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Networking For Overconvenience
Roland Piquepaille writes "For several decades now, we've read that our homes will become smart and that we'll have many robotic slaves at our service. But it's never really worked. A recent European initiative called TEAHA (short for 'The European Application Home Alliance') wants to give another try, and it has enrolled some big industrial partners to make all our appliances interoperate seamlessly. Imagine a message on your TV telling you it's time to start the laundry! Read more for additional details and illustrations describing the concepts."
Talk about life changing technology!
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
My interest isn't as much in having normal appliances that talk to each other, although that could be cool (for instance, a dishwasher and washing machine that know not to turn on when the shower is in use.. that would be pretty cool), but rather appliances that are just more accurate. I dream of the day that I won't have to posess bank-burglar safe-cracker finger dexterity to get my shower to the exact temperature I desire, but rather I can just dial in a digital thermostat to 102.5F or whatever suits me. Some fixtures are making headway in this direction.. these Hansa faucets with LEDs that tint the water red or blue (for cold or hot) have been available for a while, although they don't come cheap.. they're at least a step in the right direction, since I think most of us have occasionally stuck our hands under scalding water by accident [presuming it was instead on "cold" mode].
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Imagine a message on your TV telling you it's time to start the laundry! Read more for additional details and illustrations describing the concepts.
Imagine, popup advertising following you around the house!
Push Button, Receive Bacon
It sounds like a great idea, but think of awkwardness it could come up with once it's fully implimented...
"BEEP BEEP! Time to walk the... oh, I see you're a little busy... I'll remind you in a couple minutes or so... (that IS all you'll need, right?)"
Imagine a message on your TV telling you it's time to start the laundry!
If that's the best example they can come up with, then I don't have high hopes for this technology. Seriously guys, if you want to get consumers to buy all-new networked home appliances then at least present us with a decent reason why.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
To make matters worse, there have been studies that support the fact that pregnant women stressed by all these gadgets/technology, are more likely to have kids with severe mental or psychotic problems. Do you know that the chances of a kid getting a brain disorder are just 1 in 166? It iused to be 1 in 11000 in the late sixties.
"Sorry, sir, but you need to pay $0.99 to use the washroom."
or
"Sorry, sir, but your credit card has been maxed out. You may not enter your home."
No thanks!
I can get my girlfriend (or wife or mom) to nag me about doing the laundry. I can set alarms on my phone, PDA, computer, digital watch, even involve some loudspeakers without much difficulty. None of that means I'll actually DO the laundry. Where's the invention that will collect and automatically DO my laundry? That's what I'm waiting for. Something useful.
Yeah, and if you'r not a complete tool, you can notice it's another episode of Roland's unfound fuckwit optimisismism for the fjuuuuture. He know exactly how to write an "exciting" blurp for slashdot. Every marginally intelligent person here should be able to notice Roland's annoying style before even getting at the "More"-link.
God damn asshat, I hope he dies soon. I really do.
Or atleast I want to kick him in the crotch as soon as possible. Fucking annoying bullshitter. I want these kind of fuckheads OUT. He doesn't know _anything_ about technology, but writes these exciting headlines every-god-damn-week to drive hits to his shitty blog.
Bot Assisted Blogging
The problem with the idea is getting the household appliance industry to agree upon some standards, and I would bet that this would an industry particularly resistant to the idea.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Summary: in 2003 EU gave a grant to a Dutch and Belgian university to cooperate with Philips and some smaller companies to develop a middleware network system to be marketed as costing 5 to cent per device or lots more when AV gets involved. Like Jini they have nothing to show for it in 2006, but will do some more reseach in November.
Thanks for nothing folks.
Enough of the fucktarded Roland Piquepaille Slashvertisements
Let them invent something that will lást a decade, instead of break down after two or three years. Wait, didn't they already build fridges, washing-machines and T.V.-s that would last that long in the seventies? Gee, I wonder what happened to technology. O yes, I know, they improved it...
