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Point – A smart house sitter

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Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#3

Post by chopin »

13 wrote: post #2

> "Nothing is recorded or sent across the network. Peace of mind, without giving up on privacy." Devices like this still make me uncomfortable, given the track record of even large companies making extremely insecure devices[1]. [1]: http://www.ioactive.com/news-events/IOActive_advisory_belkin...

Or hide what the devices really do...

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#5

Post by danielbarla »

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 the previous owner circa 2000). To (re-)set zones, you need to go through a 90-step setup wizard, which requires you to calculate zone inclusions as an 8-bit number and type it in on the keypad. And in a day and age when self-driving cars are fast becoming a reality, my alarm system can't tell the difference between a 3 year old walking around, a large bird coming in for landing, and a man climbing over the fence with a crowbar in their hand. I think there's a lot of room for improvement.

Another part of me wonders why devices like this have to be wireless. Sure, it sounds awesome at first, but I'm pretty sure it means weekly battery swapping (even if we discount frequent wifi use). A device that requires frequent maintenance quickly stops being used, and security devices which are off aren't much use (or worse than useless, depending on how you look at it).

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#7

Post by mrmaddog »

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 and immediately call the police? Or do I rely on the "soft alarm" to hopefully scare away the would-be intruders?

I don't see what the "light up" option affords. If I'm there, I'll know that loud music is playing. And I don't get the sense that this is meant to replace my smoke alarm/carbon monoxide alarm, so at best the light is an early warning system that I should open a window to vent out some smoke from my cooking before the real alarm sets off.

Overall, this seems like a really cool concept that has a lot of marginal benefits and zero killer features. Hopefully that sell-story will be embellished upon in the real kickstarter!

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