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I am heavily into smart home; I have over 100 devices in my home. My main requirement for my home is that everything had to “fail normal”. My non-geek family

by efitz 3y ago

I am heavily into smart home; I have over 100 devices in my home. My main requirement for my home is that everything had to “fail normal”. My non-geek family would not tolerate the lights not working if the internet connection failed. To that end, although everything is connected to a cloud service eventually (HomeKit), loss of internet or excommunication by a cloud service provider would simply disable app- and voice control, but stuff would still work normally otherwise. If a device manufacturer bricked a device intentionally then I am fortunate enough to be financially able to hire an attorney. I am currently working with an electrical engineering firm to build my own line of smart home devices, that will be fully open (HW and SW) and will be based on Raspberry Pi (there’s an actual Pi Zero 2W in the light switches). I’ll post here when I’m at the point where I have something to share.

hparadiz 3y ago
I have a few smart power plugs outside that I like being on the cloud so I can control the string lights connected to them from bed without having to go outside and actually hit the physical switch. It's also super frustrating that they all need their own servers and app and infrastructure. You'd think there'd be a standard by now. Last time when the power went out for several hours I had to resync the switch.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  They profit from spying on you so obviously they need an app and SaaS per device vendor. In their perspective interoperability is an anti-feuture. Even just pushing one of those IoT buttons tells them you are at home and is probably used for some ad placement or credit score or whatever.
  - samtho 3y ago
    I wonder if home automation is one of those things that eventually gets figured out and we look back at today thinking, “we tolerated that?” or if it never gets solved at a standards level and we just have egregiously subpar experiences delivered by vendors all naively attempting to dominate the market with a crippled product. Also, I think the spying has the potential for being more insidious and more passive. Im thinking of sound beacons, at human-imperceptible frequencies, sent by a TV or smart speaker that lets some data aggregator determine what is being played in a home or who is at home.
    - xethos 3y ago
      > potential for being more insidious and more passive. Im thinking of sound beacons I have some bad news for you - what you describe as a dystopian future hellscape was up and running by 2015. If you want to so much as slow it down, stick to F-Droid or ditch your smartphone. [0] https://www.wired.com/2016/11/block-ultrasonic-signals-didnt-know-tracking/ https://www.wired.com/2016/11/block-ultrasonic-signals-didnt... [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-th... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/theres-a-spike-in-android-apps-that-covertly-listen-for-inaudible-sounds-in-ads/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/there...
  - hparadiz 3y ago
    I think this is tinfoil hat energy. The power adapter can't provide any meaningful information. I leave it on for days sometimes when I'm not even in the yard. Does that mean I was home or not home? Totally irrelevant. It doesn't have its own screen and once it's synced to my Google home I don't even have to think about it. Google home even lets you setup automations based on sunset and sunrise. How does that figure into this data? Credit score? Seriously? Really?
- Toutouxc 3y ago
  > being on the cloud so I can control the string lights connected to them from bed > You'd think there'd be a standard by now. I don’t understand, isn’t there a standard? All my smart stuff is on ZigBee, I can control everything locally (app via LAN to the machine running the automation, machine via Zigbee to switches and sensors) and I don’t need any cloud functionality at all. If the power goes out, everything reconnects in two minutes.
  - thedougd 3y ago
    Matter. There's a significant shift in progress to Matter from smart home device manufacturers. https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/smart-home/matter-smart-home-standard-faq-a9475777045/ https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/smart-home/matte...
    - efitz 3y ago
      There are standards, but every major smart home tech company wants to be the controller, not a slave. Generally you find that, for each brand of device, you have an in-home controller that controls that brand of device over a proprietary protocol, and a proprietary cloud that the controller talks to for app control. Most clouds allow integration with Alexa and Google assistant for voice control, and many clouds will also allow you to control devices of other brands that might have integrated with them. ZWave and Zigbee devices are currently the most vendor neutral but you have to really love smart home to stand up HomeAssistant or whatever and maintain it. And zwave in particular has lots of small but annoying compatibility issues and is difficult to troubleshoot and to keep a complex setup running. I thought threads/matter was going to be great but it looks like latter just took a whole pile of standards and mashed them together and rebranded them. I dunno for sure; I tried to install the matter SDK on a raspberry pi and it was north of a gig download and difficult to figure out.
      - thedougd 3y ago
        It still needs to play out but Matter is a multi-master architecture. It is not tied to a single controller. I tried my first switch this week and in one pass it was setup with Google Home and HomeKit. Home Assistant is my next test but I’ve been on vacation.
rationalist 3y ago
For something like light switches and outlets, it would be nice to have the option to say whether they fail on or fail off, and perhaps even if it loses internet, keep on or off for X time then flip the state (or keep whatever schedule it's on, which is saved locally).