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
then i should be able to send a message thru the tv to start my laundry, not the otherway around, and oh! when it's done, then it should be able to shift the clothes into the dryer, select the appropiate settings and dry them for me.
Donald Ray Moore Jr. (mindrape)
Suspected Terrorist
I have some ideas that would make this worth while...
Someone mentioned dial-a-temperature showers. Definitely good, but not really 'networked'... and can definitely be done without it.
TV/DVR/Game Console/etc that work -together-. Why does my TV only have 4 inputs, and why doesn't it -know- what's on each one? With a usb-type system, components could be chained together and the TV could simply display a list of all the components that are connected. It could even turn the unit on, if it's off when you switch to it. A game console could automatically pause, if you switch displays to another unit. The PC could automatically password-lock if you switch away. Too many ideas here.
TV is also connected to the house network for monitoring purposes. The burglar alarm says someone is approaching the front door. It shows them on the display. It's mom, so you use the remote to unlock the front door. (Not wireless, so it can't be exploited.)
Home Monitor also notices that you finished cooking, but left the stove on. Or that the stove has been on for 5 minutes, but you haven't set a timer yet, so it warns you in case you forgot about it. (This would save me constantly.) Timer is on the network so that it can warn you that the lasagna's done and get you to stop playing the Game Console long enough to get it out. Or the laundry is done, or... Too many ideas here.
Alarm clocks on a per-person, per-day schedule. It can even track you in case you end up sleeping on the couch that night, and be sure to wake only the right person up.
The remote control is actually part of the network, instead of being attached to a certain device. You can select what device you want to access and the remote's LCD is reconfigured for that.
Kids got the stereo too loud? Turn it down for them. Remotely.
Kids watching TV after bed time? Turn it off for them. Remotely. Or send them a video message telling them how upset you are.
Stuck in the bathroom with no toilet paper? Tell your significant other remotely, voice only. No more shouting.
I'm not done, these are just off the top of my head. They seem like minor annoyances, until you've had the tech to do that. And then they are huge assets to life. But notice that nowhere did I say all of these apps should be on the internet. No, with the ability of hackers to get into ANYTHING, I completely recommend that the internet is not even hooked into this system at all. That should be a completely seperate network. Closed circuit, as it were.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The more complex something is, the more likely it is to break down.
This is a rule I sort of made up for purchasing these sorts of things. People sell home automation on things you want a few times a year. How many times have you wanted to change the temp of your house from work? Yeah, every now and then you may be leaving early/late etc and want the house to be warm/cold when you get home. To me this is about 5 times a year, I have a programmable thermostat that turns the heat on and off at preset times that are set broadly enough to cover most days. Also for laundry dishes etc, I don't care when they are done. Maybe if I was in an apt sharing washers with several other people, but my clothes can sit there for a while, even overnight if I forget, no biggie. Agian, this would be useful about 5 times a year. Now if you made some home automation that folded clothes and put them away, I would use that 52 times a year or more. I'd be willing to pay Big Bucks(tm) for this. Basicly I want rosie the robot to do my chores. I have a roomba for the floors and it's pretty nice, although it doesn't clean as well as a full sized vacuum I feel that it lets me vacuum by hand about half as often. I await you home automation overloads.
Can't it start doing the laundry all by itself?
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
I can't tell you when the last time was that I wanted my computer to control any aspect of the household -- because it has never happened. I doubt it ever will. That is not to say that the stove, coffee pot, TVs, and a few other things are not programmable. They are. But why do they need to be networked.
Maybe there is an exception. When the power comes back after a failure a couple of our VCRs pick the current time off the horizontal reset interval data on the local PBS station. I wouldn't mind if the stove, coffee pot, and other timed devices got the time from them instead of from me. But I think the chances that "They" will limit themselves to things like that are near zero. What they will doubtless do is confront me with all sorts of options I don't want, don't understand, and don't need, labelled with icons that make no sense whatsoever and instructions that are presented incomprehensibly in several major languages. Not only that, the devices will doubtless talk to me in a dulcet sweet female voice, and misunderstand any verbal instructions I care to give them -- including occasional pickups of casual conversation.
