3 ms·

An iroh powered smart fan

168 points by surprisetalk 4mo ago

shermantanktop 3mo ago
This is interesting as an example of just how complicated and elaborate a toolchain you can use to build something dead simple. There’s a lot that comes for free by adding all these libraries and crates and steps. But from what I can tell it comes down to: let _ = if fan_on { fan.set_high() } else { fan.set_low() };
- klooj 3mo ago
  iroh is a peer to peer networking technology so the project example of controlling a fan isn't so much about the fan but rather that it's controllable from anywhere through an esp32 microcontroller that can maintain a resilient connection endpoint even through power cycles and so on. I think iroh was posted about on HN a few weeks ago and I had a similar reaction of like...what in the world is this blog post even saying haha. But I found their docs page and found it pretty fascinating learning! https://docs.iroh.computer/what-is-iroh https://docs.iroh.computer/what-is-iroh
  - rwmj 3mo ago
    I use a fan with an on/off button.
    - cinntaile 3mo ago
      That's very much not a smart fan. Not really relevant.
      - rwmj 3mo ago
        Pretty relevant because I've never seen the reason for "smart" gadgets at all. Physical switches are simply better.
        bloppe 3mo ago
        If your fan isn't Byzantine fault tolerant, you're irrelevant
        deleted 3mo ago
        [deleted]
        embedding-shape 3mo ago
        > Physical switches are simply better Pff, assuming that everyone have arms and hands much? Also I don't see the point of a fan, I live right next to the ocean, if you want moving air, why don't you just open a window?! Talk about useless invention
        rwmj 3mo ago
        I do have working arms and hands, so for the lights and fans in my house I don't need to assume otherwise.
        kennywinker 3mo ago
        90% of smart devices are for novelty, or for you to spend more time setting up and maintaining their automations than they save you in being automated. But that 10% is magic. A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room, but in a workshop setting - especially a shared workshop setting? Awesome. Just awesome. A well defined use case, in the right setting, and smart stuff can be genuinely very useful. Usually that’s not how they’re used - i know, because of the 15-20 smart things i have only one or two are genuinely useful.
        embedding-shape 3mo ago
        > A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room, Why wouldn't that be useful? People be surprised how poor their air quality generally are inside, unless they already measure it, making it better sounds useful in oh so many ways. > i know, because of the 15-20 smart things i have only one or two are genuinely useful. What are those things? I have about 70-80 "smart things" by now, but every single one is genuinely useful, otherwise I wouldn't install them in the first place. Lots of open/closed sensors, soil moisture, temperature+pm2.5 sensors, water taps and so on.
    - dtj1123 3mo ago
      Can't help but read this in the voice of Homer Simpson.
    - kaashif 3mo ago
      I think it's great someone is working on a fun little project such as a smart fan but let's not kid ourselves, it's not supposed to be practical! I don't think anyone would claim that. It's a demo of how easy it is to make even an ESP32 device available globally with iroh.
  - aquariusDue 3mo ago
    Works on Android too when developing Dart applications and making use of flutter_rust_bridge though it's a bit of an involved setup to be honest. I really hope more people will play around with iroh and build stuff especially because in the last year some things have been renamed in the API to be more clear and other stuff has been simplified e.g. see this blog post https://www.iroh.computer/blog/iroh-0-94-0-the-endpoint-takeover https://www.iroh.computer/blog/iroh-0-94-0-the-endpoint-take...
- miki123211 3mo ago
  The hard part isn't controlling the fan, it's controlling the fan from anywhere, without a central server in the way. Sure, you could probably make this much smaller if you invented a specialized p2p fan control protocol, but that's a lot of work.
  - quickthrowman 3mo ago
    The simple way to do this is a dumb thermostat wired through a relay coil that enables a fan. It doesn’t give you remote access to change the setpoint but that’s all this setup does. Something like this has a setpoint you change once and then leave it. For specific applications like transfer fans for a server room with a small amount of heat to react, you can buy an all-in-one thermostatically controlled fan: https://acinfinity.com/room-to-room-fan-8-with-temperature-controller-two-way-reversible-airflow/?srsltid=AfmBOorGpCdI0HYS8Pw3eW8wmzEYRLUaCNXMpDxAtiFwaQi6vHHwOzBq https://acinfinity.com/room-to-room-fan-8-with-temperature-c...
- shermantanktop 3mo ago
  Okay, I read up on iroh. It has some really interesting stuff in it but I see an uncanny valley here. It’s not simple enough to debug a connection failure easily, but it’s not magical enough to guarantee connectivity. Straight tcp with dns can be hard to debug; and no magical networking stack can really guarantee connectivity. I guess iroh’s strength is connectivity but I don’t know what happens if you can’t find a path. The third dimension is privacy and anonymity, and I can’t tell if the story there is stronger than other p2p+relay protocols. So it’s in the middle but at a different point in the space.
skybrian 3mo ago
