Hacker News Reader

Comment by protolif | Hacker News Reader

This may not be something we want.

It's going to happen anyway.

probably not, home automation has been "right around the corner" for 60 years.

Home automation exists and is cheap. There's a huge niche industry built around it. The problem is that people don't actually want it as much as they say they do. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I think they are still a bit too expensive for people. You can either get a whole system for several dozen kUSD, or single elements (e.g. smart outlets) for ~$100 each. The former is a significant expense people might not want to pay at once when buying homes, and the latter is a bit too expensive to buy one by one, because you require to have at least few of those devices before the system starts to get useful.

It's not nearly that expensive, though. A light socket is in the neighborhood of $15. A wall socket is less than $25. A transceiver is $30. For just over $100 you can get the controlling software, two wall switches, two light sockets, and a transceiver.

http://www.thehomeautomationstore.com/x10-home-automation.ht...

Oh, but don't use CFL bulbs with those wall switches or light sockets.

...and good luck determining whether the device is on or off.

That's not the point, and there are units which address those concerns. The point is, home automation is not "right around the corner", it's here today and it doesn't take a millionaire to have a smart home. The sticking point is not technology nor is it money, it's that people have realized they don't really want that.

The technology you refer to has not changed since 1975.

It is a stretch to call this smarthome technology considering the ban on incandescent bulbs, which completely eliminate X10s ability to dim or fade bulbs (because you are using CFL, and if you use a x10 dimmer on a CFL, you can burn down a house), and writing any sort of logic based on whether the device is on or off is not possible.

Now Insteon supports bi-directional communication and you can determine state, but you are looking at $45 per outlet or switch versus the $8 X10 stuff.

So, yeah, still out of most people's price range, unless you want to settle for over 30 year old technology.

That's sort of tangential to my point. There are reasons we might not want phased array radar systems picking up every move we make in the privacy of our own homes, independent of home automation applications, which is I presume what the post I was responding to was getting at. My point is that those desires of ours are irrelevant when it comes to whether or not the applications we don't want come to pass, because at some point there's going to be a financial incentive for someone to do it anyway.

It's your own phased array radar system--oooh such a scary word! It's an input device. If you're worried about it telling Google that you spent 30 minutes on the toilet this morning, then either monitor the traffic for odd connections or just block it from making any connections outside your LAN.

It's not necessarily your own. 2.4GHz goes through walls.

It is already here if you care to spend some money on it.

I should have said "Home automation for the masses."

I know, I worked at a startup in the space. The people who are capable of spending the money will spend the extra necessary to get someone to install it for them. The people who would install it themselves can't afford even the basic systems, as you need quite a few devices before the things get useful.

The most profitable use we ever found for it was to provide light switches and thermostats in hotels, in places where the wiring in the walls wouldn't allow. That's about it.

For under $1,000 you can easily build a significant home automation system.

http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2315509011

One definition of cheap would be something like $0.10 for self contained electronics in a light bulb. Then the installation is practically an accident.

(I think home automation sounds like a neat idea, but I always end up trying to figure out $10 of value that it would provide...)

> $0.10 for self contained electronics in a light bulb

I guess we'll get there at some point, but I'd rather prefer a $.10 for a wall-socket adapter with electronics. Much more versatile. I'd buy truckload of these and connect all stuff through it. As for lights, why not $.10 light bulb slot adapter?

> I think home automation sounds like a neat idea, but I always end up trying to figure out $10 of value that it would provide...

Fun and hackability, obviously :).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com