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[Stumpokapow]

Once I got a car with Keyless entry I feel like a goddamned caveman when I have to dig out my keys to open the front door.

Yes, this is a major improvement, especially in cold climates where you sort of do a madman run from your house to the car. Not an internet thing, but it's just all around a better execution than what we had before.

these exist. I plan on putting in a bunch at my new house. Agree on inductive charging though.

RE: the USB+AC wall outlets.

They do exist, but I'm in a 15 year old decently high end, modern complex and our outlet boxes aren't deep enough to take the USB+AC combo ones. It's a pity, because if they did (or I was better at doing wall stuff), I'd switch every single one of my outlets.

The hospital I helped build here in Toronto that opens next month has these in order to save on cooling costs. They really need to make their way to the home market.

Really glad to hear about this. It's win-win; better on costs, better on the environment, better for humans.

I could see the utility in having an app that allows you to check whether or not you left any lights on, and turn them off remotely.

I would say given that you're already using LEDs, the worst case scenario case (left lights on, went on two week vacation) is still going to be less of a power impact than the marginal additional power draw from the always-on wifi over the life of the product. For me the eco impact is more important than the cost savings, but either way I can't imagine it's a win, especially with the upfront cost of wifi lights.

There are research teams at both MIT and UC-Berkeley working on laundry-folding robots. The Berkeley team has been working on it since 2008. Apparently it's a tough problem.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/19/407736307/robots-are-really-bad-at-folding-towels

Thanks for the link!

Because inductive charging is just a temporary stop gap on the way to true wireless electricity, which is the ultimate goal. The cost of switching to a new standard is astronomical and takes years, so I'm fine with inductive charging just being this niche and everyone waiting a decade for full wireless electricity to actually take off.

Yeah, when I said inductive charging, I don't necessarily mean charging using an inductive mat, I more meant just a technological solution to the infiltration of wires everywhere.

Interesting read.

I was actually thinking not about a "thing" but something similar today when I entered my house and wondered why Spotify doesnt directly switch to remote-play from my computer / speakers from my phone automatically and instead asks me to do it

dunno, just sprang to mind that I had that thought today when reading the article

Yeah I'm also not very happy with current software/hardware seamless playback, household audio systems. All the houses I've been in with great music systems have had to do extensive pre-wiring and console and speaker installation rather than being able to expand them on an ad hoc basis by throwing arbitrary hardware.

 

[Stumpokapow]

1st gen Nest Protects disabled the wave feature. It wasn't a recall technically, it was more of a firmware update. They discovered the feature didn't work like they wanted it to testing it further and decided to disable it. The 2nd gen Protect which just came out a month or so ago, now lets you turn off alarms with the app. But the way the Protect works is it'll do sensor/battery checks, and when there is an alarm or a battery issue, it'll warn you via a voice alert first. I had one guy have his alarm way up high, like 30 feet up, and it told him for a whole month the battery was low, and it finally escalated it to telling him the alarm would sound soon, and finally did, and he then had to change the batteries.

First, hi and thanks for the reply to the thread. I think Nest is a cool company and the thermostat is just an absolute revolution. It's beautiful, great product design, and it's a punch in the face to the miserable garbage Honeywell puts out. I really hope scale helps you guys get stuff down to $100-150, which is the point that I think you'd get really high levels of adoption. Installation is reasonable, use is great, it's all very logical. My current HVAC panel requires a lot of manual babysitting, the UI is awful, programming changes are annoying, and it's just not smart when it comes to edge cases.

That being said I'm not really impressed by what I've seen from the Protect. I agree that smoke detectors are annoying. Once I lived in an apartment next to a guy who moved out just as his smoke detector had the low battery alarm beep kick in. The landlord was a real piece of shit and impossible to contact and it took us 2 days to get him to come in and deal with it. Two days of incessant beeping. I also hate that every time we do something with an oil that hits its smoke point we go through the ritual of waving at our smoke detector like crazy and opening windows and doors and stuff. But I don't feel like the Protect really offers the value for money because these kinds of painful experiences are sorta few and far between and mostly user failures. I'm actually not sure I've had my own smoke or CO detector go off for any reason other than a known cooking failure my entire life. And I actually rather enjoy the Daylight Savings Time prompts to test my alarm. The "shut off your boiler if it's causing a CO leak" thing is cool, I guess...

... and while Dropcam is definitely the best home security camera I've seen, and thus an obvious choice to buy to get you guys into that market, I feel like the execution is still sort of same-old. Also, even with Nest having considerable autonomy from Google, the privacy concerns make the camera product less appealing to me.