It's unclear to me why they needed to compile Rust to WebAssembly to write a website. It looks like iroh has a JavaScript API: https://docs.iroh.computer/languages/javascript https://docs.iroh.computer/languages/javascript Edit: actually, that's a Node.js-specific API. For browsers, it seems like they should have a platform-independent JavaScript/TypeScript API that includes a WebAssembly file (if needed) instead of expecting you to compile WebAssembly yourself.
- nine_k 3mo ago
  Not touching JavaScript might be a reason enough. (Though I bet it has a Typescript API, and Typescript is great.)
  - croes 3mo ago
    Typescript is nothing without JavaScript
    - roblabla 3mo ago
      With that logic, C is nothing without assembly.
      - embedding-shape 3mo ago
        Does C also have a compiler that turns C code into assembly before the real runtime does its work? Never done much C development in the past, didn't get the impression it worked like that.
        IceDane 3mo ago
        You can output assembly with any toolchain, yes. But there's no runtime, at least if you mean in the sense that the code is executed by a runtime.
        messe 3mo ago
        > Does C also have a compiler that turns C code into assembly before the real runtime does its work? What do you think ahead of time compilation is?
Teknomadix 3mo ago
Why.
- Frenchgeek 3mo ago
  Because Uncle Iroh needs more fans maybe? (should have been a tea kettle)
- gurjeet 3mo ago
  In hacker culture, the correct question is "Why not?" Somebody wanted to do something, and they did it; it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that :-) > Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative. Sincerely, HN Guidelines Police :-) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- kennywinker 3mo ago
  To demonstrate the potential of iroh to enable accessing stuff across complex network structures for iot type use cases
Alien1Being 3mo ago
I use a inexpensive 36 AUD Tapo infrared hub to control my fan reliably. It links to my Google Home installation and responds to voice commands. https://us.store.tapo.com/products/tapo-h110-smart-ir-iot-hub https://us.store.tapo.com/products/tapo-h110-smart-ir-iot-hu... Someone with too much time on their hands might benefit from the iroh solution....
sunshine-o 3mo ago
iroh is very interesting and in many way it could get traction for IoT. Now I am not sure it is feasible but it would be interesting to have it available in esphome. I feel this is really where real adoption happens.
devttyeu 3mo ago
Any plans to standardize Iroh IoT protocols, e.g. Matter over Iroh / Some other standard that would be plug-able to things like Home Assistant?
- karissa 3mo ago
  Yes, iroh here. We are looking into projects who want to use iroh with matter or thread. If you have a project you want to collaborate with our engineers on, please get in touch! Send an email to support@iroh.conputer
Liftyee 3mo ago
While this is neat, it strikes me as the software developer's idea of a "smart fan". The engineer in me says that an actual "smart fan" would be one whose blades are designed to produce maximum airflow with minimum noise (variable pitch? avoiding turbulence?)
- lilhenry 3mo ago
  He’s using a noctua fan which are pretty much the quietest pc fans you can buy while still moving large amounts of air
- pessimizer 3mo ago
  I think you're describing a "great" fan. A "smart" fan is one that thinks. e.g. smart TVs are worse (and therefore cheaper) than dumb TVs, but they do a lot more thinking.
  - MisterTea 3mo ago
    They're describing an efficient fan. A great fan would be one that offers the best attributes such as efficiency, quality and features. Though, I agree the term "smart" should denote some kind of CPU enabled automation and features.
unsolved73 3mo ago
Iroh is probably one of the best shots we have at making IoT finally secure with the built-in endpoint-to-endpoint encryption. The only thing that is missing is an embedded QUIC stack, the setup described in this article sees a little bit too hacky (4 MiB of PSRAM, really?).
cold_pizz4 3mo ago
Related to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872120
drnick1 3mo ago
In a heatwave, you need AC, not a fan. Moving hot air around without cooling it is pretty much useless.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo ago
  But a fan is nice in not-heatwave but still warm temperatures. I have a usb desk fan from a PC cooler manufacturer (Arctic I believe) and it's one of the best accessories.
- embedding-shape 3mo ago
  Anything helps, when you don't have AC. Moving slightly colder air to where you sit, or moving away generated from your body, does make a ever so slight difference. Helps to get rid of some sweat too, if you're sitting and sweating, which also helps a tiny bit.
- basro 3mo ago
  A fan is better than nothing, even in a heatwave.
- phoghed 3mo ago
  Lived in the California desert with no AC as a kid, fans definitely help. Especially if you are sweating or spritz yourself with some water
- lookeey 3mo ago
  Fans increase the efficiency at which your body's own cooling system (sweating) works by increasing the amount of air that flows by your skin, be it hot or cold.
- teravor 3mo ago
  there is a curve to it, up to a certain temperature it helps and then it starts making things worse (because it becomes a convection oven). I believe it's around 35 Celsius. if you are outside you can attach water nozzles to the fan, the evaporation will cool down the air stream. doing it indoors has humidity implications.
- 3mo ago

