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Smartphones: Life's Remote Control
An anonymous reader writes "This year's Consumer Electronics Show has shown off more interconnected devices than I would know what to do with. Not only are existing devices I use getting modern, Internet-connected interfaces (cars, ovens, and security systems, for example), but companies are now putting out addons for smartphones that replace existing ones (blood pressure and glucose monitors, for instance. An article at the NY Times points out that the smartphone is quickly becoming life's remote control — a portal through with you'll soon be able to control far more of your electric devices than you might expect (or care to). 'For several years, technology companies have promised the dream of the connected home, the connected body and the connected car. Those connections have proved illusory. But in the last year app-powered accessories have provided the mechanism to actually make the connections. That is partly because smartphones have become the device people never put down. But it is also because wireless sensors have become smaller, cheaper and ubiquitous.'"
Subject says it all
... by that guy who just wouldn't shut up or is just obnoxiously loud, I'll just leave this here.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
when I replace my phone in a couple years, I have to replace a bunch of other shit that magically wont work anymore
great plan, if you are not a consumer
I'm pretty sure that this is the third summary in the last few days with a comma before an 'and'.
FTFM
Just checked, make it the sixth summary in 24hrs. A couple of them had two ", and"s.
"Two specific situations call for the use of a comma before "and." The first is created when we have three or more items in a series."
Well that is embarrassing for you. Please try to learn the language before you claim to be a master of it.
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/020204whencommabfand.htm
Now since the English language is quite a flexible one and an overused comma is very common, most people tend to let that kind of thing go.
Unfortunately you chose to dwell on it, incorrectly it seems, and it lead to my great amusement.
Don't be an elitist, or an idiot.
Sounds good until you replace your phone, which if you are like a lot of people is every 2 years at minimum because phones change. On the other hand, let's see what all the devices I've got that use remotes:
1) A VCR that was purchased about 23 years ago
2) A DVD player bought in 2001
3) A PS3 bought in 2008 used for Blu-Ray (yeah, I know I can play DVDs on it, but the PS3 frequently goes between the upstairs and downstairs TV)
4) A TV bought back in 2005
5) A cable box that I think I got in 2008-ish
6) An old stereo that is about 20 years old
Assuming that tomorrow I upgrade all those things to something that I can use my Smartphone with, and assuming I keep my devices (aside from my phone) for as long as I have, how long before my phone won't have an application to communicate with them? Already we have problems with specialty applications such as remotes not working with the newest version of Android, mix that with hardware changes and you've got something that will only work for a few years before a key feature becomes obsolete. And given that there's few reasons to upgrade generic appliances unlike something like a phone, you've got an expensive featureset that won't be able to be used for most of the device's lifespan.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So? There's nothing wrong with that.
Out of all the problems in the summary, I'm surprised that you attacked it for something that's not even truly wrong.
Near field communication maybe, or wifi. Or maybe your command for your sony TV goes to sony.com who relay it to your TV if they approve of your viewing choices.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Your confusion over "lead" and "led" led to my great amusement.
I don't know of a solution to put wifi control into an appliance for less than about fifty bucks, even as a DIYer. Maybe you could do it with a pogoplug for around thirty, but if you want decent range make that thirty-five. (they have a little GPIO, you can run a relay and read the status of one or two circuits easily and cheaply enough...) But with new parts it'll cost substantially more. None of my stereo stuff supports anything other than IR or some wacky proprietary stuff none of which works together, and I'd guess that's the case for most people out there. My TV has HDMI CEC hardware but no support for it. My stereo is Sony and doesn't speak the same protocol as my VCR which is Sony (both are old enough to predate Sony's rootkits, killing Lik-Sang, etc) and neither of them will speak to my SHARP TV...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Some of the Samsung tablets already do, and I'm quite surprised that more Android phones don't have them. It's an extremely handy thing in a tablet at least, where space isn't at quite such a premium.
So far, Microsoft's response to everything is to try to make Win32 run on it. This has been demonstrated to present a number of problems not the least of which is the inability to run on lower-powered electronics and is still vulnerable to the same old exploits regardless of which processor it runs on.
I have been repeating the same old prediction -- that the computer in your pocket will become the computer you use everywhere, that depending on where you are, it will have different interfaces, inputs and outputs. CES is apparently showing it all to be true... at least so far. But Microsoft doesn't appear to be responding in any meaningful way.
