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Comment by guybrushT | Hacker News Reader

One of the companies that is solving this very problem is Xiaomi. Their method is quite crude - that is, they make everything themselves. But the end result is that everything they make - from an air purifier to a TV - is connected and operated via a similar / familiar OS called MIUI.

They give away their phones for very cheap, because the phone is the Trojan horse - it is the remote control for all the other devices it makes.

Xiaomi is the largest and fastest growing IoT company on the planet, and worth keeping an eye out for.

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Yup, Xiamoi makes everything interoperable by making it themselves. And Apple makes HomeKit. And Google makes their own. And Microsoft makes their own. And HP makes their own. And...

See the problem?

Actually, Microsoft has joined as part of the "Allseen Alliance" and has done a great deal of work around Alljoyn.

One link is here -- https://ms-iot.github.io/content/en-US/win10/AllJoyn.htm

Also a colleague of mine has done a great deal of work with and talked about this work over the last year or so. Here is a link to one of his talks -- http://www.omggeek.com/elc-2015-alljoyn-101-make-smarter-dev...

Part of the issue with IoT is what do you define as IoT, the devices themselves, data ingest, management infrastructure, etc. The whole topic is pretty broad.

I do. And you are right. I think we will get to a place where one company does it right, before we agree on an interoperable standard.

I'm cynica that will be the case. On the Internet TV front we have roku, apple tv, chrome cast, kindle fire TV-- all of them empty plastic boxes doing nearly the same exact thing, and yet there is no interop to speak of. It's just more walled gardens

I've been considering replacing my media PC with a Roku, so I'm curious why you would call them "empty plastic boxes" considering the Roku can stream from my local server and I block all outbound requests at my router (firewall). The advantage I see is the 5W power draw vs. my current 20W. I'm also unclear on what interoperability would mean for one of these devices. I don't think 2 Roku on the same network have any capacity to communicate either (maybe I'm wrong?).

I'm not krisdol, but I presume the "empty plastic boxes" is a reference to the fact that the amount of hardware necessary to stream video is now miniscule. My Roku is the size it is not because it needs to be that big to hold components, but so that it looks substantial to consumers and doesn't get lost in a ball of cables.

And interop for me would mean that instead of N proprietary platforms that must be targeted separately by software/content makers, there would be one universal platform with different manufacturers. The Amazon app on Roku, for example, is pretty weak; I presume it's much better with an actual Amazon device. And YouTube wasn't available on Roku for a number of years, even though you could get it on other devices, I presume because Google was trying to make their own device play with Google TV.

I agree with your take, but I don't see that happening; I prefer to take care of media acquisition on my own because I don't trust these companies to do any differently than the media companies they seek to, ultimately, replace.

Roku has the private channel feature that I think makes it more interesting than the other players, and I wish more effort was exerted to explore the possibilities with private channels. Have you used this feature?

It seems to me that if the streaming providers had better APIs, the device makers could make use of them; I imagine Amazon's devices have access to private APIs that Roku does not.

I picked up a new Sky Now TV box for 8 GBP (with cashback). It's basically a re-branded Roku but you can't get all the channels. Still, quite the bargain considering it even comes with an HDMI cable. It has all the standard catchup apps such as BBC iPlayer but no Netflix (Sky are competitors).

It also has a developer mode which may be what you are referring to. I managed to side-load Plex onto it. If the Netflix app code was available then I guess that could be side-loaded too. Only one development app can be loaded at a time though.

I also looked at doing some development but the VBScript brings back too many bad memories. :)

http://digiex.net/guides-reviews/guides-tutorials/media-guid...

I haven't. I use the Roku to put things like Netflix and Amazon on the big screen. I remember trying a few different things to put content from my server on the Roku, but I could never get it to work smoothly; there were hitches both with the on-Roku software and with encoding issues. Instead I just bought an Intel NUC for that.

In a few years I hope I can replace them both with some sort of Android device, but for now I don't mind two devices.

>My Roku is the size it is not because it needs to be that big to hold components, but so that it looks substantial to consumers and doesn't get lost in a ball of cables.

Are you sure its not because multiple-generations-removed miniaturization technology is cheaper, and the latest Roku devices are under $100? Or that perhaps it's a different economic driver, rather than so the consumer sees its physical size?

Regarding the second app, I think the issue is again non-technical -- content is not available across devices because it's a differentiator. It may seem an artificial barrier -- your Roku can decode any video stream -- but the structure of a system that created the content suggests otherwise.

Sounds like things are ready for interoperation except for the human/economic/structural element.

