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IoT is a fad in the current way we're going about it.

What's not a fad is getting devices to communicate their health and status to an upstream repository for things like predictive analytics.

This is already happening in the B2B sector. It will reach the consumer sector next, but like you said it will take 2-3 consumer product cycles to make it real.

It won't be about remote control or any of the barely useful use-cases you're seeing with fridges and door locks and water bottles. It will be knowing your home's A/C has two weeks of operation before it seizes up. It will be knowing your home's plumbing has frozen and burst while you were away.

The "TV in the refrigerator" IoT is definitely a fad, but you're right, there's a fundamental need to connect devices together and to a central managing/monitoring service.

There is also a fundamental need to have those devices be secure. Consumers take this for granted because they have been secure for so long. They don't know what's coming. And when they find out then there whole thing will probably blow up. It just takes a few companies to tarnish it for everybody else.

The problem with IoT is the I

The problem is the lack of corporate liability. If they used some alternative to the internet we'd be reading about how it makes the SWIFT network look secure add long as the alternatives are “spend money and time doing it responsibly” or “ship it now with a strong EULA”.

That stuff kills me when it's marketed like that. It's not IoT! Having a tablet or a TV or Twitter in your computer isn't IoT, it's just a shitty tablet, and it still required human intervention. That's literally the Internet we have right now. IoT would be your fridge talking to the store and telling them you need more milk, and then you get a shipment of milk. But that's infinitely harder than taping a tablet to a fridge, so Samsung sells us a tablet taped to a fridge and it's called IoT.

Connected devices are not IoT. Marketing needs to learn that.

Both of those use cases (AC/plumbing) are good, but cannot be stand alone products. These sensors will be integrated into your next AC unit or PEX manifold. They also need to be robust enough to last the full duration of the unit.

The major issue is the platform. Commercial products already have dedicated terminals, so the platform already exists. But I don't want to have to install the AC app on every new phone just to monitor it. Or renetwork my house when I buy a new router (imagine having your grandparent struggle through that).

I think what you'll see first is the manufacturers embed the transport layer directly into the hardware and use cheap cellular connections to talk directly to the factory. The entire service will be either opaque to the customer, available for a "subscription", or part of a warranty.

The last-mine problem of standardizing the link from device to internet is going to be a hard one for a long time to come, IMO.

I've bought a lot of "IoT" devices (going back to the days of X10) and yeah lot of them are utterly useless, but so were a lot of dotcom startups in 1999.

The thing I've realized, which may be obvious, is that first and foremost the device needs to work well in its "unconnected" form. Examples:

* Hue/LIFX/etc suck because most of the time I just want to flip a light switch, not pull out my iPhone to control it. I'm a fan of Z-Wave (or whatever) switch replacements that function just fine as regular switches, or I can turn off every light in my house through a wall controller, Alexa, or my iPhone. But if that secondary system fails I can still control my lights.

* Withings scales are great, because it works well as a simple scale, but also records my weight so I can go back and look at trends, etc.

* I like Dropcams because they're super easy, though I wish it weren't locked to a proprietary service

I have the Hue dimmer switch which makes them infinitely more useful. I can now control my lights without having to pull wires etc.

That may work, as long as you can prevent people from using the wall or lamp switch, and if it works even if your internet connection/router is down. My preference is for more hard-wired/bulletproof solutions.

Yes it works with no internet connection, you connect to a hub on the local network.

Pulling a new wire is better but also much more expensive. Adding a new switch for me is~200 and I can't move it around like the Hue.

I'm not sure it's a fad, but it is definitely not ready for prime time.

I have a "smart washer" largely because the smarts came with the washer I wanted. The "smart" functionality is completely unusable. First, it can only be connected to the network via WPS. (And the reviewers for the smart phone app don't seem to be able to connect it even with WPS. I haven't tried.) Second, the actual functionality of the connected app is a joke. So why do they have smart functionality at all? My guess is marketing. Is anyone going to return their otherwise awesome washer because the smart functionality is crap? Probably not, since there is no washer or dryer with true smart functionality on the market. But having it on there as a feature might sell a couple units.