by efitz 3y ago

hparadiz 3y ago

I have a few smart power plugs outside that I like being on the cloud so I can control the string lights connected to them from bed without having to go outside and actually hit the physical switch. It's also super frustrating that they all need their own servers and app and infrastructure. You'd think there'd be a standard by now. Last time when the power went out for several hours I had to resync the switch.

rightbyte 3y ago
They profit from spying on you so obviously they need an app and SaaS per device vendor. In their perspective interoperability is an anti-feuture. Even just pushing one of those IoT buttons tells them you are at home and is probably used for some ad placement or credit score or whatever.
- samtho 3y ago
  I wonder if home automation is one of those things that eventually gets figured out and we look back at today thinking, “we tolerated that?” or if it never gets solved at a standards level and we just have egregiously subpar experiences delivered by vendors all naively attempting to dominate the market with a crippled product. Also, I think the spying has the potential for being more insidious and more passive. Im thinking of sound beacons, at human-imperceptible frequencies, sent by a TV or smart speaker that lets some data aggregator determine what is being played in a home or who is at home.
  - xethos 3y ago
    > potential for being more insidious and more passive. Im thinking of sound beacons I have some bad news for you - what you describe as a dystopian future hellscape was up and running by 2015. If you want to so much as slow it down, stick to F-Droid or ditch your smartphone. [0] https://www.wired.com/2016/11/block-ultrasonic-signals-didnt-know-tracking/ https://www.wired.com/2016/11/block-ultrasonic-signals-didnt... [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-th... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/theres-a-spike-in-android-apps-that-covertly-listen-for-inaudible-sounds-in-ads/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/there...
- hparadiz 3y ago
  I think this is tinfoil hat energy. The power adapter can't provide any meaningful information. I leave it on for days sometimes when I'm not even in the yard. Does that mean I was home or not home? Totally irrelevant. It doesn't have its own screen and once it's synced to my Google home I don't even have to think about it. Google home even lets you setup automations based on sunset and sunrise. How does that figure into this data? Credit score? Seriously? Really?
Toutouxc 3y ago
> being on the cloud so I can control the string lights connected to them from bed > You'd think there'd be a standard by now. I don’t understand, isn’t there a standard? All my smart stuff is on ZigBee, I can control everything locally (app via LAN to the machine running the automation, machine via Zigbee to switches and sensors) and I don’t need any cloud functionality at all. If the power goes out, everything reconnects in two minutes.
- thedougd 3y ago
  Matter. There's a significant shift in progress to Matter from smart home device manufacturers. https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/smart-home/matter-smart-home-standard-faq-a9475777045/ https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/smart-home/matte...
  - efitz 3y ago
    There are standards, but every major smart home tech company wants to be the controller, not a slave. Generally you find that, for each brand of device, you have an in-home controller that controls that brand of device over a proprietary protocol, and a proprietary cloud that the controller talks to for app control. Most clouds allow integration with Alexa and Google assistant for voice control, and many clouds will also allow you to control devices of other brands that might have integrated with them. ZWave and Zigbee devices are currently the most vendor neutral but you have to really love smart home to stand up HomeAssistant or whatever and maintain it. And zwave in particular has lots of small but annoying compatibility issues and is difficult to troubleshoot and to keep a complex setup running. I thought threads/matter was going to be great but it looks like latter just took a whole pile of standards and mashed them together and rebranded them. I dunno for sure; I tried to install the matter SDK on a raspberry pi and it was north of a gig download and difficult to figure out.
    - thedougd 3y ago
      It still needs to play out but Matter is a multi-master architecture. It is not tied to a single controller. I tried my first switch this week and in one pass it was setup with Google Home and HomeKit. Home Assistant is my next test but I’ve been on vacation.

rationalist 3y ago

For something like light switches and outlets, it would be nice to have the option to say whether they fail on or fail off, and perhaps even if it loses internet, keep on or off for X time then flip the state (or keep whatever schedule it's on, which is saved locally).