Most companies don't have one great idea, so that already puts you guys in the top 1-2% of all companies ever on that basis. I'm just... I feel like the two followups are a lot less of a slam dunk. Still, really hoping to get a Nest Thermostat some time soon

 

[Krejlooc]

Yeah, when I said inductive charging, I don't necessarily mean charging using an inductive mat, I more meant just a technological solution to the infiltration of wires everywhere.

Well, in the case of wireless electricity as I described it, it's still very much a work in progress. Teams at MIT can sustain an electrical field of about 10 square feet that can power a 60 watt bulb reliably, but it can't do much more than that yet.

My estimate of a decade until it becomes ready for the lime light might be too optimistic, in fact, but every time I hear about their work it seems like they make leaps and bounds improvements. Of course, there will also need to be a battery of health and safety tests, too. Who knows how long that could take. I would put money down on us seeing wireless electricity become big within our lifetimes, at the bare minimum.

They already are prepping for a commercial version of this technology, being dubbed WiTricity. It works just like you'd imagine - a base outputs a range of electricity, and objects within that area seemingly receive power out of thin air.

It's a type of innovation that will have drastic effect on all our lives. So much of our daily lives - even the way we arrange and organize our homes - revolves around having to be tethered to an electrical outlet.

 

[redmetal86]

Got a electric keypad for my door for 10+ years and it's amazing, haven't had to worry about house keys for years.

What happens if the power goes out and you have to lock or unlock the door? Is there a backup battery?

 

[Deku Tree]

What happens if the power goes out and you have to lock or unlock the door? Is there a backup battery?

Any keypad that I have seen is entirely battery operated. And they have a key backup.

 

[ameratsu]

Existing smoke alarms are some of the worst products in existence. When you get an ear piercing chirp at 3:00am and you can't immediately fix it, or if you're searing your delicious steak and work up some smoke and set it off knowing full well you are in no danger you simply rip it out of the ceiling. Fuck it, I'll take my chances. And that's why I'd totally buy a $100 smoke detector if they promised to put a modicum of thought into it, because nobody else does.

I can relate to my smoke detector going off when I'm searing steak, but basically any sorta modern smoke detector has a button you can push to temporarily silence it and continue cooking without proper ventilation.

That's the thing most normal smoke detectors tell you to replace the battery every 6 months. They are just dumb. You can make things more complex, you just have to make sure they fail safe. It is correct to make the last line of defense a high pitched whine because it gets you to do something (even if it's the wrong thing, you have to choose to actively deactivate it), the problem is a well designed device would never reach this state under normal circumstances but for smoke detectors it's expected behavior.

This is strange -- are hard-wired smoke detectors not a common thing? These are the standard where I live in Canada, and in rental properties battery powered smoke detectors are illegal.

 

[Deku Tree]

I can relate to my smoke detector going off when I'm searing steak, but basically any sorta modern smoke detector has a button you can push to temporarily silence it and continue cooking without proper ventilation.



This is strange -- are hard-wired smoke detectors not a common thing? These are the standard where I live in Canada, and in rental properties battery powered smoke detectors are illegal.

I have hard wired smoke detectors that have a 9V battery back up and they whine when the battery backup is low... it is so horrible... They can start their high pitched whining at any time of day or night and they wont stop until you replace the battery. It doesn't even start with a warning a few days ahead of time.

 

[Thorakai]

Or use charcoal n wood. Like real bbqers

 

[ameratsu]

I have hard wired smoke detectors that have a 9V battery back up and they whine when the battery backup is low... it is so horrible... They can start their high pitched whining at any time of day or night and they wont stop until you replace the battery. It doesn't even start with a warning a few days ahead of time.

If you find the low battery warning for your disposable 9v backup battery annoying, couldn't you just get a slightly fancier smoke detector that has a rechargeable battery?

 

[KevinRo]

We're in the golden age of consumer electronics. No other time in human life will there be such a time as the one we're experiencing. If I had money I would build so much useless shit just to see if it would sell.

 

[Opiate]

I think a lot of innovative technologies start out this way: they trundle along as novelties or awkward, expensive techno gadgets for super nerds, sometimes for decades. It's too expensive, or it's too clunky, or it has some other drawback.

And then, suddenly, it all comes together. I've noticed this pattern with lots of technologies: things we all expect are just around the corner, but sometimes that corner takes 5-10 years to get around.