On the other hand, while a refrigerator that detects when I'm out of milk is useless now, I can imagine a future in which it then orders the milk for me, so I never have to worry about it. I honestly can't stand doing inventory and ordering/shopping every week. I would love for that process to be automated.

I think you've reinvented the milkman.

Regular milk deliveries might be a little bit more inconvenient than automatically ordered milk, but it's vastly simpler.

You're being ridiculously literal.

What if you have milk but are out of orange juice or cheese or steak? Unless the 'milkman' is turning up with all these things on the of chance you're low on one this system is much more efficient.

> detects when I'm out of milk

That's a fad. I wouldn't be suprised if people just wanted to take a look inside their fridge while they're shopping, so a webcam at each level would be enough.

> I honestly can't stand doing inventory and ordering/shopping every week. I would love for that process to be automated.

A beautiful fact about refrigerators is that they make for perfect whiteboard surfaces and they are magnetic. I take a picture of my fridge before I go shopping, on which I have written everything that needs to be purchased. A magnetic whiteboard marker with builtin eraser stays on the fridge. There is no way a "smart fridge" is going to catch up to that level of ease + utility any time soon.

I have an actual magnetic whiteboard, which I carry with me to the store and erase as I put things into my cart. The magnetic marker+eraser goes in my pocket, and I put it back on the fridge when I'm putting away my groceries.

What if there were and "Evernote-OCR + Amazon Fresh" app that would let you take a picture of the whiteboard and then have the stuff show up in an hour?

To me, this seems far more inconvenient than just taking out my phone and just putting in to my grocery list what I'm out of in something like Our Groceries. It syncs to my phone and my wife's phone and keeps track of items we've previously purchased. No need for a picture of the fridge, one person can just pick up everything on the list without even asking.

I am perfectly capable of maintaining an inventory. In fact I am quite efficient at it. The reason is that I despise having to do it; which is also the reason I would love an automated process which doesn't require me to snap photos or go to stores. Your solution wouldn't work well for me, though. My refrigerator is covered in stained wood. :)

Some IoT is a fad. But there are very useful things that you can do if you have many connected data devices and sensors at home.

I have ~15 temperature sensors and door sensors that alert me when doors get opened. I was able to use that data to definitively measure the positive impact insulating my house had. I can tell when people enter or exit my house, and I also have ~10 cameras for security. If I get a notification that someone is around my house while I'm gone, I can call my local police department a lot faster than any alarm company.

My Nest also tells me how long my furnace is on every day. Of course their data is useless so I constantly request and store this data in violation of their terms of services, because fuck Nest and their useless TOS. But with that I can make smarter decisions on how to save money in heating and I've halved my bill by manually adjusting my heating (not relying on their stupid algos).

Do I need a fridge that tells me I'm out of eggs? No. But having metrics and data lets me as a homeowner make smarter decisions that save money.

So you got a smart thermostat, wrote some code to hit an API, and do some fancy math to half your heating bill.

Why could you not just turn your thermostat down 4 degrees for the same thing?

I get that there might be some marginal gains you can get with tech ("A heat wave is coming tomorrow, let's shut off the furnace 1 hour early"), but it seems really small and crude compared to existing offline tech can do (look for leaky holes in your insulation, add 6" more blown insulation in your attic, etc"). Or for example replacing a 80% efficient with a 99% efficient furnace has a pretty huge impact. Does nest magic timing have more?

The nest cost $250, insulation cost 10x that, and new furnace is 40x.

I agree that insulation and upgrading the home would produce the nest results but my point is that the data is useful, not useless.

I could shut my heating completely and save 100% but that misses the point. What I did was turn on the heating in the morning to a temperature that was comfortable and then shut it off so that by the time everyone left for work/school the temperature would still be acceptable but on the lower bounds. That saved about 45 mins of heating a day.

Overnight as well I could see how my furnace behaved and tweaked based on that, etc.

The key isn't just the nest but the other temp sensors so I have a complete idea of what my houses characteristics are.

