Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Forges Ahead With New Home-Automation OS
suraj.sun writes "More than a decade ago, Microsoft execs, led by Chairman Bill Gates, were touting a future where .Net coffee pots, bulletin boards, and refrigerator magnets would be part of homes where smart devices would communicate and inter-operate. Microsoft hasn't given up on that dream. In 2010, Microsoft researchers published a white paper about their work on a HomeOS and a HomeStore — early concepts around a Microsoft Research-developed home-automation system. Those concepts have morphed into prototypes since then, based on a white paper, 'An Operating System for the Home,' (PDF) published this month on the Microsoft Research site. The core of HomeOS is described in the white paper as a kernel that is agnostic to the devices to which it provides access, allowing easy incorporation of new devices and applications. The HomeOS itself 'runs on a dedicated computer in the home (e.g., the gateway) and does not require any modifications to commodity devices,' the paper added. Microsoft has been testing HomeOS in 12 real homes over the past four to eight months, according to the latest updates. As is true with all Microsoft Research projects, there's no guarantee when and if HomeOS will be commercialized, or even be 'adopted' by a Microsoft product group."
It wasn't only a decade ago when Microsoft and Bill Gates talked about this. In Bill Gates' book The Road Ahead , published back in 1995, he was already having visions of interconnected home devices and appliances. I think this has been long time innovative thought of Mr. Gates. You have to remember that even Microsoft was still a relatively small player in the industry and had only starting to gain momentum.
I was still a teenager back then but I found many of his ideas quite fascinating, especially the ones that resolved around similar stuff to HomeOS. While many Slashdotters say that Bill Gates merely copied his best ideas like BASIC, he also did have a very large amount of original ideas and thoughts. He described in good details about his visions for the future and how and why something like this would be great for everyones home.
In that sense, and despite what many slashdotters think, Bill Gates was quite a hacker. Actually, he really was and still is, and he got lucky to have parents with business background so he could mix those two capabilities. This ultimately led him to build the largest and greatest software company the world has ever seen, Microsoft.
If you haven't read the book, and even if you have something against Gates in your mind, I highly recommend to read it. It's a great read and truly lets you get into the innovative mindset of Bill Gates. Back when he was a young hacker and like with many other young people, he had tons of ideas in his mind.
Used to be really interested in home automation. Had an x10 setup for a while (terrible system by the way) and played around with some custom software.
There was a time when everyone thought this was the future (along with virtual reality and other such things). I bought into it. I figured by now I’d be casually shouting orders at the various appliances in my house.
We now have the technology to do all the cool stuff we dreamed about in the early 90s. The big problem however, is once you automate the lights, temperature, and coffee pot what else is there that makes any sense (and even the lights are more of a novelty than much practical benefit). The “house of the future” feeling is cool and it’s fun to play with... but most of it is impractical and would seem to add very little benefit for a whole lot of complexity.
as WIFI over load can be a issue even more so in apartments.
Sounds like fun for hackers I hope it can work offline or under the big firewall if needed.
Please tell me when it's safe to come out from behind the sofa. My HomeOS appliances all got malware and have formed a botnet. My DVD player is trundling around the living room with a steak knife demanding my credit card details and my fridge has ejected spam all over the kitchen. I knew I should have installed Norton!
Even IF (and it's a big "if") people will want this (home automation on a wide-scale)...
Question is: "Will they want it from Microsoft ?"
From Apple... sure. Seems folks just can't get enough new things from Apple.
But imagine all the negative things people associate with Microsoft (rightly or wrongly), and imagine those things being present in how your home works.
MIT has monitored bathrooms, does that count?
And to troll a little bit, what happens to my coffeepot if it dies with a bluescreen?
to E(xploding)H(ouse)OD whooo hooooooooooo
Can we use it to automate opening Windows?
Interesting that the white paper 'An Operating System for the Home' was created using LaTeX. Doesn't Microsoft Research use Microsoft authoring tools? Or maybe they know better!
They're not the first to dream of embedded smart devices. But Java ME owns a huge chunk of that market, from Blu-Ray players on up.
One thing I learned that ticks me off to no end is Microsoft intentionally made the GUID incompatible with the UUID.
