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The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

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Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#351

Post by prepend »

gambiting wrote: post #49
prepend wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the voice control is very convenient. Pulling out an app is not. For example, when I come downstairs and say “computer lights on” it’s easier than flipping two switches and turning on two lamps.

So as an example - I don't have any voice control in my house, would hate to have it, but then all my lightbulbs are app controlled - just means I don't have to do the usual "tour around the house" in the evening switching every single light off, I get in bed, then on my phone click one button and everything switches off. It's very convenient.

Yea, that’s convenient too. Having the lights controllable is the prerequisite. Your preference for tapping an app vs mine for using my voice are both possible.

Both android and iPhone have voice control so if you have a smart phone you have capability for voice control, you just don’t use it.

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#352

Post by jjkaczor »

fishtoaster wrote: post #275
gangstead wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Lutron my first two years after getting my EE. I wasn't on the wireless products but we did do crazy amounts of fussing over fall back behaviors and corner cases. We very much developed the software with the attitude of hardware: we knew what we shipped had to work for years and field updates were unacceptable. I've been gone from Coopersburg for 15 years but I still practice the engineering culture I lea…

Oh hey, Lutron! I interviewed there coming out of college, some 10 years ago. I think I drove down from Rochester, iirc. Of all the places I interviewed at the time, it's one of the only ones where I remember a specific interviewing session because it was somewhat unique: The interview sat across from me and role-played a customer calling to complain about a vague issue happening in their home. I then had to roleplay…

Back-in-the-day (2006-era), that was how Microsoft would interview people for their Premier Field Engineer (PFE) role within the Support division. For customers where telephone/remote support couldn't resolve the issue, PFE's would be sent on-site to troubleshoot. (As well as do advisory and training engagements).

Also - typically, no matter where the potential job would be physically located, there would be at least one interview where you had to get on a plane and travel to complete - it weeded-out anyone who wasn't willing to actually travel for a role that required 70%+ time on-the-road.

If you accepted the position, there was a multi-week bootcamp - that would also include a week of paired shadowing telephone support calls.

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#353

Post by andrewaylett »

yholio wrote: post #23

I think any software engineer with some industry experience will absolutely NOT install a device in his home that receives automatic updates over the internet and is critical for performing some task or using some basic functionality of the house; especially one that has a well known, highly stable and ergonomic traditional mode of interaction - controlling the lights and water, opening the windows and shades etc. We…

I'm a software engineer, 17 years of experience. If it talks IP, it had better receive updates over the Internet automatically.

If the Internet connection dies, or the network goes down, the house (largely) reverts to dumb mode and we're no worse off than if we'd not installed any of the smarts. The Hue switches will still control their respective lights as long as there's power to the hub, and the Honeywell controller similarly only requires power for its smarts.

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#354

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ethbr0 wrote: post #116
londons_explore wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats needed is a much stronger guarantee. For example, "If this device ever , even once, shows an error message or misbehaves, then we'll give you a full refund, plus $100". If there was some logo and brand associated with that guarantee, consumers would prefer it, just like today some only buy organic or freetrade. Then manufacturers would want the extra sales generated by that logo/brand, and have a massive financ…

> "If this device ever, even once, shows an error message or misbehaves, then we'll give you a full refund, plus $100". Apple solved this by just never showing error messa...Your computer was restarted because of a problem.

If you’re referring to the quoted message specifically, that’s not really fair. It’s a kernel panic, you can’t do much except reboot.

Once the Mac has finished starting up again, the backtrace is easily accessible for those who want it. And if you really want to always see console output, you can turn on verbose boot permanently.

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#355

Post by roeles »

After a recent thread here on HN, I read the book "Calm Technology" by Amber Case. For those designing their own home automation systems, it provides nice guidelines on how to design technology that resides in the background and doesn't demand too much attention (in notifications and maintainance).

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#357

Post by nelgaard »

krastanov wrote: post #306
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My initial reaction to your first paragraph is "Preparation for your own death". And I don't know where on the scale from "old man shouts at cloud" to "living consciously and connected to, and aware of, the world around you" this reaction sits. Even whether that scale has both end points being co-existent. I find that pursuits intended to give myself more time for the things I enjoy eats into the time otherwise spent…

Feels like you can make the same argument about the washing machine, vacuum cleaner, and other housekeeping tools that made life easier a hundred years ago. Doing chores is not "living" and automating chores leaves more time for the wondrous and unique.

