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Comment by h2odragon | Hacker News Reader

In that same time period, my "plant light" timer, a $15 mechanical item of a design unmodified since the 1970s, has worked flawlessly, requiring attention only when the clocks change or my schedule does. It has not informed Google, Amazon, or anyone else about its job or anything else in my home. It has generated no royalties nor invoked any support or ongoing maintenance costs. It has never needed a software upgrade.

"Smart Home" stuff even since the "x10" standards has been a solution looking for a problem to solve. A hobby for the homeowner who wants to ride the high side of the Laffer curve in effort and expense. It could be argued that quiet, flawless functioning of these products would be exactly what the customer doesn't want in this product space.

Compare it to model trains: is that hobby focused around having a lovely little table set up and watching the trains run? Or is the actual focus the torn up mess that's under construction and "we can't play with it right now but i can get it assembled to show the kids by Tuesday".

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I love my smart home stuff. My lights turn on in the morning, change color temperature at sunset, and turn off at night. Thermostats set to the right temperature/mode at night and in the morning depending on the forecast for the day. My garden is watered, but not if it's going to rain. When I turn on my TV, the lights turn off and the blinds close. Everything shuts down and locks when the family leaves, resumes when we come back.

But what's important is that it's all rock solid and 100% reliable, because none of it leaves my house. I don't have any "cloud" crap. Everything exists on my local network only. Well, that's not totally true. I have a Nest thermostat. It's the only device that ever gives me trouble, and it took a whole day to get automated. Some day I'll replace it.

I'd argue that your plant timer is reliable not because it's old and not networked, but because it doesn't have dependencies on servers thousands of miles away and isn't reliant on the continuing goodwill, solvency and work ethic of the company that sold it to you.

What hardware do you use? And how were you able to get hold of something that doesn't talk to the cloud? There's nothing like that in the shops here.

Most of my stuff is ZWave which is 100% local (big Zooz fan, and I hear that Inovelli is just as good). I have a bunch of Lutron switches too, and a couple Hue bulbs. Both of those will technically phone home, but you can cut off their WAN access and they still work just fine. I control everything with an old Mac Mini running Home Assistant.

The trick is, before you buy anything, look it up on Home Assistant. If its "class" is "local push", you're golden:

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016/02/12/classifying-th...

You’re lucky or do Zwave in a small way. I spent a lot of money converting my last home to zwave and found tons of problems with it; incompatibility between the different devices from the same manufacturer; inconsistent implementation of standards by device type, etc. I am having a way better experience with Lutron Caseta (different problem is that I ran out of space on a single hub at 75 devices).

The other big problem with smart home is that every company wants to own the ecosystem. The technical term for that is “greedy bastards”. It’s not cloud; it’s cloud lock-in that’s the problem as I see it. This is the source not only of reliability problems but also of compatibility and interoperability problems.

When I started on my IoT journey I adopted a hard requirement that everything must “fail normal” - I don’t want a call in the middle of the night for tech support while I’m traveling on business, because my family can’t turn on the lights. Everything in my house fails normal- if the cloud or the internet goes away, the house becomes a dumb house and you can still turn on/off anything with a switch.

> The other big problem with smart home is that every company wants to own the ecosystem

Nah, standards assist everyone. Thus Matter[0] is becoming a thing. It will be supported by pretty much everyone (Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung SmartThings and the Zigbee Alliance).

"Fail normal" is a good thing to keep in mind nevertheless.

I am quite skeptical that "Matter" (formerly CHIP?) will fix anything.

https://xkcd.com/927/

Agree 100%. If I cut the Ethernet to my router with garden sheers, none of my automations run and I'm left with a bunch of normal light switches and locks, like any other house.

And I have about 20 ZWave devices. They've been super reliable, but, it's a small house, so I can't speak for what would happen if I quadrupled. My Caseta stuff has been just as reliable.

I have the same experience as you, but I use Zigbee stuff (a bit more future-proof and open, ZWave is proprietary). I also love the Sonoff line of devices with Espurna or Tasmota. Everything has been rock solid.

I have a similar experience with ZWave, and definitely recommend Inovelli (I'm also a Zooz fan).

I had everything on HA, but at the time they were changing _everything_ way too quickly for me. After the last time I'd lost my entire Zwave network setup, I figured it was a great time to try something now.

