Ask Slashdot: Can You Have A Smart Home That's Not 'In The Cloud'? 183
With the announcement of Google Home on Wednesday, one anonymous Slashdot reader asks a timely question about cloud-based "remote control" services that feed information on your activities into someone else's advertising system:
In principle, this should not be the case, but it is in practice. So how hard is it, really, to do 'home automation' without sending all your data to Google, Samsung, or whoever -- just keep it to yourself and share only what you want to share?
How hard would it be, for instance, to hack a Nest thermostat so it talks to a home server rather than Google? Or is there something already out there that would do the same thing as a Nest but without 'the cloud' as part of the requirement? Yes, a standard programmable thermostat does 90% of what a Nest does, but there are certain things that it won't do like respond to your comings and goings at odd hours, or be remotely switchable to a different mode (VPN to your own server from your phone and deal with it locally, perhaps?) Fundamentally, is there a way to get the convenience and not expose my entire life and home to unknown actors who by definition (read the terms of service) do not have my best interest in mind?
Yesterday one tech company asked its readers, "What company do you trust most to always be listening inside your home?" The winner was "nobody", with 63% of the votes -- followed by Google with 16%, and Apple with 13%. (Microsoft scored just 3%, while Amazon scored 2%.) So share your alternatives in the comments. What's the best way to set up home automation without sending data into the cloud?
How hard would it be, for instance, to hack a Nest thermostat so it talks to a home server rather than Google? Or is there something already out there that would do the same thing as a Nest but without 'the cloud' as part of the requirement? Yes, a standard programmable thermostat does 90% of what a Nest does, but there are certain things that it won't do like respond to your comings and goings at odd hours, or be remotely switchable to a different mode (VPN to your own server from your phone and deal with it locally, perhaps?) Fundamentally, is there a way to get the convenience and not expose my entire life and home to unknown actors who by definition (read the terms of service) do not have my best interest in mind?
Yesterday one tech company asked its readers, "What company do you trust most to always be listening inside your home?" The winner was "nobody", with 63% of the votes -- followed by Google with 16%, and Apple with 13%. (Microsoft scored just 3%, while Amazon scored 2%.) So share your alternatives in the comments. What's the best way to set up home automation without sending data into the cloud?
Some PI based projects (Score:2)
Yes, there is software that does just that - (Score:5, Informative)
Karl Denninger, the guy who writes market-ticker, has done just that, and for the same reason subby has expressed.
His post expressing his reasons for rolling his own -
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231376
And where to get it - http://homedaemon.net
Runs on a Raspberry PI 2
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Similar setup here. Custom "IoT" devices, communicating using MQTT mainly (mosquitto as a broker). The downside is that it requires electronics knowledge, prorgramming knowledge and also too much free time (that's my main problem really).
Or if you don't want to get into soldering your own mains current devices and writing your own broker, there's Insteon and Z-Wave with both standalone and cloud-tethered control hubs. Neither Insteon nor Zwave sensors and load controls are directly internet linked, the devices don't phone home to the Internet and will run fine without cloud connectivity. Some of the management hubs are very much dependent on cloud services, but the more expensive ones can talk multiple automation protocols and will work
Depends on the devices (Score:4, Informative)
Depending on the device maker, you may also be able to selectively allow outbound access for firmware patching while still blocking all the other data farming, although you may need to do a little digging into the config and/or traffic capture to do this. Devices will often use the same domain for everything though, and all too often the same hostname, so you might need something capable of URL level filtering to get this working.
Of course, none of that does anything to really protect you from some of the abysmal security that many IoT type devices have on them; e.g. backdoors or other exploitable interfaces that are available over WLANs that enable you to access the device remotely and extract the pre-shared key for your WLAN (see above about putting all this stuff on a dedicated WLAN?), change configuration options, and so on. It's also worth noting that sites like Shodan will also let the bad actors geolocate devices that have known vulnerabilities to them so they can go for a far more targetted war-driving session than used to be the case where it was more of a "see what is out there, and maybe get lucky" exercise.