What, pray tell, was wrong with the UUID standard other than Microsoft wanting to yet again try to lock customers in with incompatibilities?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Since the ancestors of our modern operating systems came out in the 80s, computing power has increased but so has the data load that the average consumer carries.
It only makes sense to start having smart management systems. Why not integrate heating, A/C, security, messaging and even purchasing of common supplies? We're all going to have home servers anyway for our video and music content, so it's not a stretch to use that machine as a control point for all of these.
The core of HomeOS is described in the white paper as a kernel that is agnostic to the devices to which it provides access,
I'm impressed with the major advances in AI that Microsoft is introducing. Not only does this OS seem to be sentient, but it is also apparently programmed to ponder deep metaphysical concepts.
The kernel must be thinking: "These devices I work with may indeed physically exist. Or they may just be something like a software simulation that's being fed to me. As a humble computer program, I really don't have enough evidence to make a final conclusion either way."
And implement the Hyper Text Coffe Pot Control Protocol and not a closed standard. Huh, who said that was an April 1st joke?
Really, after how many years Microsoft has failed to keep even their own Windows OS secure. It's so bad there is a monthly "malicious software removal tool" on top of numerous patches. Trying to make Windows secure is like bailing water out of a sieve.
Now watch the shills come out of the woodwork like rats...
Everything in the home just works, leave it the fuck alone. Why the hell do I need an embedded computer in a coffee pot or a fridge magnet. If the pot holds a hot liquid, it works. Fridge magnet stick to the fridge, done. Those things do their job with zero setup and maintenance. Now I need to setup network+power for all this shit? Integrating disparate systems in an industrial settings is hard enough, I don't want to come home and do work all over again just to have some coffee. Of course you'll need the inevitable antivirus, firewall, and automatic s/w updates for...a coffee pot.
Sounds kinda gay.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Twenty years worth of unsigned, arbitrary code execution, privilege escalation, and not-quite-ready-to-ship distributions give me no reason to trust Microsoft with so much as my toilet or lawn sprinkler. Stick to your desktop and mobile OSes and Office so that you can become irrelevant sooner rather than later.
Can't figure out from the description if its anything more than the prior art of misterhouse from a decade ago running in Perl on Linux. Is it anything more than that?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Saw a commercial from FiOS 2 nights ago about this. They had someone turning on the lights, setting the temperature, feeding their dog and some other stuff using their smartphone.
http://www22.verizon.com/residentialhelp/homecontrol/home+monitoring+and+control/use/monitoring+devices/129871.htm
Call me when they make a cheap PoE powered tablet. I will install Android on it then.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075931/
This strikes me as a solution looking for a problem. It's cool and all, but is it really necessary to have my fridge know what's inside it and when it expires and alert me on my smart phone or some similar nonsense. Is opening the fridge and checking what's in there really that much of a problem that people are willing to drop multiple $k on home automation? All things being equal, sure I'd take the internet connected fridge over the old "dumb" fridge, but am I willing to pay extra for it?
The really ugly problem with 'Home Automation' doesn't seem to be purely technological(ie. PIRs, contact switches, reed switchs, and relays are antedeluvian, adequate-speed interconnect over assorted wires also ancient, over RF also pretty old, and computers capable of crunching rulesets based on some combination of sensor outputs and RTCs are 80s stuff); but in the fact that the low-hanging fruit is too boring to be worth the trouble and the higher-hanging fruit would be massively complex and require a continual morass of several-industries-wide cooperation...
Boring case, you can drop a relay on each of your light switches, get your thermostat under control, and put some PIR presence detectors in place. If security is a concern, put up some cameras and stash a DVR somewhere. All easy; but not as inexpensive as one might like(especially in jurisdictions where touching mains current means bringing in electricians and permits and stuff), and you really have to want your bitchin' home theatre system to automatically close the drapes and dim the lights, or be very prone to leaving the stove on to fork over the additional money for the ability to remote control those things(and we are all familiar with the office comedy that is frantically waving your arms to make the 'smart' lights turn back on...)