What I really don't need in my life is to deal with one more set of flaky technology. There's a word for people who think this stuff is nifty -- even after Windows, VCRs that no one can program, and cars that turn on a "The Sky Is Falling" light if the gas cap is loose. The phrase that encompasses them is "Slow-learners".
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Imagine a channel on your TV dedicated to showing you the inside of your washing machine while you're doing your laundry!
I call it, reality TV!
I'd have to agree with a few other posts I've seen, Who cares? Phones, Mp3 Players and clocks have alarms for reasons. Most of the ideas I saw dont require a network at all. Besides.... Who wants blue screen on their toaster?
I think the chances are that the average joe won't be interested in this technology and so it will mostly focus on home entertainment and integration of communication devices. For example - Bill Gates has an RFID system set up in his home that displays art on monitors depending on the person in the room's taste. This sort of technology wouldn't be that hard to implement.
Or, considering that we're definitely moving more towards MCE TV setups, a TV that will tell you when you have an email?
I know there are certain risks and problems associated with this and it may well be more trouble than it's worth but from a 'why not?' standpoint, it's surely worth a try.
"No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
Why do I need my tv to do this. All you have to do is have the scheduler pop up a txt message at a certain time telling you to start the laundry. If you then have the comp connected to your tv it will then do that. The computer can do most of this anyway why do I need other devices to do the same thing. They should work on having appliances use less electricity ,I don't care if they can speak to me or anything like that.
Stuck in the bathroom with no toilet paper? Tell your significant other remotely, voice only. No more shouting.
If I lived in a house like that and could still run out of toilet paper, I would be pretty disappointed. I think this is a good example how being stuck in one's ways leads to awkward predictions of future technology. The inconvenience isn't that you can't talk to someone else on the loo, it's that you ran out of TP. Solve the problem, don't just enhance an old-fashioned way of solving the problem.
Another example is "message on your TV telling you it's time to start the laundry". What the hell? If the computer knows it's time to start the laundry, then why is it bothering me with that information instead of starting the laundry. It can talk to the washing machine after all. The last thing I need is another machine telling me what to do.
But I've been fooled by this vaporware before. Wake me up when the products are on sale.
Otherwise, toss this in the forgettery along with flying cars, Asimovian robots, predictably functional North Korean nukes, the last digit of pi, Windows Vista and leprechauns.
These stories are free but worth money.
I work in the automation industry. It parallels home theater and distributed systems. I have worked in homes that take 6 years to build due to the complexity of the system. These do exist. Only problem is price. We are talking the upper 5 pecent. One home had a series of touch panels that controlled anything but the central vacuume. Turn on the theater that flips down from the ceiling in the mbed, draw the shades, dim lighting, turn on the heat, and start the movie. Al from the touch panel at the entry of the home. Meanwhile the homeowner makes a snack in the kichen to arrive to the movie just after the previews. Doorbell rings and the pip opens on all active televisions giving a camera view at the door the bell was pressed. I have seen everything but the robots mentioned in the start of this string.
/software interface that allows for similar functionality of crestron. I plead to all who are capable, lets talk abbout this. I am not talking mythtv either. More of device control through adressable ip based relays or tranceivers. Daugher boxes that can handle streams of audio, video and web interfacing. Tablets that control it all. If an apple develpoer reads this please beakon the itv proect to include a extension for this level of expandable control. I would welcome any information on this subject. quotaholic, at please god no spam, yahoo
We the certified installers (at least those of us with any common sense) will refuse to touch media center from MS with its add on product from exeptional innovation called lifeware. It offers interfacing through media center for everything from temp to camera views to lighting. These start at 6 digits for a semi smart home. Those smart enough with enough time to kill could probably make their own system. With a waci NX from aurora multimedia one can do a lot of home brew automation. Crestron, AMX and Home logic are a few manufacturers of software and hardware "open" interfaces that can handle these tasks. Again price price price.