So, now it's a single ~1k line javascript file that handles all my automation, built atop zwave2mqtt (hoping to move to zwavejs soon - maybe over the holiday). It's simple, solid, and very easy to maintain.

I could use a UI, and occasionally dream of building one, but honestly I generally forget the place is automated. It all just sorta works.

That is exactly what I want to do for the same reason. Any chance you would be willing to share your JS code?

I'm not comfortable sharing the whole thing, since it's very specific to my house. But I may be able to come up with a much lighter version that could be shared.

No idea when I'll find the time, but if you want to email me (check my profile), I'll reach out when I find the chance to do so.

check out https://www.home-assistant.io/ Open source. You can be as fiddly or stable as you have tolerance for.

I run this too, nothing but positive things to say. I update it every once in a while, but I has been rock solid for years.

Any tips for those who want a simple stable setup?

Lutron Caseta. I personally like ZWave/ZigBee stuff more because it's more configurable and open, Lutron cannot be broken, even if you try.

You can even buy their pre-installed box, ready to go.

It has some warts, but my automation would not be viable without it. I specially like the NodeRED integration - even if I think that NodeRED is quite quirky and %#@!% sometimes, it's still neat to be able to write automations without programming much. I do plenty of that on my day job. Also a great visual aid to explain to non-technical people.

Philips Hue + Apple HomeKit with a dedicated hub (Apple TV or HomePod will do fine).

HomeKit stuff can be controlled remotely, but it doesn't "talk to the cloud" as much as IFTTT or Samsung SmartThings based stuff.

After you hit a wall with the Hue native automations + HomeKit, Home Assistant is pretty much the only relevant shop in town, maybe enhanced with NodeRED.

You can also reflash the firmware on a lot of smart plugs if they use ESP32, look up Tasmota.

I use Sonoff plugs, the first thing I do when I get one is solder headers on them and reflash their firmware - hey presto, no cloud

I use KNX for the "important" lights. KNX is very reliable and completely decentralized, so it continues to work evern if the server crashes, but it is also very expensive. For all the utility lights, I use ZigBee. For irrigation, wifi+mqtt. Everything is controlled by openHAB, i need to check out HomeAssistant in the near future.

I have three Nanoleaf Essentials bulbs. These are RGB LEDs which screw into ordinary A19 sockets. They work over Thread, so no connection to the Internet or my WiFi. My HomePod Mini is the Thread router.

The setup is very cool. I say "Hey Siri, good morning" before I get out of bed, and the lights turn on. Siri also understands more complicated requests like "set the center light to cyan" or "set all the lights to 50%." I also save configurations ("Scenes") and Siri can apply them by name.

Importantly the fixture has a physical switch and the bulbs reset to ordinary white after powering off, so the bulbs fail like an escalator if the WiFi is down.

No relation to any of these products, just a happy customer.

If you are connected to the internet, then your setup is not 100% rock solid and reliable.

No setup is.

How many nines of reliability does your home automation setup need anyway?

Depends what the failure mode is.

To date the only light switch downtime I've had was related to power outages and bulb failures.

You describe it as some sort of heaven, and if that's your thing then (probably) good for you. It wouldn't be for me, I like actually doing things and see these automation as overpriced solution looking for problem that generation ago mostly didn't exist, while folks lived comparably happier lives.

Plus all the time invested into building and maintaining these setups can be measured by tons of fun/adventures missed in ones live. But that's my perspective, I incline more to OP' mindset of needing at most "plant timer".

I've really enjoyed every moment of setting it all up. It's like Legos, but useful when you're done. I don't really get any joy out of walking around to every wall and flipping switches. I don't mind it, but I don't enjoy it like you do. We just enjoy different things I guess. Nothing wrong with that though!

I agreed with the 'plant timer' mindset up until recently, when I bought some smart lights to hack for a demo at work. Now the idea that someone likes 'actually doing things' where things == 'getting up from the couch to flick a light switch in the other room' seems ridiculous.

If you make smart stuff a purely additive layer over your home rather than replacing existing tech with it, keep it out of the cloud, and have everything responding to predictable rules rather than apps/AI assistants, home automation is really wonderful.

I would definitely rather get up from the couch and flip a switch than open my smart phone, start an app, fumble through a nag screen telling me about recent updates to said app that auto-upgraded since last time I used it, turn on my lamp, get distracted by emails or some other red badge with a number calling for my attention before finally remembering that I just wanted to flip on the light so I could read my book.

