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I feel like we need some sort of "Offline-First" or "Offline-Compatible" certification process for "smart" devices. It would require some threshold of usability
by goda90 1y ago
I feel like we need some sort of "Offline-First" or "Offline-Compatible" certification process for "smart" devices. It would require some threshold of usability and total safety without network connection, which would vary depending on the device category. Companies in compliance could put a badge on their products so wary consumers know who to trust.
- hahn-kev 1y agoSame with games
- mvanbaak 1y agoThis. Also, not only offline-compatible but any anomaly from the api should result in the product simply ignoring the response. A simple check for 'does not connect' only handles totally offline mode, error in responses is a lot more common.
- user_7832 1y agoWhile I fully agree with you in principle, how would that realistically happen? Countries typically only pass laws after something major enough happens. If this was an IoT device that God forbid killed someone, sure, they'd be an outcry against it in the papers, and lawmakers may be galvanized enough to do something. Call me cynical or just disappointed and jaded, but short of some EU consumer advocacy group pushing for it, I don't see how anything would realistically happen. 99% of laws are made after something bad-bad has already happened.
- goda90 1y agoIt could be a voluntary certification established by a private organization. There's other examples of such a thing in a bunch of industries already.
- dpark 1y ago> There's other examples of such a thing in a bunch of industries already. Often because the government is threatening to impose regulation. I’m not sure how many examples there are of industries independently choosing to collaborate to regulate themselves.
- julianlam 1y agoWe could even go more basic... safe defaults when disconnected should be mandatory. For example, if I pull the thermostat off my wall, the furnace should drop into a fallback mode that keeps the heat above freezing (I'm in Canada where this is a concern.) I moved into a new house and did not set up the lawn irrigation system. Despite being disconnected from the cloud service, the system kept running its schedule, when I would have expected it turn off in order to conserve water.
- baq 1y ago> Despite being disconnected from the cloud service, the system kept running its schedule I'd consider this a very important feature
- andylei 1y agoyour furnace doesn't know what temperature your house is if the furnace isn't connected to a thermostat
- kenhwang 1y agoThe connection between the furnace and the thermostat probably shouldn't go through the internet. So it's perfectly reasonable for the furnace to turn off when it is disconnected, because disconnection would be a very strong signal for an error state instead of regular intermittent network/service issues.
- kgermino 1y agoAre there any furnaces that do that? Certainly, the standard smart thermostat set up is that your ecobee is connected to the Internet, but controls the furnace using good old-fashioned signal wires
- sokoloff 1y agoWhich is only extremely tangentially related to "if I pull my thermostat off the wall" The overwhelmingly most common connection between a thermostat and furnace is a contact closure when calling for heat, with no ability to differentiate between “thermostat is present but not calling for heat” and “thermostat is not present” as both present as "these T-T contacts are not closed/shorted together".
- jahsome 1y agoAs the resident Tech Guy in a few circles (family/friends) I often get asked what I'd recommend with regard for "smart" products. Due to the widespread and apparently default lack of support for offline-friendly operation, my answer is always the same: dumb as possible. edit: a more succinct way of expressing my thinking is to say "the less software the better" by which which normies are are often amused.
- jama211 1y agoWhich will just lead you to a lower quality smart device with the same pitfalls but less features a lot of the time.
- jahsome 1y agoI disagree with your point about quality, but I'll indulge you for the sake of discussion. Given the choice between "lower quality" that will always work, or convenient-until-inevitably-bricked, I'll always advocate for the former.
- jama211 1y agoThe question was about when they ask for a smart device specifically. Not when they ask for a dumb device. My comparison is NOT between smart vs non smart devices.
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- recursive 1y agoI think the group of people who would buy something with "smart" in the name and also really care about reliability is pretty small. For instance, most people who want a reliable mattress would buy one that doesn't require, or allow configuration. It seems to me that most of the home automation enthusiasts are actually into configuration and troubleshooting as a hobby. And maybe doing party tricks. There's nothing wrong with that. But I don't think there are enough people to really make this badge work.
- dpark 1y agoThis is a weird take, especially in an environment where so many products are now “smart” whether you want them to be or not.
- recursive 1y agoIf the products are smart even if I don't want them to be, it's even easier for them to not have this certification badge, even if I want them to.
- dpark 1y agoI wasn’t talking about the hypothetical certification. I was talking about this: > I think the group of people who would buy something with "smart" in the name and also really care about reliability is pretty small.
- gclawes 1y agoIsn't this kind of (but not completely) the idea behind smart device standards like Matter?
- tekno45 1y ago48Hrs in a faraday cage and only power. Whatever works from inside goes on the certified offline list of features.
- mentalgear 1y agoCouldn't agree more. The main issue is the data-greed mentality that has arisen over the last 20 years or so (basically every company trying to copy Big Tech). They all want to harvest user data and make the users as dependent as possible (which also opens up the door for subscription services later on, and their walled garden won't allow users to easily move).
- ryeguy_24 1y agoThis is a very smart idea. I couldn't turn my Ring Alarm off and I was on the same Wifi connection as the system. In retrospect, it would be quite smart to switch over to local network.
- Larrikin 1y agoHome Assistant has basically built this system already with their platinum level certification. It's a huge project but only the smaller IoT companies are taking it seriously
- luxuryballs 1y agoI’m shocked they wouldn’t have that as a primary design approach, how absolutely depressing is that for a physical product?
- prmoustache 1y agoI rather feel that we don't need most so called smart devices because: 1) they aren't smart 2) they are answers to questions/need that don't exist in the first place
- crooked-v 1y agoMatter/Thread is pretty much that; any online features are in addition, not core functionality.
