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

Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 154 posts

Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?

#11

Post by viccuad »

Shivetya wrote: post #4

Having each light bulb intelligent seems like overkill, I can see a per circuit setup where you replace the light switch. First off its not going to go bad like a bulb which will be replaced eventually; even LEDs which still die too soon. Really, who came up with this light bulb idea...its just daft. Security motion detectors can be used to double effect here as well, you would naturally have them facing doors so the…

that being said, the intelligent light bulb approach has its advantages:

I can take a handful of lightbulbs with me to other room/apartment in a heartbeat. And the problem of getting dimmable LEDs out of an AC source is not easy, you are going to end with electronics in each led bulb anyways.

Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?

#12

Post by viccuad »

I really don't grok why I should want to use my smartphone to move up and down my wifi connected blinders. Yet that's all I see when all of this is pictured: gimmicks.

I want to see a demo of a room alarm clock: with rising light (in brightness and temperature), birds chirping, room getting warmer, music/radio a while later.. and the same for going to bed.

Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?

#13

Post by joosters »

Shivetya wrote: post #4

Having each light bulb intelligent seems like overkill, I can see a per circuit setup where you replace the light switch. First off its not going to go bad like a bulb which will be replaced eventually; even LEDs which still die too soon. Really, who came up with this light bulb idea...its just daft. Security motion detectors can be used to double effect here as well, you would naturally have them facing doors so the…

Well it's all definitely overkill. But on the plus side, you can sell these bulbs to people who can plug them in without needing to re-wire their house.

Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?

#15

Post by maxerickson »

tormeh wrote: post #9

There are house-integrated things that are cool, but they rarely require integration. CO2 and humidity-controlled ventilation is really nice, as is whole-house sound systems. But why should they be connected to each other? Maybe if you used some machine learning algorithms and made the house actually intelligent, so it could anticipate what you wanted. Other than that I don't really see the use.

A possible application would be to have different temperature regulation for occupied rooms (With some smart scheduling that anticipates occupancy).

So there's a reason to integrate the HVAC system with awareness sensors (which will probably be integrated with the sound system).

Not an interesting feature for an apartment or smaller house, but it's a reason to try to build the systems so that they can talk to each other.

Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?

#17

Post by davidbanham »

viccuad wrote: post #12

I really don't grok why I should want to use my smartphone to move up and down my wifi connected blinders. Yet that's all I see when all of this is pictured: gimmicks. I want to see a demo of a room alarm clock: with rising light (in brightness and temperature), birds chirping, room getting warmer, music/radio a while later.. and the same for going to bed.

Well yeah, but we can't do any of that stuff until we've figured out how to make the lights turn on and off reliably.

Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?

#18

Post by amirmc »

I feel like there's some kind of rush to become the box/service that runs your smart home. None of these vertically integrated solutions is going to cover all of the use-cases or user desires, yet it seems that everyone want to be the one that sells you their proprietary (and bug-ridden) box.

It would be much easier if most of this stuff could be shipped as software that you can install (somehow) into a box of your choosing and pull together components for your home as you see fit. This field isn't ready for consumers per se but those with a more hacky mindset would probably uncover the useful bits, which could later be picked up as integrated solutions. The only thing I've come across that's like this is openHAB (http://www.openhab.org)

Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?

#19

Post by nodata »

amirmc wrote: post #18

I feel like there's some kind of rush to become the box/service that runs your smart home. None of these vertically integrated solutions is going to cover all of the use-cases or user desires, yet it seems that everyone want to be the one that sells you their proprietary (and bug-ridden) box. It would be much easier if most of this stuff could be shipped as software that you can install (somehow) into a box of your c…

Is openHAB still WebKit only?

Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?

#20

Post by unwind »

lylebarrere wrote: post #14

What is the power limit of POE? I don't see a reason to try to dim LEDs on AC or a reason to keep converting DC/AC/DC/AC so often. Wouldn't POE or a similar standard be better?

PoE (that's Power over Ethernet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet) maxes out at 25.5 W at the powered device.

Not a lot general purpose domestic electricity, although of course lighting is being pushed down towards lower power these days.

Post reply on HN