Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019 • Hacker News Board

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#131

Post by deforciant » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

t00 wrote: post #37

deforciant wrote: post #24

I did quite a bit of experimentation with home automation systems (HomeSeer, Home Assistant, Domoticz and so on) and decided that the best (at least for me) and the most control giving solution is NodeRED - https://github.com/node-red/node-red . You can create pretty complex flows with many already available nodes but if you want something custom - it's trivial either to add JS functions or to create your own node fr…

Which home automation platform you eventually ended up with on NUC? I recently bought NUC to do the same and I cannot decide between Home Assistant, openHAB so I am running them both and playing a bit with Hue lights/Belkin switch. I have not tried Domoticz - I know it's very lightweight but not too feature heavy. Eventually I want to replace Alexa, using Snips.

I have both NodeRED and Home Assistant but lately Home Assistant doesn't do pretty much anything anymore and everything goes through NodeRED :)

I also run more things on my NUC like drone.io build server to run my tests and few more things. I ended up just having a docker-compose file for all my things as opposed to installing services I use through things like HomeAssistant.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#132

Post by DannyBee » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #59

DannyBee wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has cancelled plenty of things, it's just much better at erasing history and pretending those things never existed than the other companies.

I suppose that’s why instead of showing examples you are making broad sweeping claims?

Airport stuff, Ping, Monster branded beats headphones, etc.

You can get support for mac/etc stuff for 5 years after purchase (which admittedly is nice). However, before you decide that is awesome, things like the headphones were killed with no support regardless of purchase date.

Apple also refuses to call anything it stopped manufacturing "canceled" at all.

It deliberately tries to message this part, calling them "vintage" until they have been "not manufactured" (IE canceled) for at least 7 years. They are then called "obsolete". This is messaging specifically used to try to confuse the issue, and is unfortunately likely effective.

See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624

Apple doesn't turn down a lot of open API's because they never have them in the first place, which i'm not sure is better.

(They do turn down existing closed APIs, and not uncommonly by force - saying if you want to put your app on the store, you must use new version of API x)

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#133

Post by chomp » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

dustinmoris wrote: post #97

Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…

I halfway agree with your comment. I think smart home technology is still in the realm of tinkerers right now, and investing in an ecosystem requires a lot of forethought.

I replaced all of my dumb light switches with zwave light switches, but the nice thing is that they still act as light switches. I bought dumb IP cameras that can stream RTSP instead of going to someone's "cloud". I feed all of this into a homeassistant server that, when it goes down, I shrug because this is a fun hobby of mine, not anything I expect to actually work.

When people ask "wow how can I make my TV do that trick" or "that is cool, what do I need to get started with home automation", I cringe a little because of how embarrassingly techy the industry still is. Even Control4, which is probably the premiere home automation ecosystem, requires a ton of upkeep to keep it running (though at least you can throw money down a hole to have someone fix it).

Also with regards to your comment about turning on the lights to your phone, there's something magical about walking into the living room and saying "Hey Siri, good morning" and having your TV kick on, automatically start streaming the morning news, kitchen and living room lights turn on, and blinds open. There's nothing that really saves a ton of time in it, but it's just nice.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#134

Post by adrianmonk » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

bpyne wrote: post #40

I can't think of a single compelling use-case for home automation systems. I'm trying to understand what other people see in it. I have to wonder if it's driven by the amount of interest a person has in "tinkering" with technology.

My apartment came with a Nest thermostat for free, so maybe I'm not part of the enthusiast base.

I love the feature that automatically detects whether I'm at home and adjusts the setpoint. This uses a sensor in the thermostat, put it also uses my phone's location, so arguably it is a smart home feature.

I also how it integrates with my phone at bedtime and when I wake up. I have a Google Assistant routine set up to adjust the setpoint when I dismiss the alarm in the morning. I also have a routine set up for bedtime which adjusts the thermostat and tells me what's on tomorrow's agenda. I like this better than a programmable thermostat with a set schedule because I don't always sleep at the exact same time, and it's annoying having my place get too hot or too cold before I'm ready for bed, etc.

I can't think of too many other use cases that make sense to me, though.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#135

Post by asark » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #110

dustinmoris wrote: post #97

Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…

I agree with this mostly, but I do vaguely pay attention to the space in case there is some smart home application that does end up proving truly useful. I haven't seen anything yet that is compelling to me but it could happen!

Useful home automation mostly involves robots of one kind or another. Stuff you might pay a person to do because it's so time consuming and tedious. Cleaning, washing & putting away clothes, lawn care, maybe cooking. Basically anything rich people tend not to do themselves, brought within the reach of the working class by robots.

