In case no one noticed : https://xkcd.com/927/
Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
181–190 of 364 posts
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're probably right. It's been a while since I had the misfortune of working with BT.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19958300
For anyone not following the the link, cptskippy has given a user perspective that summarises things nicely in my view:
“It's easier to tell when you're not using BLE. :) The Tesla Model 3 uses traditional Bluetooth for phone calls and streaming but the Phone as a Key functionality is BLE. When you walk up to the car and try to open it and the car says FU then BLE isn't working. When your Xiaomi Mi Band smartwatch hasn't buzzed all day but you pull your smartphone out of your pocket and have 8 missed calls, 100 messages, and 500 emails then BLE isn't working. When you're at a Tech Conference and the Conference App uses BLE Beacons to help navigate you indoors and it can't determine your location then BLE isn't working.”
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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. Wait, what? Please explain more. It feels like you're saying Alexa heard you being ... passionate, and got concerned. But my understanding was that Alexa listens only after the trigger word. I'm really confused by what you've said and wish to know more context.
If you've ever owned a device like Alexa or Google Home what he said isn't confusing at all. They trigger accidentally all the time. His Alexa simply triggered when it wasn't supposed to and then reacted to what he was saying. Given he was gaming it was likely something about killing himself or someone else.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#184It 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] controlle…
I expect that MQTT is that standard. ( http://mqtt.org/ ) I have just been playing around with IoT devices and was just trying to set it up.
MQTT is a nice transport layer, but to be really useful this needs standard message templates and topics.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I am surprised this is how we have ended up. We have already had a pretty good looking model for this sort of voice activated computer interaction thanks to Star Trek: TNG.
It would be far more palatable for the devices to wait for a command cue ("Computer--") to respond with an activation bleep. After the bleep, the commands begin to be interpereted.
Instead we have a listener always awaiting commands. What could be a helpful and invisible servant is instead some kind of jerk who interjects with the most literal interpretations of normal conversations.
If I wake up in the morning feeling grumpy (every day) and say some crazy crap (totally possible) on my way to the can, will an apple contractor employee be able to figure out what the hell I really wanted by reviewing the seconds of audio?
I have made death threats to wall hanging photographs in those 30 minutes before my medication kicks in. There is no checkbox for this in the privacy settings. I know with some of these smart things you can change the prompt, but this feels like not the best we can come up with.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#186What we really need is a legislation for those devices, that force all manufacturer to: - have a hardware switch for everything - have 2 microphones. One is always on, and only listens to the keyword, and is not linked to the rest of the device. If it detects the keyword, it triggers a hardware switch that activate the second microphone. - text recognition is done from a local unit, not a remote server. This local un…
We don’t need that. You’re right that technology isn’t going to save us though. You can just, you know, not use Alexa. Normal light switches continue to work. Windows still exist for checking the local weather and are probably more reliable than Alexa is.
I don't have any kind of smart speakers or camera at home.
The problem is that many other people I visit do.
It's the same issue with Google products in general: I don't have a gmail address. My phone don't even have an email tied to it and I don't use the official store. But because my contacts mostly do those things, google still has a log of all my conversations, my face in pictures, my positions, etc.
But even then it's not just about me: people take bad decisions all the time, companies as well. We don't let people own a radioactive materials, we have laws for that. We don't allow companies to sell radioactive materials to the public, we have laws for that.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#187> 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.
[deleted]
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#188LOL ... there has been a standard for years for smart home devices, it is called KNX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNX_(standard)) ... what is wrong with KNX? Hundreds of companies already support it, so why not join them instead of re-inventing the wheel?
I think I know what im talking about, because my (smart) home automation is based on KNX, I use Alexa voice commands or a KNX app on my mobile devices to controll all my KNX compatible devices, a server gets the commands and allows me to control the lights (on/off/dimming), to inquire an set the temperature in each room, to control the inner blinds as well as the outer shutters (open/close), to get data of water consumption, electricity consumption from many devices like the cooking plate, the owen, the lights, the AC, ... to get values from my weather station like wind speed, wind direction, sun intensity and much more ... I also have fire detection sensors, movement sensors, air pollution and water leak sensors which can trigger alarms... I can inquire on my phone if I forgot to turn off the owen in the kitchen, if the main door is being or has been left opened. Through Alexa I have also connected my Roomba as well as my TV and all the media devices connected to it (using the Logitech Harmony hub) but those two things are not KNX, everything else is.
Being able to control all this through Alexa is super fun. When I go to bed I just need say "Alexa good night" and Alexa tells my KNX shutters to move down to 100%, all my lights in any room to 0%. When I leave the house I say "Alexa, good bye" and Alexa checks if my appliences are turned off, turns the lights off and lowers the heating in all the rooms a bit. Also as im super lazy, if I finish cooking and throw myself on the couch but forgot to turn of the kitchen lights I just need to say "Alexa turn of the kitchen lights and turn on netflix".
What is also nice is that I can program (control and combine) everything myself. I currently use NodeRed (https://nodered.org/). So I can program routines, like "if the time is > this and the front door gets opened send me an email or SMS", if the wind speed is above a certain threshold open the shutters to avoid damage, ...
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#189We are building a new house right now. All subcontractors know the rules - no "smart" devices or "wifi enabled" appliances or mechanicals. All lightswitches are plain-old hi-voltage only switches. Thermostats are dumb, unprogrammable, with no memory or scheduling or timing. The locks on the doors use physical keys. The smartest thing we have are the sonos speakers and we pug those in with ethernet. Everyone will be p…
> Everyone will be pleasantly surprised when they interact with our house.
...you're aware that the vast majority of homes are not 'smart homes' already?
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#190HomeKit must really be struggling for Apple to publicly join this consortium. I don’t say this just as a snarky dig at Apple’s preference for walled gardens, but because this announcement more or less Osbornes all the HomeKit devices in the market right now.
Despite its walled-garden nature, I’m sad to see HomeKit go. It was the only home automation standard I’d trust in my home, though hopefully Apple’s participation in this new initiative means it will share HomeKit’s emphasis on security, cloud independence, and privacy.