168 points by surprisetalk 4mo ago

This is interesting as an example of just how complicated and elaborate a toolchain you can use to build something dead simple. There’s a lot that comes for free by adding all these libraries and crates and steps. But from what I can tell it comes down to: let _ = if fan_on { fan.set_high() } else { fan.set_low() };

klooj 3mo ago
iroh is a peer to peer networking technology so the project example of controlling a fan isn't so much about the fan but rather that it's controllable from anywhere through an esp32 microcontroller that can maintain a resilient connection endpoint even through power cycles and so on. I think iroh was posted about on HN a few weeks ago and I had a similar reaction of like...what in the world is this blog post even saying haha. But I found their docs page and found it pretty fascinating learning! https://docs.iroh.computer/what-is-iroh https://docs.iroh.computer/what-is-iroh
- rwmj 3mo ago
  I use a fan with an on/off button.
  - cinntaile 3mo ago
    That's very much not a smart fan. Not really relevant.
    - rwmj 3mo ago
      Pretty relevant because I've never seen the reason for "smart" gadgets at all. Physical switches are simply better.
      - bloppe 3mo ago
        If your fan isn't Byzantine fault tolerant, you're irrelevant
        deleted 3mo ago
        [deleted]
      - embedding-shape 3mo ago
        > Physical switches are simply better Pff, assuming that everyone have arms and hands much? Also I don't see the point of a fan, I live right next to the ocean, if you want moving air, why don't you just open a window?! Talk about useless invention
        rwmj 3mo ago
        I do have working arms and hands, so for the lights and fans in my house I don't need to assume otherwise.
      - kennywinker 3mo ago
        90% of smart devices are for novelty, or for you to spend more time setting up and maintaining their automations than they save you in being automated. But that 10% is magic. A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room, but in a workshop setting - especially a shared workshop setting? Awesome. Just awesome. A well defined use case, in the right setting, and smart stuff can be genuinely very useful. Usually that’s not how they’re used - i know, because of the 15-20 smart things i have only one or two are genuinely useful.
        embedding-shape 3mo ago
        > A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room, Why wouldn't that be useful? People be surprised how poor their air quality generally are inside, unless they already measure it, making it better sounds useful in oh so many ways. > i know, because of the 15-20 smart things i have only one or two are genuinely useful. What are those things? I have about 70-80 "smart things" by now, but every single one is genuinely useful, otherwise I wouldn't install them in the first place. Lots of open/closed sensors, soil moisture, temperature+pm2.5 sensors, water taps and so on.
  - dtj1123 3mo ago
    Can't help but read this in the voice of Homer Simpson.
  - kaashif 3mo ago
    I think it's great someone is working on a fun little project such as a smart fan but let's not kid ourselves, it's not supposed to be practical! I don't think anyone would claim that. It's a demo of how easy it is to make even an ESP32 device available globally with iroh.
- aquariusDue 3mo ago