Now, interesting case is where you expose every detail of all the devices in the home, quite possibly adding more sensors depending on the device category, and start having them cooperate intelligently to achieve various objectives. However, this is where the complexity gets ugly. Consider the history of ACPI: They wanted a way to allow computers to be more intelligent about power use, peripheral idle states, and environmental monitoring. Despite being hammered out in a near-duopoly environment(with MS on the software side and Intel on hardware), ACPI was a screaming pile of shit that barely worked properly even on mainstream OEM wintels until comparatively recently(and, even today, there are vendor-specific quirk packages, messy hacks, and peripherals that don't play quite right), never mind the poor bastards who dabbled in DIY or alternate OSes.
Now, you want the Home Of The Future? See to it that your utility meters, consumer appliances, home entertainment electronics, computers, water heaters, plumbing fixtures, climate control and thermostat systems, entry detection and security systems, and who knows what else all expose their sensors and capabilities in a standardized way. Don't let the fact that most of the items on that list have one or more industry consortia squabbling about the details of how their own little fiefdoms will be semi-standardized within themselves, much less on a broader basis, worry you.
Once you have the data to look at and the buttons and knobs to fiddle with, you just need some rulesets that make the devices collaborate intelligently and a set of interfaces that expose the power, but hide most of the complexity, to a degree sufficient that the fancy new hotness is actually worth the trouble.
Basically, you've got a problem whose complexity is fairly similar in scale to the sort of thing that smallish networking/datacenter entities would have an SNMP jocky on hand for, except that none of the hardware actually has management support yet, and the end result has to be easy enough for Joe Consumer to use. Also, it should ideally not be a dystopian surveillance nightmare or a script-kiddie playground. Not an easy problem....
No thank you. Microsoft cannot even get their Windows product to work reliably after nearly 20 years of trying. Why would we think they can do any better with yet another OS?
I for one welcome Microsoft Home Automation Line of products...
I feel safe with their Home automation Line
Or H.A.L. for short.......
ermmmm...
on second thoughts...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
I am also having some fragmented Domotica in my home, self-built and generally working 'ok': doorbell gives me an e-mail, outside lights are controlled by a crontab, alarm system gives a message when a door is opened and that stuff. But like the parent I feel that it is generally useless to the common person. However, there may be an opportunity for someone to integrate everything into 1 solution that *would* give benefit ; maybe integrate it with the TV system using tools like jstx. But I don't think MS will solve this issue though ; way too much focused on their own OS, not on the user.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
With the rise of competitors to challenge it, Microsoft is not seen as the big ogre it once was. And yet its reputation for reliability has never been exceptional.
HomeOS... would you really feel comfortable turning your back to it? Leaving your children alone in the care of HomeOS? And if you were in the shower, I can imagine that HomeOS might allow you to set the temperature on command, e.g. "Four degrees warmer, HomeOS." - "Fabulous!". But if you dropped the soap in there with HomeOS just how would that work exactly?
Call me old fashioned, but I'm just not yet ready to flirt with HomeOS. The whole thing might just be one big PITA.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I always wanted to make my own Java Toaster. It burns the weather forecast into your toast in the morning.
Oh, so you KNEW your home appliances would eventually turn on you! You just wanted Norton's "routine background scan" to trigger every 30 minutes to slow your own personal Skynet down to a crawl. You know, so you'd have time to go get a snack before the next foray.
Karma: NaN
Software isn't the problem and hasn't been for a while. All major OSes have options available to them for running home automation, and there are a number of decent automation appliances too should you not want to run your automation on a PC. You can control most of them from your smartphone too, via a web browser or an installed app, depending on the system.
The problem is the hardware. Ignoring the ancient and unreliable X10, you're looking at spending $50 and up per light switch, and the return on investment during a home sale doesn't get close to covering it. Compare that to less than a buck for a standard switch bought in bulk, and it's easy to see why home builders don't often install automation. Retrofitting them is more expensive as now you have to pay the installer too.