Assuming $50.00 for a Roku, electricity at $0.15/kWh, and 16 hours average daily usage, breakeven point is in ~3.8 years vs. an existing 20W solution.

16 hours daily usage?! Whoa nelly, that's a lot of TV watching! I suspect a lot of people on here (like me) watch less than one hour a day. The US national average is five hours, which is still startlingly high, but doesn't get you close to 16 hours per day even with multiple people in a household (as their viewing times will tend to overlap).

I suspect that stand-by power usage may be more important than active power usage for such a device. And I don't know how Roku fares for that, nor its alternatives.

The point of the disillusionment exercise was to carefully select parameters that favored narrowrail's perceived "advantage" in an improbable but still realistic way.

In other words, assuming a proverbial couch potato got a sweet deal on a new Roku 3 and pays up the wazoo for electricity, it would take a solid 4 years of usage in the prescribed manner before breaking even on a relatively small investment, rendering any perceived power savings "advantage" over an existing 20W system null...let alone other considerations like product MTBF, lifecycle, the next trending 6-second attention getter, interoperability, etc.

Get a small, open system. I own a CuBox, but something like a Raspberry Pi 2 would work just as well.

Install some linux distribution (I use OpenELEC) that boots into Kodi (formerly xbmc).

Seriously. No proprietary thing I have ever seen matches the features and usability of Kodi. It's an amazing piece of open-source software.

if all of these have youtube, hulu and netflix ...to the consumer that might be the level of interop currently required -- interop with their fav delivery platforms, not necessarily the devices themselves

We haven't seen this with instant messaging. For some inexplicable reason, the big players find great value in maintaining walled gardens.

Why would we expect things to be any different in the world of hardware?

Why not a good open-source standard? iOS did it "right" for mobile, but Android provided tough competition. And Apple benefited from the competition... it pushed iOS designers to keep their game up - and likewise.

https://xkcd.com/927/

Like AllJoyn?

[0] https://allseenalliance.org/

Like file systems and network shares!

weeps for the future he'll never see

What's wrong with CIFS?

If Xiamoi makes enough of the stack, the devices with a desirable user experience...it might not be a problem at all for both Xiamoi and the customers at this phase of IoT - the vertical integration level is likely required to get it off the ground and make it a good experience.

Eventually, a shift to a more horizontal and open approach will win out, but it seems hard to do that at the starting point of an emerging market.

That is not a problem. That is competition. Imagine the opposite where a company has monopoly over the technology.

If you had to decide the brand of your power sockets, and then use only devices of that brand, would you call that competition?

There is a whole different dynamic to these devices in China. Air quality, water quality, etc. are part of middle class lifestyle in China, and many people do not trust the authorities to keep these parameters within spec. Multiple air filters in an apartment are common, and monitoring the performance of these devices is an obvious interest to their owners. This is a much more compelling home automation story than thermostats or smoke alarms that should be mostly invisible in the home environment.

I've never understood the desire to add smart technology to the smoke alarm. Once properly installed a smoke alarm should be interacted with when (1) there is a fire, (2) the battery is running flat. False alarms pretty much mean you've installed it wrong.

A friend of mine, a great cook, regularly performs what she refers to as The Dance of Smoke Alarm Supplication, wherein she and a broom jointly try to persuade the alarm gods that everything is fine. When she heard that there was a smoke alarm that would pop up a notification on her phone first so she could mute it with zero shrieking, she was very excited.

It may be that her landlord installed it wrong, but landlords (and homeowners) install an impressive number of things wrong, so a business that didn't depend on "amateur does X perfectly" doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.

Ah, the Smoke Alarm Supplication Dance. Great term. My wife and daughter had the same issue. They like to cook and can tomato sauce. Our smoke alarm would go off very easily - lots of false positives. One day my wife is vacuuming the hall and the motor in the vacuum cleaner overheats and starts putting out thick, black smoke right under the smoke alarm. Nothing from the smoke alarm... Needless to say we quickly replaced both the vacuum cleaner and the smoke alarm and made certain to get one with dual sensors...

> A friend of mine, a great cook, regularly performs what she refers to as The Dance of Smoke Alarm Supplication, wherein she and a broom jointly try to persuade the alarm gods that everything is fine. When she heard that there was a smoke alarm that would pop up a notification on her phone first so she could mute it with zero shrieking, she was very excited.

The Dance of Smoke Alarm Supplication can still apply to smart smoke alarms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsMkLaEiOY

I don't know why this was downvoted; I thought it was very relevant.

Yes the landlord installed it wrong.

