My only concern is that this is a lot of hardware / installation to get some of the basic use cases down, which might be intimidating for non-savvy users. Unless they can sell a home-installation service as well...
SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
11–20 of 38 posts
Re: SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
#12How is this much different than Ninja Blocks, which was funded in March (and a few months late on delivering)?
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ninja/ninja-blocks-conne...
Re: SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
#13This is definitely a great idea. My only concern about any products like this, that connect to a centralized location on the Internet, is privacy. There are enough details about me online as it is.
Re: SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
#14Sorry, but I think this is pure fantasy. Of course it is possible, but they won't provide all those things for 100K.
What I mean is: all they show is a smartphone app and a fancy looking device. All the cool things we all dream about will have to be built on top of that. That is exactly the state we already have without that Kickstarter project (could as well go for Arduino or whatever). Yet nobody is building those things. Hence my conclusions that these are just pipe dreams...
Might as well start a Kickstarter for a Teleporter.
Re: SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
#15It's nice to see lots of competition in this area.
Small nitpick – on the main page you probably mean "CO Alarms", not "CO2 Alarms".
Re: SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
#16I started thinking about a similar concept a few months ago. When researching if to connecting various things in your life to some sort of central, network connected, interface already existed, I wasn't entirely surprised to find out there are a few less than inspiring home automation systems developed by garage door opener companies, Time Warner Cable, etc. Their applications are limited and their UI's look pretty terrible.
It would be awesome if this could be pulled off in some manor that either has a ton of applications from the vendor, or has a fairly open architecture that allows other sensors / devices to be applied it. And if it can do all of this while still being simple for non-tech people who may still want some basic functionality, I could some big potential in it.
Re: SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
#17How is this much different than Ninja Blocks, which was funded in March (and a few months late on delivering)? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ninja/ninja-blocks-conne...
Ninjablocks is a cool idea, but in practice not great for home automation, and not great as a user experience for non-hackers.
For one, from what I understand, Ninjablocks connects sensors to your network via ethernet or wifi. In practice, that's a bad way to do home automation. It looks like SmartThings is using a mesh network (Zigbee or Zwave), which is way more scalable and self-extends its range as you add more devices to the mesh. Using Zigbee/Zwave and Bluetooth 4.0 also means sensors can be super low power... just pop a battery in a sensor and stick it somewhere and have it last for years before needing to replace the battery. Ninjablocks can't do that. Devices that connect via ethernet/wifi/usb are a lot more demanding power-wise.
Also, NinjaBlocks is all about having sensors trigger online actions. That's cool, but what if I want it to trigger my door to unlock? They allude to being able to do that in the future, but from what I gather it will on their site you'll have to cobble together a DIY solution yourself.
Re: SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
#18Sorry, but I think this is pure fantasy. Of course it is possible, but they won't provide all those things for 100K. What I mean is: all they show is a smartphone app and a fancy looking device. All the cool things we all dream about will have to be built on top of that. That is exactly the state we already have without that Kickstarter project (could as well go for Arduino or whatever). Yet nobody is building those…
> but they won't provide all those things for 100k
they raised 135k in a day. by the end of the kickstarter they will likely have raised 1-2 million.
i think their plan is to ship with a handful of sensors and apps but have a platform for others to develop and share on easily. seems like a pretty good way to do it if you ask me. the platform will be key though, and i guess we'll find out more about that in the coming months.
Re: SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
#19Sorry, but I think this is pure fantasy. Of course it is possible, but they won't provide all those things for 100K. What I mean is: all they show is a smartphone app and a fancy looking device. All the cool things we all dream about will have to be built on top of that. That is exactly the state we already have without that Kickstarter project (could as well go for Arduino or whatever). Yet nobody is building those…
While you raise a good point about the difficulty of what they are attempting, I think it is worth noting that they might be attempting to get an MVP out there to gauge market viability. If this campaign is successful (which it obviously has been so far) then the team could always raise a little seed money on much better terms compared to what they would get before the campaign.
Re: SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
#20I started thinking about a similar concept a few months ago. When researching if to connecting various things in your life to some sort of central, network connected, interface already existed, I wasn't entirely surprised to find out there are a few less than inspiring home automation systems developed by garage door opener companies, Time Warner Cable, etc. Their applications are limited and their UI's look pretty t…
Same here. Just got a house and I'm looking for a way to automate the whole thing, but there's a pretty shockingly small amount of usable hardware out there for a reasonable price. Here's hoping this platform is everything that hackers like us are looking for in a HA system.