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Is it really 'the cloud' that's the problem - or is it just that funding it all through advertising is the problem. If Google had all the data it currently has, but used it strictly for providing its services - and you paid for those services rather than letting Google place ads based on what it knows about you, would that be less of an issue?
Because the type of services we're talking about are certainly enhanced by the ability to search the internet - and do that as effectively as possible from any locati
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When the government and it's stooges go around saying that the NSA phone spying is not violating anyone's civil rights because it is business records owned by the businesses, the data is the problem- period.
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Many cloud-tethered products have no documentation for their protocols, no supported way to modify the firmware, and use public-key encryption to make it very difficult to "spoof" the cloud service so you can run them without talking to the vendor's proprietary server. Many vendors have realized that consumers will shop on price and ignore privacy. For example, Y-cam used to manufacture IP cameras, but based on feedback from customers now only offers a smart cloud-based security solutions, in both free a
Re:Depends on the devices (yes & no) & PRO (Score:2)
I've constantly tried maintaining requirements for my SW to work from behind
a proxy. Game manufacturers are probably the worst, but a huge hit in privacy -- I like the idea of a "smart home", -- but I want to control it from my home computer --- not a "smart phone". As near as I could tell, most of the home automation products will only work / can only be operated from one of their apps that you can get for various smartphones. None of them that I looked at had any way to record, control or analyze the
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Lemme tell you, its NOT just iot stuff thats afflicted with requirements to use a company owned website to configure/program the device. I wanted a clock radio that was also able to play shoutcast and other streaming audio sources. I found one for a great price by Acoustic Research, I'd always thought they had good products and went ahead and bought the unit. The first one I bought I found out after going around with their tech support for a month or so, would NOT EVEN do what the product info/brochure stat
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I doubt I have to say here: that's not what I want in a router.
I never did find out what became of that situation. All I know for sure is that I don't buy Linksys products now.
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I never did find out what became of that situation. All I know for sure is that I don't buy Linksys products now.
It is still basically the situation. But you can load openwrt on them, because that's one of their features now. I have a WRT1200 and that's what I've done.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MQTT + OpenWRT-router/some other server (Score:5, Interesting)
- For generic Home Automation stuff, use Z-Wave: a non-open radio protocol that has proven to be pretty robust. Z-Wave devices form a mesh network so range generally isn't a problem. And with the latest version of the standard, some security has been added as well. There are tons of items out there: switches, dimmers, thermostats, locks, sensors, remotes, and so on, from many brands, in many ranges of prices and quality.
- You need a Z-Wave hub, and again you have several choices that do not require the cloud: Homeseer (reliable but you get nickle & dimed to death for addons, and it's less accessible to tinkering), Vera (pretty reliable, and best of all it is open to tinkering. You can write your own plugins for this hub and there is an active community of plugin developers), or OpenHAB + a Z-Wave stick (Open! But using it is still somewhat reminiscent of installing Linux in its early days). I am currently using a Vera hub
- Your hub needs to be able to address non Z-wave devices. Most hubs do this with plugins, allowing you to include these in your setup: WiFi-enabled thermostats, Philips Hue bulbs, Alarm systems, anything networked that has an API, really.
- For your DYI devices, use Arduino + a NRF24L01 radio module running the MySensors libraries. MySensors is an open DYI project using Arduinos, having them form a reliable mesh radio network (way better than WiFi), and you can build pretty much anything you can imagine with it, usig the libraries and a handful of lines of code. MySensors interfaces nicely with Vera, there's a plugin that will expose MySensors devices like switches and sensors as native Vera devices, allowing you to use them in scenes. For the MySensors gateway to be used with Vera, I recommend using an Ethernet Arduino for maximum reliability.
Oh, and for anything that needs to be somewhat reliable, avoid WiFi devices. WiFi is not a very good HA platform.
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This is how IoT should be done across the board. I have pleaded with several IoT startups to go hub and spoke, just so they reduce their attack surface, but because it is cheap to just open up to cellular or Wi-Fi, they just open the device to the Internet, since it is so easy to go that route with commodity hardware, and yet again, I get told that "security has no ROI".
