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

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

#31

Post by YayamiOmate »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #21
stirkac wrote: post #6

This is why I would never invest too much into Smart Home. While my phone may be expected to last for a few years only, I don't want my house deprecated because of a takeover/bankruptcy of a company.

Reconsider. I'd say these are two safe options: 1) Go with a cloud service using products exclusively made by a single major company, like Google or Amazon. This is simpler to setup and maintain but more expensive. 2) Go with an open source solution, like Home Assistant. Cheaper option with more control but requires a lot of time to learn, setup and maintain. Both options should be considered safe at this point. Edit…

What are you talking about. This whole situation is a one great counterexample to your 1).

Making any company a single point of failure is a bad idea. You are basically giving up your freedom of choice for maybe some convenience, but don't confuse it with guarantee of sustained service.

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

#32

Post by netsharc »

benbristow wrote: post #12
erinnh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely would invest into Smart Home, but only if I can control it 100% from the server in my basement without the appliance having any internet access at all. All my IoT devices are in a wifi without any internet access.

Not really an 'internet' of things then is it? More like 'WLoT' (Wireless LAN of things)

In office buildings, devices already talk to each other using a network, so you don't have miles of cables from each switch to light or window-blind. In cars too, with CAN Bus.

Apple sells Apple Home Hub, I wonder if that's their "central control system" so that the Apple Home devices can be a bit dumber, but also it means there's a central firewall and system that can look for updates.

Also if you can install the "cloud-end" on your own device, when the company goes Nest, it means you can at least run an old version to keep your "IoT" gadget running, and it'll be running on the (hopefully) firewalled local hub.

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

#34

Post by josteink »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #21
stirkac wrote: post #6

This is why I would never invest too much into Smart Home. While my phone may be expected to last for a few years only, I don't want my house deprecated because of a takeover/bankruptcy of a company.

Reconsider. I'd say these are two safe options: 1) Go with a cloud service using products exclusively made by a single major company, like Google or Amazon. This is simpler to setup and maintain but more expensive. 2) Go with an open source solution, like Home Assistant. Cheaper option with more control but requires a lot of time to learn, setup and maintain. Both options should be considered safe at this point. Edit…

> Go with a cloud service using products exclusively made by a single major company, like Google or Amazon.

You mean like Nest? Not a good example.

Better advice is buying something non-cloud based which uses established standards and which works entirely within your LAN.

If the company goes down, at least you can interact with the devices using the standards they were built on (Zigbee, z-wave, etc).

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

#36

Post by Twirrim »

benbristow wrote: post #12
erinnh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely would invest into Smart Home, but only if I can control it 100% from the server in my basement without the appliance having any internet access at all. All my IoT devices are in a wifi without any internet access.

Not really an 'internet' of things then is it? More like 'WLoT' (Wireless LAN of things)

"Intranet of Things" is probably reasonably accurate, and hey, we get to keep the same acronym!

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

#37

Post by t00 »

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.

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

#38

Post by DannyBee »

heavymark wrote: post #11

This is why we invested in Apple Home, since that is the least likely to go away completely off all the options. Any Google service other than Gmail and Google Maps may come and go so while they offer amazing features at the cost of invading your privacy, there is no guarantee they will there in the long term.

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

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

#40

Post by bpyne »

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.
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