieces that run themselves on a simple schedule. I can't see much else making it's way into the place and creating additional headaches. I felt like a cynical old git shaking my head about new the work coffee machine having a touch screen and needing wifi to work, but seeing how often the same machine was 'down' waiting for a tech and the absurdity of colleagues who didn't quite know how to work around such an outage... This kind of stuff may be creating value for investors somewhere but in the long run there's little chance it's improving the lives of those it's being marketed to.

jansan 5y ago

In 1959 Westinghouse presented an amazing visionary concept for future living with their "Westinghouse Total Electric Home": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyrTgtPTz3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyrTgtPTz3M Many of the presented ideas are eubiquitous today, and in a luxury modern house, almost all of the presented features exist. I wonder if any vision for future living exists today that will turn out to be as prophetic as the Westinghouse Total Electric Home.

NotSwift 5y ago

I am a bit disappointed that no one has mentioned a big problem with all these machines: security. Most of these items were developed by companies with only limited experience in security. They offer a tempting attack surface for attackers. Once they are compromised they can be used to attack other devices in your network. Most of them run proprietary software, so it is not possible to verify its code. They require that the network is correctly configured which is not at all easy. There have already been a lot of incidents where surveillance cameras were exposed on the internet.

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
Even if they do have security experience (i.e Google), I would expect that for many vendors security is WAY, WAY down the list. And security doesn't end when they ship the device, it also must be present throughout all updates, even when the device is no longer supported by the vendor.

mumblemumble 5y ago

This tweet pretty much sums up how it works in my social circle: https://twitter.com/TooMany_Monkeys/status/1120561634412584960 https://twitter.com/TooMany_Monkeys/status/11205616344125849... > Non-magic users: collect crystals, call their pet a familiar, draw pentagrams > Magic users:the most magical things I keep in my house are rocks, and I keep a hammer next to them in case they act up

uberman 5y ago

I think that the smart home is failing/will fail because people have a limit on how much they are willing to be tracked. Smart devices from TVs, to cameras to speakers to vacuums are reporting details of our lives that most people just don't want to give up. It used to be the case that people feared that the government could watch them through their TV or listen in via their phone. Now, those things seem like they are product features.

laddershoe 5y ago
Anecdotally: I don't have any smart home stuff, but literally every other member of my family does (parents, siblings, inlaws, etc). I've had numerous conversations in which they ask me why we accept an Echo or a Nest or something as a Christmas present, but my privacy concerns are always greeted with a blank stare. They just don't see it as an issue. To them, the (perceived?) issue is how hard everything seems to setup and maintain. I haven't tried connecting any smart stuff lately, so maybe it's really easy for all I know, but all that stuff seems really advanced to them and they seem kind of afraid of it.
only_as_i_fall 5y ago
I doubt it. Most people literally don't care if Amazon is recording all their conversations. Even more people don't care as long as nobody at Amazon is actually listening. Smart homes aren't super popular because of integration issues imo.

mabbo 5y ago

No company has successfully marketed an actual smart home system. Google Home and Amazon Alexa are, in reality, personal data collection systems that utilize convenience to get consumers to use them. The goal is not to help consumers, but to collect data. And from an economical perspective, this makes sense. There's great money in gathering massive amounts of person data about people. Who would have imagined 15 years ago that we'd let Amazon and Google know about what time we get up and go to bed, what time we use our microwave, what sports games we watch, when we call our mothers. I want something simpler, local-network-only. Not a 'smart' home but an obedient home. Ideally something like an Event Bus with a basic protocol for events and some safety controls to prevent chaos. But there's no economic incentive to build or sell such a thing.

gdulli 5y ago
I bought a house last year and the first thing I did was remove the Ring video doorbell. But if it hadn't been a company with an Amazon or Google type reputation I'd have at least tried using it for a while.
- taeric 5y ago
  I would think the odds are much higher of a smaller company either a) selling your data to everyone that they can get money from, or b) just not having the tech skills to keep secure. Note that I am not criticizing you not wanting to use it at all. Just curious that if it was another name, you would have been ok with it.
  - JohnFen 5y ago
    I don't know about that. Amazon and Google have a decent track record of being bad about data privacy, and the size of a company by itself says nothing about that company's expertise.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    I think the point was that with Google or Amazon, you know what their real motive is. With another product, they might actually just be selling a security camera.

