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An iroh powered smart fan

iroh.computer

51–58 of 58 posts

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of smart devices are for novelty, or for you to spend more time setting up and maintaining their automations than they save you in being automated. But that 10% is magic. A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room, but in a workshop setting - especially a shared workshop setting? Awesome. Just awesome. A well defined use case, in the right setting, and smart…

> A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room, Why wouldn't that be useful? People be surprised how poor their air quality generally are inside, unless they already measure it, making it better sounds useful in oh so many ways. > i know, because of the 15-20 smart things i have only one or two are genuinely useful. What are those things? I have about 70-80 "smart…

> Why wouldn't that be useful? People be surprised how poor their air quality generally are inside

First because it’s the wrong solution to the problem. As I understand it bad air quality in a home is created by specific activities like cooking, vacuuming, or lighting candles/incense/smoking. So you solve the problem by turning on the fan when you cook, opening the windows when you vacuum, and by not using incense or smoking.

Second because you can have a dumb sensor and switch the fan on with your hand when it goes turns orange or red.

> I have about 70-80 "smart things" by now, but every single one is genuinely useful

We have different definitions of genuinely useful. I’m glad you find you setups useful tho - you do you!

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#52
post #37

While this is neat, it strikes me as the software developer's idea of a "smart fan". The engineer in me says that an actual "smart fan" would be one whose blades are designed to produce maximum airflow with minimum noise (variable pitch? avoiding turbulence?)

I think you're describing a "great" fan. A "smart" fan is one that thinks. e.g. smart TVs are worse (and therefore cheaper) than dumb TVs, but they do a lot more thinking.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#53

Any plans to standardize Iroh IoT protocols, e.g. Matter over Iroh / Some other standard that would be plug-able to things like Home Assistant?

Yes, iroh here. We are looking into projects who want to use iroh with matter or thread. If you have a project you want to collaborate with our engineers on, please get in touch! Send an email to support@iroh.conputer

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#54
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very much not a smart fan. Not really relevant.

Pretty relevant because I've never seen the reason for "smart" gadgets at all. Physical switches are simply better.

I have an automation that automatically regulates the level down when I do something where I want to minimize noise (like watching a movie or when I go to sleep)

Sure you can do everything manually, but I like networked things, especially those using open standards (matter over openthread) so I can connect them all together easily.

For example, every time I watch a movie the roller blinds automatically come down, the lights turn off and the fan turns down, I think thats just cool.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#55
post #45

In a heatwave, you need AC, not a fan. Moving hot air around without cooling it is pretty much useless.

there is a curve to it, up to a certain temperature it helps and then it starts making things worse (because it becomes a convection oven).

I believe it's around 35 Celsius.

if you are outside you can attach water nozzles to the fan, the evaporation will cool down the air stream. doing it indoors has humidity implications.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#56
post #37

While this is neat, it strikes me as the software developer's idea of a "smart fan". The engineer in me says that an actual "smart fan" would be one whose blades are designed to produce maximum airflow with minimum noise (variable pitch? avoiding turbulence?)

I think you're describing a "great" fan. A "smart" fan is one that thinks. e.g. smart TVs are worse (and therefore cheaper) than dumb TVs, but they do a lot more thinking.

They're describing an efficient fan. A great fan would be one that offers the best attributes such as efficiency, quality and features. Though, I agree the term "smart" should denote some kind of CPU enabled automation and features.

Re: An iroh powered smart fan

#58

This is interesting as an example of just how complicated and elaborate a toolchain you can use to build something dead simple. There’s a lot that comes for free by adding all these libraries and crates and steps. But from what I can tell it comes down to: let _ = if fan_on { fan.set_high() } else { fan.set_low() };

Okay, I read up on iroh. It has some really interesting stuff in it but I see an uncanny valley here.

It’s not simple enough to debug a connection failure easily, but it’s not magical enough to guarantee connectivity. Straight tcp with dns can be hard to debug; and no magical networking stack can really guarantee connectivity. I guess iroh’s strength is connectivity but I don’t know what happens if you can’t find a path.

The third dimension is privacy and anonymity, and I can’t tell if the story there is stronger than other p2p+relay protocols.

So it’s in the middle but at a different point in the space.

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