- ncallaway 1y agoThis is the biggest reason why I look for Matter-compatible smart home devices. It means I can put them on a locked down network, with no internet access, and I know at least the Matter supported compatibility will function offline. I think it would be smart for Matter to lean into the "offline local control" aspect of their branding and certification requirements.
- amluto 1y agoHow easy is it to commission a Matter device onto a specific WiFi network? And how easy is it to set up a Thread network without Internet access? I haven't actually tried this, but: - The Home Assistant Matter commissioning tool doesn't have any documentation at all about how the network is selected AFAICS. - The Thread organization seems extremely proud of how Thread devices can access the Internet. Apple TV doesn't seem friendly at all to preventing its Thread Border Router from forwarding to the Internet. Home Assistant's OTBR add-on has no useful configuration whatsoever AFAICS. The easiest way to get it right would seem to be to buy something like a Sonoff POE-capable Thread dongle and sticking it on a VLAN, except that those, for some reason, seem to support Thread RCP but not being a Border Router themselves, and then you're back to managing your own OTBR installation.
- WaitWaitWha 1y agoThread as i see it currently is a locked ecosystem that cannot be breached. so far, all the Thread devices I have been interested in will only accept their own manufacturers' thread border router.
- 0x457 1y agoI'm pretty sure "all the Thread devices I have been interested in will only accept their own manufacturers' thread border router." that device won't get thread/matter certified. Are you sure this isn't a case of different matter version support? In which case, in my experience, thread border router works just fine, but the controller needs to support such devices.
- WaitWaitWha 1y agoThis is the way. My rule #1 in home automation is making sure none of the technology fails its original function without connection. I implement Home Assistant to assist in homes for non-technologist. Every single thing i implement must function independently, without the vendor or any internet connection. i.e., z-Wave locks must function with or without connectivity. Switches must switch on/off with or without zigbee, and valves must be able to close/open without that wifi.
- tonymet 1y agothis is a great idea that I've been toying with too. Something like OU / Orthodox Union certification for Kosher or UL for electrical & electronic equipment. A Right-To-Operate & Right-to-Repair certification There are a few sub-certifications: - OF: Offline-First as you mentioned - JE: Jailbreak-Escrow -- the firmware install keys are held in escrow and will be published if the company goes defunct -- allowing ongoing repair & control. - FE: Firmware-Escrow -- firmware source will be published if the company goes defunct. - FA: Firmware-Audit -- firmware is compiled by certifiers to verify BOM, security, privacy & online dependencies. Another benefit would be a "nutrition label" showing active online traffic & data shared.
- tonymet 1y agoCTA is supposed to be providing this. They develop industry standards and help make them accessible to consumers to encourage a healthy consumer electronics marketplace.
- fortran77 1y agoAnd can it function either without electricity (like is your Toto Washlet flushable without power) or at least in a steady state (powered, but needs no human input, environmental sensors, or network support to operate). This is useful for shabbos modes as well as failsafe.
- tonymet 1y agogreat suggestion. I'm baffled at how many devices force a dependency from a mechanical feature --> electricity --> online control logic when the mechanical feature should work fine alone
- Marsymars 1y ago> like is your Toto Washlet flushable without power Hey, I got myself a water-pressure powered bidet so it still works without power.
- bakugo 1y ago> Companies in compliance could put a badge on their products so wary consumers know who to trust. This would only work out for the companies if the average consumer actually cared about "offline-first", which they very much don't. It would be a very small and ever shrinking market.
- hinkley 1y agoI had a dilemma at my longest job. We had a monolith (but not monorepo) that had big Conway’s Law problems. We wanted to start making microservices. We had a couple sidecars that I either wrote or did reconstructive surgery on, but the few microservices we had were dumb. One created head-of-line problems for fanout, asking a question that could have been a Consul long poll. The other really could have been run entirely in Bamboo if we hadn’t cheaped out on agent size. I killed the former, but the latter used a larger slice of all of our modules than all of the sidecars combined. It was also an offline process, writing into dark content in S3. So I could break it for an hour without anyone noticing, and in some environments I could go a full work day without rolling it back as long as I watched for production alerts (and I was on the team that did). If I got rid of it then all library and runtime upgrades would get harder, though half the team ignored my advice anyway and then we had occasional P1s or 2s because of it. My experience, there and elsewhere, is that offline logic of any flavor at least pays for itself in terms of code-build-test cycles, fairly quickly and self-evidently. But some people think it sounds counterintuitive and push people to “go fast” without it. Which only happens if they double down and cut more corners.
- giancarlostoro 1y agoI'm genuinely shocked this isn't the default. Imagine if your fridge stopped working because it could not connect to the internet. Which I had forgotten about mine, and it did not connect for like two years, it worked just fine.
- blopp99 1y agoJeff Geerling talked about it on a video about his Washer. Totally agree.
- xnx 1y ago> I feel like we need some sort of "Offline-First" or "Offline-Compatible" certification process for "smart" devices. If there's a subscription, then it doesn't work offline.
- anotherevan 1y agoThe best piece of home "automation" in my house is a big flashing red LED in the ceiling near the front door that is connected to a magnetic reed switch that tells us if we left the garage door open.
- KoftaBob 1y agoThat's essentially what Matter + Thread is. The Matter smart home standard, which can run on the Thread wireless protocol, allows products to work without an internet connection for local controls. Matter is pretty common on newer smart home products, while Thread is a bit newer so it's only supported on some products right now.