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Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

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Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#71
Can anyone recommend a method* without Wifi? Isn't there a method for "smart outlets", main scheduler, etc over electrical lines rather than bluetooth, wifi, etc? Method* == standard, or product line. [yes i used pointer and equality symbols oddly]

Edit: basically looking for a way to avoid more wireless transmitters in the house. Or are all outlets "receive only"?

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#72
It would be nice if such standard supported Publisher-Subscriber style of messaging. For example alarm could subscribe to events from motion sensors and security cams (a camera in addition to providing a stream could push events like motion detection) or heating controller could subscribe to temperature change events. To make security of that realistic this would need some form of ACL, probably centrally[0] controlled.

[0] central as in "home router" not as "somewhere in the cloud"

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#74

I hope security is at the top of their list. I want a super secure hub that everything connects to. The hub is the only thing that speaks to my router. The hub is super secure & doesn't let devices send data back to their manufacturer. If I buy cheap devices off a flea market like Amazon, I want to sleep safe & know that the hub is preventing that device from messing with any other devices or accessing the internet.…

This is how ZigBee and Zwave work. The devices form their own network for inter-device communication (it can be setup so a switch talks directly to a bulb, so even if the network is unreachable it still works) and then you use a hub to orchestrate that and provide functionality such as phone control via an app. That can be something simple like a Philips Hue hub, or something more complex like SmartThings, or you can roll your own using Home Assistant and a dongle.

The problem with these protocols is although they are more or less open, device manufacturers need to pay to be certified.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#75
post #60

> The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers... > The industry working group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol and increase compatibility for consumers. Curious if I as a hobbyist will benefit from this? Or if this will become a: it works perfectly, but only if all your devices connect to ou…

Apple's existing standard (HomeKit) is relatively 'open' - the specification is published, and several open source implementations exist. I've used the Python one to implement automation on the smart-home devices I've built myself. However, you do need to be certified to distribute a product otherwise you get a warning in the app when you add the device. This seems like a fair compromise to me.

Seems fair indeed. I did a quick search and HomeKit seems to work without an internet connection (on lan at least, not remote), what's your experience with that?

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#77
post #68
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess: first of all, "for security reasons" your DIY device will need to be certified, any existing SBCs will need to be replaced/extended to support new type of network and due to bloated protocol specs with a myriad of abstraction levels will render it almost impossible to implement it on your own and the open source library that can do that will implement the standard as specified whereas all proprietary soluti…

Believe me, they will it will never find adoption. How to say, they are free to make whatever standards, but they will not matter much if nobody will use them. Their entire ecosystem together have less devices shipped than even some OEM nonames, not to say of Xiaomi or Huawei or Tuya who tower over them. All kinds of "smart assistants" like Alexa end up in drawers very quickly after initial novelty passes, and it cre…

Can confirm. My alexa went in the drawer after she was offering to call the crisis line for me during a spirited session of gaming.

I genuinely think the Amazon team (at least in that particular regard) want to do some good. But until they can teach their machines how to understand context, I just don't want my unfiltered conversations going around potentially to medical institutions or law enforcement.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#78
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everyone (especially at home) is using only IPv4. IPv6 is always perpetually on the horizon. The better argument would have been that using a /23 or /22 subnet should probably be enough for most home automation setups.

5 years ago your comment was spot on. Now in the us it is common to see dual stack v4 v6 on residential and mobile connections.

Comcast and Verizon will dual stack you, sure. As the largest two ISPs, they're out of addresses. But a lot of other ISPs won't, my ISP doesn't support IPv6 at all.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#79
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope they recognize the need that people want to keep their data on their lan. Actually that would be required by the GDPR if they won't let me sign anything. My derived data is my own people, it does not belong to who ever collects it. I.e. I just want a thermostat the is a big rotating button and speaks mqtt. It does not exist. If you want it to look good you end up with a Nest thermostat. Home Assistant n…

If your device supports opentherm (which is not as open as you might think, btw) you might want to look into OTGW [0]. It probably works with Nest to if the Nest allows to run without internet at all. [0] http://otgw.tclcode.com/

My central heater is a simple on/off model. Nest will work offline with it but afaik you can't write target temperatures to it then.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#80
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's existing standard (HomeKit) is relatively 'open' - the specification is published, and several open source implementations exist. I've used the Python one to implement automation on the smart-home devices I've built myself. However, you do need to be certified to distribute a product otherwise you get a warning in the app when you add the device. This seems like a fair compromise to me.

Seems fair indeed. I did a quick search and HomeKit seems to work without an internet connection (on lan at least, not remote), what's your experience with that?

Yeah, it works completely locally on the lan - there's a MDNS discovery and then pairing process between devices and the phone.

You can access stuff remotely if you have an Apple device which is paired to the homekit stuff and connected to the internet (e.g. an Apple TV, we use an iPad which is always at home).

I've deliberately designed my system to work offline as while our connection's pretty reliable I don't see why I should need an internet connection to turn on a light! :)

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