Ya so you don't just need a nest.. you need a nest + other sensors + a bunch of other code. If your bill rate is $200, it is pretty quick before the amount of effort you spent engineering a nest solution would have been beat by just having some guys come blow $1000 in insulation in your roof.

> . I can tell when people enter or exit my house, and I also have ~10 cameras for security. If I get a notification that someone is around my house while I'm gone, I can call my local police department a lot faster than any alarm company.

What kind of cyberpunk dystopia are you living in that you need this?

It's fun as hell knowing what's going on in the house at all times and feeling that I'm protecting myself and my family. Whether or not that's true is to be determined.

What about the increased security liability and added attack surface you've exposed for the benefit of the smarter criminal or random online script kiddie just wanting lulz?

I'd seriously be interested in how you addressed that.

What security liability? If you're talking about a random attack, then they would need to somehow piece together my various email addresses and break different passwords. The cameras (Dropcam, Smartcam, Ring) don't keep ports open on my firewall.

If you're talking about a targeted attack, there's likely nothing I can do except sit in my house with a loaded gun.

Are you running off the shelf temp sensors or something you built?

I use wirelesstags.net which is good enough for me. Pretty effective for my uses, batteries last about 1 year for updates every 10 mins, and you have access to all your data for all time.

> IoT is a fad

It is a fad because there is no common standard.

Just imagine you could connect to all your devices (washing machine, heating system, warm water system, garage doors, TV and hifi) from the same app om your phone. And just imagine you could just go to your parents place and do they same thing there. Just imagine you could just buy some random LED bulbs from alibaba and they would just work in your home without thinking about the right standards.

But all of this is just not possible because there is no common standard. I'd really like to buy some remote controllable LED bulbs and perhaps a remote for my heating system. But there are dozens of companies which offer the samw things but they don't work with each other... This is why home automation is not taking off.

My parents are planning to build a new house and it will be 100% traditional without any fancy home automation stuff because there is no universal system.

> Just imagine you could connect to all your devices (washing machine, heating system, warm water system, garage doors, TV and hifi) from the same app om your phone

Why would I want to.

Well, to be honest: Nobody really needs this.

But if this would work flawlessly then life could be just a bit more comfortable.

For example I am laying currently on the bed and the light in the kitchen is still on. Yes, I could just get out of bed and walk over there, but if there would be an easy gui for this is my mobile it would be good because at the moment I am very lazy.

A quite real problem I have in winter is the temperature in my sleeping room. Sometimes I wake up and it is either too warm or too cold and I have to get up and change the settings. Usually I then have the problem that I can not fall asleep again. If I could just press a button, I could turn around and continue sleeping.

So yes, I don't really _need_ this, but my lazy self would love the comfort.

In all fairness, I'm sure there was a day when many people said: "A remote for the TV--how lazy can you be?" (Admittedly there were only about four channels or so then.)

>If I could just press a button

The more likely model is to go "Alexa--turn off the downstairs lights."

Joking aside, there's probably some confluence between consumer IoT devices and natural language recognition that brings some things into the lazy but genuinely useful range. Unfortunately, most of my annoying home tasks fall into messy physical world interfaces (do the laundry and put it away) that don't really lend themselves to digital automation.

Eh, people also looked at a bunch of terrible inventions and correctly said, "who would ever want that?". Sometimes an invention is mistimed (eg, if the remote control were invented when we had 4 channels and not 40 or 400) or lacking just the right amount of polish (does anyone remember browsing the web on a pre-iPhone smart phone?), but sometimes an invention is just solving a problem almost no one has in a way essentially no one wants.

"A remote for the TV--how lazy can you be?" that definitely did happen

The first TV remote control was called Lazy Bones: http://www.tvhistory.tv/1950_Zenith_Wired_Remote.JPG

Fragmentation of various sorts is a problem though some of it is probably inevitable to a certain degree as there's probably a need for, at minimum, a variety of protocols and physical interconnects.