kbos87 5y ago

I don’t think many people make a decision to “smartify” their home at any one point in time. The reality is that it creeps in over time. If you are shopping for a mid to high end anything today - lighting to a dishwasher - some smart features are likely going to be standard on many models. People get these things home, probably try and like some of the smart features. But inevitably over time you discover how poorly integrated they all are with one another, you become frustrated when the smart features start chronically disconnecting, and suddenly it’s all more trouble than it’s worth. The only way out of this that I can see is the passage of time and steady iteration by device manufacturers, and real investment by a few platforms (eg Apple with HomeKit) to give us a decent front end and quasi home iPaaS. I worry they don’t have the incentive to keep investing.

qalmakka 5y ago

The smart home is a crappy idea because appliances, switches and fixed lights are supposed to last for decades before needing to be replaced. Companies have clearly shown close to no interest in maintaining and upgrading even reasonably recent devices - adding smart features to previously dumb devices is nice at first, but what about in five years when the software will start to rot and stop working, and probably become a serious privacy and security liability? Until this gets solved somehow smart features will always remain a marketing gimmick. There's no way around it. People accept replacing ageing phones and computers because their connectivity features are a large part of the reason they exist. This isn't true for a light switch, for instance, which is mostly seen as a way to turn lights off.

newsclues 5y ago
I think the technology is ready but it’s held back by business model incompatibility. The smart home should be an open source hub that integrates appliances, switches and lighting etc. But the business model requires vendor lock-in closed systems.
- teeray 5y ago
  It would be nice for the building code to start dictating some interop standards for this stuff to overcome the natural tendency of the business to make this a winner-take-all market at the expense of the consumer. At first blush, it feels like it would be a little out of their wheelhouse, but it's not entirely unusual since it responds to consumer interests. For example, Energy Storage Systems (batteries) are a new-ish thing added to the code around 2014.
  - conk 5y ago
    Codes abs standards have working groups composed of industry, consumers and inspectors. New groups are created all the time to address new technology. Unfortunately the initial cost to set up is typically too high for most individuals leaving progress in building codes/standards up to corporations.
  - 5y ago

stuaxo 5y ago

I read this as "smart phone", but maybe that was hoping too much ?

splitrocket 5y ago

Do yourself a favor and read the writeup about the perfect home automation system by founder of Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io) https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016/01/19/perfect-home-automation/ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016/01/19/perfect-home-a... An app per device class/vendor is beyond useless. A centralized, single controller that mostly has no interface at all is the solution.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

I never wanted a smart home. I don't even want "smart" appliances. I want energy-efficient, reliable appliances and homes, with behavior I can predict, that don't spy on me, or rely on remote APIs, and have high usability factors. I don't mind remotes, and voice activation might be nice if I was disabled, but for the most part I'm happiest when my home and I don't get in each other's way.

at_a_remove 5y ago

I think this is a combination of various weaknesses acting in discord (rather than in concert) to create pure chaos. 1) Making the devices Internet-Must devices. Not only does this mean some dumb failure modes when your connection goes down -- and it will -- but temperature adjustments might be made based on far-away weather stations, processed through layers of averages and aggregators, instead of drawing from local sensors. 2) Not thinking about security (conflicts massively with #1). Security isn't as daunting if you are not hooked up to the Internet. It can still be an issue, but opening up your attack surface to "the world" only makes things worse. 3) Proprietary, and therefore incompatible standards. If I want X, but I already have Y, I hope to hell that YCorp has an X-like offering in their works. 4) Being more about data collection (see also Samsung's SmartTVs exfiltrating data, or Amazon Walk ... or maybe now Apple is dipping their toes into that with their CSAM "won't somebody think of the children?" business) 5) The general disposablity of today's electronics. This also plays into standards because it'll just burn out so why be backwards-compatible? Just make a new standard. And you're back to #3.

yalogin 5y ago

The biggest hindrance is showing value in upgrading to the "smart" devices. A light switch connected to wifi and a phone is just not needed in 99% of the cases. Operating it with a phone is just not incentive enough to replace it with something that is 10x more expensive than the original. Same thing with other "smart" items too, at least in my case. Something like a garage door opener is different because its relatively expensive to replace than fitting an adaptor to automate, and there could be more people needing to operate the garage door remotely. I don't see an explosive market there. The only easy market is the "scare" market which is what Ring exploited and pretty much rules the camera doorbell.