The only thing I wish there were a wireless protocol for, would be for block access. Something like a wireless iSCSI. This sounds stupid
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There's a ton of building automation stuff out there that will do exactly what you ask it to, and nothing more.
This one is open source for the controller code, and the desktop environment.
http://www.temcocontrols.com/p... [temcocontrols.com]
I've used many of these, and they work great! Flexible analog inputs and outputs can be configured for 0-10 VDC or 4-20 mA, and there's a terminal block for each input and output that provides power and ground connections for easy hookup.
Cheers!
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Hate to reply to myself, but here's a better link
http://www.temcocontrols.com/p... [temcocontrols.com]
The other link is just remote I/O without a processor.
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No problem!
Check our their github page for lots of helpful interfacing scripts also.
These are very affordable, flexible, reliable controllers, and they program very easily.
They also have a zigbee radio, and very affordable sensors, thermostats and actuators available too.
The interface allows you to define what the signal means open/closed or on/off or fwd/rev etc so you can easily program the logic in real world terms.
It's worth it just for the ruggedized I/O, task scheduling, and process control abstractio
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Universal Devices ISY series do a pretty good job; after setup I just let it get an internal NTP server and it is pretty happy. It can be a unified platform for Insteon, Sonos, Hue, etc., with a little bit of work. They charge for add-ons, but the simplicity is nice.
What's the great thing about a "smart" home (Score:5, Insightful)
Since this "smart" home stuff began to emerge, I've always wondered what the great thing about it was. I personally do not mind having to leave the chair to turn on the lights, or having to carry physical keys with me to unlock the door. Nor do I mind having a "dumb" fridge where I have to think of the stuff to buy myself.
As a proper slashdotter, I spend a big chunk of my time in front of a screen, so I'm no way non-digital. Still I don't see any benefits in a "smart" home.
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Next you'd have us getting up to change the channel ... blasphemy!
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Remote controls for TV devices make sense: Most times if you turn lights off/on you either enter a room or leave it, and for that you already have to get up. But when watching TV you most likely sit or lie, and want to change the channel. The only time where you want to turn on the lights and don't stand already is twice a day: once in the morning and once in the evening. But that I think I can live with.
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Remote controls for TV devices make sense: Most times if you turn lights off/on you either enter a room or leave it, ...
And, if you're one of those folks that does want to turn on/off lights while lounging around, there have been cheap and easy solutions for decades.
The clapper comes to mind. Certainly easy for that one use case.
X10 firecracker is another cheap and easy option. They used to have a starter kit with a couple lamp modules (plug a lamp into a tiny box, and plug that into wall), a device remote, and a firecracker computer interface module (that worked with Linux even way back then). You could dim or turn on/off a
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I found a little box module on ebay - it's just a board with four relays on, and a matching radio remote. A little wiring work to install it above my ceiling and I can now turn my lights on and off from bed.
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Most times if you turn lights off/on you either enter a room or leave it, and for that you already have to get up.
You need to talk to my roommate.
She's one of those people who falls asleep on the couch while watching TV. She gets home, has dinner, turns on the TV, lies down, and is out like a light 20 minutes later. She'll occasionally wake up, hit the rewind button on the DVR, and fall asleep before the DVR gets back to the beginning.
I usually come downstairs around 11:30PM and find her asleep on the couch with the TV on and the lights on. I'll turn off the lights and go to bed, leaving her in the dark with the TV
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Those lucky Europeans tend to have much more time off than us 'Mercans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I installed one, but the wife refuses to us it that way, complaining that the cat will be cold when we're off to work. I tried explaining that the cat was born with a fur coat...no joy.
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How about a device the monitors your pictures to make sure they are hanging level and sends status updates to your phone?
You should Kickstarter that.
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To answer the top level question, yes. Easily.There was even a company(ies?) in the early 90's selling a host of controllers based on the x10 protocol [wikipedia.org]
On ebay [ebay.com]
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You don't see any benefits because you think the "smart" home is about switching off the lights from your computer. As a proper slashdotter you should have more imagination as to what technology can do for you.
- Track power to help reduce costs.
- Track water usage.
- Track plant watering for ideal horticulture, or even automate your garden.
