31–40 of 154 posts
This is the sort of thing you build, rather than buy, since it will only ever fit the person who designed it.
I have yet to see an intelligent house feature I would like. I understand that some want a better climate control interface, like the Nest. But I have yet to see a house that have central climate/heating control, and I don't miss it in my own home.
Is it really such an inconvenience to get up to turn on the light or turn the blinders?
Sounds like my experience with Nest last summer. Got the thermostat, can't get it connected to my wireless. Support basically tells me to get bent until I go into full IT guy mode and prove its an issue with the unit. Replacement unit comes, doesn't work at all (first one was at least a nice looking thermostat with no connected features). Third unit comes and it's been fine ever since. For some reason I thought it wo…
That smoke detector story makes me think it could even be dangerous, no?. Could opposite happen and the device fail to detect smoke?
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…
Current circuit layouts are wasteful, you have to run enormous amounts of wire between the outlets and the switches, just to be able to control the lights. Much better to just run power directly to the outlets. The control logic should ideally go into the socket, but with 50k hour lifetimes of LED bulbs, the lost efficiently of putting it in one over the other place is trivial. Also remember that putting the controls…
As for the needing an electrician part: remote socket receivers are a well proven, cheap and safe technology requiring no electrician to install it. IMO, the Telldus offerings are the best solution for wireless/smart light controls.
Maybe I'm just not getting it, but why would I want a "Smart Home"? It seems to be a little like a Smart TV, everyone wants more features, but really they're newer going to use the built in voice control or install any apps. We need a few basic feature and the rest just sits their, unused, contributing to the complexity of the device. I have yet to see an intelligent house feature I would like. I understand that some…
It can be; if you're incapacitated, for example. But automated lights and blinders also offer other possibilities besides remote interfaces, like waking you up with sunlight instead of an alarm clock.
In any case, I agree with you, for now; I do want a smart home, but the current implementations provide very little utility for me. I want a smart home if it can do actual work, like cleaning itself.
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…
Even then it all depends on dedicated circuitry: webs of low voltage wires for power and signaling snaking from control panels in closets. Sure Wifi is capturing some corner cases, but NFPA isn't going to allow its use for fire alarms any time soon. Those systems need to be reliable. Or people die.
The smart home won't be based on a wireless bus. Wall warts show that we're already at the point where a standard low voltage power bus makes sense. More wires and a case for surface mounting is the way electrification goes historically.
The current approach to smart homes is equivalent to configuring a new network, hooking up a dozen different 80's dot matrix printers, and then writing drivers for them...using a smartphone touchscreen keyboard. Except instead of technical support you get consumer services.
Adding a touch screen and 802.11 doesn't make getting a system working or geewhiz configured easier than X10. It just makes it look simpler and cleaner and more likely that the end user will blame themselves for not being able to use a smartphone.
For example, I've got this light control system installed in my home:
Wireless, battery-free buttons that you can put anywhere you like. I keep one of them on my night stand. Rest of the switches look and work just like regular light switches.
Except the switches are connected to the system, so I can activate pre-defined scenes with one click of a button. No need to use a smartphone. The scenes are configured through a multi-platform web client.
The client, by the way, uses a regular REST API so I can control my lights with cURL too. Over the internet :)
It's more expensive, but it just works.
Sounds like my experience with Nest last summer. Got the thermostat, can't get it connected to my wireless. Support basically tells me to get bent until I go into full IT guy mode and prove its an issue with the unit. Replacement unit comes, doesn't work at all (first one was at least a nice looking thermostat with no connected features). Third unit comes and it's been fine ever since. For some reason I thought it wo…
In the northeast US this weekend we will be having a high temperature of zero degrees Fahrenheit in some areas. I don't want to rely on a flaky device determining if the heat should be on. What happens if the temp drops really low, like with a power failure? Did they test that?
Same can be said for smoke detectors. A lot of new construction houses have all the smoke detectors wired by electricity with 9v battery backup. One goes off, they all go off. Sure there can be device failures, but you're talking about something that has been around for a long time with a proven track record.
If anything, maybe keep the old tech devices running and use the new tech along side it to see how it works.