I think part of the problem is that frequently/mostly, I want a dedicated input device like a switch or a dial, not my iPhone to control stuff like lights.
Nest has an app but primary interaction is with dedicated UI widgets.
Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?
141–150 of 154 posts
Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?
#142I 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.
Problem of that, and that of the author is that you are entering the world of programming. You need to be able to enumerate all the possible scenario in your head in order to make a script that looks intelligent. eg: ok I want the light to start when I'm entering and switch them off when I leave. Well unless there is somebody inside (another sensor), unless I just pick the mail (a timer). How do I communicate my inte…
You make a good point about the logic of such problems, and that certainly is a pain-point of these systems. I agree wholeheartedly.
However, having used Wink devices and being a minor-league programmer, I can tell you that the crux of the author's issue should not be mistaken to be a misunderstanding of how to 'program' actions on the device. The logic is there - it just often simply does not work correctly due to various issues; some obvious, some not.
For instance, geofencing on Wink simply does not work reliably, as mentioned in the article. No matter how you set up your routines, location-based events won't work if the app does not correctly gauge/communicate your location.
Also problematic is that your routines are stored on your phone - not on the Wink Hub (basically a 'dumb' radio) - so if you set a timed event but your phone is off or you have no service, the event does not trigger.
Everything is further complicated by the fact that your commands are not sent from the app to your device - they are sent from your phone to Wink servers, and then to your device. If their servers are down, experiencing latency, or your home connection is fubar, or your cell service is slow, or your DNS won't allow you to tunnel out and back in with your phone on wireless, or packets are dropped somewhere en route - it is simply not going to work.
Finally, there is a ridiculous lack of information in error-handling. Sometimes the hub just does not want to work. With no web-based GUI, inconsistent alert LEDs that simply mean 'something is wrong', and even a reset button that does not actually perform a reset, even the most avid DIY-er is at a loss. Case in point: to truly reset your hub's network settings, Wink recommends that you change your home wifi network's name so that the hub will not be able to reconnect and will eventually reset itself. The inset 'reset' button only power-cycles the device.
With problems like the above, understanding the logic behind your comings and goings is a moot point - you can spend hours working with the thing and, as mentioned by the author, suddenly start to appreciate your light switches.
Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turning off the lights on the other side of the house after you are already in bed is such a nice feature :)
If you're in bed, how do you know those lights are on? Also, why wouldn't you turn the light off as you left the room? Most of these "smart home" devices really do seem like a gimmick at this point. Maybe in the future, they'll be well enough debugged and refined to be useful, but for now, I just don't see a benefit in a normal* home. My dad uses Nests, "smart" locks, and remote cameras alarms (off-season) on his bea…
Some of this becomes painfully apparent after you give these systems a shot, especially inexpensive half-baked solutions like Wink.
However it can be nice to schedule lighting changes (I live in a high-crime area), have your porch light come on when you roll up in the driveway, etc. I find myself primarily using it as a dimmer, but in a rental property being able to install a few $15 25-year LED bulbs and a smartphone app to get some of these features does not feel wholly ridiculous to me.
Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?
#144The best 'consumer facing' demos of these involve the "I'm leaving home" or "I'm coming home" activities. Aggregate functions, think IFTTT.
For much of these devices today, the experience is so fragmented that only a tech savvy customer can figure them out.
Also, yes, it's not helpful when I have to take out my phone, put in the password, open the app, and click 'off' when I could just get up and press the switch much faster.
Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?
#145Home automation is not something you can install yourself, unless you are a full stack programmer, and with full stack I mean also PCB's and micro-controllers.
Surprisingly there's a lot of cheap consumer stuff out there, witch can easily be modified to do what you want. Some of them are "unhackable" though.
The trick is to make everything automated. And use a high level language like JS to make it smart. Yes, I write my home automation in JavaScript :P
Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
LEDs may have 50k hour lifetimes, but that's very far from true of the constant current drivers. I've had several expensive (Phillips/GE) LED bulbs fail after a year of sparse usage. That's more like 1.5k hours. The cheap chinese ones I also tried lasted on average four months (I bought 8 bulbs), all of them blew up electrolytic capacitors on the buckpucks (with release of magic smoke). As for the needing an electric…
50k hours is probably ambitious for some, but not too far off the mark. The Achilles' heel here is the capacitors, they are the weakest link. 10k hours is easy, and they should never fail before that absent some design or manufacturer defect, or atypically high ambient temperatures. >I've had several expensive (Phillips/GE) LED bulbs fail after a year of sparse usage. You have an electrical problem in your home. Perh…
When we moved in two years ago there was an intermittent earth fault, so we had everything checked then. They found the earth fault, it was a loose connector inside a T junction I believe.