Sure, but in my home, the light is already on.

>But what's important is that it's all rock solid and 100% reliable,

There will come soft rains.

My initial reaction to your first paragraph is "Preparation for your own death".

And I don't know where on the scale from "old man shouts at cloud" to "living consciously and connected to, and aware of, the world around you" this reaction sits. Even whether that scale has both end points being co-existent.

I find that pursuits intended to give myself more time for the things I enjoy eats into the time otherwise spent on things I enjoy - both in the setup and the maintenance (you already said it's reliable though, so maintenance may not be an issue).

To what end? is my question. Living in the perfect temperature works to narrow the temperature range in which you can comfortably operate. TV on, lights off, blinds closed... it just feels like the next step is automatic fecal extraction and progress towards the body types on the space ship in Wall-E.

To what end? To see if I can. And if you can, which in this case you could, it feels as if you're retro justifying the effort. Are you happy no longer having to do these mundane tasks? Living in algorithmic rhythms.

Feels like you can make the same argument about the washing machine, vacuum cleaner, and other housekeeping tools that made life easier a hundred years ago. Doing chores is not "living" and automating chores leaves more time for the wondrous and unique.

“Boats can float in water, but they can sink in it,too.”

Doing laundry, dishes etc involves real work and takes time.

Getting up from my chair and pressing a switch when I feel it is getting too dark is not really a chore. And it is probably good for my back.

I do have a couple of X10 switches but I mostly use them where I once was too cheap to put an extra cable. One died this year after only 20 years of service. Luckily I had a spare.

I also have a couple of electronic thermostats. I really hate having to replace batteries every few years. Now I set the day and night temperatures to a about the same. But I like that if I feel cold, I can manually turn up the heat and not having to remember to turn it back down. This should also be possible to implement mechanically.

I also have a drawer with some Zigbee smart home stuff and a CC2540 debugger to program a USB dongle to allow me turn off all the lamps in my living room. Which I will do whenever I feel like it. Because I have 5 lamps and if I turn them off 3 times a week for 20 years and I save 3 seconds per lamp minus 3 seconds to use some Zigbee switch, I will save 10 hours in total. If I have to find a phone or remote first, it will be a lot less. And I will probably spend a lot more than 10 hours before it all works. And I am not sure that it will work for 20 years, or that I can easily replace broken devices in 20 years.

Your not getting the weather forecast from your local network, so your put to at least 2 cloud dependencies. A really basic test it how much still works when the internet fails.

Because just that watering setup is the opposite of rock solid. If the electricity is on, and these several devices in your house didn’t fail, and you have internet, and the cloud service works, then you water your lawn unless the weather forecast says otherwise. Meanwhile a simple mechanical watering timer is basically if you have water pressure and the divide didn’t fail then it all just works.

Don’t get me wrong it can be fun to setup, but setting up and maintaining these “smart” systems end up sucking up more time than those home automation projects in theory save. At least compared to a simple mechanical timer.

When the internet fails, my garden won't get watered (though, I live in an area where it rains about 160 days a year), and I'll have to adjust my thermostat by turning it with my hand. When my cloud dependency fails, I'll use another of the 400 ways to get weather data. I've already switched weather providers several times. Don't worry about me; I'll make it through. ;)

> sucking up more time than those home automation projects in theory save

I guess? But it's fun. And I'd rather spend 10 hours automating something than 1 hour doing it. I'm not doing this to create free time, I'm doing it in my free time.

> When my cloud dependency fails, I'll use another of the 400 ways to get weather data. I've already switched weather providers several times. Don't worry about me; I'll make it through. ;)

> And I'd rather spend 10 hours automating something than 1 hour doing it. I'm not doing this to create free time, I'm doing it in my free time.

That’s exactly the point the original commenter was making. It’s a hobby, you do this because you enjoy it, and it’s not a general off-the-shelf solution that anyone can pick and plug it in. Nothing wrong with that, I enjoy the same stuff so I know where you’re coming from. But I’d be lying if I said it’s simple and robust like the mechanical timer thing.

Not to mention what happens when the power goes out, even momentarily. On Friday afternoon I lost power an hour before leaving for the airport. I was reasonably sure I could remember the light switch position to ensure lights were off, but the digital (non-networked) thermostat booted up when the power came back and has been heating my empty apartment all weekend long.

