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Comment by prower | Hacker News Reader

Or you could just flip the switch with your actual thumbs.

There's a discussion to be had to on placing every basic action on our daily lives on a finicky smartphone.

There's value in automation across different devices. Just a silly example: I've got a CO₂ monitor in my office. If the level goes above a certain threshold, it triggers a fan and changes the color of an LED light strip to alert me.

Automation is great. What's nice is the thing you described can also be implemented extremely cheaply without any fancy logic or network connectivity, and then it's just a Thing, not an IoT thing.

... Are you really using iot for a co2 sensor of all things? It's one thing if your smart toaster fails to start when your car enters the garage, it's another when a device to save your life decides to do an npm update at the wrong time and you go to sleep. For good.

This is probably to keep CO2 below 500/600 ppm, not a safety device.

Sitting in an increasingly concentrated puddle of my own CO₂ when I close the door of my small home office is not a life safety issue. It just seems to affect my cognitive performance at some point. If there were CO₂ tanks or combustion in play, I'd be using a proper industrial CO₂ alarm.

CO2 is pretty safe because your body has a built in sensor.

are you thinking of CO?

Slightly OT: But what sensor are you using? I've been on the lookout for one for years but always decided they've been too expensive. But now working from home I think it's time to finally get one.

I'm using the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ CO₂.

I was looking at this sensor available from Adafruit (and others): https://www.adafruit.com/product/4867

Seems like a reasonable price for a true CO2 sensor.

Automation is what you are missing.

I love that my light turns on in the hallway when sun sets. Or the lock locks/unlocks as I leave or approach the house. Or that I can see my camera over vpn.

I totally understand it for security, as ironic as it is (given the topic). For everything else though, I feel like there's a "honeymoon" effect in place, where the theoretical and immediate convenience overshadow the implications.

To make a silly comparison, it's like buying digital videogames on a console instead of their physical versions, knowing you're trading immediate convenicence while giving away control, ownership and future availability.

I would have much less problems processing IoT if the "I" was scrapped and optional by default.

I guess I have an hard time understanding people relying on the internet at all.

Correct. Most people like myself go with no cloud versions of smart home gear. And use vpn to have a lot more control.

A camera that works only locally (dafang hacks + wyze), home assistant, zigbee/zwave for example.

That's definitely a popular stance in the community of people who care enough to join the home automation and general electronics community, but if 'most people' is a factor, Amazon's best sellers are all "works with alexa" and "no hub required", and all of those products will surely die when their cloud tenancy is turned off.

In addition to what the other reply said about going local-only using Zwave/Zigbee, the other key is that home automation should be "in addition to" not "instead of."

Want to control your lights remotely or automate them? Use an in-wall smart switch. They still work as physical switches even if all your automation/smart home stuff is down. Guests don't need to know anything about the smart home, they can just operate them like regular switches. You get smarts "in addition to" the normal light operation that everyone in the world understands.

Smart garage? Hook into a regular, tried and true garage opener using some kind of remotely controllable relay. The button on the wall still works, the opener in your car still works, but you can have smarts in addition to all that.

Replacing regular bulbs with smart bulbs and then requiring a phone or internet connected voice device "instead of" a normal wall switch is insanity.

Other people feel differently.

I personally hate living in a haunted world which is filled with devices watching me, ready to pounce and fill me with delight at their fulfilling my every desire. It's absolute exhausting and downright terrifying when you think through the hell some motivated hacker (or hater) could subject you to.

Is it unthinkable that all this stuff will turn on you one day? What if you become infamous for crossing the wrong person and a viral video sends the firehouse of political hatred from one group or another your way? "Swatting" is a thing. Just wait until people start hacking your house. They could burn it down while you are away by just turning on your oven maybe!

Me? I'd like my bricks, locks, doors, lights, and life to stay dumb.

“Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door,” he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure. “All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.” - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

People just can't get enough of Alexa and her Genuine People Personality!

The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”

He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”

“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”

In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.

“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.

— Ubik, Philip K Dick, 1969

I like not having to get up and walk across my house to reset the internet because my ISPs modem is garbage and locks up under heavy load.

I like being able to schedule my plant's grow lights to get the appropriate amount of light regardless of season and being able to keep that schedule even when i'm not home

I like knowing that I left my garage door wide open as I drove away because I forgot to look back over my shoulder to see that the button in my car didn't get picked up.

I like being able to unlock the door for my neighbor to let my dogs out if I end up stranded at work longer than I had intended to when I left that morning.

I like that my garage camera turns on and takes shots of whoever is entering though the door when its opened.

I like that my system texts me if a door/window is opened after 10pm (if its me? no biggy. If its an intruder? BIG HELP)

I like that these devices are on a segregated VLAN with firewalling protecting my personal computers/NAS

---

There's a lot of negativity to be said about smart devices, but you can't focus solely on the negativity while ignoring the advantages.

There's also a level of risk and comfort each individual should be willing to set for themselves. I don't 100% trust my garage automation, that's why I have monitored security on my house. I'm not willing to automate devices that can harm my house (oven as your example) but I am willing to monitor their power state (is the oven on?)

This isn't all or nothing in the end.

Your dual-edged sword is a valid argument, but one can only set the level of risk and comfort iff he/she is aware of the risks in the first place. Look at how busy the Best Buy "Geek Squad" is setting up TVs' and helping new owners with use of their smart remote! :-)

I'd go further: smart devices are largely a status symbol. You're advertising to your guests that your concerns are those of convenience and luxury, to the point where you won't even use a light switch. That alone is pretty gross before you add in the implicit support for the megacorps.

That's a little too cynical.

I use smart home stuff, because: 1. I use it as security device (i have tons of zigbee sensors for motion, and contact). 2. I forget about simple things, all the time. I forget to lock my door, i forget to get my keys etc. All of this is taken care for me in case i forget. I haven't hooked up my garage door yet, but my kid (1 yo) likes to find the remote and press it mindlessly, and i really don't want to leave it open. 3. I like the convenience in general.

If you come to my house, it's definitely not something you'd say a "status symbol". It's only expensive because it's in bay area, otherwise it's a mediocre house.

I have been a programmer for as long as i remember, and these things excite me, that's another aspect.

I agree, but what I dont like is how to function a device needs Internet connectivity. Our smart vaccum cannot work with its app unless its connected to thr Internet. The nice thing is we can see its progress on mobile data, etc, but its a little ott for a 3rd party server to be involved. I'd prefer it to be local only.

I don't know of an off-the-shelf one you could buy.

For the tinkerers, https://dontvacuum.me/ and dustcloud/dustbuilder as search terms.

I have a roborock(Xiaomi sub-corporate brand) firmware flashed to no longer need internet, hosts "the database" on itself which is great for latency/responsiveness, provides web page functionality so you can use it from your phone, computer etc.

I quite like it.

Nice, I have the xaoimi mi vaccum Mop, not sure it's supported by that site just yet, but glad someone has taken up the challenge. It's a great little device.

There are lights in our home that are simply hard to get to, especially in certain cirumstances. I could probably rig up a physical switch with some extension cords (potentially dangerous) or rewire the house (expensive and messy) or I could use a wifi bulb or switch.

And once that was the case, it just made sense to have others for convenience, too. For instance, we can turn off almost every regularly-used light at the same time now when we go to bed. The remaining ones are lights we only turn on for a short time anyhow, so they don't get left on.

There are some good use cases for connected devices. Some are just gimmicks, but there's no point in being smug and discounting all of them.

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