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Please just stop! There is one area where gadgets and appliances are the most cumbersome to use, and that is their electronic UI. They have always been terrib

Please just stop! There is one area where gadgets and appliances are the most cumbersome to use, and that is their electronic UI. They have always been terrible (eg programming VCRs). Graphical UIs won't make them better. And all those screens and buttons will be the first things to fail, will be very hard to source replacements for, and will be too expensive to bother repairing anyway, not to mention, an expensive addition to The Thing in the first place. Please, just add a bluetooth LE interface, and a web app, for control and programming with cheap, ubiquitous, and designed-for-UI mobile phones, and open-source it. The Thing itself should only have the most minimal physical interface, eg on/off button and led. Keep the embedded mcu (and embedded programmers) for low-level device control mechanisms and some policy enforcement for safety.

alexvoda 5y ago
There is a lot to discuss here, but if I had to choose I would reject your idea. This is mostly because, in reality, manufacturers not only will they never open source those apps, most probably they will never provide APIs and the Thing and associated apps will depend on some server. Such a dependency I find unacceptable, but it is the trend of all things IoT. If this were not the case, if by law all IoT Things had to provide open APIs, I would be all for it.
- jacknews 5y ago
  I agree, please no server, no cloud, no auto-update, the interface should be local. 'Right to repair' laws should extend to 'right to program' , thus forcing open APIs of some kind. There should be some kind of standard, defacto, or official.
aitchnyu 5y ago
In my Utopia, I could see a vending machine, open its web app UI in my phone, pay via UPI (Indian interoperable payment system) app, and get the item. Its HTTPS over Bluetooth. I could list Bluetooth devices like ACs and TVs in range, and open paired devices as a web app. It could be server rendered with JS sprinkled, a PWA I could install like an app, or even streaming video.

alexvoda 5y ago

There is a lot to discuss here, but if I had to choose I would reject your idea. This is mostly because, in reality, manufacturers not only will they never open source those apps, most probably they will never provide APIs and the Thing and associated apps will depend on some server. Such a dependency I find unacceptable, but it is the trend of all things IoT. If this were not the case, if by law all IoT Things had to provide open APIs, I would be all for it.

jacknews 5y ago
I agree, please no server, no cloud, no auto-update, the interface should be local. 'Right to repair' laws should extend to 'right to program' , thus forcing open APIs of some kind. There should be some kind of standard, defacto, or official.

aitchnyu 5y ago

In my Utopia, I could see a vending machine, open its web app UI in my phone, pay via UPI (Indian interoperable payment system) app, and get the item. Its HTTPS over Bluetooth. I could list Bluetooth devices like ACs and TVs in range, and open paired devices as a web app. It could be server rendered with JS sprinkled, a PWA I could install like an app, or even streaming video.