- The inherent selling point of the Nest is that it optimises your heating to save money, not that you can control the temperature from the PC.
- Connected security devices
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- Track power to help reduce costs.
- Track water usage.
I never saw what the advantage in this was. I do know that a device requires power, because it is connected to the power network. I do know that electric stoves need more power than lightbulbs and that I shouldn't keep the stove on. Also I know that I should turn off lights everywhere when I leave a room. Everything else just feels like microoptimisation to me.
- Track plant watering for ideal horticulture, or even automate your garden.
This may be a point, but I still don't see why it should be connected to a touchscreen mounted to my frige. I also don't need to be waked by a TTS vo
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The objective of home security is not to render your home burglarproof. The objective of homo security is to render your home marginally less appealing to burglars than the one next door.
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Everything else just feels like microoptimisation to me.
You are absolutely right. But once macro optimisation is done what is left? Here's two relevant examples that happened to me. I track my power usage and have for the best part of 7 years. I identified degraded seals in the my refrigerator by looking at the trends one day. The over the years the fridge had spent more time with the compressor running than in the past. Likewise with my water use, by monitoring it I identified an underground water leak in the incoming pipe to the house, naturally after the wate
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Making home infrastructure smart has plenty of utility, beyond simple laziness.
A smart thermostat connected to other home automation can know when nobody is home, automatically switch to energy saving mode, and then be notified when a resident is heading home so it can enter recovery mode and be back to a comfortable temperature by the time you arrive. Same goes for water heating -- if nobody is around, water in the storage heater tank can be allowed to cool down, and then brought back up to temperatur
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For me, the main thing is having lighting scenes and sonos control automated: time-of-day, day-of-week, occupied/unoccupied, etc. I would like it to do a few more things, but mainly the focus is in setting moods transparently.
I was surprised that my wife missed it when the power line modem died, but it really grows on you.
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As a proper slashdotter, I spend a big chunk of my time in front of a screen, so I'm no way non-digital. Still I don't see any benefits in a "smart" home.
Me neither. I bought a Samsung SmartThings, played with it for an hour and couldn't even be bothered installing the sensors anywhere.
I can see some value in an outdoor camera facing the gate so that any unwanted visitors might at least get caught on camera should I need it, but even then I don't care that much to go out and get one.
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I have my computer turn on my towel warmer before I wake up and take my morning shower. It's nice and hot by the time I get out. Before I had this, I had 2 alarms set and I would end up waking up earlier, but not getting out of bed earlier. What a waste!
Market solution (Score:2)
Most devices you would need for a smart home (e.g., thermostats, locks, light switches, etc.) are relatively simple, so if you are *really* determined to have a smart home without watchers, why not start making the smart devices yourself? If you get a working model put together, I am sure you could easily start a successful kickstarter campaign and bootstrap a business with it. Win/win for everyone.
The problem with the entrenched players is that they all have a vested interest in making everything cloud-e
X10 (Score:5, Informative)
It's only been around since the '70s.
https://www.x10.com/x10-home-a... [x10.com]
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X10 is not up to the task because it is a one-way protocol. You can not verify that the commands you send to a device are received (or successfully executed) by the device. The best you can do is send the same command multiple times and hope that at least one of them got through. And if the commands are not idempotent (as in you need to send a sequence of commands that depend on the success of the previous command) then it becomes very unreliable.
Its nice for turning on the light in the room you are already in, but that's about it.
Correct. This is why X-10 has been almost universally retired, supplanted by Insteon [allhomerobotics.com]. And most people just getting into HA today are going with one of the newer wireless-only protocols, usually Z-Wave (Smartthings, Wink, Vera, Securifii), sometimes Zigbee (Philips, GE) or WiFI.
What about X-10? (Score:3)
I thought that was all locally controlled.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting problem... (Score:3)
As a developer of custom hardware and software, I'd LOVE to make products in this space. However:
1) Most people are trained to look for cheapest prices for devices, which are (for the most part) made in third-world sweatshops.
2) To provide a competitive price, you have to manufacture in volume in third-world sweatshops.
3) Due to lack of functioning IP protections in third-world countries, manufacturing there means instantly creating many competitors you cant compete with.