 

[Lord Error]

The nightlight that listens to your smoke detector does in fact sound like a pretty cool idea. It's not "adding" a hundreds of dollars worth smartphone to a detector, because everyone already owns a smartphone. I have received a Nest Protect smoke detector that on its own alerts your smartphone when the smoke is detected, and it's pretty cool tbh. You can just call up neighbours and ask to check up on things if you're on a vacation and get such an alert.

 

[HawkeyeIC]

I'm really surprised (but maybe this exists) we don't have some sort of grocery store subscription plan that allows you to scan items in your own pantry/fridge/freezer that you're low on, and then send that info to the grocery store to be collected and packaged up for you to pick up.

So basically Kroger could charge 9.99 a month for the service (which would off-set the cost of labor if someone didn't pick up their order). You'd have a full grocery list already sent to Kroger, and stop in, pay, and out you go to your car with your cart. Any last minute items could obviously be picked up while at the store as well.

Grocery shopping takes up a good chunk of time and I know my wife and I would gladly pay a subscription just to roll up to the store and grab our stuff and get home within 20 minutes.

Instacart?

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

My mental concetion of a "smart home" is a powerful central processing thing which controls a series of things that are themselves dumb. Instead what I'm getting is three hundred tiny computers of dubious necessity. Every individual components needs to be able to operate independently because people can't be assumed to have all of the rest of the pieces and they want to sell everything individually. But I think efficiency wise that's not a great way to do it long term.

Eh I'm sure somebody will figure it out eventually.

 

[Krejlooc]

My mental concetion of a "smart home" is a powerful central processing thing which controls a series of things that are themselves dumb. Instead what I'm getting is three hundred tiny computers of dubious necessity. Every individual components needs to be able to operate independently because people can't be assumed to have all of the rest of the pieces and they want to sell everything individually. But I think efficiency wise that's not a great way to do it long term.

Eh I'm sure somebody will figure it out eventually.

The way you imagine things actually exists. It's sold as "smart home" packages from companies like Siemens. They are usually prohibitively expensive, but encompass an in-home ecosystem like you imagine.

That's what you're sensing from these small individual products. The problem with them is that they are piecemeal, as you describe.

 

[Lord Error]

My mental concetion of a "smart home" is a powerful central processing thing which controls a series of things that are themselves dumb. Instead what I'm getting is three hundred tiny computers of dubious necessity. Every individual components needs to be able to operate independently because people can't be assumed to have all of the rest of the pieces and they want to sell everything individually. But I think efficiency wise that's not a great way to do it long term.

Eh I'm sure somebody will figure it out eventually.

I think it's probably better this way, as if one thing dies, the others continue working without interruption.

 

[Timeaisis]

Silicon valley has stopped solving real problems and instead seeks to give us these things that don't actually make life any easier.

I thought technology's place in society was to make life easier, more convenient, safer, or more entertaining. The smart propane reader does not help me. Silicon Valley is now about minimum viable product appealing to early adopters, technophiles and the lowest common denominator. There have been no huge leaps because nothing actually is improving or quality of life.

 

[iamblades]

My mental concetion of a "smart home" is a powerful central processing thing which controls a series of things that are themselves dumb. Instead what I'm getting is three hundred tiny computers of dubious necessity. Every individual components needs to be able to operate independently because people can't be assumed to have all of the rest of the pieces and they want to sell everything individually. But I think efficiency wise that's not a great way to do it long term.

Eh I'm sure somebody will figure it out eventually.

The problem with the central control model is that it requires the entire house to be designed for that. No doubt it is the ideal solution, but in the real world where we don't replace our house ever couple of years, it is not really feasible, at least until the technology reaches a more stable place.

I think we have to start with the individual devices, then as these devices become popular and useful, they start getting built into new houses as core functionality.

I think eventually most of the smart lighting stuff should be replaced with dedicated low voltage circuits for lighting, but that's going to take a long time to become mainstream, so most people are going to be stuck with the smart bulb solution for some time.

 

[RDreamer]

I could see the utility in having an app that allows you to check whether or not you left any lights on, and turn them off remotely.

