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Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

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Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#101

Post by PascLeRasc »

samsolomon wrote: post #83

Curious, does anyone have a good manual thermostat that they like? Part of the reason Nest has done so well is most programmable thermostats are horrible to use. I'm a product designer and I don't understand how the scheduling works. Scheduling isn't something I really need for my studio. At night I turn the AC on, in the morning I turn it off. Don't really need to turn on the heat in the winter. I'd love is a qualit…

I think there are some objects where adding computers can only make them worse to use. Stereo amplifiers, car interiors, and coffee equipment come to mind, and smart home stuff seems like it's just not a good experience ever.

There are some really nice vintage thermostats out there [1] [2]. As far as I can tell they're not a niche collectable so they're still pretty inexpensive too.

[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Minneapolis-Honeywell-Stoko...

[2] https://www.icollector.com/VINTAGE-HONEYWELL-THERMOSTAT_i228...

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#102

Post by beat »

What I don't understand is... What's in this for Google? Why are they making such a radical, customer-hostile, partner-hostile change in direction? Strategically, this just seems all wrong to me, but there's clearly a Big Picture I'm not seeing.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#103

Post by erinnh »

braythwayt wrote: post #81
throwayEngineer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I can't buy Apple products. It's the opposite of interchangeable.

I buy only Apple devices. It's true that they're mostly proprietary, and Apple runs its own services, and I hate iTunes these days. But—and I realize not everyone feels the same way—but at this time they are literally the only b2c company that has any credibility around privacy. They feel to me—and again, not everyone agrees—they feel to me like the only hardware company that thinks of their users as their customers,…

If I wouldnt be using Android Phones with custom Roms and no Google at all, I would proably also be using iPhones. I just try to stay all open source. I pay for my email, I have my own servers with services I use etc.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#104

Post by derefr »

nine_k wrote: post #89
zelly wrote: post #46

We are all used to SaaS randomly getting obsoleted, but when you buy a physical device you kind of expect to own it forever. But no, cloud and IoT means even your physical stuff are SaaS products. Just stop buying the trash.

Can't help but quote: «“the "Internet of Things" won't work until the "Local Area Network of Things" works», seen here on HN [1]. There's significantly less money in it, though, and more hassle. It's not going to become popular enough until people get burned enough with vendors going out of business, or just stopping support, and making their convenient $199 gadgets obsolete. In a sense, a large company like Nest pul…

I would say that the Local Area Network of Things has existed for decades, but the intricacies of its deployment means that so far, it’s required a network admin to set up.

The most classical example of such “things” are softphones. They need their own vxlan and switch QOS policies and so forth, to function the way people expect phones to work (rather than flaking out when someone is torrenting.) Softphone deployments exist in plenty of enterprises, but have you ever heard of a SOHO deployment of softphones (where the phones are PBX extensions and can call each-other over the LAN; not where the phones are distinct phone-company DIDs sending IP packets through the gateway, out over the internet, and to the the phone company’s PBX terminus, just to talk to one-another)?

Until we get SOHO router-gateways smart enough to make such a SOHO softphone deployment “installation-free”, we’ll probably never see LANoT.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#105

Post by 2Ccltvcm »

scarface74 wrote: post #82
jerf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've occasionally pondered screwing around with various wifi-embedded things like the Arduino, but then I think about how long the light switches have been in my house already, and I find myself wondering, will even Wifi last long enough? Will today's Wifi still be going in 40 years? Dunno. Maybe. But for me to be interested in something it still has to be something that is going to pay back my fiddling in probably t…

I had my house wired with gigabit Ethernet when it was being built. I don’t know how long will that be enough.

You can tie a new generation of wire to your existing wire in the wall already and pull the new wire through end to end that way to upgrade your connections behind the walls.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#106

Post by linker3000 »

magicalhippo wrote: post #79
erinnh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely would invest into Smart Home, but only if I can control it 100% from the server in my basement without the appliance having any internet access at all. All my IoT devices are in a wifi without any internet access.

I'm mainly going for Z-Wave plus, using Home Assistant as controller for now (though still evaluating that). My A/C is on Wifi though, and the cloudy controller web page is using a REST API (undocumented but simple enough to sniff and fake), so that's the only outlier so far.

I really want to love HA, but I find doing things in Node-Red so much quicker and easy to comprehend due to its visual nature. After a gap of about a year, I installed HA again a few weeks back and tried to setup geofencing using first bluetooth and then third party location services, but gave up due to the inconsistent determination of whether I was home or not. Using Node-red and a couple of tutorials I had things working very quickly. YMMV.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#107

Post by beat »

knicholes wrote: post #88
throwaway55554 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems. I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems that communicate with someone else's servers. But, having lights and temp auto controlled would be nice. But getting a system up and running that only runs on MY server is a little more tinkery than I have time for what with all the LeetCode I have to do to switch jobs…

How about ordering supplies for you when you run low?

That sort of thing scares me. I'd rather have it automatically send notifications to me that I need supplies, and let me do the ordering.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#108

Post by 2Ccltvcm »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #63
kryptiskt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no safety going with products from a major company. They pivot all the time, not least Google. The only benefit is that one might get a refund when they do something egregious. And in this case, Google just gave all their customers using the Nest API the finger. How is it safe to trust them going forward?

That's why I specifically said " made by a single company", not "made for a single company". Products using the Nest API were "made for".

Irrelevant because you will always get screwed unless the company has a huge track record in backwards compatibility and very conservative slow changing management.

Get open source hardware and software that you can maintain yourself or suck it up and cough up the dough.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#109

Post by ketzu »

adrianN wrote: post #94
erinnh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely would invest into Smart Home, but only if I can control it 100% from the server in my basement without the appliance having any internet access at all. All my IoT devices are in a wifi without any internet access.

Tor Hidden Services provide fairly secure access to your IoT things over the Internet: https://github.com/n8fr8/talks/blob/master/onion_things/Inte...

Isn't just having a vpn endpoint at home more than enough?

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#110

Post by gameswithgo »

dustinmoris wrote: post #97

Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…

I agree with this mostly, but I do vaguely pay attention to the space in case there is some smart home application that does end up proving truly useful. I haven't seen anything yet that is compelling to me but it could happen!
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