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Point – A smart house sitter

formdevices.com

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Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#51

Post by RankingMember »

ancarda wrote: post #27
kristiandupont wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. May I ask why you would prefer that? Is it a security concern?

I don't have WPS on my router (How else do you input the SSID/Password?) and I turn Wi-Fi off when I'm not in my house so this product would be a real hassle to setup/use.

Is turning the wifi off when you leave a security concern or a power thing, like you're running off the grid? I'm just curious, as if it's the former and I had the same concern I'd just limit access to specific MAC addresses and make the access point invisible.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#52

Post by VLM »

PinguTS wrote: post #23

Another device connected to the cloud sending data to the cloud and this time also sound. It was already creepy the learn that Netatmo, a _weather_ station, is recording sound. Because the company released sound profiles from the games during the FIFA world championship mapped to countries, regions. As they said, there is only a loudness sensor integrated. But this time it is a real microphone. That makes it another…

I have another startup idea free for anyone to take and run with.

A simple little box that eats 5V from a USB connection or PoE or whatever and it limits bandwidth to a long term average of perhaps 0.3K. Lets call it 300 baud for old times sake because my first modem was one of the first commercial direct connect 300 baud modems in the early 80s. Go ahead NSA, try to listen to me, my little bandwidth limiting firewall will never speak faster than 300 baud on average so you best be very patient while spying on me for your corporate customers or just to be creepy.

Obviously does nothing for wifi unless you limit your whole wifi connection. Whoops. I'd assume something like this is wired anyway, I don't want to replace batteries every week.

I would also sell one that limits to just a little slower than the slowest youtube video feed with a switch, so during "homework hours" the kids can plagarize wikipedia all they want but can't watch minecraft or unboxing videos on youtube.

I'd like to see a nice web front panel as first choice or as second choice an app, that does some limited sniffy and analysis, and maybe blocking. So if my smart TV suddenly starts talking to .RU or I simply don't want it talking to the mfgr anymore, then I can stop it.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#53

Post by amelius »

RankingMember wrote: post #50

I wonder if it can sense the difference between a cat throwing a glass off a counter and a burglar breaking a window. I love home security stuff like this, and hope this rolls in at a decent price point.

Also, I hope it doesn't get triggered by the neighbor's loud tv set.

Frankly, I'm not sure if I'd be prepared to receive and deal with false positives even once a month, let alone once a day.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#54

Post by RankingMember »

amelius wrote: post #53
RankingMember wrote: post #50

I wonder if it can sense the difference between a cat throwing a glass off a counter and a burglar breaking a window. I love home security stuff like this, and hope this rolls in at a decent price point.

Also, I hope it doesn't get triggered by the neighbor's loud tv set. Frankly, I'm not sure if I'd be prepared to receive and deal with false positives even once a month, let alone once a day.

Agreed, a system with false positives is worse than no system at all imho because it trains you to disregard warning signs.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#55

Post by VLM »

ISL wrote: post #15
mrmaddog wrote: post #7

I really like the idea of unobtrusive anomaly detection as a product, but I wonder how much benefit I could actually derive from this. Perhaps it is nice to have a log of whenever the front door opens, but that feature certainly won't sell me on its own. It is cool that they can tell when a window breaks, but... how much good does that notification do for me? How confident can I be that this is not a false positive a…

If you're a landlord or hotelier, this is like a black-box/speed camera/friendly supervisor for your property. Music too loud, or smoking in a non-smoking place? This thing lights up and lets your guest know to tone things down. If it gets too loud, it switches color and logs the infraction. Appliance failure or security concerns get monitored too.

"Appliance failure"

I converted from an old fashioned clothes washer to new high efficiency a couple years ago. No problem, but I suspect a big problem for the software devs is an old fashioned washer sounds like a modern direct drive just exploded and vice versa. I imagine that's quite a puzzler. Also when my water softener kicks in at the same time as the tankless hot water and the washer and the dryer and the furnace that must be an audio analysis puzzler to tease it all apart.

The washer biz likes to segment by UI, so a clothes dryer that tweets completion costs them an extra $20 to build but they sell it for an extra $1000 which I find highly unappealing, but if this thing is smart enough, it could short circuit that marketing driven profit center and send me a notice when my dryer finishes tumbling. Ditto clothes washer, dishwasher, maybe other things?

