331–340 of 378 posts
> Google's smart home strategy will now revolve around only the "Works with Google Assistant" program This arguably makes more sense anyway, and I think it opens up some interesting possibilities that might not have been possible while Nest was a standalone entity.
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Thank you! It looks like a good start but certainly lacks some of the features and I'd of course expect a more user friendly version will eventually be introduced as it matures. Nice to see people are working on it!
It's quite extensive and great to work with. What features are you looking for that might be missing?
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> Without a camera, there's ~0% chance of anyone being caught. If you're only interested in recording what happened (as evidence) an IP camera can run on PoE to a laptop or mini-pc on a UPS, and record for as long as you want, even in the case of a power outage if you include a UPS (an old laptop works well in this case - you can potentially just run the PoE switch/injector on the UPS and let the laptop run on its ba…
But then they can also steal the laptop or mini-pc that is recording. It's also a PITA to setup and manage yourself. I'd rather pay the $50/yr that I do and just have someone else do it. I'm done with the bradlys-as-a-service thing. It'd be another thing adding heat to my living environment as well. It's been useful for other things like checking in on. Where/when packages are delivered, when the landlord showed up,…
What I don't understand is... What's in this for Google? Why are they making such a radical, customer-hostile, partner-hostile change in direction? Strategically, this just seems all wrong to me, but there's clearly a Big Picture I'm not seeing.
Maybe the conversion of Nest's infrastructure was internally viewed as more maintenance than new project, so it didn't get much in the way of resources? Google palpably doesn't care about brand damage so that's not a consideration.
I bought two nest outdoor Cameras on the general recommendation that they were the best all around for the job. I have them hooked up to my home automation system so that they sync away statuses - now this is pretty much kaput. How much would it possibly cost for Google to just keep the Works with Nest Apis on maintenance mode? I personally will never buy another Nest (or I guess Google Nest) product since apparently…
The cost is basically infinite as Google is internally structured, maintenance on anything but a monster service is a career dead end. It would likely be worse for an acquired service like Nest, the experience gained wouldn't transfer over to Google's back end.
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> But you could design one with a manual fallback option. Doesn't seem foundational to me. Nothing about an IoT design prevents one from doing that. Certainly I could (or at least someone with the engineering skills could), but the actual IoT companies don't . My impression of IoT devices (do not want) is based on what actually exists, not on what could theoretically exist.
>Certainly I could (or at least someone with the engineering skills could), but the actual IoT companies don't. That is incorrect. There are several IoT products with manual fallback options on the market. I don't even know why you're disagreeing to be honest. You don't like IoT devices, I got that part.
Name three.
Also, "manual fallback" is a cop-out. When I want manual operations, I don't go looking for home automation. The "smart" features should be available without Internet. There's nothing technically difficult about this, but it isn't being done because of abusive business practices.
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This is 100% why I refuse to buy WiFi "Smart" devices. They are always a step away from being shutdown and no longer supported. It is my understanding that HomeKit devices have to allow direct communication to HomeKit, meaning that $CHEAP_ASS_IOT servers can be taken down, but it will still work with HomeKit. (I did make an attempt to find a link to support this, but a few minutes didn't yield anything for/against.)
You'd still be relying on Apple for your UI. Which isn't bad but could be limiting. Better to go with a Raspberry Pi and home assistant, and add home kit as an option. Hell also add alexa and google while you are at it. You wouldn't be tied to anything.
Which I do have, but Home Assistant often relies on APIs that HomeKit doesn't. For instance, EcoBee thermostat: HA needs your creds to go through the EcoBee API that could be turned off in the future. HomeKit doesn't care, it talks directly to the thermostat. Now, get Home Assistant to speak HomeKitese and we have the best of both.
In summary, I'm much less concerned about Apple turning off HomeKit than I am about EcoBee getting bought, or otherwise deciding they don't want to support an API anymore.
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I would say the TV example isn't really a great example from the perspective of utility. In the dead of winter, it's still pitch black out when I take my dogs out first thing in the AM. The temperature can fluctuate quite a lot where I live, so I usually have two different winter coats. My winter "good morning" routine turns on my main floor lights and announces the outside temperature so I know whether or not to wea…
My former flatmate had some smart lights, and I wrote a little script that rigged them up to display the weather on a scale from deep blue to bright orange. The city I live in has very erratic weather, and my apartment stays pretty temperate regardless of the outside weather. This makes it fairly easy to absent-mindedly dress inappropriately and end up sweating or shivering on the walk to work. I generally get in the…
It wasn't until I got an Amazon Echo before I got any real value from my Wemos other than what I mentioned above. Since then, I've gotten into Zwave and invested more into smart home products. I admit that it's not life changing, but stuff like being able to check lock status, etc. has, as you say, made life incrementally better.
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Turning off the lights is negligible to your overall health. Automating it (or not) will not affect your obesity or other health outcomes. There are lots of reasonable arguments against IoT switches; this is not one of them. Let's move on.
Assertions dressed as facts are not very useful either.
> the logical conclusion to that are the couch potatoes shown in the movie Wall-E
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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…
As a comparison, I didn't really consider typing in my phone pin every time I wanted to unlock my phone a disaster. But now that I've got Face ID and it works reasonably well (yes I know not everyone feels that way) it'd be annoying to go back.
You can critique the current implementations but when someone comes up with a good ecosystem to integrate with these products will gain steam.