Thermostats set to the right temperature/mode at night and in the morning depending on the forecast for the day.

I'm trying to understand how that could work. My old style thermostat maintains my apartment at a constant temperature based ... what temperature I set it to. If I wanted fancier, might have more sensory, fans or whatever to keep temperature average between floor and ceiling. But I can't see how outside temperature gives you any significant value compared to knowing changing in the inside temperature you're controlled.

Yeah, I mostly have automation so that I can turn the temperature down at night. I'm a big fan of sleeping in cold air. Even significantly colder air. When it's warm out, the AC kicks on. When it's cold, the heat just turns down.

Apart from that, I could just set my thermostat to heat-cool between 70-74 at all times. But then if it's 40 degrees out and I'm cooking a roast all day, the thermostat right next to my kitchen could kick the air conditioning on, which could actually damage it. So... I automate it; heat when it's cold, AC when it's hot. :shrug:

A regular digital thermostat has settings for turning down the heat at night, and turning it back up in the morning, etc.

The interesting one was the NWS bulletins as well. I keep a weather radio, with battery backup and tuned to my county and with just emergent alerts to audibly alarm set on my nightstand.

It’s worked for…I dunno, a decade maybe. The settings are saved on a small SoC peristent memory chip so even if the battery dies I don’t have to set it back up.

Why mention this. Because a tool like this CANT depend on internet connectivity. Usually when it’s needed most basic power and even internet are either not available or intermittent at best. I live in a hurricane prone area that also by proxy is sometimes succeptible to weak tornadoes. I would NEVER trust that to a “smart device”. It’s just not necessary.

And that’s beyond things like smart bulbs kinda baffle me. I get it, but I would never have one myself. Similar to things like yard services.

I do have some smart things and n my home, like a Honeywell thermostat or even some wifi mouse traps that generally save uneeddd crawl space trips. But other things like bulbs, fridges, even alexas I don’t get. But also understand I’m not a primary market for that either

I've got the same old-fashioned mechanical timer. I actually attached it to one of those "box fan filters" that people talk about here from time to time. (So I can filter on a schedule) It works perfectly, and I've never had any issues with it. I'm thoroughly convinced that if I tried to replace it with a "smart" device I'd have no shortage of issues. I like your thinking regarding the lack of reliability with these smart devices. It's clearly possible to build these sorts of things reliably, but for some reason there doesn't seem to be any market pressure on companies to do so. If that's the case, then consumers must at least partially be to blame.

Whats needed is a much stronger guarantee. For example, "If this device ever, even once, shows an error message or misbehaves, then we'll give you a full refund, plus $100".

If there was some logo and brand associated with that guarantee, consumers would prefer it, just like today some only buy organic or freetrade. Then manufacturers would want the extra sales generated by that logo/brand, and have a massive financial incentive to only apply the logo when the product is good enough.

There is the UL certification, but I doubt it covers software. That's the crux of the issue, isn't, that _mechanically_ everything is working fine, but something outside of the control of the unit (e.g. spotty wifi, internet connectivity issues) cause UX issues. In the end, whose fault is it?

UL certification is really all about safety, as in a software defect won't cause an electrical fire and burn your house down. They don't guarantee a good user experience.

Well spotty WiFi and internet connectivity issues probably aren't the homeowners fault either...

The fault probably lies with the ISP, the router manufacturer, or someone else. Let the gadget manufacturers guarantee pay out, and they can try to chase the ISP themselves. If the issue doesn't get fixed, they can simply say "IoT doorbell (reliability guarantee excludes use with Comcast)"

I prefer to buy and use stuff with “open”-ish interfaces. This is usually more commercial, industrial, or high end, but I don’t need my request to turn on the light to go to some server in AWS.

I like these openish interfaces because when it breaks, I can fix it.

> "If this device ever, even once, shows an error message or misbehaves, then we'll give you a full refund, plus $100".

Apple solved this by just never showing error messa...Your computer was restarted because of a problem.

If you’re referring to the quoted message specifically, that’s not really fair. It’s a kernel panic, you can’t do much except reboot.

Once the Mac has finished starting up again, the backtrace is easily accessible for those who want it. And if you really want to always see console output, you can turn on verbose boot permanently.

