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Comment by voisin | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of consumers are going to wake up in a few years and feel ripped off when their smart thermostat or smart lock or smart lights are no longer supported and have lost the functionality they’ve paid extra for.

I miss the days when you pay for some set of functionality and it stays with the device for the duration of ownership. The standard seems to be to buy on one set of value propositions and to find them degraded over time (see Peloton eliminating Apple Watch support for all exercises but cycling this week as a recent example). I think this is what makes Tesla special with regular OTA updates increasing functionality.

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Especially with the rising cancer known as SaaS. Soon you'll need to be paying $10/mo for your thermostat to work, and you'll need to fork over another $200 every other year to upgrade the hardware.

And then the company will be purchased by a FAANG and you will immediately be forced into using new accounts and new workflows for the same functionality (yes, suddenly thermostats have workflows now...)

It's a small price to pay for the new Amazon Lord of the RingsTM television event where everyone's heaters will kick on at max whenever there's fire on screen.

This is actually an improvement. It aligns the incentives of the guys making your thermostat's web UI. Otherwise your thermostat wouldn't get new features and security updates

No, I want security updates without surveillance, without lock-in and without a monthly fee.

Sounds like too much to ask?

This is what Linux distributions has been providing for decades. And my 486 PC was less powerful than some thermostat.

SaaS gets hated on too much here. The incentives work out as well for desktop software - there's no longer the incentive to add new features to justify customers purchasing a new version (or withhold features until the new version). The problem I've seen is that it almost always comes with a big price hike when compared to an alternative of upgrading every 3 years. The only exception to this I can think of is Office 365 which still remains a deal.

Its a fucking thermostat.

I don't need the company to be bankrolling a $2mm/yr AI team so that the thermostat can try to make better guess about when I want to turn on the heat.

You don't, but they do. By analysing how you use thermostats they may figure you need an AC and sell your profile to AC makers.

I bought some FEIT rgb smartbulbs at costco (there were on sale I think it was $5 or $10 each) but yes I don't like the outsourced service (tuya), even though I normally turn them off with a switch. I even wrote FEIT suggesting they make a slightly more expensive hobby version where you can still overwrite the esp32 firmware, etc so you don't need this "free" service and could connect the directly to say something like home assistant. I think I would willing to pay something (maybe $5) just for the keys to overwrite the firmware, like the license you have to buy for your raspberry pi to use the mpeg-2.

After-sales profits are the dream they're chasing.

That's why it'll be increasingly hard to get a dumb TV, because after-sales profits keep going without having to make anything.

This is absolutely why I refuse to purchase any smart home products that aren't fully functional within the Apple Home app. If something cannot work offline and without a central service then it doesn't belong in my home.

I think that's the primary value proposition for Apple HomeKit and I'm really quite sad that more companies, and Apple themselves, don't put more effort into supporting it.

I am an admitted Apple fanboy, but even I recognize that Apple is an offender in this field. We have tons of old Apple iPhones and iPads that had functionality that no longer works - app developers stopped supporting the only iOS that can be loaded on the device. It is only a matter of time before this happens to HomeKit too.

and the more built-in and capital intensive, the worse it will be. It's not so bad to have an internet radio die, as has happened with several architectures thus far, but it's painful when there's real money involved.

I always marvel at the people who built new homes with subfloor heating systems who usually have a closet full of manifolds, valves, custom PCBs-in-a-box, none of which will be available in a decade or two.

In addition, even if well supported (like Tesla), there's a number of product families that are priced like long term investments (electric cars, solar panel/battery setups) but have shorter term PC-style turnovers in technology. They may still work, but will be obsolete.

Subfloor heating systems aren’t just a water boiler in the basement and bunch of dumb water tubes?

Yeah I don't think the person you're replying to has any experience in building control systems. I used to be an energy engineer and I would predict sub-floor heating owners will have no real issues here.

The point does stand generally though. I have had to replace entire HVACs because the coolant is no longer available or because the cost to replace a certain component is too high because the parts are no longer readily available.

I think the only solution is to try to build as minimally as possible. A huge amount can be accomplished through passive heating and cooling (windows placement and size, site location and angle toward prevailing winds and morning / afternoon sun, etc etc). We are too often reliant on technology to allow us to ignore these things and we do so at our peril.

>experience in building control systems

lol. If you mean 'design', you'd be surprised. Admittedly, I'm not aware of the full array of residential heating control systems, but I've sure seen some over-complex ones.

I've seen some that most definitely were not, usually along with a bunch of other high-efficiency tech. To be fair, I've seen minimum systems also, so it can be done.

My general take on home design is simple-passive-accessible. Someone in the future will thank you.

It's worth poking around manufacturer's websites. http://www.pexheat.com/Catalog/Controls

and consider the lifespan of a house vs. the lifespan of the subsystems. My general take is that the more built-in and difficult to modify it is, the madder someone will be in 50 years. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm no fan of radiant heating systems having seen the issues of parts availability, latency, the tearing up of floors for repair,and a strong preference for point sources of heat (gas stoves for example), so it might show through in the comment.

Recommend reading "Ghost Fleet" where even your toilet stops working when we go to war with a country that manufactures many of our electronic components.

When you get bored, list all of your connected home and personal items that rely on wired, cable, wifi, bluetooth, rfid, infrared, cellular, etc. Put them in a spreadsheet.

Then you will not be as surprised when your lighting system, refrigerator, or washer/dryer is hit with ransomware.

I totally agree. My personal philosophy has been to only buy OT devices that fail/stop being supported to being manual and not fail to being e-waste.

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