Hacker News Reader

Comment by nicpottier | Hacker News Reader

For those that have a bunch of home automation.. is it actually... good?

It strikes me as one of those things that is fun to set up, but probably breaks in weird ways every few months and you have to have a special kind of patience to deal with that. (not to mention a shared sense of patience from spouses etc..)

How reliable and stable is all this stuff? Can you really set this up and forget it and have it work reliably, ie, always? How often do these standards change? Am I going to have to reconfigure all my light switches after getting a new router for example? Or base my light purchasing decisions based on this?

Just curious, I'm intrigued, but having gone down this path in the past it feels more hobby than utility.

View on HN

I setup my own "internet buttons", but I did it in a cheating way - my buttons are nothing more than dumb radio-transmitters. There is no bluetooth, no wifi, and no complexity.

The buttons are dumb, so they are cheap.

Because the aim of the button is to do something "internetty" there is a single receiver which is plugged into my desktop PC which recieves the radio-transmissions, decodes the button IDs, and completes tasks.

There is a brief overview here:

https://blog.steve.fi/creating_an_iot_button__the_smart_way....

I have two receivers, an ESP8266 based device, and a hacked copy of software which uses an SDR dongle. Both are reliable and stable.

In terms of functionality though, they're useful. Dotted around the flat they let me control music, disable lights, and similar.

Cool, that sounds like a reasonable approach. I like the idea of a series of cheap buttons that can connect to a central hub in the home. Couple of questions though:

1. Do these buttons have their own power supply? If so how long does a battery last?

2. Is their a secure radio channel of communication?

3. Is their any feedback on the button that the computer received that button press. (To avoid multiple presses)

1. Yes, the buttons are powered by CR2032 batteries, and when the button is pressed an LED lights to let you know it worked. (i.e. You can detect when they're empty.) My batteries have lasted for several months so far, but I don't know how long to expect them to work.

2. Not sure what you're getting at here; anybody "local" could probably overhear the transmission. And probably perform a replay attack.

3. There is no feedback on the buttons, you press the button and they send a radio transmission (+ light the LED). There is no facility for two-way communication.

If I were building the buttons myself I'd probably have them both send and receive, such that you could use an ACK system. But the whole point is to use cheap & off-the-shelf parts so ..

Nice, wow those batteries are tiny!!

Replay attacks might be acceptable for insignificant tasks light lights and Air Conditioning I suppose. Also gives a much simpler architecture to the system.

I have remotes setup in my home and office and the only time I need to enter the Turn Touch app is when I add a new device. You would be surprised at how easy the app is to use. I looked at every other home automation app I could find and I made my own app with the simplest interface I could design.

It really is a set-it-and-forget-it product.

I would hope that it works now, my worry is more will it still work without me buying new stuff in five years?

Unlike very other tech product, the board inside Turn Touch is user replaceable (without tools!). So you can order a new circuit board when the wireless standards improve and get new functionality without having to spend the full amount.

Try to avoid stuff that depends on the Internet, Revolv was one example where customers got burned because Google essentially bricked the service after acquiring it. Logitech did a similar thing to their Harmony Link hub, though were more generous in offering customers an upgrade path.

I predict this will work in five years but not in fifteen. By 2033 you will have an iPhone XXIV which will not support Bluetooth, and even if you find an ancient iPhone XVI with Bluetooth on eBay, the remote maker will no longer be working on improving the app, so Apple won't let you install it. Of course today he's here to say the circuit board is replaceable but unless this thing is a breakout hit there won't be enough motivation to enhance it in 2033.

For those who may say if a remote lasts five years it's good enough: maybe you're right in today's context. Things I grew up with came with remotes that lasted 20 years and were only obsolete when the thing they controlled was. I guess that's true of Turn Touch too, if you consider that the device it controls is your iPhone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com