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Comment by pcwalton | Hacker News Reader

> Even the value proposition is unclear. A simple mechanical light switch Just Works (TM). It's cheap, reliable, and nearly universally understood. Adding network connectivity, scheduling, voice recognition, etc. to these things sounds cool, but that novelty wears off very quickly, and you're stuck with features that probably won't matter to you day-to-day.

As I mentioned down below, I'm currently on crutches with a broken leg. Voice-controlled lighting is a big convenience in my scenario. Mechanical switches don't "Just Work (TM)" for disabled people.

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There are numerous existing controls, most of which integrate with the switch rather than the bulb.

Photocells / IR motion sensors turn lights on or off as ambient light levels fall or presence of a human is detected.

Audio switches turn on or off with a sound ("The Clapper", etc.)

Timers can be used to turn circuits on or off on a set schedule. This may not be ideal, but can work for general cases.

There are remotes which work based on a handheld control and either IR or RF frequencies.

All of these are backwards-compatible with old technology, are tried and proven, and will continue to function for years.

"Smart Home" implementations remain 99.99996% crap.

Yeah I find that a couple of the 433Mhz remote-controlled sockets suit me very well.

I can lay in bed and turn on/off a fan, a pair of lamps, and the coffee-machine (which I pre-fill manually the night before).

More complex things would be nice, but I just don't trust most of them.

The only other thing I do is record the temperature in my living-room, balcony, and sauna. The sauna monitoring is useful because I can make it ping my phone when it reaches 80/90 degrees and is "ready".

(That just uses an off-the-shelf battery-powered temperature/humidity sensor. Every 30-60 seconds it broadcasts the current readings and I have an SDR-receiver plugged into my desktop. That logs the values to influxdb, and visualizes with grafana. Nothing amazing, but fun and a little useful.)

That’s not a strong value proposition though. There are many specialized devices for disabled people - doesn’t mean that they offer great value to the able-bodied. Eg a special watch for the blind is a great idea… but not something that would attract many non-blind people.

What a strange argument. You might as well say penicillin doesn't have a "strong value proposition" because it doesn't have value until you're sick.

That seems like a poor counter. Everyone gets sick as far as I know not everyone becomes disabled.

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