However in what scenario does a landlord install a £100 smoke alarm when s/he can install a £10 one though? No landlord I've ever had would have done this -- given that over here bills are paid by the tenant a thermostat is usually not provided.

Homeowners can at least move them when they realise they have installed them wrong.

Some landlords will install a £100 smoke alarm when they realize that they can get real-time notifications that one of their buildings is on fire. Others will do it as a fancy feature to attract higher-paying tenants.

And when the price falls to £30, as happens with these things, a lot more will do it.

>Some landlords will install a £100 smoke alarm when they realize that they can get real-time notifications that one of their buildings is on fire.

Not even on fire, maybe people are smoking inside when they aren't suppose to be. Maybe someone burns their food commonly and that needs investigated before they burn the whole damn place down one time. I can see lots of reasons for that.

> I've never understood the desire to add smart technology to the smoke alarm.

Because very few things suck more than coming home from work and your house is burnt down because the smoke alarm wasn't heard by anyone and by the time the fire crews arrive it's too late. Happened to a friend of mine, house was beyond repair even though fire crews arrived 10min after a passing driver noticed the blaze.

A smoke detector is there to alert the occupants of the building so that they get out. If it was an actual alarm system that is connected to a dispatcher, the firefighters would've been notified.

Yeah, as originally designed perhaps, but what if you could add a bit of tech to make sure your pets are safe? Or you're not coming home only to inhale carbon monoxide? I don't think $99 is a ridiculous expense for such peace of mind, even if it's not proven to be full proof just yet.

My CO alarm sounds pretty loudly. You notice it the moment you open the door again smart it does not need to be.

How would you get your pet out in time if your CO alarm or smoke alarm went off when you were at work?

Perhaps coming home hours earlier from work and/or calling a neighbor would increase their odds of survival.

I find it odd that people are questioning the value of this life and death information while there are plenty of frivolous IOT devices.

Because CO kills surprisingly quickly -- unless your commute is in the order of a couple of minutes you'd be too late. Also you don't send a person into a house with a CO leak so asking you neighbour to retrieve your cat would be placing them in danger.

My point is that the smoke alarm and the CO alarm should be exactly what they are simple alarms that allow occupants to escape in an emergency. Adding IOT capabilities doesn't add to the alarm functionality in sensible ways. However, it does risk introducing vulnerabilities. I don't want my smoke alarm to start sending spam emails (this really happened with a smart fridge a couple of years ago).

You're being awfully pedantic. Have the neighbor shut your gas off. Have your landlord alert the neighbors. What if you just left for work? I can find a bunch of scenarios where the information can be useful, whereas you seem determined to argue that only the occupants (who might just be kids burning toast) should have this information.

The information is intended to allow the occupants to escape safely if required. In the case of a CO alarm no one should enter the premises until qualified engineers have made it safe. The the case of a smoke alarm the occupants are the only ones that can safely decide if it is a false alarm -- if there is a fire no one should enter the premises until the fire has been dealt with by qualified personal. What you are suggesting would mean adding a general purpose computer to essential safety equipment. Anything that adds complications and could affect the main function of the safety equipment would need to be considered very carefully.

I never suggested that unqualified personnel should enter an unsafe environment or people add anything to essential safety equipment. The Leeo just listens for alarms and lets you decide what to do with the information. It does not affect the operation of the safety equipment whatsoever.

In the case of CO2, is it better to have qualified personnel attempt to arrive at 6pm after you get home from work and hear the alarm, or sometime closer to when the leak occurred and you were alerted on your smart phone? (I don't think emergency responders are twiddling their thumbs in the evening or there's light traffic)

In the case of fire, is it better to call the personnel before the retired lady down the street notices the flames and smoke while your at work??

What is the Leeo?

That's not true - you're meant to test your smoke alarm weekly. Also false alarms can be the smoke detector acting correctly to the presence of smoke, eg. Burnt toast.

In this case the ability to remotely check the alarm status from a self check, or to remotely snooze a false alarm while clearing the smoke can be very handy

OK so you find it easier to find your phone open the app and then press that button. I find it easier to press the button on the unit. I also find it easier to touch a £10 device with food covered/wet fingers whilst cooking than to get out a £300 smart phone and touch that with food covered or wet fingers.

I agree. They are so cheap. The ones I install are less than ten dollars. Won't name the brand. They are usually on the bottom of the shelf. Hidden away from worrisome consumers that equate price with function. Many contractors buy them by the case.

I usually install two, and run a electrical line to one.

Yes, an app is fine if you burn food, and have the disposable income? I would rather see home owners spend the money on running a line to their smoke, and CO detectors though.

Weeds grow fast too. Maybe I'll go buy some.

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