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Smart Homes Alter Human Behavior
- thrashh 5y agoI have a lot of smart home gear but almost no automations for this reason. I’ve never had an automation that got it right enough to keep using. Pretty much what remains are basic things like a text message if we left the garage door open overnight or our garden is thirsty for too long.
- Semaphor 5y agoI have a few automations, but they are also explicitly set to certain values that I chose. No ML or anything. Works pretty well for me. But then I also avoid "smart" devices that require internet connectivity.
- Taywee 5y agoYeah, I feel like there is a huge missed potential for high levels of home automation that are not "smart", but rather just powerful and well-interconnected. I'd be happy to have a high level of home automation that is flexible, extensible, powerful, and just does exactly what I tell it to without having to "learn" or "guess".
- SEJeff 5y agoCheck out home assistant. It is also 100% open source (and the core is beautifully written and unit tested async Python)
- lostlogin 5y agoGoing way deep down the rabbit hole is possible with HA, and custom stuff on ESP32 or ESP8266 chips with your own sensors, relays etc is possible with ESPHome. It’s good fun and very inexpensive.
- SEJeff 5y agoIndeed it is. Incredible project
- Shish2k 5y ago> It’s good fun and very inexpensive. Once you have the equipment and the knowledge, it takes around $2 of electronics to turn any random simple device into a smart device. Speaking for myself at least, it took around $1000 of tools and 3 months of trial-and-error self-teaching to reach that point… Definitely good fun though :)
- SavantIdiot 5y agoSame here. I had a Nest thermostat for a while and ultimately ended up using it like a dumb thermostat with 7-day wake/work/return/sleep settings. It kinda put me off on automation. Now I have my own home-made BLE / video IoT gadgets that I manage myself. It is waaaay more coding & fiddling, but in a fun way and not a "I paid $500 for this crap" way.
- dylan604 5y agoYeah, you just spent countless hours of your precious time so you have "I have no idea of the actual cost for this crap" now. ;-) I have a closet full of half, 3/4, 9/10 completed projects that were going to be so damn cool and cheaper. Be laid plans blah blah. However, with each and everyone of those not completed projects, I learned a lot and I have not regrets on any of it. I'm guessing you don't either on your IoT gadgets.
- lnsru 5y agoI put 100€ tag on my hour of tinkering or hacking. That’s how I even don’t start projects without commercial intention. It would be really cool to upgrade old Geotrax trains with ESP32, but such 40 hours experiment does not pay off.
- dylan604 5y agoThat's sad that you feel that way. There is so much potential unknown that can be discovered in these types of projects. If you only ever do things that will make you money, well...I don't know exactly. Boring is the best I can come up with. You don't ever do things just because it might be fun? Or is it that you actually do know everything and there's no point?
- lnsru 5y agoI do lots of tinkering and hacking in my day job. I rather build something using well structured Lego instruction in my spare time. I was thinking about designing my own smart home units recently, but ended up buying quality lamps with motion detectors.
- paiute 5y agoI still miss my mercury filled thermostat. None of this constant on/off from the digital contraption.
- fumar 5y agoWait, what is wrong with a digital thermostat?
- sojournerc 5y agoThere can be such thing as too much precision. I have in-floor radiant heat that benefits from a longer duty cycle. I buy thermostats that are designed not just for a particular temp, but will also run without what I would call thrashing. E.g Constantly on and off because someone walked by and caused a breeze of slightly cooler air. Not to say a digital thermostat couldn't account for this (you have to find them specifically), and are probably better with good firmware, but murcury will have a wider margin before activation.
- seszett 5y agoWhat problem does adding hysteresis solve on a digital thermostat, though? Is it a problem that it stays closer to the asked temperature?
- mjevans 5y agoIf you've ever had a basic electronics course with a raw button, hysteresis might instead be known as 'debounce' or making the button's single human action a single 'press' result on the other side. I think a digital thermostat could work well enough if they weren't made with a focus on being stupidly cheap or possibly somehow still absolutely energy efficient. * Wake up and respond FAST to user inputs. * Show the numbers it's thinking of big (running average over 5, 10, 15 min?), but also the current reading small (but readable) updated whenever it polls. * If there's a hold or timeout involved display that too, expose the user to the thought process, don't just be a nearly opaque box. * Be responsive in other ways. If I switch modes at the very least kill the old mode's 'calling' line right then, even if the new one gets a cooldown to prevent equipment issues.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoWe're somewhat conditioned that facebook and other "free" things are an exchange for selling our privacy. But why do IoT devices, which we pay for, then STILL sell our privacy/freedom? If IoT is the internet 3.0, then things aren't going to be good. Ipv6 and nigh infinite addressability is just going to be nigh infinite granular surveillance. Honestly, the lack of interop and standards barriers is a good thing at this point. And I didn't even talk about the hackability/vulnerability issues.
- pitched 5y agoThe margins on hardware are terrible. Multiplied by how few people care about home automation and you get a project that’s probably not making money. The two ways to close that gap are cloud service revenue (paid monthly or with privacy) or to charge thousands instead of hundreds for a thermostat. Also, an ESP8266 costs 5-10$ and all the software needed to build your own gear can be one-click installed with the Arduino IDE. That’s what preserving freedom and privacy costs today.
- dylan604 5y ago>But why do IoT devices, which we pay for, then STILL sell our privacy/freedom? Because they can. Do you routinely leave money laying on the table?
- rootsudo 5y agoSmart cars alter human behavior: Look at self driving and tesla. Goes to say every technology changes human behavior. Candlestick, oil lighting, electricity, etc.