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#56

Post by Agustus »

Hi Form engineers and Form finance department, you have my attention and desire to purchase this. Can you provide answers to the following questions:

1. How much will this cost to purchase?

2. Will their be a subscription fee?

3. How is the Point system installed, from the video it appeared to be a magnet?

4. When is the actual release timeline, so I can start figuring out where I can put this in my house or if I should simply Arduino / Pi / Grove a solution instead.

5. Why kickstarter, you appear to have the infrastructure (e.g. engineering, prototype, etc.) in place.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#57

Post by ancarda »

RankingMember wrote: post #51
ancarda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have WPS on my router (How else do you input the SSID/Password?) and I turn Wi-Fi off when I'm not in my house so this product would be a real hassle to setup/use.

Is turning the wifi off when you leave a security concern or a power thing, like you're running off the grid? I'm just curious, as if it's the former and I had the same concern I'd just limit access to specific MAC addresses and make the access point invisible.

Both. Why not save power by turning off the router while shrinking the amount of time there is to break into my Wi-Fi network? I can't see a reason to leave my network on while I'm out of my house. I don't need it and as far as I can tell, my neighbors don't either.

That said if someone needed to use Wi-Fi, I'd be happy to open a guest network for them (I think my router can do that but I haven't checked).

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#58

Post by maxerickson »

danielbarla wrote: post #5

Glad to see at least some companies are taking an (at least semi-) offline approach to these things. With the way things have been going these last few years, the internet-of-things irks me. I've also often wondered why the home security industry seems to be so out of phase with the rest of the tech world; e.g. my house has a security system which seems to have been designed in the 70s (yet it was likely bought by th…

Some of it is because it's a niche market. And then a lot of the people in the market don't care how hard it is for the installer to set it up.

"Why not aim for a larger market" has a little bit of an answer in that a system isn't worth much without monitoring, and for example, for much of the US, petty property crime isn't so pervasive that $500 seems like a smart trade.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#59

Post by VLM »

cpwright wrote: post #43
kristiandupont wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our power budget gives us between one and two years of battery life. Your phone will give you a heads up when a change is required. It's a bit of a hassle, but we feel it's worth it to have the freedom from cables.

I think you should consider adding a POE option, you'll have a more reliable connection + no batteries to worry about.

Also scalability. The designers would probably enjoy people with large houses buying 12 of these things for every room and level of the house, and if marketing says a battery will last 12 months you Know that means it'll really only last 6 months, maybe only 3 months, and six month battery life vs 12 gadgets means once the battery use randomizes I'll be tracking down and replacing a battery every two weeks which is too much peasant work. I don't mind capital improvement like running wires when I'm not busy but I do mind unscheduled peasant work when I'm busy.

If you "can't" put in a power jack (UL? EMI/EMC concerns? Cost?) then at least please manipulate the case design such that when I solder wires directly to the battery jacks then the case can still be closed, I don't have to drill extra cabling holes, etc. The easiest battery to convert is 9volts for obvious connector reasons, but they likely don't have the energy density you need.

I have 12 volts available thru the house so if you could uprate the on board caps and power circuitry to tolerate 12V in that would be nice. Likely your silicon will be fine, and you can't have a thermal issue if you think you're running for a year off any battery smaller than a forklift battery, so its just please solder in 25V caps on the input of the voltage reg instead of 6V caps. Then I can direct wire to the 12V rather than running thru a nice inefficient converter.

(edited to add, I have a marketing idea for the "runs off 12 volts" plan... RVs and boats have 12V and make the software smart enough to understand "animal noises" and send an alert.)

Then again if this is going to be one of those "$300" gadgets, I'm not buying one anyway. And I didn't see a price.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#60

Post by meowface »

ancarda wrote: post #57
RankingMember wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is turning the wifi off when you leave a security concern or a power thing, like you're running off the grid? I'm just curious, as if it's the former and I had the same concern I'd just limit access to specific MAC addresses and make the access point invisible.

Both. Why not save power by turning off the router while shrinking the amount of time there is to break into my Wi-Fi network? I can't see a reason to leave my network on while I'm out of my house. I don't need it and as far as I can tell, my neighbors don't either. That said if someone needed to use Wi-Fi, I'd be happy to open a guest network for them (I think my router can do that but I haven't checked).

I can understand power concerns (though I think home routers use very little KWH), but frankly shutting your router off every day to prevent intrusions is bordering on tinfoil hat-level of concern.

If you shut off WPS on your router and use WPA2-CCMP with a good passphrase, there is really no concern of someone getting into your wireless network.

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