Fuck seeing whether lights are on or off. I don't care. I want to know whether my damned stove/oven is on or not.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Kickstarter projects that you might call "internet of things" or "home automation" and funded above ~$1 million (included a few just below)

SCiO molecular scanner - It's a thing you carry that you can scan what an object is and get facts about it, but it uses a spectral scanner to figure it out. Example: Scan fruit to find out nutritional info?
Sense - I literally can't figure out what this does even reading its KS page. It's an alarm that measures your sleep cycle, and the humidity and noise levels in your bedroom???
NEEO - Some sort of infrared remote control blaster + a remote with a fancy screen. Also shows what music is playing on your TV or something?
Glyph - A head-mounted non-VR screen and speakers so you can watch movies in front of your eyes instead of on your TV
Sesame - Smart lock
Airdog - A drone you put your GoPro in and it follows you or something
LIFX - Smart wifi colour bulb
SmartThings - A router/hub that controls other internet of things stuff
Blink - A small motion detecting camera with a one year battery. No monthly fees.
BioLite BaseCamp - A campfire stove that recaptures heat and uses it to power electric things?
Solar paper - A thin solar panel designed to charge your phone
Ring by logbar - A ring that records gestures you make with your hand and does stuff over the internet
Coolest Cooler - A cooler with a blender, bluetooth speaker, USB charger, light, cutting board, and wheels, and a bottle opener.
Emotiv Insight - A brain wave reader
Trunkster - A suitcase with a GPS in it and a USB port
Barracuda - A suitcase with a GPS in it and a USB port
Hidden Radio - A Bluetooth speaker
MIITO - A kettle that requires less energy?

Of these, only the luggage actually seems like an interesting product to me, but they're both ugly and wayyyyy more expensive than the luggage I usually buy. Anyone think this sample of products really shows us the possibility of the future?

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

I could see the utility in having an app that allows you to check whether or not you left any lights on, and turn them off remotely.

I was thinking earlier today that instead of turning lights on and off all the time, and thereby invoking the switch-on surge, it might be worth keeping them on all the time. Instead, you would just calculate (and measure) the usage and compensate for it with a renewable resource like solar energy.
I'm fairly the constant surge is probably using more power then the entire steady period when the thing is on. Also, being constantly on seems to put less strain on the object itself, meaning it will last longer because it never has to vary so immensely in terms of power usage.

So, 'no' to that app.


As for the article: companies (and engineers of questionable motives) have been bringing things like these to demo's as long as I can remember. None of it ever happened, precisely because the reason she gives: it's all junk.
The real question isn't whether it can be made or some dumbass would think something to be "totally convenient" (five minute conversation with any engineer, this will happen), but how to prevent companies from making such ludicrous things mandatory in their products. imo.

 

[Somnid]

I can relate to my smoke detector going off when I'm searing steak, but basically any sorta modern smoke detector has a button you can push to temporarily silence it and continue cooking without proper ventilation.

This is strange -- are hard-wired smoke detectors not a common thing? These are the standard where I live in Canada, and in rental properties battery powered smoke detectors are illegal.

Most do not actually have a turn off feature (more expensive ones do). Typically they have buttons but those are to test the alarm (which it's recommended you do once a week...like anyone actually does that). Most do connect to a power source but need a backup battery incase of power outage, if they get low that area becomes uninhabitable with a shrill chirp until you fix it which can be quite difficult depending on where it's located. Last time this happened I had to stack furniture to make a crazy unsafe makeshift ladder because maintenance takes about 2 days and what was I supposed to do? Not sleep? Can't imagine how bad that must have been for my cats all day. Nobody regrets buying cheap things until a problem arises.

 

[coleco]

I would just be happy with a proper plumbing system that reroutes all used washing water to the toilets' deposits like they do in many prisons.

Also, someone please design a proper peeing solution so I don't have to waste 5-10 litres of water every time I flush or pee in the sink and then use the toothbrushes glass to flush in some sort of hidden taboo ritual even though my gf knows perfectly well what is going on though pretends she doesn't.

And solar panels, and general electricity switches so I can truly stop electricity consumption in the areas of the house I'm not using.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Also, someone please design a proper peeing solution so I don't have to waste 5-10 litres of water every time I flush or pee in the sink and then use the toothbrushes glass to flush in some sort of hidden taboo ritual even though my gf knows perfectly well what is going on though pretends she doesn't.

A lot of new toilets do the half-flush / full-flush thing where if you pee you just use a half-flush. Not sure what it gets water usage down to.

 

[Deku Tree]

If you find the low battery warning for your disposable 9v backup battery annoying, couldn't you just get a slightly fancier smoke detector that has a rechargeable battery?

I would have to buy five of them and pay for installation (because they are connected to electric wiring). Not cheap. So far I just replace the battery every so often and then forget about it until the next time it happens and I get deeply annoyed.

