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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

It's a good title... My instinct is to ridicule the entire concept of the smart home with its dozens of internet-attached devices from TVs to refrigerators to light bulbs accessible from one's smart phone. I suppose I should instead be curious as to why anyone would be comfortable with such a system?

I can see the attraction of using a Raspberry Pi on a closed local network instead of timers and so on, for example if one has a lot of houseplants and so on, but I don't really understand the desire for having that network be internet-accessible.

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> dozens of internet-attached devices from TVs to refrigerators to light bulbs accessible from one's smart phone. I suppose I should instead be curious as to why anyone would be comfortable with such a system?

I get value from such a system for the following reasons:

- my bedroom lights wake me up by fading in over the course of an 20 minutes. Before that, I'd always wake up in a bad mood as I got startled awake by an alarm.

- Thanks to the HomePod in the bedroom, we can adjust the lights by voice, useful in the evening when one is falling asleep and the other's still in the bathroom. Like the 80s "Clapper", but magnitudes more useful.

- My mainroom lights adjust color temperature through the day, which I find inordinately pleasing. They will also switch to an "evening" dimmed and redder lighting at a particular time. This is often a subtle cue to me to stop working, or prepare for bed.

- The HomePod in my bedroom also serves as my alarm, using music from the auto-generated playlist of stuff I like. I no longer am woken up by the same repetitive alarm (I can't listen to some of my favourite tunes due to the association), or awful radio.

- I can transfer the music to different devices as I go through my morning routine. It's never been easier to listen to what I want, where I want.

- If a meeting suddenly comes up, I can just give a vocal order to stop the music

- I can switch watching something on my iPad to my TV, and control the TV from the phone that I always have with me, rather than hunt down the single-purpose remote.

There are some downsides of course, but they don't outweigh the above quality-of-life benefits, and I'm very happy with what I have.

That all sounds great... But none of your examples require, or are even improved, by being internet connected.

What non-internet connected voice recognition/NLU system that integrates with light bulbs is available for sale?

Voice systems only require Internet because companies have designed them that way to keep you on the hook and collecting your data. There’s no reason that voice control can’t run on a local box except for this business decision. Voice control systems had been around for years before everything was in the cloud, and with the advances made in the technology since then, the accuracy would be just fine on a local system.

I don't know any that are for sale on the internet but the deep learning, mesh network and microcontroller tech to join together such a capability are readily available and open source.

I thought Apple's system didn't use the internet. The voice recognition happens on the phone. No?

Apple introduced voice processing on the devices with iOS 15 (that's the current version if you are not so familiar with the system.) Older versions of iOS required an internet connection for any voice command. This works on all but the oldest supported devices (which are ~iPhone 6), from what I remember.

Edit: scroll down to section "Siri" here: https://www.apple.com/ca/ios/ios-15/features/

Sometimes my home wifi gets stuck. I noticed that when I talk to Siri at this time she doesn’t react quickly (working on it for seconds).

Newer devices and newer OSs can do some recognition device-side-only. But many features, and certainly anything through the older HomePods, requires cloud assistance.

This article has a good overview: https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/08/02/how-to-use-siri-o...

Even having a separate, but integrated, internet-connected voice recognition system would allow the devices themselves not to be internet-connected.

This is possible on Android, you can have an Android app call out to Google for voice control, and have the app control your local network.

That is in fact how most smart lights are implemented. There is a central unit each lightbulb connects to and that central unit (optionally) is connected to the internet.

You can make your own.

Network connected devices are fine, but this thing where every object in your home is reliant on a persistent network connection to a remote server which it uses to funnel data back to the manufacturer? This needs to die.

The push for evergreen, cloud-connected, as-a-service everything was never about meeting users' needs. It's just a cynical grab for recurring revenue and job security.

> I don't really understand the desire for having that network be internet-accessible.

Some devices are more useful if they're internet accessible:

- Thermostat: can start the AC/heating ahead of time if one comes back at irregular times, in order to come back to a house at the right temperature while saving energy away from home

- Security system: can arm it away from home if someone forgot to arm it, can disarm it remotely if coming back with heavy packages

- Security cameras: can monitor them remotely if needed

- Garage door: can close it remotely if forgotten, can open it remotely so that it's fully open by the time one arrives at the door, can also integrate with Amazon delivery so that they can leave packages in the garage instead of on the porch

- Lights and other devices: no more wondering "did I turn off the lights?"