The problem with the hardware is twofold. First, the cost of certification testing (to get those UL and CE marks necessary for your insurance to cover fire damage caused by a faulty module) is significant and adds resistance to manufacturers wanting to introduce or evolve their product lines. The second problem is that of compatibility and licensing. Each of the systems (eg UPB) needs to be cross-vendor compatible, but that isn't easy to implement, especially when you get into the details. Remember that when it comes to compatibility the entrenched vendor wins, bugs and all. Would you want to be a startup paying significant licensing and safety certification fees to enter a tiny market where you'd be competing with an existing vendor whose products you'd be compared against?
The result is that we have a chicken and egg situation. We have lack of demand because of the per-switch cost, and high per-switch cost due to the lack of demand.
God love Microsoft for getting into HA, but until we can get decent reliable automation components for ~$10 or less, there just isn't going to be widespread adoption. Here's hoping that this will act as a catalyst.
coffee pots. lights. garage doors. There is no decent reason to attempt to automate these things and by the time hardware worth automating comes out any software developed now will be as obsolete as BASIC on Commodore 64.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
"Open the front door, HAL." "I can't do that Dave, it is not in your trusted zone."
"Why does my fridge have active X controls and why does it have something called SourMilk 0day exploit?"
"It looks like you are trying to flush the toilet", Paper clip says, "Would you like help with that?"
"Someone is trying to use the bathroom: Allow or deny."
"Lights on, HomeOS." "Did you say, the Blight is on? All doors have been now bolted for the apocalypse."'
"Mom, all of the picture frames have blue screened again."
I would give my home the voice of Steve Jobs and tell everyone that he was a ghost in the machine. You may laugh, but at least my home would be desirable, secure, and virus clean, although I would have to give Apple a cut of all the groceries.
- DiMM the WiTTed
I remember back in the early 90's, I worked for a small computer reseller, and the owner was very interested in home automation. He tried to get certified as an official partner for a "SmartHome" project that was underway at the time. I don't remember all the details anymore, but basically, it was a consortium of manufacturers trying to create standards so the infrastructure could be purchased as an option, at the time a new home was built. They had a whole catalog put together of the products they planned on offering. As I recall, it was all based around the idea of replacing standard home wiring with a ribbon cable of theirs. It would attach to special wall plates you'd buy for it, and depending on the features of a particular plate, different wires in the ribbon would be utilized to carry electrical power, transmit audio signals, ethernet data, etc. Of course, many of these plates and products (digital thermostats and so on) would also allow automation, via commands I assume you'd send down the ethernet portion of the cabling.
I don't think that ever materialized into anything of substance though. The last I heard? They had too many barriers to entry on the home building side of the equation. Home builders weren't technical/computer-centric people as a rule, and they simply weren't interested in doing something as basic as electrical wiring of a home a different way than what they'd always done -- especially if consumers weren't exactly clamoring for it in the first place.
I remember having a fascination with home automation myself using the old X10 stuff, and as quickly as I got interested? I got over it. Like you say, X10 simply sucked. I wired up a portion of my parent's house with it for basic security reasons. (They wanted the front and back porch lights to turn on after dark and off in the early morning, for example -- and other misc. lights to be able to be controlled in a similar fashion for when they left on vacation.) Within a year, all of the push-button type wall switches X10 offered went bad - so you had to repeatedly stab at the buttons to get them to manually turn a light on or off. The automation proved to be unreliable too - with switches missing commands randomly. And even the Radio Shack branded alarm clock with X10 integration as a central home controller was garbage. It allowed programming 2 pairs of on/off times, maximum, for any of eight X10 modules - but any time you forgot to erase an existing program before trying to add a new one, the clock would completely crash/freeze up if you accidentally exceeded that 2 pair per module storage limit!
When I tried to move to something better than X10, I quickly saw the prices soar on all the alternatives. And ultimately, THAT is why home automation hasn't ever really gone mainstream. It's not that it's a "toy" with no practical uses - but it only adds so much value. The really GOOD automation stuff is VERY expensive and only gets purchased by the rich, who can afford to buy it just for the bragging rights and to play with it. Everyone else would only get their money's worth if the prices were at or lower than the X10 stuff's cost, but actually worked reliably.
As someone that has worked in this field for over 6 years. Both home automation and Smart Buildings, Microsoft has a very VERY long way to go. AMX,Vantage, and Crestron all own that market.. And no they dont run a Microsoft OS. In fact it would be utterly retarded to run a full fledged OS for this.