 

[Somnid]

Some more to Stump's general thought now that I've thoroughly destroyer smoke detectors if you look at long term the potential is there but perhaps beyond what a normal user could be expected to make use of. Home automation is basically trying to make things work without human intervention, or at least much of it so the full potential is basically programming.

Start coffee when I wake up, set light to brighten in the blue spectrum (to mimic sunrise), Start energy efficient water heater for my shower, run fan when I get out for 10 minutes etc. etc.

The problem is this is already much to ask of most tech interested people who don't program let alone a general audience and there's many failure points. What if I hit snooze? What if it's labor day? What if we're out of milk? What happens if the water was shut off? That's hard to say. So at this point everything needs to find use with itself which is often exchanging a switch for a smartphone app that does the same thing remotely for "convenience," which is rightly not compelling. We also need to wait on specs to settle. Wemo, wink and smartthings all rely on separate hubs and apps but also wireless standards. You have bunch of special ones like Zigbee and Z-wave in addition to BLE and Wifi, not counting upcoming things like 802.11ah. We need one or two of these to win out and then we need a way to bridge them across manufactures to have concrete APIs for device types. Brillo/Weave and Homekit are kinda trying to do this but currently failing because there's so much breakage with existing products and people don't want lock-in, but also because they are predicated on using phones or wearables which while a hub of personal life is ill-suited for a hub in a public space. I'm not going to delegate user account permission to my wife's Apple account just so she can change the lights with her phone, that's completely stupid. You need a centralized hub that anyone at that location can use freely without configuration.

So for now we're in a place where home automation means buying $50 lightbulbs that change color.

 

[Culex]

So does there exist cellphone linked door knobs that unlock with your cellphone app? Because I would pay to have those installed in my house.

 

[Calamari41]

Most of the "internet of things" products that I see these days do seem superfluous, but I have to say that converting all of my outdoor outlets and light switches to z-wave has been a godsend. Christmas (and other decorative) lights are easily set on a schedule rather than requiring me to go out and unplug them before going to bed, and my porch lights and post lights are all waiting for me if I arrive home after the sun has gone down.

I absolutely loved my Nest as well, but it turned out that the board in my furnace isn't compatible with it, so I had to take it out after a couple of months of operation. It was really nice to be able to just turn the heat on ten minutes before getting home, and have a nice warm house waiting for me rather than needing to keep the furnace on the whole time I'm out or depending on inaccurate and convoluted standard timers.

 

[Bboy AJ]

The hospital I helped build here in Toronto that opens next month has these in order to save on cooling costs. They really need to make their way to the home market.

Can you give me more details on the adaptive window tinting? How much? How did you choose this company? Any downsides? Consumer availability?

I'd like to buy some, depending.

 

[Krauser Kat]

I would just be happy with a proper plumbing system that reroutes all used washing water to the toilets' deposits like they do in many prisons.

Also, someone please design a proper peeing solution so I don't have to waste 5-10 litres of water every time I flush or pee in the sink and then use the toothbrushes glass to flush in some sort of hidden taboo ritual even though my gf knows perfectly well what is going on though pretends she doesn't.

And solar panels, and general electricity switches so I can truly stop electricity consumption in the areas of the house I'm not using.

Any serious thought of saving water should come from eating habits where it would make the most impact.

 

[LucidMomentum]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS0MZuvNQMI

 

[Stumpokapow]

Any serious thought of saving water should come from eating habits where it would make the most impact.

I'm not sure this is true. It's true that food probably takes the largest water footprint in someone's life, and clothing is probably second, with everything else like showers and brushing teeth and flushing the toilet being far behind... but it's also a lot more achievable for the average person to learn to turn off the water when they brush their teeth or push the half-flush button or share showers with their spouse than it is to give up meat. Both should be considered for sure, but I just mean I don't think we should blame people for doing low hanging but less important fruit before the harder but more important ones.

 

[mrklaw]

Is the nest worth having? My current thermostat/programmer just died, and the difference between a replacement standard one and a nest is about £100. Control via smartphone I don't care about, I'm more interested in how good it is at adjusting to your patterns and saving energy

 

[samn]

I am lazy about food and grocery shopping. Give me an app with the ability to take an inventory of items in my kitchen, suggest things I can prepare with said items, and simplify the ordering process so things are fully stocked. Even better, maybe it should cook the food for me, place the table, and do the dishes.

A website for this was actually featured on Dragon's Den UK. I don't think it got the investment.

 

[Lord Panda]

I just hate the whole product as a service trend and locking users into annual plans usually at eye brow launching pricing tiers.