ctdonath 5y ago

Yes, “why bother?” works for most. Those of us who do, or don’t, want “smart home” don’t need to justify it. For those who do . . . Should be simple installation matching existing patterns. Switch & outlet covers shouldn’t need to change, as there’s just enough failure to fit to make updates unworkable (haven’t seen any smart switches fit a 2-3 switch cover plate). Blend traditional operation with smart (smart wireless switch next to normal wired switch annoyingly interfere). Don’t compel grouping of lights (wife’s light must not be coupled with mine in automatons). Ensure sensible symbiosis (“on at sunset, off at 9pm” shouldn’t leave light on when sunset is 9:02pm). Stay on the right network (I have two). The problems are petty and easily fixed - yet nobody wants to solve them.

JohnFen 5y ago

I've had a "smart home" for about 20 years now, and it's been great! Definitely not a failing concept. But I wouldn't buy any of the modern "smart home/IoT" devices mostly because they're security nightmares, although tons of them have other serious issues as well. The way that most modern "smart home" equipment manufacturers design their devices is the failing concept, not smart homes in general.

DoubleGlazing 5y ago

The author is right the, most current home automation products suck. The stuff from big brand names is poorly supported, pricey and designed to suck your money away from you. The cheaper Chinese stuff requires the use of a cloud server located somewhere I don't know and it comes with god knows how many security holes. Plus, the build quality is ropey at best, I clearly remember that time a desk lamp controller in my children's room literally melted. There are a few devices on the market that don't rely on cloud servers. I have a few plug controllers that you can control via WebSockets or a REST API. I've been dabbling with them for a while and they seem pretty decent. It's just a pity there isn't any off the shelf home automation software that I could use to control them.

Nextgrid 5y ago
> off the shelf home automation software that I could use to control them. Home Assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io
- only_as_i_fall 5y ago
  Home assistant is great, but I wouldn't really expect someone who isn't very good with technology to be able to use it well.

gr1zzlybe4r 5y ago

I don't own, but when I do I will go out of my way to try and buy unconnected devices. There is no physical device in my home that I want "as a service" in any way.

pcdoodle 5y ago

Insteon is pretty good (Wall switches, lamp dimmers and appliance modules). No central hub required. They form relationships with one another without a middle man. There's also a USB module if you like programming your own stuff.

indymike 5y ago

My house is a big, fancy container for people. Where it is nice, is where I can easily reconfigure it. Think moving furniture around, wall coverings and so on. Easy. Where it hardest to get right is where you can't easily re-configure and re-decorate. Bathrooms that are fixed by plumbing. Kitchens fixed by immobile cabinetry built around plumbing. Inflexible wiring. Smart isn't the problem. Flexible is.

kwhitefoot 5y ago

What problem is a smart home the solution for?

Causality1 5y ago

After what happened to Revolv customers when Google bought them I'm never going to spent more on a smart device than I would on a good lunch. Sure, I'll put some five and ten dollar smart switches on lamps but this whole home integration crap is for the birds.

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johnboiles 5y ago

HOME ASSIS TANT It's really the only thing that's good in the smart home world rn. It makes all sorts of otherwise crappy IOT hardware work decently together.

johnboiles 5y ago
Imagine this but with emoji claps in the spaces of the first line. I guess HN doesn't do emoji ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

yuy910616 5y ago

Fun story time - One time I woke up in the middle of the night. Not knowing what time it is, I shouted into the darkness "Hey Google, what time is it?" To my surprise, the machine reply in a excessively cheerful tone, "Welcome to what fruit are you" and proceed to give me a personality quiz. I wasn't able to get the time - but I found out that I'm a watermelon. So I think it is a mistake to call smart home a failure.

cratermoon 5y ago

Also smart home devices can and have been employed by domestic abusers against their victims. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54554408 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54554408 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200511-how-smart-home-devices-are-being-used-for-domestic-abuse https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200511-how-smart-home-d... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-devices-domestic-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-dev...

cratermoon 5y ago

All the comments here seem to be from and about people who own their homes. What about renters? https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/tenants-worry-smart-home-tech-could-be-abused-by-landlords/ https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/tenants-worry-smart-hom...

