Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HomeKit

developer.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 146 posts

Re: HomeKit

#61

Post by nmrm »

Already__Taken wrote: post #58
wwweston wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a very myopic view. Technology needs to advance in all fronts Citation, please. Or at least a clarification of what you mean by "advance." If you like, here's an example from writer Wendell Berry: "To make myself as plain as I can, I should give my standards for technological innovation in my own work. They are as follows: 1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. 2. It should be at least…

I can shorten that list; 1. I don't care for change, everything is terrible as long as I can pick at least one problem. 3 and 9 clearly contradict! This is garbage.

3 and 9 do not contradict, they just aren't universally consistent.

Something that achieves 3 without sacrificing 9 is probably better (or at least more likely to be adopted) than something that achieves 3 but sacrifices 9.

Re: HomeKit

#62

Post by klinquist »

michaelvanham wrote: post #52
JackWebbHeller wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Z-Wave the same thing as a Zigbee mesh network? I know that's what Philips Hue uses.

zwave and zigbee are similar but competing standards. the devices are not interchangeable but some home automation controllers support both. more info: http://m.electronicdesign.com/communications/what-s-differen...

Yep. SmartThings supports both and has an open API.

Re: HomeKit

#63

Post by Anderkent »

nmrm wrote: post #61
Already__Taken wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can shorten that list; 1. I don't care for change, everything is terrible as long as I can pick at least one problem. 3 and 9 clearly contradict! This is garbage.

3 and 9 do not contradict, they just aren't universally consistent. Something that achieves 3 without sacrificing 9 is probably better (or at least more likely to be adopted) than something that achieves 3 but sacrifices 9.

No, 3 and 9 together mean you cannot ever replace something good with something better.

Re: HomeKit

#64

Post by smackfu »

untog wrote: post #25

Shrug. Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but am I the only one not really excited for this kind of thing? Turning lights, air conditioning on and off isn't exactly a huge problem in my life.

It's cool if you actually replace the switches. If you don't, now you have two switches for one control, and they don't know about each other. If you do something crazy like switch off the wall switch, your fancy home automation is dead.

Re: HomeKit

#66

Post by smackfu »

logn wrote: post #53
tmuir wrote: post #27

Does anyone have any shred of information about this at all? Since when do placeholder pages completely devoid of any details whatsoever make it to the top of HN?

On that page, there are links to both the API reference and a beta SDK.

Unfortunately the software API isn't very informative. As you'd expect, it's a pretty high level model, with a home object, that contains rooms, that contain "accessories", that have actions. So it's sufficient to write a home control app, but gives no info on how iOS interfaces with the devices themselves.

Re: HomeKit

#67

Post by mturmon »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #37
untog wrote: post #25

Shrug. Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but am I the only one not really excited for this kind of thing? Turning lights, air conditioning on and off isn't exactly a huge problem in my life.

May I counterpoint? I live in a 1200 sq foot condo, 1 floor, with limited natural light. Automated lighting activation via Bluetooth LE (Tasker on my Android phone) is very handy when I come home late at night, because walking through ~15 feet in the dark to a light switch isn't fun (yes, first world problem). More importantly, my Nest thermostat. Am I lazy for changing the house temp from my bed? Most definitely. Bu…

Or "I'm going to bed early, turn off all the lights". Or, "I'm having a party outdoors, turn on all the exterior lights." Or, "I'm done listening to music, turn off the audio." There are lots of use cases.

But, all of this nifty tech does rely on tapping in to home infrastructure (switches and devices that understand the protocol), so it's a long haul.

These devices are wired in and have 50-year design lives. The life of these protocols seems to be significantly less than 50 years, which is a pretty big mismatch.

Yes, I'm still sore about the ~10 useless X-10 switches I put in in the 2000s. ;-)

Re: HomeKit

#68

Post by avar »

zmmmmm wrote: post #34

Dear Apple, please for the love of god and the good of everyone, get together with Google and iron out a common protocol for this stuff. Don't make this one of your competitive technologies designed to fragment the world into Apple and not-Apple. Home automation is just dying to take off and there's a pile of gold for everyone if you just show a tiny bit of cooperation to get it started ... And you can all still sue…

Just like mp3 players and touchscreen smartphones never took off due to Apple maintaining a walled garden around the iPod and the iPhone?

If they come up with a compelling product there will be competitors and standardization.

Re: HomeKit

#69

Post by ghaff »

mturmon wrote: post #67
toomuchtodo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I counterpoint? I live in a 1200 sq foot condo, 1 floor, with limited natural light. Automated lighting activation via Bluetooth LE (Tasker on my Android phone) is very handy when I come home late at night, because walking through ~15 feet in the dark to a light switch isn't fun (yes, first world problem). More importantly, my Nest thermostat. Am I lazy for changing the house temp from my bed? Most definitely. Bu…

Or "I'm going to bed early, turn off all the lights". Or, "I'm having a party outdoors, turn on all the exterior lights." Or, "I'm done listening to music, turn off the audio." There are lots of use cases. But, all of this nifty tech does rely on tapping in to home infrastructure (switches and devices that understand the protocol), so it's a long haul. These devices are wired in and have 50-year design lives. The lif…

I still have a bit of wireless X10 I use for a couple of rooms that never got totally rewired :-)

But you're absolutely right. It's hard to sell incrementally useful capability when it requires spending a fair bit of time and money to upgrade components that are doing a decent job today and probably will for years to come.

Case in point. Would I buy a Nest if I needed a thermostat today? Probably. Will I buy one to replace a perfectly good programmable thermostat that's already installed and working? Probably not.

Re: HomeKit

#70

Post by bergie »

smackfu wrote: post #64
untog wrote: post #25

Shrug. Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but am I the only one not really excited for this kind of thing? Turning lights, air conditioning on and off isn't exactly a huge problem in my life.

It's cool if you actually replace the switches. If you don't, now you have two switches for one control, and they don't know about each other. If you do something crazy like switch off the wall switch, your fancy home automation is dead.

...and only cool as long as everybody in your household has an iOS device
Post reply on HN