In other news, "Wolves, Lions, Tigers and Leopards develop Open Standard for Sheep Housing."
It is a group incentivized to make sure the sheep are happy, healthy, and within easy reach. ;)
Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
121–130 of 364 posts
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is incorrect. Openthread uses nothing from Zigbee, but does use 802.15.4 radios, the same as Zigbee does.
OK, let me be more specific since that is what I was inferring. Yes the software layer is different.
right, but Zigbee just uses a generic 2.4GHz radio. There is nothing about the radio that "involves Zigbee". Some silicon vendors sell 2.4GHz radios that can run a BLE, Zigbee, or Thread networking stack.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#123Seems like the sorta thing which has tons of buy in from teams that don't matter and the teams that actually need to be using this won't and it'll get abandoned in a few years.
Google (specifically, Nest) and Apple are both looking to displace other solutions in the market.
"Teams that don't matter" today. This market is absolutely rife with opportunity for someone to steal the whole thing with better UX and an interop promise.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can confirm. My alexa went in the drawer after she was offering to call the crisis line for me during a spirited session of gaming. I genuinely think the Amazon team (at least in that particular regard) want to do some good. But until they can teach their machines how to understand context, I just don't want my unfiltered conversations going around potentially to medical institutions or law enforcement.
Has anyone found Alexa way too easy to trigger? As someone who frequently talks about people with a similar name, I'm amazed at how often Alexa chimes in. I think 'OK Google' is at a sweet spot (although my parents for ages were convinced 'hi google' would work if they tried enough :)
Don't have an Alexa so can't comment on how easy it is to trigger, although I don't know any Alexes so it'd unlikely be a problem for me.
What I can say about the google equivelent is that I find saying 'Hey Google' everytime I want it to do something is a bit of a mouthful especially if you want to do several things is shortish succession.
And my other problem is that I apprently say 'OK Cool' too often when I'm on the desk phone at work as my google account is full of recordings of bits of my work phone convo's where I've triggered it unwittingly.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#125I hope security is at the top of their list. I want a super secure hub that everything connects to. The hub is the only thing that speaks to my router. The hub is super secure & doesn't let devices send data back to their manufacturer. If I buy cheap devices off a flea market like Amazon, I want to sleep safe & know that the hub is preventing that device from messing with any other devices or accessing the internet.…
I'll tell you this. You already have a hub, it's called WiFi router. I see zero reasons to rationalise the need to buy yet another white box for the buyer.
Wifi is a poor choice for this because it uses a lot of power. Lots of things that connect to a smart hub are tiny sensors that use expensive batteries.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but I would still want to check that network's clients as well, so I would still want to identify the devices on that network to ensure that only my devices are on it. Either way, it's still an additional step compared to Z-wave. Other than the hub, I don't need to set up an IP network for my Z-wave devices to connect to at all.
I mean, I’m using Z-wave too, but you’re describing the same level of complexity. Either you set up a dedicated WiFi network and check that to see the status of IoT devices, or set up a dedicated Z-wave network and check that for the status of devices.
For a z-wave device to pair to my hub, I need to put the hub itself in pairing mode.
Unlike wifi devices, a zwave device can't just join my hub by knowing an SSID and password.
Yes, I could do something similar with a wifi network and whitelisting mac addresses etc, but that's not nearly as simple as the way z-wave works.
[addendum] When I talk about checking my network, I'm also not talking about status. With wifi, I'm checking to look for unexpected clients. I occasionally have a temporary freakout when I see an unknown device on my wifi that ended up being something that I bought, added and forgot about (like a media player), etc. That's not a concern I ever have with a z-wave network.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#127Just because the 'standard' is open doesn't mean it will be free software. See: HTML5.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#128What we really need is a legislation for those devices, that force all manufacturer to:
- have a hardware switch for everything
- have 2 microphones. One is always on, and only listens to the keyword, and is not linked to the rest of the device. If it detects the keyword, it triggers a hardware switch that activate the second microphone.
- text recognition is done from a local unit, not a remote server. This local unit analyse the voice then send proper commands to the rest of the device, but never share the words, and cannot receive data from the rest of the hardware except during signed updates.
- all devices share a stanadrd color code for a mandatory indicator light giving the state of it and a standard activation/confirmation sound
- all devices must be able to be controlled from a provided remote with a button instead of a keyword, which can be deactivated
- all devices must have a BT kill switch, if a phone send a signal saying "I don't want to be listened to", the device will no activate.
- any data sent to server must be encrypted from the client with a key the server doesn't have
And once it's done, do something similar for phones, e-health devices, etc.
We can't expect big companies to act decently, and technology is not going to save us.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#129As someone who is perfectly happy with Home Assistant and Z-Wave, I worry that a bunch of mega corps getting together to create a standard will crowd out the market, and prevent non-local, privacy-honoring options from continuing to be manufactured. If average consumers are told to simply "look for the CHIP logo", and the CHIP standard includes facilities for must-phone-home messages akin to streaming DRM, I'm afraid…
I think people who expect Home Assistant to be useful to the general consumer are delusional. Home Assistant is an amateur piece of software with severe UX shortcomings and broken auto-update functionality (it phones home continuously and often bricks itself after auto-updates).
I appreciate the enthusiasm in the home automation community, and I agree there's a need for an offline solution, but Home Assistant is not it, and we'd be better off scrapping that codebase and starting something better.
Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll tell you this. You already have a hub, it's called WiFi router. I see zero reasons to rationalise the need to buy yet another white box for the buyer.
Wifi is a poor choice for this because it uses a lot of power. Lots of things that connect to a smart hub are tiny sensors that use expensive batteries.
The consumer have a choice, a device that works right away, or a better, more expensive one that doesn't
Think why they can't sell much of these