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The Internet of Way Too Many Things

nytimes.com

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Re: The Internet of Way Too Many Things

#101

Post by speleding »

antr wrote: post #2

I just bought a home, and just started a considerable renovation. I'm putting in new water pipes, new electrical wiring, etc. I thought of putting "smart" devices (i.e. switches, alarms, thermostats, etc.) given the "advantages" these promise. After considerable research, it's not worth the hussle or money. Let's put aside the fact that these are considerable more expensive, and won't breakeven in years (some devices…

I renovated my house a few months ago and also had to decide whether or not to go "smart" on the lighting, switches thermostat, etc. Did a lot of research and came to the same conclusion that there was little benefit and large chance that I would have obsolete technology next year.

However, I did go for an electronic doorlock (with finger print reader) and after just a few months I can not imagine ever going back to having regular keys again. If you have a family with small kids and cleaning ladies that need to come and go this saves so much logistic hassle. No need to wait for a delivery man, just give him a temp code to put it in the hall, etc.

There are definitely a few great IoT things, but just like we once imagined a PC would be used to store recipes, we just have to find out what the truly useful IoT things are.

Re: The Internet of Way Too Many Things

#102

Post by jedberg »

> I asked a young man working at the Target store how visitors felt about their every action being tracked and he said that they’d come to accept it. And that was that.

I think this is completely true. I've done research in this area, and people under the age of about 22 have no concept of privacy whatsoever (it should be noted that these people were 12 when Facebook started and basically hit their teenage years just as Facebook opened up to the general public).

Here is one of the anecdotes I collected: when one of them arrived at college, she posted a picture of her school ID and her key and said, "I've arrived!". I pointed out that with just the info in the photo someone could make a copy of the key and get into her dorm room. She said, "eh, that won't happen".

Re: The Internet of Way Too Many Things

#103

Post by alistairjcbrown »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #48
Zigurd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a whole different dynamic to these devices in China. Air quality, water quality, etc. are part of middle class lifestyle in China, and many people do not trust the authorities to keep these parameters within spec. Multiple air filters in an apartment are common, and monitoring the performance of these devices is an obvious interest to their owners. This is a much more compelling home automation story than th…

I've never understood the desire to add smart technology to the smoke alarm. Once properly installed a smoke alarm should be interacted with when (1) there is a fire, (2) the battery is running flat. False alarms pretty much mean you've installed it wrong.

That's not true - you're meant to test your smoke alarm weekly. Also false alarms can be the smoke detector acting correctly to the presence of smoke, eg. Burnt toast.

In this case the ability to remotely check the alarm status from a self check, or to remotely snooze a false alarm while clearing the smoke can be very handy

Re: The Internet of Way Too Many Things

#104

Post by hoka »

jedberg wrote: post #102

> I asked a young man working at the Target store how visitors felt about their every action being tracked and he said that they’d come to accept it. And that was that. I think this is completely true. I've done research in this area, and people under the age of about 22 have no concept of privacy whatsoever (it should be noted that these people were 12 when Facebook started and basically hit their teenage years just…

Another common one: people posting that they're going on vacation or posting pictures from vacation while still on it. Sure, your friends might not break into your place, but what if their laptop gets stolen and the thief sees you're not going to be home for a week?

Re: The Internet of Way Too Many Things

#105

Post by dgallagher »

I walked through Target's Open House in SF a few weeks ago; I'd recommend visiting if you're in the area. It's pretty slick product display space. Each "room" has a projector which gives an overview of four or five products in a room, and how they tie together in your life. One of the rooms had a Kinect mounted above next to the projector; not sure what it was being used for.

The main lobby has a couple long tables with all of the products on display which were demo'd in the rooms along with some interactive Surface-like table which detects if you get near it and moves floating sprites around. They had displays on the wall listing the most popular products, and a few sales people to answer questions. IIRC there were approx 40-50 products displayed. Kudos to Target for setting the space up.

Everything being sold felt they'd fit perfectly inside of a Brookstone, or Sharper Image when they still had retail stores. Most of them were "vitamin" products rather than "aspirin", which gives way to some of Allison Arieff's criticism in the article: "What the products on display have in common is that they don’t solve problems people actually have."

That's very fair to say. There were a few items which did solve real problems, like Nest which can help reduce heating costs, but most things sold didn't fit into that category. Many were "neat" things which you could entice someone with disposable income to splurge on.

Re: The Internet of Way Too Many Things

#106

Post by dgallagher »

I walked through Target's Open House in SF a few weeks ago; I'd recommend visiting if you're in the area. It's pretty slick product display space. Each "room" has a projector which gives an overview of four or five products in a room, and how they tie together in your life. One of the rooms had a Kinect mounted above next to the projector; not sure what it was being used for.

