231–240 of 378 posts
In what world could Nest have been a profitable ongoing concern without being acquired by someone? It’s hard enough going from startup to either IPO or a self sustainable “lifestyle business” for a software company. It’s almost impossible for a hardware company - see Eero.
I got a Nest as a housewarming gift and was excited to set it up and play with it. I set it up in SmartThings, HomeBridge, IFTTT, and Alexa. That was about 2 weeks ago, now I'm considering returning it and going to with some zigbee/z-wave alternative. This is 100% why I refuse to buy WiFi "Smart" devices. They are always a step away from being shutdown and no longer supported. Tuya devices are sometimes acceptable bu…
This is 100% why I refuse to buy WiFi "Smart" devices. They are always a step away from being shutdown and no longer supported. It is my understanding that HomeKit devices have to allow direct communication to HomeKit, meaning that $CHEAP_ASS_IOT servers can be taken down, but it will still work with HomeKit. (I did make an attempt to find a link to support this, but a few minutes didn't yield anything for/against.)
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I, for one, am enjoying my 'smart home' setup, where I can say "Alexa, turn off the TV", "Alexa, turn on Chromecast" and "Alexa, set the bedroom temperature to 72", regardless of which floor of the house I'm on. I'd rather fiddle with updates and setup once in a while (I have never had to reconfigure the devices in 2 years), than look for that goddamn remote between couch cushions, press the power button and possibly…
> I would hate to make that trip downstairs, annoyed and grumpy. My grandma always said "What you don't have in your head you must have in your legs". My calculation is simple: Where do I expect to waste more time in my life? Periodically configuring/updating smart home devices, getting to the bottom of issues if something doesn't work as expected, or once in a while walk the stairs an extra time because I left the T…
Only people who don't use smart home devices think the experience is even remotely like this. Worse case scenario for any smart home device malfunction is flipping a switch on and off. You're just imagining problems that don't exist.
Has anyone tried Home Assistant to get around things like this? Or are you locked in proprietary technology anyways?
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I halfway agree with your comment. I think smart home technology is still in the realm of tinkerers right now, and investing in an ecosystem requires a lot of forethought. I replaced all of my dumb light switches with zwave light switches, but the nice thing is that they still act as light switches. I bought dumb IP cameras that can stream RTSP instead of going to someone's "cloud". I feed all of this into a homeassi…
> there's something magical about walking into the living room and saying "Hey Siri, good morning" and having your TV kick on, automatically start streaming the morning news Magical in the sense that hell is magical?
In the dead of winter, it's still pitch black out when I take my dogs out first thing in the AM. The temperature can fluctuate quite a lot where I live, so I usually have two different winter coats. My winter "good morning" routine turns on my main floor lights and announces the outside temperature so I know whether or not to wear my heaviest coat.
While it sounds like a small benefit, I find it very useful considering how groggy I am at that time.
I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems. I'm trying to understand what other people see in it. I have to wonder if it's driven by the amount of interest a person has in "tinkering" with technology.
My system is 100% local, I use zwave, zigbee, and Home assistant. If the internet goes down nothing changes. If the Pi dies, the light switches work like one would always expect. My favorite use case is simple, I walk into a room the lights turn on, I leave the lights turn off. I open the pantry door, light on, close it light off. I also enjoy getting in bed and the house shutting down, lights, security, temperature…
Maybe we're using different terminology, but what do you use in lieu of light bulbs? (I call any of those tubular things, e.g. fluorescent lighting, light bulbs.)
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> I would hate to make that trip downstairs, annoyed and grumpy. My grandma always said "What you don't have in your head you must have in your legs". My calculation is simple: Where do I expect to waste more time in my life? Periodically configuring/updating smart home devices, getting to the bottom of issues if something doesn't work as expected, or once in a while walk the stairs an extra time because I left the T…
I was pretty skeptical before trying it. I found that you don't spend much time configuring things and it's actually quite nice to just go to bed saying "Alexa, turn off living room". Not life changing, but definitely worth the investment. If something fails, you're no worse off than you were before. Also, smart sockets and switches are great items for a Christmas/birthday/wedding/etc registry/gift-list.
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…
It's sad because the concept of IoT in the home has such great potential, but the execution so far has just been atrocious. https://twitter.com/internetofshit
I spent a bunch of money replacing every light bulb in my house with an LED so that I'd never have to deal with burnt-out light bulbs again. That was a use of improved technology that simplified my life.
If you hook your household devices up to the internet and make them dependent on external services they will always be prone to breaking. If I get some fancy internet-connected light bulb and have to spend even so much as ten minutes, ever, in its lifetime, figuring out why it stopped working, then it has already become a worse value proposition than the passive, non-internet thing it hoped to replace.
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In office buildings, devices already talk to each other using a network, so you don't have miles of cables from each switch to light or window-blind. In cars too, with CAN Bus. Apple sells Apple Home Hub, I wonder if that's their "central control system" so that the Apple Home devices can be a bit dumber, but also it means there's a central firewall and system that can look for updates. Also if you can install the "c…
> Apple sells Apple Home Hub Apple doesn't sell a "home hub" product. But their smart speaker (HomePod), TV set top box (Apple TV) and tablets (iPad) can all function as a gateway for HomeKit devices to be securely controlled from outside the LAN without the devices themselves having to be very smart or secure.
Totally feasible to make a killer wireless AP that's Apple branded and connects better to the ecosystem, but that doesn't seem to be the direction Apple is going.
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This is the exact kind of comment that would make it to the top because it just empowered everyone that DOESN'T have one such system. It's filled with finger pointing. Most of the replies basically point out yeah, I hate IoT lights, but this use case is good... It's not genuine to dismiss the entire enchilada because YOU don't have it. In 5 years when all the crap is worked out and you eventually buy a system with ex…
I don't have a smart home device and I won't buy it in a few years. And the simple reason is that there is no regulation for bad behavior. These companies keep getting away with massive privacy violations. We can dig into the big companies but at this time, that point has been beaten to death. When there is better regulation and the software engineers are being jailed for violations of privacy, I will trust the syste…