Each device is interconnected on it's own network, most of the time RS485. Redundant controllers on the system ensure high reliability and by only running the code for the systems task, I.E. lighting it further increases reliability. So a typical fully automated home will have about 6-8 controllers. I put in 2 for lighting, 1 for redundant hot backup, because lighting is considered critical. 1 dedicated for security, 1 for hvac, and one in each major media section. Theater get's it's own and one or two is used for the other 6 rooms in the house with tiny 55" Tv's and shared video distribution. I have one dedicated for Whole house audio, and a final one that does side jobs like sprinklers, gathering the weather info, maybe parsing RSS feeds for stocks, news, etc... to be fed to the other systems that all interconnect and can be controlled by the single 6" and 8" touchscreens through the house, or by the ipads and iphones.
NONE of this runs a Microsoft OS. and none of it is designed in any way like their demo homes. Segregated but communicating systems means that if a system goes down you retain a bulk of the operation and only lose the subsystems on that failed branch. Microsoft design will crash to the floor taking it all with it.
Yes, you can design a Crestron or AMX system to crash to the floor, Badly designed systems like that exist out there, typically in homes where they cant afford to do it right so the integrator half asses it. Those systems typically never work smoothly as they overload a controller with too much.
Microsoft has a very long way to go or they need to partner with Crestron and AMX in hopes they adopt this system and throw away 20+ years of reliable consistent operation and switch to a unknown.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Bill Gates, a visionary??? Please. He missed the single biggest, most obvious trend of the 90s.
By the mid-90s anybody with half a brain who was paying any attention at all to computer and communications technology related industries understood that the Internet was well on its way to becoming THE dominant communications medium. The only question was what form it was going to take. Even so, by 1995 it was pretty clearly going to be led by Web based technologies. Yet Gates missed all of this and had to put out a revised edition of his own book to include it.
Want to read what a true visionary wrote? Take a gander at Alvin Toffler's books from the '70s. Go read Future Shock (published in 1970) and The Third Wave (published in 1980).
Heck, go read William Gibson's Neuromancer (published in 1984). Or, for earlier descriptions of how the Web might work, read James H. Schmitz's Hub stories, some of which date back to the '40s and '50s.
Bill Gates, a hacker? Of a sort, although there were and are FAR more talented people hacking away on a variety of stuff. IMO he was always too self centered to really be a good hacker. (This, from a guy who used computer time on a system that he may not have had authorization to use to create his version of BASIC.)
Good hackers want to share. Great hackers know that it's absolutely mandatory to share.
"Open the front door, HAL." "I can't do that Dave, it is not in your trusted zone."
"Why does my fridge have active X controls and why does it have something called SourMilk 0day exploit?"
"It looks like you are trying to flush the toilet", Paper clip says, "Would you like help with that?"
"Someone is trying to use the bathroom: Allow or deny."
"Lights on, HomeOS." "Did you say, the Blight is on? All doors have been now bolted for the apocalypse."'
"Mom, all of the picture frames have blue screened again."
I would give my home the voice of Steve Jobs and tell everyone that he was a ghost in the machine. You may laugh, but at least my home would be desirable, secure, and virus clean, although I would have to give Apple a cut of all the groceries.
- DiMM the WiTTed
Long as Pierce Brosnan is one of the computer voice options I'm in! How could I go wrong?!
"I didn't do it."
Insteon works alright until one of the devices fails (which happens quite often). Then you have to factory reset everything in the system in order to get it to perform well again. Plus, they included X10 support in insteon devices which can't be disabled. The X10 support causes your devices to switch on and off at random depending on its hardcoded address and the electrical noise.
This article calls for a classic post, and I'm actually surprised no one else has done this already.
From the LA Times, way back in 1993...
The Day You Discover That Your House Is Smarter Than You Are
INNOVATION / MICHAEL SCHRAGE
November 25, 1993|MICHAEL SCHRAGE | Michael Schrage is a writer, consultant and research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He writes this column independently for The Times. He can be reached by electronic mail at schrage@latimes.com on the Internet
Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable television company, is in talks to launch a pilot project in conjunction with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Microsoft Corp. to design a "smart home." The home automation industry is expected to triple in size from $1.7 billion this year to more than $5.1 billion by the year 2000.