Doing laundry, dishes etc involves real work and takes time.

Getting up from my chair and pressing a switch when I feel it is getting too dark is not really a chore. And it is probably good for my back.

I do have a couple of X10 switches but I mostly use them where I once was too cheap to put an extra cable. One died this year after only 20 years of service. Luckily I had a spare.

I also have a couple of electronic thermostats. I really hate having to replace batteries every few years. Now I set the day and night temperatures to a about the same. But I like that if I feel cold, I can manually turn up the heat and not having to remember to turn it back down. This should also be possible to implement mechanically.

I also have a drawer with some Zigbee smart home stuff and a CC2540 debugger to program a USB dongle to allow me turn off all the lamps in my living room. Which I will do whenever I feel like it. Because I have 5 lamps and if I turn them off 3 times a week for 20 years and I save 3 seconds per lamp minus 3 seconds to use some Zigbee switch, I will save 10 hours in total. If I have to find a phone or remote first, it will be a lot less. And I will probably spend a lot more than 10 hours before it all works. And I am not sure that it will work for 20 years, or that I can easily replace broken devices in 20 years.

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#358

Post by glonq »

Sad but true.

My Skybell decided to forget that it belongs to my house this week. It does that a couple times per year; IDK why.

And my GE Z-Wave light switch failed after two years. It doesn't work via Z-wave, but also doesn't work as a mechanical switch either. Online, people say that the failure rate for these is really high after a couple years. So I replaced it with a dumb switch.

And for some reason SmartThings is a hell of a lot less good than it was a couple years ago.

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#359

Post by belval »

I know this is not for everyone but I have been loving Home-Assistant. It requires a local server and the initial setup requires some docker knowledge (unless you go the RasPi route), but after that I am impressed by how much of it "just works". I ordered a bunch of TP-Link smart switches, installed the Kasa add-on (in the Home Assistant interface, no terminal there) and it basically just works!

I think like every tech that is emerging the first few iterations are rough around the edges, but in my experience once it actually works, it is surprisingly useful. My lights are turned off automatically, my air cleaner starts when the PM10 particules are above a specific threshold, I get a notification when the CO2 level is too high in my home office, the growth light for my hydroponic garden are automated and the coffee machine turns itself on in the morning!

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#360

Post by hakfoo »

I almost feel like there's two generations of smart-home concept at play.

One of them is basically a modern reinvention of X-10. Automation is the selling point-- turn on a outdoor security light at 18:00 and off at 06:00, switch on a water pump when a moisture sensor fires, maybe turn on the indoor lights when the garage door opener starts lifting the door. This feels like a much more solvable problem. It really requires very little "smarts". We could do those things in the 80s with low-voltage signals over CAT3 wires, a bag of 74xx logic gates and jumpers, and some relays. Now, we've replaced the cables with short-range wireless protocols, but there's still very little need for a huge complicated software stack or arguably even a CPU to run the show.

The new generation seems to be about voice control and external services. It takes a bazillion times more infrastructure to capture, decode, and relay "Hey, Siri, turn on the security lights" or accept a message from some remote network relay saying you want to turn the stove off from 300km away, than it does to ask a local battery-backed clock module "Is it 18:00 yet?" And, of course, the reliance on external services tingles my spider-sense for "new revenue models" that involve the tail of user-data sales wagging the dog that is "actually making a product that does what people expect it to without surprises."

I don't think marketing does a good job of decoupling the two. I'd be more interested in a home automation platform that focused on the first option-- simple, bulletproof, and impossible to kill off when they decide they no longer want to support it. But I suspect everyone wants to sell the latter, because for some reason, babbling at your appliances is now modern and sexy rather than a sign of oncoming dementia.

I'm sort of salty because I can't find the one automation device I want. The ceiling fan in my room is on a normal switched mains outlet. I'd love to replace that switch with "on/off/on if it's over (temperature selected on knob)" This seems like it should be a $20 part and a "detach two wires and insert in new switch" install job. All I can find are vendor-specific things that aren't likely to work with my random contractor-grade fan, external boxes clearly designed for plug-in, not hard-wired devices, and systems that are clearly intended to run a whole HVAC system (and obviously won't fit tidly in the little blue wall box)

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