341–350 of 364 posts
10 years in the trenches here. Apple’s smart home protocol famously does not support multiple users. Amazon is choosy on what features you can implement (turn on alarms but not turning them off, locking doors but not unlocking them). Google loves using radio hardware no one else supports. Zigbee has delightful legacy security vulnerabilities and consortium drama. I look forward to these groups putting aside their dif…
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That shouldn't do them any good. The device should require it to be in pairing mode for the key to do anything.
But then what do you need the key for? In theory somebody else could try to pair with it while you have it in pairing mode, but they would have to be on your property for that and could potentially see the key anyway. So you go slap them with a trout or call the police or something, and then go back to setting up your future garbage.
Zigbee etc. tries to get around the whole thing by requiring that the pairing process is done from a 5cm or something distance.
Imho that is good enough but I don't know how far you could extend it with directional antennas etc.
That anyone can reclaim a device they hold in their hand is a feature.
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The part where they can't resist? So no, there will not be a published protocol.
Isn't the topic of the article that they are trying to create a standard?
Probably most toxic companies on earth? Yeah, I'm sure it will be a wonder of openness.
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Apple's existing standard (HomeKit) is relatively 'open' - the specification is published, and several open source implementations exist. I've used the Python one to implement automation on the smart-home devices I've built myself. However, you do need to be certified to distribute a product otherwise you get a warning in the app when you add the device. This seems like a fair compromise to me.
HomeKit is now open source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21831259
So only the "device" part, sadly not the "controller" part. So you'll still need a iOS device to setup stuff in your house, I tried it yesterday with only my iMac to no avail.
But still it's a step in the right direction.
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Believe me, they will it will never find adoption. How to say, they are free to make whatever standards, but they will not matter much if nobody will use them. Their entire ecosystem together have less devices shipped than even some OEM nonames, not to say of Xiaomi or Huawei or Tuya who tower over them. All kinds of "smart assistants" like Alexa end up in drawers very quickly after initial novelty passes, and it cre…
Apparently at least Apple is turning over a new leaf; they just open sourced HomeKit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21831259
That's the guy who flopped with Silk Labs labs.
LOL ... there has been a standard for years for smart home devices, it is called KNX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNX_(standard) ) ... what is wrong with KNX? Hundreds of companies already support it, so why not join them instead of re-inventing the wheel? I think I know what im talking about, because my (smart) home automation is based on KNX, I use Alexa voice commands or a KNX app on my mobile devices to contro…
LOL ... there has been a standard for years for smart home devices, it is called KNX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNX_(standard) ) ... what is wrong with KNX? Hundreds of companies already support it, so why not join them instead of re-inventing the wheel? I think I know what im talking about, because my (smart) home automation is based on KNX, I use Alexa voice commands or a KNX app on my mobile devices to contro…
Is KNX affordable? I did some searching to see how to control Philips Hue lights via KNX, and found something called an "ise Smart Connect KNX HUE" for this. I found a few sites online selling this, all in Europe. Most would not show me a price without me first creating an account and logging in, but I did find one German site that would show me a price, which after converting Euros to USD, came out to a little over…
LOL ... there has been a standard for years for smart home devices, it is called KNX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNX_(standard) ) ... what is wrong with KNX? Hundreds of companies already support it, so why not join them instead of re-inventing the wheel? I think I know what im talking about, because my (smart) home automation is based on KNX, I use Alexa voice commands or a KNX app on my mobile devices to contro…
I enjoyed the description of your home automation setup! I learned about the wide range of sensors and devices that can be incorporated, and that technically it's possible for the owner to programmatically control everything. I can see you're riding the edge of the coming wave. Looking at the differences between the KNX standard and the "Connected Home over IP" project.. From the latter's home page [0]: > By building…
The alexa bridge is not perfect, sometimes it has hald a second of delay. Twice a year the servers are down and it doesn't respond for few hours, but besides that I'm very happy with it. B.t.w. I used this server from PRO KNX to connect my Alexa(s) to the KNX server: https://proknx.com/en/news/2017/realknx-2-0-voice-control-al... (it is also compatible with Google Home as well as Apple Homekit).
Thx for the clarifications about the differences. I don't know much about the KNX standard. I fiddle around a lot with NodeRed (nodejs / javascript) and use some Alexa routines but I never tried to implement the standard myself. As far as I understand it, KNX is also using IP Networks, because all my devices have IP addresses and my servers are open on different ports.
I hope the Google, Apple, ... alliance decided to do create a new standard for good reasons, but I have doubts as I can't find someone that explains me what is so bad about the existing standard. Why Apple, Google and the others don't just join the KNX foundation and why this already open and royalty free KNX standard can be built upon!?
I bought a home and the previous owner used Z-Wave for everything. The whole thing worked irregardless of internet working or not. Whatever they invent if it is useless without internet access its a step back from something that has already worked. All my home automation / smart home integrations will have to be Z Wave compatible or I will not use it. If my internet goes out will all my things be useless without it?
Zigbee is already an open standard, but some Zigbee devices don't work with others. Yet, with Z-Wave they all tend to work and there isn't that much of a price difference (between Zigbee and Z-Wave devices). The biggest problem with Zigbee is that is uses 2.4 GHZ which doesn't travel long distances or through walls very well. Z-Wave uses a lower frequency that does. (edited for clarity)
In a real situation this usually doesn't cause issues. Most of the zigbee devices that you're gonna have (such as light bulbs) are also acting like a zigbee router and it creates a mesh network. You can even visualise the network if you're using zigbee2mqtt with zigbee2mqtt/bridge/networkmap