4) If you're willing to give up most of the world markets, you can still only compete against imports by spending lots on lawyers for ITC import games.
In their defense, "cloud" components provide a way to monetize the product in a manner somewhat resistant to third-world knockoffs and late shift runs to your competitors, as well as provide a user-friendly front end that you can tune without requiring the customers to update software, which is always a nightmare. That said, there is NO moral defense against the wholesale "all your data belongs to us, we can sell anything to anyone as long as we anonymize (sic) it" games that are played today. That said, for most modern corporations there are no such thing as morals.
I'm not aware of realistic ways to bring such products to market that are price competitive AND can provide sufficient income stream to recover initial investments, cover ongoing operating costs for a small team, and turn even a modest profit. Not in this world.
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IP is the biggest problem in being to operate even a small scale business without running a loss. UL (, CE) and FCC are relatively modest engineering and financial hurdles, they just require consideration during design and paying certification labs. For a simple product that's under $100k, been there many times, actually kind of fun (other than writing the check.) The problem is if you're making something really simple like an outlet or dimmer, it has to compete against the $10 Chinese devices with X10 o
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If you do manage to innovate sufficiently to charge $20, then thanks to IP knock-offs can appear here for $11 before your prototypes arrive you hoped to get certified. Meanwhile the knock-offs with fake UL, CE, and FCC stamps start appearing at WallMart, and when you try and get them to sell yours they inform you they already have a cheaper supplier. Who is a shell company owned by the company you contracted to make yours.
I have half a dozen product ideas of the same order of magnitude as you're describing, and the 20 years of professional coding experience to pull off at least the software side. Theoretically I have the necessary hardware education, but I lack the experience. Acquiring the necessary hardware experience is an uphill battle and a big big disincentive to pursuing it is exactly what you describe. If I go to all that work, learn what I need to know, and launch a successful Kickstarter that exceeds the scale o
DIY shouldn't be hard (Score:3)
A duct tape and bailing wire DIY shouldn't be too hard. Tricky part will be a smooth consistent niceness.
Quick google shows X10 to be alive and well, with RF or wired access to the devices. A webserver-with-API-to-X10-controller bridge device shouldn't be too hard to do with a Pi or similar acting as the bridge hardware, so that can get you on your local network - a quick google shows you should check the Pi and a project called Heyu. Rent a Linode or similar VPS for internet based control if you can't get a static method of addressing your home network when you are away or if your service provider blocks the ports you want to use
If it is in the cloud, it is not smart. (Score:2)
If it is in the cloud, it is not smart. Having your house report everything you do to people you don't know with interests you don't share may or may not provide useful features, but it is definitely not smart.
depends on what you mean (Score:2)
For something like thermostats, fire alarms, and cameras, some off-site access is an essential part of their functionality. For others (switches, etc.), it's a convenience. There are plenty of high-end for business use that don't use the cloud, but they are going to cost you: dedicated data lines, secure off-site facility, off-site server hardware, maintenance staff, backup, etc. Cloud integration is just something that turns an expensive high-end product into a cheap mass market product. But if you're will
Radio Thermostat (Score:2)
Yes; It just takes more work (Score:2)
It's not as shiny and takes more work than using the big name solutions (ie: Nest/Google), but the options are out there.
The RadioThermostat works over your choice of WiFi, Z-Wave, or Zigbee (pick up to 2 protocols). The cloud service is easy to setup and includes a convenient app, but the API is fully documented and compatible with a number of open source home automation servers. You can easily disable the cloud service if desired, or reconfigure it to point to a server of your choosing (local or remote)
Sensors are not the complicated part (Score:2)
Taking a break from tinkering with Raspberry Pi + breadboard + sensor kit to post this. Would not be that hard to control the wires a thermostat is connected to with GPIO. The question is just how smart and safe your solution is going to be. Value of cloud is machine learning based not just on your home, but all homes, and human follow up to enhance the software when there is a trend with no automated solution. Non-networked solution will never be as good, and thus will not be a consumer product.
DIY or GTFO (Score:2)
In my opinion the only way to avoid the big companies collecting your information is DIY.