I will be a happy person when the linux programmers of the world collaborate on such a project as a open hardware
Wouldn't it be great if you could set up everything in your house to play 'Joy to the world' if and when a single day goes by without a pigpaille spamming of slashdot? That's a future I could live with!
The computer still needs someone to load it.
People with second homes usually have alarm systems. They are starting to get somewhat sophisticated, including webcams and remote tempature sensors that can be accessed from the web. almost all of them use proprietary software and comms protocols internally, but will usually interface with web browsers.
:) Too bad the debate has become a shouting match (at least here in the US), but that's the way of politics these days.
Most of us in the first world are aging. Combine that with children living farther away and you have 2 choices: Hire an imagrant/slave to take care of you, or develop automated homes. Japan is going for the automation, and I think that's a great thing. I just wish they'd spend more time developing systems that work instead of walking robots that don't seem to do much else. For how much they are spending on humanoid walking robot research they could retrofit apartments for rolling 'bots.
Here in the US (and to an extent, Europe), we are going the other route, importing workers from the third world, and then complaining that they are here "taking away jobs from 'mericans." I don't know about you, but I realllly don't want to spend my days cleaning up after, and fixing food for my elders. It's bad enough I have to be their tech support.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
sPh
HVAC systems are a prime example. In our office, we have central heating (with hot water radiators), and an AC system. Both are controlled separately, which is stupid because you can easily set them up to work at the same time, counteracting each other.
To make things worse, the heating has the dumbest thermostat I've ever seen. It ignores room temperature, and only uses the water temp. and outside temp. as inputs. One sensor is used to regulate the temperature in half a dozen rooms, which are warmed up by to sun at different rates. Result: there's no way to get the temperature right. Plus, the thermostat is run by an $5 microcontroller which has the most convoluted, braindead UI I've ever seen for such a simple function. The controller is made by Cenvax (so you know what to avoid).
What we need is a system that controls both hot and cold sources, with an easy way to program temperature profiles for each room separately. Get that right, and we can talk about refrigerators that can order food on their own.
Imagine a message on your TV telling you it's time to start the laundry!
.0.]
Yikes! You mean this isn't already on the blueprint for MythTV. v. 0.62? Considering it's only at v. 0.20 I expect HAL by version 1.0 [Yes, obviously he would be a
Here's a technical PDF on the system. Guess what? This is a Trusted Computing system!
It specifies devices to contain security module / security component. It specifies that this security component contains a crypto key and that the owner is forbidden to know or read his own keys (that is what they mean when the PDF says "non cloneable"). It specifies using public key cryptography for chips to exchange communication keys in a manner secure against the owner, and specifies Confidentiality as establishing communication links which are secure against the owner "eavesdropping" on his own data. It specifies Authenticity capabilites, meaning that neither the owner nor any competitor can produce a device that can be substituted in your own network in place of a given device. Any attempt at an interoperable substitution will lack the required manufacturer's cryptographic key and signature to authenticate the device, and other devices can reject the substitute and reject its connections and prohibit it from operating in the original device's place.
Every time the PDF uses the word secure or security, it is used in the sense of securing the system against the owner. The PDF literally classifies the owner as an "intruder" at one point, and to be secure against him.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Wouldn't it also be Zonk's fault for posting the story to the front page of /. ? /. settings. I don't even know if he still writes stories for /.
Roland writes his same 'ol crap on his blog and probably has an RSS feed to Zonk's inbox.
I fixed my problem with Jon Katz stories long ago, by blocking them in my
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
If the TV tells you to start your laundry, then the house isn't doing its job. You should be able to toss your laundry down a chute, and have it automatically sorted, washed, dried, and returned to you, ready to wear again. I don't want a TV or house that acts like a naggy mother.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
If you don't have the time to tell your kids in person to turn off the TV or turn down the stereo, you shouldn't have kids.