- Washer/dryer: I don't have one of those, but it would be nice to get phone notifications that the laundry is done and be able to check remotely how much time is left on the current cycle

I look at most of that in the opposite way

> Security system: can arm it away from home if someone forgot to arm it, can disarm it remotely if coming back with heavy packages

Someone finding a zero day can turn off my security system

> Security cameras: can monitor them remotely if needed

Someone hacking my system can spy on me and my family members naked or doing other NSFW things

> Garage door

Same as above, someone will hack it to open my garage

> Lights and other devices:

Increases the surface area massively for getting hacked.

> Washer/dryer (same as previous item)

Further, each one is a chance to be monitored by 3rd parties and/or charged a subscription.

Just to pick one, i think there are many more likely threats to your home security system than a hacker with a zero day.

In the end, it’s about your personal threat model.

Effort matters.

We live in a world where anyone who can run a script can attack 10k houses while they're watching Spiderman. Old school burglars can only do one house at a time and they have to actually go to the house.

"My instinct is to ridicule the entire concept of the smart home"

Your choice. I'm an IT consultant and I try to run my home IT to the same standards as at work.

I keep my IoT devices on a separate VLAN or two. I use Home Assistant as a mediator and I absolutely refuse the likes of Alexa. I'm pretty sure that my Kitchen telly is listening and it is surely loving Morecambe and Wise show's audio on an endless loop and quite quiet.

I'm a former IT consultant, and I'd like to run my home network to the same standards as at work. I looked into it and came to the conclusion that dealing with a few timers is much less hassle than trying to do it with computers.

We're totally happy with a Christmas tree timer, and see no need to let the world know when our tree lights are on or off.

I have a few plant light timers, and I'd really like to adjust them to varying daylight hours without setting every timer separately. A computer could even do the daytime calculations automatically. And while I'm at it, it would be nice to run them all day on cloudy winter days. I wouldn't need to broadcast it to any service provider though, and it would be nice if the setup would work without any Internet connection.

Smart home is a useful thing.

A cloud-connected, vendor-locked smart home is not such a smart move, to my mind, though.

A LAN of things, with a VPN to my phone and laptop is something I'm considering. An always-on third-party listening device, like Echo, I would never consider.

> I suppose I should instead be curious as to why anyone would be comfortable with such a system?

My assumption, informed by a few anecdotes of people I know - people want to feel like they're living with modern amenities, or like they're in the future (Star Trek people talking to their computers, for example), and this is obviously aided by marketing.

Remember when Apple referenced Dick Tracy when introducing the Apple Watch (or a subsequent model?), and how they had always wanted to have the same cool device? I suspect that this is a huge part of what drives the "smart" home.

There are lots of applications for having home devices and appliances on the network. The typical user doesn’t know much about security and tends to assume devices will do what they’re supposed to, so it’s not an obvious problem for those devices to be accessible by a cellphone app.

I imagine our home of the future with a microchip in all outlets, switch, circuit breaker, bulb, etc.

Each breaker would know the current going through it and through all sockets and bulbs. They will be able to detect the bad connection, shut off the current and report the problem, saving a lot of electric fire.

The wiring of the house will be massively reduced as they will be no need to go from switch to light. All lighting will be connected all the time, the switch will be wireless, will be just a faceplate that you stick where you want them. You will assign the switch to the light that you want, they will adjust with the time of day, etc.

Some of the heavy energy use appliances will do peak shaving to reduce the cost of the electricity bill (already in place in some areas)

Sounds great. None of those devices need to be talking to anything outside the home, though.

Even peak shaving can be done by simply checking the AC supply voltage. If it's starting to sag, ease off some of the heavier appliances. If it's higher than expected, now's a good time to burn some extra power.

I agree, they don’t really need the internet.

KNX already does this without internet. The downside is that it's expensive and just as proprietary as the internet-connected smart gadgets.

There are (since several years) "bus" electrical systems, simplified, there are five wires (live+neutral+earth+a two wire "bus" ) going everywhere.