Nov. 28, 1995:
Moved in at last. Finally, we live in the smartest house in the neighborhood. Everything's networked. The cable TV is connected to our phone, which is connected to my personal computer, which is connected to the power lines, all the appliances and the security system. Everything runs off a universal remote with the friendliest interface I've ever used. Programming is a snap. I'm, like, totally wired.
Nov. 30:
Hot stuff! Programmed my VCR from the office, turned up the thermostat and switched on the lights with the car phone, remotely tweaked the oven a few degrees for my pizza. Everything nice & cozy when I arrived. Maybe I should get the universal remote surgically attached.
Dec. 3:
Yesterday, the kitchen crashed. Freak event. As I opened the refrigerator door, the light bulb blew. Immediately, everything else electrical shut down--lights, microwave, coffee maker--everything. Carefully unplugged and replugged all the appliances. Nothing.
Call the cable company (but not from the kitchen phone). They refer me to the utility. The utility insists that the problem is in the software. So the software company runs some remote telediagnostics via my house processor. Their expert system claims it has to be the utility's fault. I don't care, I just want my kitchen back. More phone calls; more remote diagnostics.
Turns out the problem was "unanticipated failure mode": The network had never seen a refrigerator bulb failure while the door was open. So the fuzzy logic interpreted the burnout as a power surge and shut down the entire kitchen. But because sensor memory confirmed that there hadn't actually been a power surge, the kitchen's logic sequence was confused and it couldn't do a standard restart. The utility guy swears this was the first time this has ever happened. Rebooting the kitchen took over an hour.
Dec. 7:
The police are not happy. Our house keeps calling them for help. We discover that whenever we play the TV or stereo above 25 decibels, it creates patterns of micro-vibrations that get amplified when they hit the window. When these vibrations mix with a gust of wind, the security sensors are actuated, and the police computer concludes that someone is trying to break in. Go figure.
Another glitch: Whenever the basement is in self-diagnostic mode, the universal remote won't let me change the channels on my TV. That means I actually have to get up off the couch and change the channels by hand . The software and the utility people say this flaw will be fixed in the next upgrade--SmartHouse 2.1. But it's not ready yet.
Dec. 12:
This is a nightmare. There's a virus in the house. My personal computer caught it while browsing on the public access network. I come home and the living room is a sauna, the bedroom windows are covered with ice, the refrigerator has defrosted, the washing machine has flooded the basement, the garage door is cycling up and down and the TV is stuck on the home shopping channel. Throughout the house, lights flicker like stroboscopes until they explode from the strain. Broken glass is everywhere. Or course, the security sensors detect nothing.
I look
Woooo... just another opportunity for Microsoft to screw something up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Seed
We'd really like to know *everything* about you, up to and including the contents of your medicine cabinet, refrigerator and trash bins.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
...this classic column by Steve Ciarcia in Byte magazine from the mid-late 70's. http://books.google.com/books?id=DKajtHfqoRkC&pg=PA225&lpg=PA225&dq=ciarcia+home+alarm+story&source=bl&ots=-51QR-yF0A&sig=KJ7fYiy-dAL9RnRLBr4thoVLoVg&hl=en&ei=1uwXTL6kMJieMraWmYsL&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=true
The automation proved to be unreliable too - with switches missing commands randomly. And even the Radio Shack branded alarm clock with X10 integration as a central home controller was garbage. It allowed programming 2 pairs of on/off times, maximum, for any of eight X10 modules - but any time you forgot to erase an existing program before trying to add a new one, the clock would completely crash/freeze up if you accidentally exceeded that 2 pair per module storage limit!
Indeed. It was for the most part a one way protocol with no handshaking and prone to "lost" commands. Even with a decent controller (I had an ocelot, which _still_ retails for a few hundred dollars) .. every other component in the system was so shitty and unreliable that it was little more than a neat toy. And of course as you said, there was no middle ground between x10 and the really expensive commercial application stuff.