I'm more inclined to believe it is caused by the crappy wiring system that is standard in my country, where there is not a neutral lead and a live one, but two live ones with a phase shift.
Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I know, if you're in the stock camera app, you can tap a portion of the screen for the camera to focus on that area. My girlfriend has an Android phone and can do the same.
tap is to autofocus. So if the autofocus is wrong, enjoy your frustration, miss your picture, or enjoy your blurry picture.
Tap and hold in iPhone camera app locks the focus, you can then move the phone to manually focus.
Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
50k hours is probably ambitious for some, but not too far off the mark. The Achilles' heel here is the capacitors, they are the weakest link. 10k hours is easy, and they should never fail before that absent some design or manufacturer defect, or atypically high ambient temperatures. >I've had several expensive (Phillips/GE) LED bulbs fail after a year of sparse usage. You have an electrical problem in your home. Perh…
When we moved in two years ago there was an intermittent earth fault, so we had everything checked then. They found the earth fault, it was a loose connector inside a T junction I believe. I'm more inclined to believe it is caused by the crappy wiring system that is standard in my country, where there is not a neutral lead and a live one, but two live ones with a phase shift.
>When we moved in two years ago there was an intermittent earth fault, so we had everything checked then. They found the earth fault, it was a loose connector inside a T junction I believe.
If there was one, there may be others. I've located several loose junctions in my attic (on my bathroom electric strip heaters). They were easy to spot because of the discolored insulation. At my own home my connection to the electrical grid also had such a fault (a corroded junction on one phase). It was an intermittent but persistent fault and I am surprised that I didn't ruin more electrical stuff before I found it.
>I'm more inclined to believe it is caused by the crappy wiring system that is standard in my country, where there is not a neutral lead and a live one, but two live ones with a phase shift.
Sorry, I shouldn't have assumed you were in North America.
Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?
#149There's a general pattern of trying to dumb things down to a simple, inflexible interface, too often with half-baked "AI" bolted on. Good products still need attentive human supervision.
I installed Insteon motion detectors and webcams after a robbery, but the included software was such undependable and inflexible garbage that I replaced it all with a simple Misterhouse-based Perl script that sends texts via email.
If I see another tech product ad aimed at millenials featuring bright easter colors and indiepop music pitched by Steve Jobs wannabes who are unable to get any angry nerds to make their products actually work, I might snap.
By the way, the other HN article about malfunctioning Nest smoke detectors is a hilarious accompaniment to this. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9048110 )
Re: Why Is My Smart Home So Dumb?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open standards are a real issues in the industry. I find it ridiculous that you often have to pay thousands of dollars for software that simply understands those protocols. Not only that, it requires you to jump through ridiculous hoops to do stuff that you could easily do with a reasonably simple Python script. (Look up Niagara AX as an example.) Another problem is APIs and connectivity. Tuning a light on or off sho…
This is what I do as well. One raspberry pi with all the required connections (Z-Wave USB controller, IR emitter and a wire to my PC) with an extremely simple node application that serves urls like /lights/on, /curtains/open and /computer/power. My phone running Tasker to trigger the various appliances. Add some buttons to the homescreen for direct control over everything. The real added value comes from a trigger fr…
Hah, I ended up with a very similar system: raspberry pi plus a razberry z-wave controller[1], IR receiver and cheap universal remote, and a node app that exposes a simple API as well as a simple UI. stunnel plus port forwarding on my router so I can access it securely from anywhere. Trigger on my phone for geo-fencing to turn off lights when I leave and turn them on when I get home (only if it's dark out). (Cheap PIR sensors are the next project.)
Overall I've found that z-wave is quite reliable. It never loses commands and latency is good enough. The protocol supports just about any kind of device or signaling you might want, in theory, though it can't really do high-bandwidth things. The problem is that devices are relatively expensive (compared to the cost of the components) because the protocol is quasi-proprietary. Zigbee is "open" and extremely flexible, but as a result, zigbee devices from different vendors often can't talk to each other. I'll take the more limited but working thing, thanks.
(The Trigger app's geofencing is pretty unreliable, though. Has anyone found an android app that can reliably do http requests when crossing a geofence?)