The main lobby has a couple long tables with all of the products on display which were demo'd in the rooms along with some interactive Surface-like table which detects if you get near it and moves floating sprites around. They had displays on the wall listing the most popular products, and a few sales people to answer questions. IIRC there were approx 40-50 products displayed. Kudos to Target for setting the space up.

Everything being sold felt they'd fit perfectly inside of a Brookstone, or Sharper Image when they still had retail stores. Most of them were "vitamin" products rather than "aspirin", which gives way to some of Allison Arieff's criticism in the article: "What the products on display have in common is that they don’t solve problems people actually have."

That's very fair to say. There were a few items which did solve real problems, like Nest which can help reduce heating costs, but most things sold didn't fit into that category. Many were "neat" things which you could entice someone with disposable income to splurge on.

Re: The Internet of Way Too Many Things

#107

Post by jdietrich »

fallingmeat wrote: post #67
rollback wrote: post #21

Commentary about the silliness of the avalanche of IOT devices being created right now aside (99% of consumer internet startups are based on dumb ideas and fail, but that doesn't mean there is no market or trend!), it's inevitable that this stuff is going to get traction in the market and it's a vast market. I doubt it's going to happen based on a bunch of edge-case $99 devices though. The big trend here is the cost…

"...wifi-enabled microcontroller for _$3_..." have been available (in volume) for, at least, a few years now. I'm not sure why, all of a sudden, this is such a promising solution on the most trivial of problems. As an engineer in this industry, these companies often seem like carpetbaggers, attempting to enter niche markets they know little of, with a solution who's only merit is it's hype.

The ESP8266 is making waves because a) it's substantially cheaper than anything else on the market, b) it integrates the WiFi MAC, the entire RF system from balun to baseband and a useful microcontroller and c) it is fantastically easy to use.

Espressif will sell you a single ESP8266 for less than $2; the ESP8089 is less than a buck, again in single quantities. TI's 1ku pricing for a CC3100 SoC is $6.70. Nordic's cheapest 2.4GHz SoC is about $3.50/1ku, and that doesn't do WiFi. The cheap Espressif chips really are a big deal IMO, in the same way that cheap ARM A-series processors from Rockchip and Allwinner have radically changed many consumer markets. You can run an HTTP server on a chip that is price-competitive with an ATTINY88.

Re: The Internet of Way Too Many Things

#108

Post by Frondo »

jedberg wrote: post #102

> I asked a young man working at the Target store how visitors felt about their every action being tracked and he said that they’d come to accept it. And that was that. I think this is completely true. I've done research in this area, and people under the age of about 22 have no concept of privacy whatsoever (it should be noted that these people were 12 when Facebook started and basically hit their teenage years just…

In fairness, she's right--that won't happen. That's a pretty good example of private stuff where the characteristic of privacy doesn't really matter.

Who's going to go through the trouble of taking a key blank, grinding it down to shape, somehow gaining entry to the building, just to break into her dorm with the actual key? It's a dorm room, it's going to have a cheap dorm bed, a macbook, nothing of value worth stealing, and if you really wanted to break in, you could use a bump key.

And breaking in to rape her or something else malicious that isn't property-related? She's at far greater risk of that happening from the frat boys down the road.

No, she's right, the key privacy doesn't matter.

Re: The Internet of Way Too Many Things

#109

Post by michaelsbradley »

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is also in the works, with standards efforts kicking into high/er gear.

The two big contenders seem to be the American-led effort/s that has come together for IEEE P2413[1], and the German-led effort known as Industrie 4.0[2].

See also: Industrie 4.0 vs. the Industrial Internet[3].

[1] https://standards.ieee.org/develop/project/2413.html

[&] http://www.industrialinternetconsortium.org/

[&] http://industrial-iot.com/2015/09/ieee-pursues-standard-refe...

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattform_Industrie_4.0

[&] http://www.zvei.org/en/subjects/Industry-40/Pages/The-Refere...

[3] https://www.mapi.net/research/publications/industrie-4-0-vs-...

Re: The Internet of Way Too Many Things

#110

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

This is why we started EarthData.io. It hasn't flown due to me failing to raise money, but I still believe that the premise of every 'thing' accessible to every 'app' in 'near-real-time' where this all heads.

As long as the connected devices are all connected via their own, standalone cloud, whether it's proprietary, open source or purchased, we're not going to see the true value of IoT and the ROI of connectedness will be squelched. Yet this is how the device manufacturers still view connected devices: A marketing lever to lock their customers into their hardware.

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