I do remember the smarthome stuff.. but there was so much other similar sounding things being thrown around it was hard to figure out what was current. I think that too was part of the problem. You kept hearing about home automation.. but you were hearing about it from so many different directions.
Microsoft is just preparing for the possible impending presidency of Romneytron 3000.
Yeah. Some guy's house just blue-screened. It took most of his neighborhood down with it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I designed one of these systems years ago in a theory paper. Basically I took a lot of ideas from Star Trek, gave it 2009+ technology, and wrote it for a graduate marketing class because I figured I could confuse everyone enough that I would be forced to get a decent grade. Not that grades matter but I had a game theory course the same semester that I wanted to learn more from and needed a fluff filler.
Concept was basically reproducing everything a Majel Barrett ST computer system could do. I started small, voice activated locks, windows, lights, and simple "Siri" inquires (pre-Siri mind you). Step 2 in development would incorporate moving things like the windows, auto-sensor doors (would help with moving days!), and add in different users. I wanted to add in people tracking based on IR or whatever so you can locate people inside the house or you dog. Even say "Computer, I put my keys here" and it would know exactly where and would be able to track where they went if it fell when you either lose of them or half-assed put them on an unstable surface. Add in a remote diagnostics if a unit doesn't work. Add in iOS / Android add-ins. This was before the iPad I think. I designed a tablet that also would be wall mountable and integrated / hung up somewhere. Don't think iPad, think LCARS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCARS
I also did a research study (surveymonkey) of gamer / tech people.. which I think was the main point of the assignment (data analysis) but I had fun with it. So I have some hard data on what that market segment would jump on.
I didn't patent anything frankly because I'm not in it for the money and I'd rather see it be done. (though if a 2012 650xi shows up at my door one day, I'll be appreciative)
Here are some problems;
You need an OS. I like Android because it's open and I don't like Android because it's open. Don't mod my stuff... at least at first. Once you buy the system, you can blow your house up, whatever. Just keep the brand name out of the news. Also open for a linux / unix platform language... maybe even assembly. It might need a new language, unfortunately.
There are problems with the given technology. Power, data bandwidth (2009.. G was big, N was semi there, AC was a dream), OS, security, and integration. I was young an nieve.. I mentioned a possible backbone with Intel Light Peak for 10gbps.
Power was easy. Hook up with my pals from CMU who can take care of the wireless power problem for a full wired system. I did a mock up transmitter like a modded Glade plugin with a witricity emitter.
http://www.witricity.com/
Data is now easier. At one point I mentioned an integrated circuit board for drywall to have a smart wall or something to pass data. Internal transfer conduits (interlocking so you really don't need nails and quicker to assemble a room) or something like a built in wifi repeater to completely bypass the problem with signal loss. I think I mentioned I needed more review of safety standards and requests from construction workers / engineers to see how to improve drywall and make it smarter. Those guys work their asses off... yet they shouldn't in 2012. That turned into some side project that never took off.
Security. I was stumped on this. What stops Joe blow from saying "LOL CALL TEH COPS" or a robber saying "CANCEL POLICE CALL". Three years later... two level of security code. Authenticated / recognized users would need to say a PIN (Mac OS X elevation, anyone?). There were two PINs (can add in more but two in function. Like 5 safe passwords and 1 omg emergency password incase someone overhears you). One was normal and another was emergency. Meaning if I call the cops, robber puts a gun to my head and says cancel it, I can fake-cancel the call with the Panic PIN. Meaning the computer will say it "cancelled" the call but will make a notation. Sort of like if the banks really gave a shit about your well
Great, another avenue for viruses and trojans to wreak havoc our lives... LOL
JAVA, aka OAK, was supposed to be the toaster esperanto when it was in development. Now it is bloat city.
http://mathbits.com/mathbits/java/Introduction/BriefHistory.htm
IN any case why would anyone give an operating system a name that is homophonic with the historically derogatory slang for the gay community: Homos? It's like Squirting your Social. Or the Brown zune. So tone deaf that it is doomed before it starts.
I just bought some microsoft stock a few weeks ago anticipating that Win8 is going to help MS, but now I think I will sell it. These people are institutionally clueless.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's enough to make me want to go back to ice boxes and wood stoves.