Home automation is great, but automated parenting is bad.
Help I'm a rock.
ca. 1998 - Jini by Sun Microsystems.
Didn't work out.
The technology has matured quite a bit in the meantime, but is still not very widespread.
There exist *many* very complex complete control systems for HVAC. Hell, even my house has shared thermostats between heating and cooling and both cannot be active at a time (well, for a given zone).
Just because your HVAC system at your office was poorly implemented (don't even know how long ago it was set up), doesn't mean most modern deployments lack common control systems that are more intelligent, sensors for more zones, and vent control to direct hot or cold air as appropriate based on appropriately fine grained zones.
One thing I do think fails a sanity check for me is that places with large datacenters, AFAIK in the winter do fairly inefficent stuff. The heat will be on to the rest of the building as if this blazing hot datacenter didn't exist, and the datacenter AC units will be on full blast in the datacenter, ignoring the fact that the rest of the building has undesired cold air. I would think they could do some air exchange where air from the rest of the cold building's air returns can injected into the datacenter and the heat exhaust from the datacenter be fanned into the ductwork for the vents in the places that need warmth. With fans and dynamic duct routing (makes no sense in the summer), efficiency could be increased such that for the most part, only heat is needed to supplement the exhaust (if the BTUs of the datacenter can't warm the facility in and of itself), or cooling is needed (if the datacenter produces so much BTU that the entire place would get too hot).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
>Not wireless, so it can't be exploited.
That's a foolish assumption. Assumptions like this can result in less secure systems than a wireless system. In a wireless system people are highly aware of the risk of injection risks and eavesdropping, so they are more likely to employ cryptographically sound methods of protection.
Your best bet would be to wire it, because that's sane and doesn't require EM bandwidth sucked up for a very static setup, and don't assume someone can't eavesdrop and/or inject commands. Assume a world where such a deployment were common place, and the unlock codes were like the power button code on a remote control. A burglar would have a device that attempts to induce a signal in a nearby wire cycling through the commonly used unlock codes near the lock, and might get luck. A more determined burglar could probably detect where the cable is, drill a hole, and get at the wire even if the shielding were enough to make it difficult. Drilling a hole is easier to do quickly and quietly than cutting the locks or around the locks, so it would represent a realisitc path to getting into a house unwanted.
As to the rest of the stuff mentioned, some has merit, some doesn't. For example if a unskippable sequence begins in a game that you have seen before comes up and you switch away to do something else while it plays out, it would be unfortunate if the game console decided you must want it to wait for you. Similarly if you are switching away real quick and your HTPC screen locks just because of it, it could be annoying. Maybe you could have a timeout that is more relevantly linked to the state of the video output rather than user activity. Also turning on when you switch to an input may be undesirable. A lot of remotes conserve space by having a single source change button, which works fine as it stands today, but if your systems turned on and you had to turn them off just because you happened to cycle through them would be annoying.
The stove timer similarly could be annoying, I don't want to set a timer for everything I put on the stove top to keep the warning from firing. Maybe you could make it sophisticated such that if a timer is set, assume the user wants any pre-emptive alarms suppressed for the duration, if motion is occurring in front of the stove, assume the person is aware of the situation and not fire an alarm. Maybe if no weight is on a particular section that's on for a period of time also alarm.
Alarm clock prospect I can't argue except it's weird that it knows where I am. The remote as well I think makes sense.
All the remotely dealing with the kids is bad parenting, and should not be encouraged.