You can decide to mount in "box #1" a switch and (say) a socket, then you configure the switch in "box#1" to command light bulb #23 and the socket to be either always on or commanded by switch #18, etc..

What you are proposing is essentially removing the two wire cable to go wireless.

You need anyway the three mains cables (live+neutral+earth) to get everywhere and passing in the same pipe/tube the additional two wires cable is "no cost".

NO practical advantages, but a whole new possible sets of malfunctioning and/or vulnerabilities.

Apart from the added (and not-so-trivial) added cost of a "bus" system as compared to a traditional electric cabling(not that your dream solutions will be any cheaper), the existing solutions work, and work reliably, because by now they have existed and have been tested for many years, let's introduce a new wireless protocol and brand new microprocessors/terminal devices that offer no advantage...

As an example: your driving home on a cold night, and you want to turn your heating on to preheat the house before you get home.

I guess the question is really the upside/downside ratio. I think for many the upside is marginal compared to the potential downside.

Grandma tech: keep rolls of sugar cookie dough in the freezer, and bake 'em when you get home. An excuse to hang out by the oven, and then you have cookies.

Each generation toils away to solve problems that were first solved more than 200 years ago

Or maybe our problems and potentials are radically different than they were 200 years ago?

Spoken like someone toiling away at something your great-grandpa had a solution for.

Actual grandma tech: keep grandma at home using the oven so the house is warm when you get home.

Nah, my grandma had a life, as I fully intend to when I'm her age.

I have never found this feature useful. In cold places you tend to leave the heat on to keep things stable. Same when it is hot and humid.

You can turn down the heat a few degrees when you’re out of the house and save quite some energy this way.

Not really, not where I live.

That would be a dumb home then. A smart home would be properly insulated and a lot more passive, it wouldn't leak as much heat and wouldn't be cold when you get home. All without "smart" tech or burning extra fossil fuel.

The “smart” tech is affordable and costs less than renovating or rebuilding a home, a luxury which many people cannot afford.

Did you run the numbers on savings with insulation vs using "smart" tech?

Usually, it's only a matter of time before insulation pays for itself, the time being roughly a decade. Still, people would rather limp along rather than fix it up.

A smart system would learn your patterns and eventually be able to predict your arrival, setting a temperature that's further away from ambient and towards some target the more confident it is.

Or a tad bit more risky, you could email it.

Curious if that saves any significant energy, if you visit home regularly. The same with summertime AC. I believe that allowing a properly insulated room to get hot/cold and then reheating/recooling it takes the same work, because half a day is barely enough for it to get equilibrium with the environment. For a week probably yes, but then again you don’t want your home to cross a freezing point too often. Am I right or naive here?

You are half-way right (or half-way naive, it depends on points of view).

Generally speaking (but it depends greatly on the specific home thermal properties and on the kind of heating or AC you have) it is usually less energy intensive to keep in winter your home at a certain temperature (lower than normal but not too lower) than to switch off completely heating and then when you get home boost to the wanted temperature.

Many years ago I knew someone (an electrical engineer by trade) that modified a standard/ubiquitous Panasonic telephone answering machine connecting it to his home thermostat, he used the code to hear messages to switch the heat on.

You don't need the internet, nowadays the equivalent would most probably be something like :

https://www.ezyswitch.co.nz/

Both voice calls and SMS are routed over the internet today, though…

It's a quote miss-attributed to Walt Whitman. Made very famous by Ted Lasso (in probably the greatest scene in television history).

https://youtu.be/i_FofLSherM

We're currently binge watching Ted Lasso, and that scene really stung and stuck with me. I am someone who is often judgmental and contrarian, exacerbated by the Internet and many things in our society being not enjoyable, and it has masked the underlying humanity of curiosity that lies inside. It's hard, but focusing on what I can do to learn more about something and actually do things rather than critiquing some existing thing is a process I'm trying to implement. While being a critic is valid, too much of anything is not a good thing.

I would suggest others not watch taht YouTube clip if there is even a small chance you plan on watching Ted Lasso. The build up to that scene is phenomenal and personally am glad I got to enjoy it organically.

That's a good point!

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