To take this further... To mean anything, this guarantee needs to apply unconditionally and forever. Even in 50 years... Even when the manufacturer is bankrupt.

To do that, There could be a "Will Work Guarantee" organisation. The organisation will administer refunds to all customers with claims, (and combat fraud). Companies who want to be members of the scheme must pay into the scheme to cover payouts for their own products, plus a deposit for future failures of their products if they go bankrupt.

Of course this would have to be a Government service, maybe just government backed; and would have to set barriers to market entry and enforce standards to keep obvious trash off the market... "Ministry of Production" perhaps?

Can't imagine any downsides.

That’s why I like buying things from Costco when I can. they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee on most items. And I’m willing to bet on the longevity of Costco more than any manufacturers of goods.

Back during the 'Capcitor Plague', when HP lied and denied there was a problem, Costco replaced 3 out of warranty HP laptops for my clients who bought them there. Their customer service, quality meats and they pay their employees well, are a few of the reasons why I prefer to give them my money.

Related: MSI replaced 15 OoW mainboards without proof of purchase, too. They merely asked for serial numbers and shipped them out in a timely manner. Can you guess who's boards I used exclusively when building towers over the last 15 years?

> "If this device ever, even once, shows an error message or misbehaves, then we'll give you a full refund, plus $100".

Your device stopped working because the server it syncs with is gone because the company that owned the server is gone.

Who gives you your money now?

I think that the point is that if a company puts forward such a guarantee they wouldn't release products that relied on anything external.

More likely, they conclude that if they don't exist, they can't be fined.

This is wild to me, since I'm getting my parents HomeKit smart plugs because their old fashioned mechanical timers are crapping out all the time and not running their grow lights at the right times.

As a counter point, I've lived in places with frequent power disruptions and smart timers that use the internet and NTP and figure out the time work _so much better_ than the mechanical timers.

I hate to be the tiktok pokerface simple solution meme guy, but that's a solvable issue by just adding a RTC module, no complex internet garbage required.

Ah yes, the trivial to build, ultra simple crystal oscillator real time clock. Every hobbyist can just fab them right up, or just dig around in the garden to find a few.

Or buy them online for $15

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12708

Following hobbyist-directed instructions that are, also, readily available online

https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/embeddedlab786/real-tim...

So, order electronics from the internet for my non smart, non internet connected devices. Got it.

Or go to an electronics store, if we need to be snarky about it.

Or just buy a finished product for the same price as a single part: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G6O28NA

Exactly. I only mention the hobbyist route because they took their comment in that direction.

I think he means it's a problem solvable by manufacturers that does not involve end user surveillance.

And a battery, and a UI to set the clock, and a thing to alter the DST/Time zone

And if the country you're in dares change the DST switch-over date (aka the US, during the Clinton era), you're now in an even worse situation, because you have to change it four times a year. Twice because of DST, then two more times because your clock is trying to be helpful and accommodate DST for you. That or you download the firmware, repack it with new tzdata files, and reflash the system, which as we all know, all manufacturers totally support everywhere, and for free, so doing that sounds like an easy technical exercise.

A realtime clock for a mechanical timer of the type I believe the comment alludes based on reference to the 1970's would require stepper motors, solenoids, rigid frames and such to turn the dial. Maybe a camera too to determine the state of the timer.

...and hence the fussiness of home automation. Or to put it another way, clockworks are inherently so complicated that features are literally called "complications." TAANSAFL. YMMV.

>would require stepper motors, solenoids, rigid frames and such to turn the dial. Maybe a camera too to determine the state of the timer.

Huh? Electric analog clocks have small electric motors to turn their dials and that's it.

You know those "strip of LEDs on a gooseneck" plant lights? Even these, low-end as they are, have similar issues. They have buttons instead of physical switches. If the power goes out, I have to remember what sequence of button-presses gets me a twelve-hour timer. And you can't even set it to "always on" and control with a mechanical timer. Maddening.

This is why engineers invented the screwdriver and soldering iron :)

It's not hard to just wire shit directly and use an external plug to control the light.

> soldering iron

I worked my way through college with a soldering iron. The wire to my headphones broke, and I thought "I'll just strip the wires and solder them back together!"

The problem was, the wires were about as thick as a hair. My fat fingers just couldn't solder them. I could hardly see them.