At most on the outside you should ever need is a Dynamic DNS provider, and there are dozens of those you can use and script to send your outside accessible IP (assuming you don't have static address[es]).
A lot of this is actually fairly simple programming with basic IO sensors. You could build a thermostat like a Nest with a PiZero, a basic thermal sensor, a couple of relays and some of your own time. Sure, it won't loo
Vera (Score:2)
I have a Vera Lite [getvera.com]. It can be entirely functional without a connection to the internet. I have door locks and a thermostat which talk on the Z-Wave protocol. When one of the doors is locked using the button on the outside the Vera changes to an "Away" preset.
Why would you hack a Nest (Score:2)
Look into open protocols and free software (Score:2)
https://www.ietf.org/proceedin... [ietf.org]
Control4 (Score:2)
Yes it's easy, with the right hardware. (Score:2)
Pick the right controller to start, Vera is a good starting place and Openhab is more than happy to control it later on. Neither of those need internet access to work. My HA system has little to no internet access. I VPN in from phones to run it remotely and use a bit of custom code for geofencing. Now parts of the system have internet access my alarm panel use it as backup to talk to the monitoring company. Openhab is allowed to talk to weather and some other bits via my proxy. My garage door remote
DIY Nest (Score:2)
I built a smart thermostat about 12-15 years ago.
It's really not that hard.
Get an RCS TR-16 thermostat.
Hook it up to a PC (or, today, a raspberry pi).
Read the specs on the protocol and write a small daemon to listen for requests and take appropriate action based on them. For good measure, add sanity-checking of request parameters (don't allow it be set to cool below, say, 65, or heat above 72).
Use netcat or telnet to talk to the port it listens on.
It's really not difficult at all.
These days it'd make sense
CastleOS Maybe? (Score:2)
Another big issue is responsiveness of rules/triggering/devices.
I have a smartthings hub and sometimes simple motion triggers or routines fail and usually it's due to some sort of network issue. If I lose internet connectivity then a lot of my smart things become dumb things. To be fair things seem to be improving albeit slowly but I am still tied to Samsung and whatever they want to do with their services - it looks like they are more focused on TVs and Refrigerator hubs at the moment. I have no confidence
Given up. (Score:2)
63% (Score:2)
> The winner was "nobody", with 63% of the votes
How this isn't near 100% is completely baffling to me.
DIY libraries? (Score:2)
Incidentally, when I got into IoT and "that stuff", the first thing I did was starting to write my own software to control lights. So far only made it to a generic library, with a reference implementation etc, partly because all the smart-home equipment is too expensive ... and companies don't always share (local) APIs .... and I'm lazy ... but at least I got it pushed to Github.
But really, only buy stuff that has a local API (i.e. can be accessed directly via (W)LAN), so you're not 100% dependent on cloud-
Homematic (Score:2)
I use a Homematic CCU2. It works perfectly without any cloud.
Home Server (Score:2)
I haven't kept track, but ISPs used to shit bricks if you tried to run a home server (without paying for a business class connection). Their (somewhat legitimate) reasoning was that home servers were more likely to be hacked and used for things like anonymous e-mail relays for spam. But most botnets work just fine with any Windows desktop OS, so that reasoning is no longer valid. Still, with everyone trying to sell cloud services, rolling your own will still meet some resistance.
Most home automation/securi
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I haven't kept track, but ISPs used to shit bricks if you tried to run a home server (without paying for a business class connection). Their (somewhat legitimate) reasoning was that home servers were more likely to be hacked and used for things like anonymous e-mail relays for spam.
For the most part, American ISPs have backed down from this, and block inbound only for TCP/25 and the high-risk Windows ports. A few block port 80.
For just accessing your home network for the purpose of automation, there are plenty of workarounds to get past ISP blocking, they really don't care if you run a "server" that is only ever accessed by two iPhones, one for you and one for your SO.
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That was never the reason. That was the excuse.
The reason was that small businesses would use cheap consumer internet service, and the ISPs wanted commercial users to pay the greater rates for a business service. They put a 'no commercial use' clause in the contract, but it's difficult to enforce, so they just crippled the home service just enough that businesses couldn't easily use it.