thehappypm 5y ago

By far my best experience with any sort of smart home device was for my apartment in Boston. My overhead light did not have a switch, and the previous homeowner used a pull cord. I replaced it with a Phillips smart LED that connected wirelessly to a physical switch that I pasted onto the wall. No electrician, and now my light has a switch. $30 well spent. I never did get around to connecting it to an app or anything like that. Oh, I also had a WiFi enabled outlet! That was a gift from my sister in law. I used it on an air conditioner -- if I remembered, I could turn on the AC an hour before I got home. I also have a WiFi enabled AC in my new home and can set each room's temperature individually by app. These things are useful and convenient but I'm not really going out of my way to set them up.

D13Fd 5y ago

I've had great success with smart switches/dimmers/outlets/locks, mostly because they allow you to set more complex schedules and timers. I rarely use the remote on/off capability, but just having a device that works on a schedule is really nice. Examples: - Our late-1980's house has a lot of accent lights scattered about. We never used them before because we had to flip a switch on each one. Now they come on automatically at dusk and turn off after we go to bed. It's nice. - Our TV speakers don't have a sleep mode. We use a smart outlet to power them down automatically at the times when we usually don't use them. - Our 2-year-old used to turn his very bright closet light on and stay up late in his room. We set a smart switch so that turns off after a couple of minutes. Now he sleeps much better. - Our kitchen lights were way too bright and people kept leaving them on, plus the two sides of the room were on different switches and one was brighter than the other. Now they come on at an even 20%/40% brightness unless double-clicked, and automatically shut off after a few hours if people leave them on. - Our garage door shuts itself if we forget to shut it. - It was too inconvenient to keep the busiest exterior door locked. Now the deadbolt locks automatically after a few minutes, and we can give out visitor codes the babysitter and for people who come in to work on the house etc. We put all this stuff on a separate WiFi network (to alleviate some of the possible security issues) to the extent it needs wifi. We have a mishmash of different things from different manufacturers, and no central hub. But things have been working really well for a couple of years now.

sheepybloke 5y ago

My issue with smart devices is that they aren't smart. They are just internet controlled devices that can you can control via an app. To me, smart devices are objects that have added value by doing a task more intelligently. Think like a thermostat that can learn your lifestyle and adjusts the temperature accordingly. Or like a microwave that sets cooking time based on what was put in it. These are smart devices, and honestly, I don't think there are actually many out there now.

teclordphrack2 5y ago

If it is cloud based and requires a connection to the outside world then it is not going in most peoples homes. These places have to start offering a DIY level of service where they just sell the physical device and software and then are no longer in contact with the customer.

robochat 5y ago

I guess that I have a smart home albeit a cheap version. I have used sonoff smart switches to give me remote control of my flat's electric radiators. This has given me extra control over their schedules than available using their in-built interfaces. Plus I can turn them on remotely if I am unexpectedly coming home so the flat is warm when I get back. I live in France and the radiators have a control pin that accepts various 230V AC waveforms (!) to set different functions but luckily simply on/off can be used to toggle between the radiators' high and low temperatures (that I set via each radiator's internal interface). It's crude but effective. I use an app to control the remote switches; I'm not totally happy about relying on a cloud based app but I can always bypass the remote control locally if there's an issue and in summer the radiators' are simply switched off so the risks are minimal.

robochat 5y ago

I've often thought that it would be good to have a app that could tell me that my doors and windows were shut and locked for when I suddenly can't remember if I actually did it. However the security implications of having such a system would worry me, particularly if it became popular. If hacked, it could tell thieves which houses had been accidentally left unlocked in an area, which could be worse than accidentally leaving a door unlocked all day. Also it might even make the company running the system liable for any thefts caused by hacks to their system and so it might be hard for a company to run such a system.

tintt 5y ago

Smart homes are so stupid today

taurath 5y ago

It’s also about the only thing holding up electronics retail. Half of Best Buy now is smarthome gadgets.

laacz 5y ago

I've said it multiple times, and I'll say it again. Smart home is a supplement. Your home should work in a way that when smart stuff fails, home won't fail. Take a light switch as an example. You have to be able to get up and manually switch lights on/off when an app or a smartswitch won't work. If smart heating won't work (sensors or smart regulators fail), heating should work anyway, it just wouldn't be as smart.