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An iroh powered smart fan

iroh.computer

21–30 of 58 posts

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#21
iroh is very interesting and in many way it could get traction for IoT.

Now I am not sure it is feasible but it would be interesting to have it available in esphome. I feel this is really where real adoption happens.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#22
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty relevant because I've never seen the reason for "smart" gadgets at all. Physical switches are simply better.

> Physical switches are simply better Pff, assuming that everyone have arms and hands much? Also I don't see the point of a fan, I live right next to the ocean, if you want moving air, why don't you just open a window?! Talk about useless invention

I do have working arms and hands, so for the lights and fans in my house I don't need to assume otherwise.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#23
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very much not a smart fan. Not really relevant.

Pretty relevant because I've never seen the reason for "smart" gadgets at all. Physical switches are simply better.

I have lots of smart gadgets that also have physical switches. It's convenient to be able to control them in more than one way, from more than one location.

Anyway, why are you commenting here if you're not into this sort of thing? Feels like you're just trying to stir up an argument.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#24
post #9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iroh is a peer to peer networking technology so the project example of controlling a fan isn't so much about the fan but rather that it's controllable from anywhere through an esp32 microcontroller that can maintain a resilient connection endpoint even through power cycles and so on. I think iroh was posted about on HN a few weeks ago and I had a similar reaction of like...what in the world is this blog post even say…

I use a fan with an on/off button.

Can't help but read this in the voice of Homer Simpson.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#25
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty relevant because I've never seen the reason for "smart" gadgets at all. Physical switches are simply better.

90% of smart devices are for novelty, or for you to spend more time setting up and maintaining their automations than they save you in being automated. But that 10% is magic. A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room, but in a workshop setting - especially a shared workshop setting? Awesome. Just awesome. A well defined use case, in the right setting, and smart…

> A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room,

Why wouldn't that be useful? People be surprised how poor their air quality generally are inside, unless they already measure it, making it better sounds useful in oh so many ways.

> i know, because of the 15-20 smart things i have only one or two are genuinely useful.

What are those things? I have about 70-80 "smart things" by now, but every single one is genuinely useful, otherwise I wouldn't install them in the first place. Lots of open/closed sensors, soil moisture, temperature+pm2.5 sensors, water taps and so on.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that logic, C is nothing without assembly.

Does C also have a compiler that turns C code into assembly before the real runtime does its work? Never done much C development in the past, didn't get the impression it worked like that.

You can output assembly with any toolchain, yes. But there's no runtime, at least if you mean in the sense that the code is executed by a runtime.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that logic, C is nothing without assembly.

Does C also have a compiler that turns C code into assembly before the real runtime does its work? Never done much C development in the past, didn't get the impression it worked like that.

> Does C also have a compiler that turns C code into assembly before the real runtime does its work?

What do you think ahead of time compilation is?

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#28
post #9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iroh is a peer to peer networking technology so the project example of controlling a fan isn't so much about the fan but rather that it's controllable from anywhere through an esp32 microcontroller that can maintain a resilient connection endpoint even through power cycles and so on. I think iroh was posted about on HN a few weeks ago and I had a similar reaction of like...what in the world is this blog post even say…

I use a fan with an on/off button.

I think it's great someone is working on a fun little project such as a smart fan but let's not kid ourselves, it's not supposed to be practical! I don't think anyone would claim that.

It's a demo of how easy it is to make even an ESP32 device available globally with iroh.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that logic, C is nothing without assembly.

Does C also have a compiler that turns C code into assembly before the real runtime does its work? Never done much C development in the past, didn't get the impression it worked like that.

> Does C also have a compiler that turns C code into assembly

Yes, that's 'a C compiler', like gcc.

> before the real runtime does its work

Sort of, the program is 'the runtime', but this is backwards, languages that have 'a runtime' get the name from it running at runtime to compile/interpret source or byte code. In C what runs at runtime is just your program, whatever you compiled. (Maybe it's an interpreter though!)

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#30
post #5

This is interesting as an example of just how complicated and elaborate a toolchain you can use to build something dead simple. There’s a lot that comes for free by adding all these libraries and crates and steps. But from what I can tell it comes down to: let _ = if fan_on { fan.set_high() } else { fan.set_low() };

iroh is a peer to peer networking technology so the project example of controlling a fan isn't so much about the fan but rather that it's controllable from anywhere through an esp32 microcontroller that can maintain a resilient connection endpoint even through power cycles and so on. I think iroh was posted about on HN a few weeks ago and I had a similar reaction of like...what in the world is this blog post even say…

Works on Android too when developing Dart applications and making use of flutter_rust_bridge though it's a bit of an involved setup to be honest.

I really hope more people will play around with iroh and build stuff especially because in the last year some things have been renamed in the API to be more clear and other stuff has been simplified e.g. see this blog post https://www.iroh.computer/blog/iroh-0-94-0-the-endpoint-take...

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