It's just price discrimination - a little underhanded, but a perfectly legitimate business tool. It's equivalent to, for ex
Yes you can (Score:2)
I install them professionally. You buy AMX or Crestron, and have it installed and programmed. BOOM non cloud based home automation that works fantastically.
This has been the case for well over 30 years now, and most rich people have been enjoying it.
Non cloud based reliable stuff has existed for a long time now.... Dirt cheap home automation for poor people? That is a new thing from the recent decade. and "cloud" is how you extract money from those poor people unwilling to spend $20K on their home auto
How long will you live in your house? (Score:2)
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My house is thirty years old. There's a constant slow drip of water down the side due to a failed washer in the cold water tank ballcock. The washer can't be replaced because the valve after thirty years is a sculpture of copper oxide and is sure to crumble to dust on any attempt to access the washer, so even the simple mechanical things do fail. That's why plumbers do house calls.
One day it will be replaced, but there are certain family conflicts currently preventing it. That strange quirk of usually-male
Go old-skool/Please Specify (Score:2)
Digging deeper, it depends:
Local voice recognition doesn't work as well (Score:2)
At the current state of the art at least, cloud based voice recognition simply works better than anything you can implement on an affordable local system. There are two reasons.
One is that the cloud system can devote massive amounts of resources intermittently when you need them to recognize a voice command, but give those resources to other people when you do not. Current day voice recognition systems really aren't very intelligent; they work by comparing massive amounts of data with the recorded voice dat
WTF is "home automation" (Score:2)
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B-but can the cloud be very small; on your own server in your own home?
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
B-but can the cloud be very small; on your own server in your own home?
Not unless you want to spend a lot of money, and hundreds of hours of your own time.
Look, the economics of this is simple: By producing data that can be monitized, the cloud companies can reduce the up-front price. Most people go with the cheapest option. This reduces costs even more, since NRE can be spread over more units. It would be very difficult for a non-cloud company to compete with that. People that care about their privacy, and are willing to pay extra to protect it, are a niche market.
My home automation system uses an Amazon Echo and a Samsung SmartThings hub. The Echo is cloud based. I would prefer a non-cloud solution, but to be honest, I would not be willing to pay much more for it. I don't really care that much if Amazon knows what time I turn off the lights.
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It could be done. The embedded boards are not expensive, and one can get a Raspberry Pi Zero or an Arduino for pretty cheap, and build from there. Someone who wants to spin their own boards and even make their own ASIC is doable. If one wants as small a physical size as possible, it may take about $500,000 to fab an ARM SoC ASIC with a decent CPU, but it isn't impossible. We had X10 offering some form of home automation for decades now, and it never needed a cloud.
The trick is to use a hub and spoke arr
Mycroft (Score:3)
Mycroft [mycroft.ai] just released (Python, version unspecified) code they say you can run on your Raspberry Pi; Mycroft is an Alexa-like system, differences being it's open, the s/w is free so you can build your own, and the hardware is pretty open too.
There is cloud STT (Speech-To-Text) going on, but they're interested in local STT according to an email they sent around to those of us on their mailing list. My GPS (ca. 2013) does non-cloud general STT, so there's working code out there.
Speaking as an owner of both an
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Local control works, but (absurdly) requires a secure server as well as cloud-based comms with Amazon because that's the only way the Echo can understand what you told it.
All it really needs -- if they'd just get after it -- is a couple ip/ports open on the Echo so that one would send text to your computer when you spoke to the Echo, and one would receive text to be spoken from your computer. Then a single command that initiates that sequence, one you'd program in using the app. Imagine it was "custom" then
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It can be done cheaply, but that's only if you don't include the time to set it up as part of the price. Home automation without a prepackaged cloud solution is going to mean getting in there with a soldering iron and at least a bit of scripting.
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No, you don't observe that. What you observe is that newer items with more power come out for about the same price as they used to. Texas Instruments is a good example, the price points don't change, but the capabilities have gotten a bit better over the years. But, you're still looking at the same price.