That said, even if you hand wave away this problem you still need to have solutions that mainstream consumers find genuinely useful/valuable. Yes, lack of interoperability adds additional friction. But I see a lot in the consumer IoT space that I'd still have zero interest even if it were completely standardized and interoperable.

The article isn't really good but the headline is spot on: "Smart technology is a solution looking for a problem"

http://www.dezeen.com/2016/04/27/smart-technology-driverless...

I don't have anything useful to say about IoT, but I can think of three major changes newer than television: microwave ovens, personal computers, Internet. Mobile phones are also a major change that you might also put in this category.

Alternatively, it's a feature not a product.

My favorite example is garage doors. People won't pay $50 to retrofit a half assed automation onto their existing opener. When many openers come with wifi without much of a price premium, lots of people will start using the feature.

Just out of curiosity why would you want to open a garage door via the internet? If it somehow enables you to close the door without seeing what it might be closing on that sounds like a spectacularly bad idea.

Obstruction sensors and automatic reverse have been required for decades (in other words, the openers are already meant to be safe to operate without observation). Anyway, just knowing it is open can be useful.

I can imagine use cases.

The most obvious is: "Siri/Alexa open the garage door." (assuming some established authentication mechanism) rather than dealing with the unique garage door remote.

I can imagine others. "This is Alexa, it's 11pm and your garage door is still open. Should I close it?" and things in that vein. But those seem pretty marginal. I have very rarely left my garage door open by accident.

There are a few devices where there are good arguments for connectivity. An HVAC thermostat, for one, benefits as it's the most expensive consumer of electricity, so a smarter device (or access to external resources) makes sense. Additionally, the ability to control it remotely has a great benefit for "oh hey, I forgot to turn off the A/C before we left on our month-long trip." It could pay for itself right there.

I really think IoT ought to be much more focused on a few high-value devices. Mostly, I think this is important because they have high value for end users but, as such, are also potentially targets for attacks, and by focusing on fewer devices they can hopefully be made much more secure.

Like AI, IoT is a catch-all term for the things that are not yet significant enough to have their own more specific category. Useful applications arise from the primordial soup and acquire their own name.

The existing products (locks, sensors, smoke detectors) are barely different from existing home security products that have been on the market for years

The existing products have miniscule market penetration, for decades, precisely because their networked integration is abysmal. IoT is yet another attempt to impose some order on the market, which is still focused on incompatibility as a way to retain customers rather than grow the market.

There is ENORMOUS pent up demand for networked everything, if only a cheap universal standard arose and was accepted.

I think that demand is from the companies and not the consumers. Stand in front of a Lowes in the Midwest and ask consumers who walk out if they would like whatever item they bought to be hooked up to the internet. I bet you would get more No's than Yes's.

You said it! I don't want a smart oven and a smart lamp. I just want stuff "that works".

Digital devices take off when they have a killer application. So far I've seen nothing along these lines.

I will avoid buying 'smart' appliances for probably forever. Besides having mostly useless features, I'd rather not have another electronic probe in my life relaying all of the details of my life to everyone.

All valid points, but I think the products now are laying groundwork for the future. I really believe that at some point, the home will have more safety features and convenience because of IoT. I'm actually surprised that Nest failed to deliver more products. There will be some company that offers a wide range of products and has a huge marketing budget for explaining the use to people.

IoT will eventually happen, but for Smart Grid to reduce power usage. There is a potential to save 30% of energy cost.

That doesn't need the "cloud". It just needs a broadcast signal telling your appliances the current price of electricity.

It's not exactly the same, but in the UK, Economy 7 is effectively a low tech version of this. At night the price of electricity is cheaper, so electric storage heaters and boilers are switched on then to take advantage of the lower costs and reduce demand at peak times. Rather than using timers, it is controlled by a radio signal broadcast throughout the country.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7

Check out Wattvision - it's like Fitbit for your house ;)

I agree about everything being connected to the internet.

However, I think no truly groundbreaking device has come out, yet. I bet money that one day, a truly useful device will eventually come out. Something, years later, we'll wonder how we ever lived without it.

Like the iPhone did for smartphones.