I have a much lower tech solution to the bathroom with no toilet paper, I have spare toilet paper rolls in every bathroom in convenient places so I never need assisstance from my wife. Sometimes over complicating things is not the answer. Rube Goldberg-like solutions generally should give you pause and invite you to think of a simpler answer.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Flaky. (Hope that's spelled right) None of this technology has ever worked right. I used to be an X-10 addict. Wait! If I order 3 eagle eye I/R detectors I can get an ultra-remote too! Hell, sign me up! The idea that you could control all of that stuff was cool but it never worked quite right. I had motion detectors tied into lights, lights on schedules and even the A/C on a schedule. It worked ok but never 100%. Closer to 50%. I'd be watching TV on a hot summer night and the AC would shut off. Lights would go on and back off. I struggled to get it working but the nail in the coffin was when I put the upstairs light outside the bedroom on a remote control. two nights in a row the damn thing turned on in the middle of the night, waking me up. There just wasn't any reason to it. The third day all that shit went into a box for sale on ebay.
As for internet on refrigerators and stoves, I just don't get it. Not sure what the point is. I suppose if you can afford the $4k stove that will refrigerate until it's time to cook it might be worthwhile but other than that it just isn't there. I expect it would be a huge pain in the ass. We should probably start with something very simple like appliances that can set their own time. If we can get that right, then move on to something really groundbreaking like a stove that is actually 350 deg when you set it to 350. How about an affordable dishwasher that doesn't sound like a plane taking off?
Would this really be that hard though. Embed an RFID in the clothes that contains the washing instructions, and have some sort of system that drops it in separte baskets to wash. And then does the laundry whenever you accumulater a full load of laundry. Extra features that would be cool include telling the machine that you want your green shirt clean for the next day and it would ensure that it's ready for you. Although Washing machines make things so much easier than they used to be. Seriously people are so lazy, with dishwashers, laundry machines, disposable cleaning things like swiffer, that I can't believe that people still complain. You think you have it hard, try cleaning your laundry on a Washboard
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Of hot slavegirls? No technology needed.
We are only immortal for a limited time - Rush, Dreamline
Imagine a message on your TV telling you it's time to start the laundry!
That smart TV would soooo get smacked with a smart sledgehammer.
A plain old sledgehammer would do just fine if you think about it.
Right now, we've got little to nothing in our houses we might want to network for any reason... Who really gives a damn about your TV telling you the phone is ringing? Everyone is so anxious to leap-frog the next several steps, that they skip over the REASONS someone might EVENTUALLY WANT to network their house.
I'm still opening and closing all my windows...
I still have to go up and open/close the vents in my attic...
I still have to climb onto my roof... I still have to adjust my refridgerator's temurature... I still have to turn each room's lights on and off. I still have to run wires to get sound or video from one part of my house to another. I still have to manually transfer individual music/video files from one device to another. etc.
It is rather necessary to have those individual things automated in their own small way first, before you would even WANT to start networking the house. Simple, local mechanisms could take care of many of those current hassles without some single, over-riding system in control of it all.
Only then would you perhaps want to interconnect all those things, to have them working together.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Thanks to the wonders of psuedo-capitalism we get so much planned obsolescence shoved down our throats (computers, lightbulbs, etc) and just plain shoddy manufacturing... I'd like to see products that work predictably, reliably, and without unnecessary complication. Sure, you can buy really expensive high-end stuff for that, but without economy of scale and competition, it's not really affordable to most people.
We put a man on the moon almost 40 years ago. We should be able to at least make this stuff simple and not suck.
and don't get it. Why would I want a message on my TV telling me to do a laundry. When I do laundry, I do laundry, I put it in and press "start", messy, labour intensive, but the TV really can't help me with this. Until the "home connectivity" people can answer basic questions of "why", they will continue to fail.
"I completely recommend that the internet is not even hooked into this system at all. That should be a completely seperate network. Closed circuit, as it were."
Differenent subnet you mean?
No, that would not be a closed circuit, and would still be able to be hacked. I'm talk seperate network hardware-wise.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
You should be able to toss your laundry down a chute, and have it automatically sorted, washed, dried, and returned to you, ready to wear again. I don't want a TV or house that acts like a naggy mother.
It's ironic, however, that a "naggy mother" is the only system currently known which does all the functions you specify in one unit.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."