In markets where there's a bit more competition you'll see that the companies will occasionally be forced to reduce prices in order to compete, which lasts until they buy out the competition and put an end
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Do you find the Echo/SmartThings combination effective?
No. There are a lot of problems and incompatibilities with various IoT devices. "Google Home" will supposedly have a built-in Z-Wave hub, so it will not need a separate bridge like the Amazon Echo does. You might want to wait a few months for it to be released. But Google Home is designed to mostly work with Nest devices (which are way over-priced) so I am not sure how well it will work with third party devices.
Home automation is still in the "early adopter" phase. So you should go ahead if you want so
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
Removing spying background services on an open system like Android is easy: either don't install the Google stuff (or remove it), or disable it selectively:
1. Root the phone (it is YOUR phone, you're the boss).
2. Install a service manager like https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
3. Open it, go to system, open Google Play Services.
4. Disable AdvertisingIdNotificationService, AdvertisingIdService, AnalyticsIntendService, AnalyticsService and AnalyticsUploadIntendService.
Now open Google Settings and see that your device does not have an advertising ID anymore. The above method kills most, however some apps collect their own data and don't let it go via Google so watch out what you install.
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The newer Samsung phones self-disable when rooted, unfortunately. I can't find a good replacement for my Note2 that has wireless charging.
The Nexus 6 has wireless charging, and has an unlocked bootloader.
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The trend in the tech industry for years is to unnecessarily drag some element o
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That's bullshit. Speech recognition was at like 97% or so for years before people had always on connections. And it gets even easier if you're dealing with commands and have people using fixed commands. Sort of like what Google does with OK Google. If you add House Activate or something similar before the command, then the system just has to see if what you said matches a known command.
The only thing that's at all tricky about it is setting it up so that it doesn't activate in response to the TV or radio.
Re: No. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's bullshit. Speech recognition was at like 97% or so for years before people had always on connections. And it gets even easier if you're dealing with commands and have people using fixed commands. Sort of like what Google does with OK Google. If you add House Activate or something similar before the command, then the system just has to see if what you said matches a known command.
The only thing that's at all tricky about it is setting it up so that it doesn't activate in response to the TV or radio.
^This. Mod parent up. Natural language parsing and speech recognition has been improving for years, and even Apple has finally allowed "offline recognition" options for their base system.
Going to the cloud makes it *easier*, since it vastly increases the number of samples and allows them to not care about processing resources at all and be generally shit programmers unless their project eats up too much of the internal balance sheet.
We all have computers far more powerful than are necessary to do this in our pockets. Add a desktop system to act as a central unit (not an unreasonable requirement) and to offload any particularly difficult recognition task to and it's entirely possible to have it all work internally.
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Natural language parsing and speech recognition has been improving for years, and even Apple has finally allowed "offline recognition" options for their base system.
Just to go on the Apple theme, Apple had "Speakable Items" in OS 9 and OS X for many years which worked very well.
Re: No. (Score:2, Interesting)
I have lights, hi Rez cameras, facial recognition, doors, locks, spa control, garage and alarm system. NONE of that is in the cloud and I control it directly with my phone, get alerts etc. There are plenty of options.
Re: No. (Score:5, Funny)
:Are you a James Bond supervillain?
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no you don't.
Your post rings of maternal basement dweller
That's because mom uses it to keep him down there.
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I'm curious if some of these devices actually have the processing power to locally do the things they are trying to do. Maybe costs cutting has led to underpowered hardware.
I'm wondering if anyone knows for sure.
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I second Homeseer [homeseer.com] as the local server of choice that will work with a variety of PLC (power line carrier devices) such as Insteon products (more modern X-10 equivalent) and security systems, thermostats. etc.
It's extremely powerful as you can do pretty much anything with the scripting language, or just stay within the confines of the UI and make some very flexible ladder logic and timed events.
To access the system remotely, open a port on your firewall for it and use a dynamic DNS service to make sure you
Re: (Score:2)
Mysensors is a nice framework they only recently added any security to it and it's optional, not that I'm to worried about somebody faking sensor data. I would not trust it for primary alarm sensors. Not to worried about somebody knowing when one of my LED light strips gets turned on or turning it off remotely.