Ask HN: What would you have in your "smart home"?
I have a Raspberry Pi, Ninja Blocks, and some Wemo Lights. I'm trying to think of cool ideas I could do for my apartment. I would love to hear what ideas or stories HN has about "smart homes"
Most people have too much stuff, too much clutter, too many gadgets/clothes/vehicles/appliances/tools, etc. All these things take effort and mental energy to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
The ironic thing about home automation is that it manages stuff by adding yet more stuff to manage. By trying to make stuff smart, you end up adding more points of failure-- more ways for things to get screwed up.
What I would want at this point would be.
* Automatic light control from a central device and a phone/tablet. To better extend dimable. Also it would be nice if it recognized that there was no one in the room and shut the lights or turn them on when someone walks in. Special care needs to be done when watching tv in order to dim the lights accordingly.
* Automatic shutters that can be handled as the lights controls. Could be nice if they learned when to actually shut ( when there is too much sun and the AC is running, or when the heat is working and it is day ).
* Media centrer functionality. This is nice and can easily be done by a central pc and instances of XBMC using a shared library. With raspberry this is the cheapest automation that can be done.
* Smart door, recognize who is at my door and grant access to me or anyone i have added to the list. When someone hits the door, send me something to my phone so i can know who is there. Add me the capability to open the door remotely.
* Smart heating like Nest seems to be doing. Never went into much detail about that.
* Security system. A good security system is essential. Monitor with camera and report any activity that is in the house when the system is on. Let me know when there is no power, no internet, or someone interacted with the alarm system.
* A smart fridge as someone else wrote here. If it can know in what stuff i am running low on and send me an email that i am running low on this that would be super (doesnt yet exist)
* Info graphics, in what is going on my house. Where is the majority of the power been used ? How many people visited my house ? and many more.
* Recognise the pattern the inhabitants are at home. Turn the heating/ AC on/off accordingly.
Smart lighting. Turn off lights automatically when I watch the movie channel. Don't go all bright when I wake up for a pee in the middle of the night. Learn the pattern of me waking up and turn the lights on accordingly.
Watch my fridge. Nag me when I stocks run low. Better yet, prepare me a shopping list.
In response to interest we got after Nest's API opening, Carvoyant's running a pretty low key contest, best Carvoyant+Nest mashup(s?) gets a Carvoyant+Nest+Hue package. https://www.carvoyant.com/2014/06/24/my-car-told-my-house/
Personally, I'd love to see Raspberry Pi & Ninja Blocks in that mix and would be happy to foster a few more connected car/smart home mashups.
One nice thing about a connected car and a good rules engine in the home, is that our "things" can take independent action like dim the lights, adjust temp and lock up on their own, all the time. More timely adjustments can maximize the savings and reduce user intervention.
Even without the car, I'd really consider any design options/devices that can reduce or eliminate your intervention. The homes not so "smart" if you're always issuing commands.
First, a variety of device types and brands together.
Second, how it notifies me, SMS, email, phone call, etc. It has to be able to stream across the Internet, both to notify me, and so I can view video on demand, but be secure against hacking; using BSD as the OS would be nice, but Linux can be secured pretty tight.
Third, I want to configure the effects of a breach with layered effects: stepping inside the fence might trigger only a warning audio, continuing to the house might trigger a different audio, etc.
Mainly, I want to put some thought into the setup, and then not have to consider it again; it just works.
I think the reason we haven't seen a blockbuster IoT app is because everyone is still focused on the things, not the people. Or in your case, as a DIYer, you're not thinking about yourself.
So consider what keeps you up at night, and think about the lowest-common-denominator way to solve that via wiring up your home.
If there is a tool which looks at track whether, day(weekend or not), time of day and etc after this things it select best music for me?
I can like or unlike music for my mood and it also learn my listening habit?
It'll be wonderful.
No personal experience though.