The problem is all the solutions so far kinda suck, and most are still expensive. If they weren't, absent regulation killing the spyvertising industry (oh please oh please oh please), guaranteed to be spyware wholly dependent on sending everything you or they do to "the cloud", I'd say Asimo-style general purpose home robots can't get here soon enough.

Light switches, coffee makers, thermostats? Anyone who cared could already get 95% of the way to as-good-as-IoT with motion sensors and timers on existing, cheaper, out of the box solutions, without all the spying and "I'm sorry I can't reach my server so even though we're on the same local network and I'm more powerful than a late 90s desktop PC I still can't talk to your smartphone because I am a piece of absolute garbage."

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#136

Post by adjkant » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

pault wrote: post #122

adjkant wrote: post #111

If there's anything to be learned from Nest, I think it would be interesting to se a full open source stack for things like Nest as well as Google Home / Alexa. If the NLP is right, the actual functionality is not hard to replicated means that third party integrations can be easily added/customized. Then you also eliminate the always on problem with everything going through your own servers. What I'm imagining (all o…

There's home assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io/ And mozilla web things: https://iot.mozilla.org/ Plenty of options these days. I have high hopes for web things to become the "app store" that you mention.

Forgive my laziness, but how does this play with third parties and where is it on the NLP/hardware front?

As much as I love the idea of going open source, the practicalities right now is using Google/Spotify/Weather/Netflix via voice control is the majority of my use cases an

I see now I'm talking less smart home and more smart assistant, so I guess this is verging off a bit from Nest's functionality. WebThings looks really good on first glance - the API seems well designed and intuitive and the gateway idea is exactly what I wanted. It seems like the NLP/Speaker to Gateway connection is needed still.

I really hope this also becomes something third parties support. I'm concerned that even if all of these pieces come together, Netflix/Spotify just say "lol no we're gonna only support Amazon/Google".

Appreciate the links!

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#137

Post by deforciant » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

SteveGregory wrote: post #62

deforciant wrote: post #24

I did quite a bit of experimentation with home automation systems (HomeSeer, Home Assistant, Domoticz and so on) and decided that the best (at least for me) and the most control giving solution is NodeRED - https://github.com/node-red/node-red . You can create pretty complex flows with many already available nodes but if you want something custom - it's trivial either to add JS functions or to create your own node fr…

I've been using Node Red for a few automation things too, basically as a self-hosted ifttt/zapier, and it's been working well. I would recommend it beyond home automation for the kinds of things that are "too small" to warrant their own code project and deployment setup but are still important enough to be automatic. This includes things like checking a webpage every 10 minutes and sending a text if it changes, or re…

Exactly! My NodeRED besides doing some home automation actually does a lot more "ops" work for me:

1. Complex healthchecks for my side project webhookrelay.com (tests backend functionality every 30 seconds) 2. Normal HTTP healthchecks for all my websites - webhookrelay.com, keel.sh and few other backing services such as drone itself. 3. Updates homebrew formula hash when a new release is out (there's a super easy to use github integration that allows you to modify files) 4. Receives and processes emails from Mailgun about delivery failures.

So yeah, probably the best self-hosted IFTTT/Zapier out there :)

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#138

Post by eloisant » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #80

NotPaidToPost wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they had a shot. It seems to me that they had managed to effectively own the top end segment of the home thermostat market in term of branding and product recognition. I don't see why that wouldn't have enabled a profitable, sustainable company. The thing is that these days people start this kind of company with their exit in mind from day one.

How sustainable? There are only three ways to sell a thermostat. - at the time a home is being built when it’s easy to get all sorts of add ons bundle through the builder. How many homes are being built in a year? - as a self service after market upgrade to your existing thermostat. In the grand scheme of things, how many people are willing to do that? -working with service companies or building out a network of inst…

It probably depends on the countries but your thermostat is usually tied to your HVAC system, i.e. you usually change your thermostat when you change your HVAC, so it's more often than when homes are built.

So the best way to get volume is probably to partner with a HVAC maker.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#139

Post by gerbilly » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

This so called smarthome stuff is just a bunch of garbage 'solutions' in search of a problem.

Re: Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019

#140

Post by ryukafalz » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #81

throwayEngineer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I can't buy Apple products. It's the opposite of interchangeable.

I buy only Apple devices. It's true that they're mostly proprietary, and Apple runs its own services, and I hate iTunes these days. But—and I realize not everyone feels the same way—but at this time they are literally the only b2c company that has any credibility around privacy. They feel to me—and again, not everyone agrees—they feel to me like the only hardware company that thinks of their users as their customers,…

>but at this time they are literally the only b2c company that has any credibility around privacy

I can think of a few: Purism, System76, OSMC, Mycroft... they're smaller and less well-known than the big players of course, and they're not all perfect, but they treat their users as customers unlike many companies these days.