Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

I admit this product does not really collect any particularly sensitive kind of data, but I still find this sentiment exemplary for the IoT market and it kind of bothers me:

The data (collar, toys) needs to be collected, sent to the cloud, and quantified (to view the results). There also obviously needs to be an app.

The problem the author was trying to solve was "get obese cats to move more" and the technical implementation of the first prototype was a simple "if cat does not move for a certain amount of time, activate toy". None of this requires that there is an app or that the product should need an internet connection for basic functionality. Yet those points seemed to be baked into the design from day one, without even giving them much thought. I'd like to know why this is the case.

Now, in this case, of course you need to collect data to figure out the correct parameters, get feedback and figure out more complex behaviors like the adaptive toy. But even then, this tracking could be done locally by the "brain" that was described later and only uploaded occasionally and with user opt-in.

I don't find anything wrong with this. You need to remember while the cat is an important stakeholder in the system, the executive stakeholder is the cat owner (he pays the bills) and thus he needs to see the value. Thus the app is to keep the owner in the loop and show them stats about the cat's activity.

Yes, and storing the cat's data in the cloud inevitably also leaks at least some information about the owner. For instance knowing when you feed the cat or let it in our out of the house gives clues about when you're at home.

I'm not convinced a (mandatory) app is always seen as added value - often it can be a liability instead.

But anyway, it's not clear to me at all that the owner would want such statistics or sees them as valuable. They bought the product to solve a specific problem - get their cat to exercise - and I assume the value they expect from it is to see their cat interact with the toy and eventually lose fat.

The statistics are all nice and well and may even be of interest to some customers - but that's in no relation to the hefty price that all customers are paying for them: That suddenly your cat toy requires a smartphone, an internet connection and an external cloud service to function. (Not to mention the collected data itself)

Things would be different if the cloud service was an obvious requirement for the product's core function - e.g. a location tracker that lets you find out where your cat is right now via smartphone. But that's not the case here in my opinion.

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