  Works on Android too when developing Dart applications and making use of flutter_rust_bridge though it's a bit of an involved setup to be honest. I really hope more people will play around with iroh and build stuff especially because in the last year some things have been renamed in the API to be more clear and other stuff has been simplified e.g. see this blog post https://www.iroh.computer/blog/iroh-0-94-0-the-endpoint-takeover https://www.iroh.computer/blog/iroh-0-94-0-the-endpoint-take...
miki123211 3mo ago
The hard part isn't controlling the fan, it's controlling the fan from anywhere, without a central server in the way. Sure, you could probably make this much smaller if you invented a specialized p2p fan control protocol, but that's a lot of work.
- quickthrowman 3mo ago
  The simple way to do this is a dumb thermostat wired through a relay coil that enables a fan. It doesn’t give you remote access to change the setpoint but that’s all this setup does. Something like this has a setpoint you change once and then leave it. For specific applications like transfer fans for a server room with a small amount of heat to react, you can buy an all-in-one thermostatically controlled fan: https://acinfinity.com/room-to-room-fan-8-with-temperature-controller-two-way-reversible-airflow/?srsltid=AfmBOorGpCdI0HYS8Pw3eW8wmzEYRLUaCNXMpDxAtiFwaQi6vHHwOzBq https://acinfinity.com/room-to-room-fan-8-with-temperature-c...
shermantanktop 3mo ago
Okay, I read up on iroh. It has some really interesting stuff in it but I see an uncanny valley here. It’s not simple enough to debug a connection failure easily, but it’s not magical enough to guarantee connectivity. Straight tcp with dns can be hard to debug; and no magical networking stack can really guarantee connectivity. I guess iroh’s strength is connectivity but I don’t know what happens if you can’t find a path. The third dimension is privacy and anonymity, and I can’t tell if the story there is stronger than other p2p+relay protocols. So it’s in the middle but at a different point in the space.

skybrian 3mo ago

It's unclear to me why they needed to compile Rust to WebAssembly to write a website. It looks like iroh has a JavaScript API: https://docs.iroh.computer/languages/javascript https://docs.iroh.computer/languages/javascript Edit: actually, that's a Node.js-specific API. For browsers, it seems like they should have a platform-independent JavaScript/TypeScript API that includes a WebAssembly file (if needed) instead of expecting you to compile WebAssembly yourself.

nine_k 3mo ago
Not touching JavaScript might be a reason enough. (Though I bet it has a Typescript API, and Typescript is great.)
- croes 3mo ago
  Typescript is nothing without JavaScript
  - roblabla 3mo ago
    With that logic, C is nothing without assembly.
    - embedding-shape 3mo ago
      Does C also have a compiler that turns C code into assembly before the real runtime does its work? Never done much C development in the past, didn't get the impression it worked like that.
      - IceDane 3mo ago
        You can output assembly with any toolchain, yes. But there's no runtime, at least if you mean in the sense that the code is executed by a runtime.
      - messe 3mo ago
        > Does C also have a compiler that turns C code into assembly before the real runtime does its work? What do you think ahead of time compilation is?