The headphones went into the garbage.

Yeah, they should engrave the button sequences into the back of cover of the controller. There are only 4 or so. Or the settings onto the buttons themselves, if each button is associated with one setting. That would be the fix for mine…

Yup.

I've got both mechanical timers and digital timers. While the digital ones have more programming flexibility (e.g., different hours on different days), I've also got to relearn the button sequences for checking & setting them up every time I use them.

So, what comes out first? The mechanical ones, just set the time, put the pins in the on/off times I want, and plug it in. I only bother with the digital ones if I need to use more than the couple of mechanical ones on hand.

What will I buy next if I need more? Some of these same mechanical ones...

Short, simple, and robust tech stacks really are better than tall, messy and brittle.

If someone could give me a tall, clean, and reliable stack with a clean UI, I'd be all over it, AND happy to pay more. But the trend these days is all about programmer convenience and "productivity". Great, except when the result is mountains of digital crap that results in articles like that one.

It’s absolutely a hobby for me. The hobby isn’t in doing, it’s in doing while obeying the prime directive: lights always work… that AND to create something useful that my partner actually uses that makes their life better.

Also, I get a kick out of designing the system to withstand the usual challenges of staying running in the usual house: power outages, kids playing with light switches, etc. Its basically got to always work.

Mechanical timers aren't as reliable as you make out.

For example, if you attach loads with high startup or inductive currents, like fridges or big motors/fans to them, then they'll wear out very fast and typically stop working in a few months.

If they jam for any reason, they'll usually overheat and melt all the little plastic gears inside. This happens if you tell them to turn on and off every 15 minutes all day...

Both these failure cases sound unlikely, but of perhaps 10 mechanical timers I have used in my lifetime, I have had 3 fail. That isn't great really.

Digitizing the timer doesn’t improve the reliability of the electrical components though.

Electronic timers usually use electronic switches, which can switch at the zero-crossing, and thus are far more robust to startup surges than mechanical relays (though without proper heatsinking, cannot handle as much continuous current). I once built a product with a relay and triac, the latter to handle the startup surges from a capacitive load and the former up handle the continuous 12A load. People loved it.

You can buy timers specifically designed to handle high current, heaters, motors, etc. True that the typical timer you'll find at a department store will be meant for room lamps or other light loads.

> In that same time period, my "plant light" timer, a $15 mechanical item of a design unmodified since the 1970s, has worked flawlessly, requiring attention only when the clocks change or my schedule does.

This could just be survivorship bias. If 99% of these plant timers broke and were sent to the scrap heap, you would still feel like they were 'built better back then' because you're only seeing the ones that made it 50 years. Not the ones that didn't.

Sure, the standard cheap mechanical timer has DOA's and failures because its a cheaply made machanism; but the basic electro-mechanical switch on a clock design has been around since the 70s.

I find the timers are best replaced after say 5-8yr because they're cheap and i dont trust the plastic once it brittles up.If you've been running one over say 50% of its rated load it might be entertaining to crack it open and see how much the conductors have softened.

The key point here is complexity. It's hard to argue mechanical timers are more complex than digital ones: in the sense of number of key components vs their reliability vs their average lifespan.

Good software is simple.

Nothing in the smart home category, as implemented today in retail products, is simple.

Totally different comparison. The design of a mechanical timer is such that if placed in the appropriate environment will last a long time.

Quality may vary between manufacturers, but they are fundamentally more reliable. They are simple devices.

Contrast that to my HomeKit switch. It’s operation requires that a pki based system incorporating WiFi, Bluetooth and some cheap SoC work correctly. It’s controlled by an Apple framework tied to a cloud identity. When it works, it is marvelous. I get power metering, switching, timers, etc.

My lights didn’t turn on this morning. The only telemetry is a red blinking light. I checked my WiFi management app and the switch dropped off WiFi around 3 am. Solution: unplug/replug. Not good for something that is supposed to control security cameras and door locks.

Sure, there's a lot more pieces now - I won't argue that there's not more complexity. However simplicity doesn't imply reliability and without knowing how many of these timers didn't work or failed we can't really hypothesize on their relative reliability.

It could also just be the lack of longevity engineering that lets people design products that will last a very specific time period to save costs. Back then you just had to eyeball it and usually it meant leaning on the durable side to be safe.

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