I won't give up indoor plumbing though.
It e-mails fifteen million people.
"New user account, lengthy reply posted with the same timestamp as the story, marketingish language, ugh. Yup -- same shill, new account. "
Ya know, it might not be the *same* shill, maybe just another drone from the same hive.
What gets me about at least this post (I haven't checked the others) is the *really bad grammar* - someone is definitely getting paid, but how much? It's gotta be someone outsourced, you can't be telling me the grammar is that bad on purpose.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This should be fun.
The godfather of hardware was Frederick Terman at Stanford. Steve Blank has a great talk of the founding of silicon valley and Terman role in driving innovation (hint, radar's needs created the valley). These two people did not do the heads down work, but were really the two greatest product managers in history who had the resources of a nation as their development teams. For example Bush was the champion of the Manhattan Project so pretty cool having Oppenheimer as your technical lead on a project.
Who was the microsoft shill that modded me down? there are a lot of virus written for the x86 ABI of Windows and a lot of them are in the wild, there is nothing false about this statement. HomeOS would clearly benefit from a different ABI to avoid being in the same target as millions of other desktops.
I have been using windows since about 3.x. Other than DOS and Excel, ms products are generally bloated, slow, and prone to hangs, crashes, and severe security issues. I can't imagine why anyone would trust (or even want) HomeOS.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I fail to see the point or value in home automation. Why do I need to turn lights on when I'm not home? Why do I need to adjust the furnace when I'm not home? The fridge? The oven? etc... I turn things off when I leave, and turn on waht I need as I need it. On the rare occasion I've done something stupid like leave some lights on, or a window open, I notice when I return and am angry enough at myself for wasting money on light/heat or leaving an easy path of entry for thieves that it generally doesn't happen again.
I view it kind of like those annoying buzzers in cars when you leave your keys in the ignition switch, or your headlights on. There's an entire generation of kids who will grow up without responsibility and common sense because they are weak from not being exposed harshly to their own stupidity. The first and last time I left my headlights on was during a blizzard. It only took one time with a dead battery after clearing two feet of snow off my car with nobody around to learn to never make that mistake again. Same for locking my keys in the car and taking two hours to find a suitable implement to use as a slim jim to pop the lock. You learn to be responsible and not forgetful by making mistakes that are inconvenient. A generic memory of pain or inconvenience at your own hands reminds you to be more thoughtful or less forgetful in the future.
Anyhow, home automation sounds like an electricity hog to me, having all those things running at all times. Not to mention the high upfront cost and complexity. I work in IT, I don't want to configure my lights so I can see when I get home or plan out an implementation for my oven so I can cook dinner. No thanks.
...Computer science papers like this seem as if they could have been written by a high-schooler? One obvious observation follows another.
I for one welcome our very own WAL2000* home automation overlord...
As long as it isn't in any house I'm in. I don't want to be there when the house OS Blue Screens. It could give a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.
News flash: A family in New Jersey was locked inside their house, and killed by the house automation security system, due to a bug in the code that loads the defense protocols before loading the authorized users list. Oops!
* If you need this explained, please hand over your geeks creds at the door.
If prior versions of Microsoft software are any guide (and they are), you can expect the following behavior:
If your house catches on fire, HomeOS will offer to help you. The standard edition will automatically throw grease on the fire, because water is a "premium" feature. If you go online and update to the "premium" edition before your house burns down, water will be sprayed after the next reboot, but only if you accept the terms that say Microsoft owns everything in the house that survives.
Anyone who buys into this platform is not paying attention. Not for the jokes about houses crashing, etc., but because it's not Windows. Seriously. History has shown again and again that Microsoft has one platform: Windows (or DOS before that). Anything else will eventually be killed off *by Microsoft itself*. Even for WinCE/PocketPC/WinMobile/WinPhone/whatever, the writing is on the wall -- Microsoft wants to get off that platform and on to a MinWin-derived, stripped-down mainline Windows system.
I don't want to have to replace all my home automation in X years when the upper echelon at Microsoft finally notices this thing isn't Windows and kills it.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.