Teknomadix 3mo ago

Why.

Frenchgeek 3mo ago
Because Uncle Iroh needs more fans maybe? (should have been a tea kettle)
gurjeet 3mo ago
In hacker culture, the correct question is "Why not?" Somebody wanted to do something, and they did it; it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that :-) > Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative. Sincerely, HN Guidelines Police :-) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
kennywinker 3mo ago
To demonstrate the potential of iroh to enable accessing stuff across complex network structures for iot type use cases

Alien1Being 3mo ago

I use a inexpensive 36 AUD Tapo infrared hub to control my fan reliably. It links to my Google Home installation and responds to voice commands. https://us.store.tapo.com/products/tapo-h110-smart-ir-iot-hub https://us.store.tapo.com/products/tapo-h110-smart-ir-iot-hu... Someone with too much time on their hands might benefit from the iroh solution....

sunshine-o 3mo ago

iroh is very interesting and in many way it could get traction for IoT. Now I am not sure it is feasible but it would be interesting to have it available in esphome. I feel this is really where real adoption happens.

devttyeu 3mo ago

Any plans to standardize Iroh IoT protocols, e.g. Matter over Iroh / Some other standard that would be plug-able to things like Home Assistant?

karissa 3mo ago
Yes, iroh here. We are looking into projects who want to use iroh with matter or thread. If you have a project you want to collaborate with our engineers on, please get in touch! Send an email to support@iroh.conputer

Liftyee 3mo ago

While this is neat, it strikes me as the software developer's idea of a "smart fan". The engineer in me says that an actual "smart fan" would be one whose blades are designed to produce maximum airflow with minimum noise (variable pitch? avoiding turbulence?)

lilhenry 3mo ago
He’s using a noctua fan which are pretty much the quietest pc fans you can buy while still moving large amounts of air
pessimizer 3mo ago
I think you're describing a "great" fan. A "smart" fan is one that thinks. e.g. smart TVs are worse (and therefore cheaper) than dumb TVs, but they do a lot more thinking.
- MisterTea 3mo ago
  They're describing an efficient fan. A great fan would be one that offers the best attributes such as efficiency, quality and features. Though, I agree the term "smart" should denote some kind of CPU enabled automation and features.

unsolved73 3mo ago

Iroh is probably one of the best shots we have at making IoT finally secure with the built-in endpoint-to-endpoint encryption. The only thing that is missing is an embedded QUIC stack, the setup described in this article sees a little bit too hacky (4 MiB of PSRAM, really?).

cold_pizz4 3mo ago

Related to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48872120

drnick1 3mo ago

In a heatwave, you need AC, not a fan. Moving hot air around without cooling it is pretty much useless.

Cthulhu_ 3mo ago
But a fan is nice in not-heatwave but still warm temperatures. I have a usb desk fan from a PC cooler manufacturer (Arctic I believe) and it's one of the best accessories.
embedding-shape 3mo ago
Anything helps, when you don't have AC. Moving slightly colder air to where you sit, or moving away generated from your body, does make a ever so slight difference. Helps to get rid of some sweat too, if you're sitting and sweating, which also helps a tiny bit.
basro 3mo ago
A fan is better than nothing, even in a heatwave.
phoghed 3mo ago
Lived in the California desert with no AC as a kid, fans definitely help. Especially if you are sweating or spritz yourself with some water
lookeey 3mo ago
Fans increase the efficiency at which your body's own cooling system (sweating) works by increasing the amount of air that flows by your skin, be it hot or cold.
teravor 3mo ago
there is a curve to it, up to a certain temperature it helps and then it starts making things worse (because it becomes a convection oven). I believe it's around 35 Celsius. if you are outside you can attach water nozzles to the fan, the evaporation will cool down the air stream. doing it indoors has humidity implications.
3mo ago