- diego 5y agoThe actual title says "How Smart Homes Alter Human Behavior." The submission title makes it sounds like it's news that they do.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y agoI’m still waiting for the answer to the headline’s question.
- emodendroket 5y agoThe wording of the headline seems to be blindingly obvious, but the actual finding seems to be "usually they get it right but if not you'll spend more time fiddling with it than a regular one." Well, OK. Doesn't seem horrible.
- mypastself 5y agoAmusingly, they used A.I. to simulate human behavior in response to faulty A.I. behavior. Another funny part: “The researchers also explored scenarios where two humans with different preferences were in the smart home environment at the same time. In such instances, the humans actually changed the order of their tasks to minimize their time spent changing temperature.“ The horror!
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoI fiddle with my dumb thermostat all the time. The problem? One of the discomforting things about living inside houses is when the air doesn't move. Yes, you can use a portable fan or ceiling fan to move air around, but that's normally at a speed which is TOO fast. If you sit in a room for any period of time and the air temperature coming from the vent doesn't change, then you may not even feel it blowing, which is almost as uncomfortable as being too warm or too hot. I feel a better solution would be to set a temperature threshold and allow the thermostat to have a bit of wiggle room to increase the comfort level of those who are in the house by moving the air around longer and altering the temperature slightly, which is what would happen were you outdoors.
- lancebeet 5y agoI believe it's normal in commercial buildings to have CO2-sensors which are connected to the control of the HVAC system, activating/increasing the ventilation when the CO2 levels are too high. It seems like this solves the problem you're describing.
- Terry_Roll 5y agoI was going to suggest CO2 might be an issue in a room. CO2 in the bloodstream upto 30% saturation has a stimulating effect which make no ventiliation in bedrooms a common reason sleep is not restful, over 30% saturation level it has the opposite effect and can then be viewed like a noble gas and the effect noble gases can have on the body, namely it can kill and the body doesnt react.
- alphabettsy 5y agoYou can set Ecobee thermostats to have min fan usage and use remote temp sensors to help keep temps consistent.
- alliao 5y agodon't all thermostats have some kind of builtin hysteresis algorithm? so it does it's best to keep temperature steady... ideally without feeling the wind?
- rjprins 5y agoOne of the biggest impacts on my life recently was adding an automation for my smart lights (Philips Hue) in the living room. The lights start dimming over a span of 2 hours until they are their minimum at 22:00. The result is that it just feels like it is time to go to bed. I have always struggled with getting plenty of sleep and not staying up too late and this has had a tremendous effect the past two months.
- noja 5y agoI like this too, but I found it fails badly in a very common use case: I want the lights on brighter because of <thing>. So I do that, but then the automation starts fighting with me because it wants to dim the lights again. Very frustrating.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoOne of the folks I play board games with has this installed. Great for when they want reminders to go to bed: Not so great when we need the lighting to better see the table. So much fiddling with the light - I generally wish there were a simple override for stuff like that and honestly, it has turned me off such a system.
- gregwebs 5y agoI just started using the newer Phillips Wiz. It’s trivial to override the automated rhythm in the app. Normally $12-15. Black Friday sale $7/bulb but still might be available at Home Depot for $10/bulb.
- JamesSwift 5y agoIts a tradeoff. The automatic fade / transition of Hue is really well done. Its where the system shines IMO. But if you want to be able to interrupt the process, you lose the previously sent transition. You have to do all the logic manually if you want to be able to bounce between the two.
- neilalexander 5y ago
- zoe4883 5y agoWhy should be AI in control, while its learning? Normal thermostats, wearables, phone/tv usage, and perhaps motion sensors should provide enough data points to tweak learning in passive mode.
- mypastself 5y agoWell, of course adopting any piece of technology is going to change human behavior. The question this study ostensibly posits is whether it’s for the worse in the case of smart homes. And although they seem to have worked hard to answer in the affirmative, the conclusions reported by the article are suspect. First, if a smart thermostat takes more time to calibrate than a dumb one, then surely it won’t be widely adopted. The question, then, is how accurate the researchers’ model is compared to available technology. And the conclusion that humans would “change the order of their tasks to minimize their time spent changing temperature” is as baffling as it is amusing.
- MilaM 5y agoOne way my "smart home" has altered my behaviour is that I have to worry about keeping numerous devices up to date software wise and fix broken configurations occasionally. It's partly my fault because I have used devices from different vendors and ecosytems and tied them together with Home Assistant. It works most of the time but also breaks in sometimes unexpected ways. For example I have to regularly (every four to six weeks) reset my IKEA light bulbs because they start misbehaving by loosing the connection to my server. It has been a fun learning experience, but I would not recommend this kind of setup to someone less technically inclined. Given these experiences I have a hard time seeing how AI could improve my setup. It would probably just make it more chaotic and even less predictable.
- diogenescynic 5y agoI finally ripped all the Wemo and Eero smart devices out of my home. They were unbearably finicky and kept not working for some minor reason and you’d have to just keep resetting everything. Wasn’t worth the effort. Now I just have a good old fashioned mechanical timer on the lamp in my living room. It never fails due to some random update or Wi-Fi setting.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lnanek2 5y ago> if the smart home system was just a bit off in predicting a human’s preference, the human and AI developed misaligned behaviors. “This led to more time spent by the individual changing temperature and activities than without the smart home system—the opposite of the smart home objective This definitely happens to me. My clothes dryer is "smart" which means it refuses to just run for a fixed time and has some sort of smart detection of when to stop. It doesn't work well. Instead I have to run it several times before the clothes are actually dry. There's also no easy way to set it to a fixed time long enough. You have to mess around with the dial, long press another button, hit another button over 12 times - then that works for one load and it goes back to default "smart" settings.