I suppose it's possible that some skunkworks program in Microsoft's darkest R&D halls may be cooking up an answer, but it would seem to be a bit late. By the time they have any serious response to the new computing style, the market will already be dominated and owned by Google's Android, Microsoft won't get so much as a shrug.
They should have started building something new YEARS and years ago instead of recycling Win32 at every new cycle of Windows. At the very least they should have divided their resources where one part keeps Business and Win32 going while the other half moves on to the new mobile computing thing. They have LOTS of money so I have little doubt they could have done it. Why they think they have to move everything all in the same direction is beyond me. I picture a giant amoeba desperately trying to move in one direction where its own mass and inertia prevents it from making any difference.
It's 'fewer' not 'less', idiot.
Or at least something that can run an X server that can send multitouch back to a client
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I see nothing wrong with that comma, and I have a reference to back it up.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I don't own a smartphone and never will. Hell, I got my first cell phone only last year when I was forced to have a way to communicate when on the road and there are no pay phones anymore. I just don't see the draw in these expensive toys. I got the most stupid phone on the planet (and the cheapest non-contract prepaid one to boot) and I use it *GASP* as a phone! Nothing more. I may rarely send a text but all-in-all I can even do without that. Everything I've been reading about those phones leads me to believe they are too invasive to my privacy for my likes. Most of the time my phone is off (not that it is really off without removing the battery). Everything from geolocation for targeted advertising to the phone provider themselves profiting off the phone's always on monitoring is disturbing to me.
Then the stories like this comes along. Anything that can be remotely controlled by you can also be remotely controlled by someone else. Whether that someone else is good or bad is irrelevant. The fact that they can control it is bad enough for me. So now my crotchety ass will have to check to ensure my other household appliances are just as stupid as my phone is.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
You obviously didn't check the summaries from the last 24hrs then. There are MANY examples of series of two or less where there is a comma before the 'and'.
Yet you decided to complain about the one where the oxford comma was used correctly. Next time go post your grammar complaint as a response to the story that you are actually complaining about.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The stupid IBM popup ad hovers over part of the summary and it can't be dismissed in Firefox.
I'm running firefox, and I do not see any pop up ad. Of course, I am on 3.6 with ab+, no script, and a few other goodies.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I believe my Palm IIIx had most of the functionally required. Now we have fancy smartphones that can't even change the channel on a TV.
Although the summary is inconsistent--in one sentence they use the Oxford comma, in another they do not. While the Oxford comma is debatable (DEATH TO THE INFIDELS WHO DENY ITS GLORY!), to be inconsistent about it is something that all grammar nazis can agree is wrong.
That's fair enough, I can't argue with that, the only reason I mentioned it was because I noticed so many examples in one day...
I probably didn't help my cause by triple posting either!
Yeah, well I still jerk off manually.
How easy it will be to commandeer another's life by hacking their master controller (i.e., smart phone). Centralization of control invites attack.
Remember that none of this stuff will work if you have even the faintest hint of security on your home network.
Don't even think about putting your spiffy new never-patched, Internet accessing, firewall-less "smart" devices on a separate subnet from your WiFi if you want to actually use these features.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
a) Heating: Best done on schedule, and automaticlaly controlled. The savings from adjusting to your fluctuation of getting home are miniscule
b) Light? No need to remotly control it.
c) Kitchen devices: The only thing i could imagine would be turnign on the coffee machine before you wake up - and that is not remote control. All other things require manual intervention.
I mean I could imagine that filling the bathtub may be an applicaiton.
Obligatory: http://i.imgur.com/YF3Iu.jpg
The part I have never never quite gotten is why its so rare to fine IR transmitters in modern devices. This would ensure near total compatibility with all home AV gear. I know space is at a premium in these things but surely such a handy and simple thing would be worth it for the value add. The add ons i have seen are expensive or clunky, and thebbedt ones seem to be IOS based.
So I realize that the internet, bluetooth, and 2G signals are ways of getting devices to interact with each other, but is there any centralized off-the-shelf solution for conglomerating feeds and getting things to talk with each other, or does everything require customized approaches for receiving and working with the data in any way?
Seeing as how there's only a single submitter, your use of a plural pronoun seems to indicate that you advocate a "singular they".
I find your heresy to be an abomination.
Like most other technology, a connected home is a good convenience within strict limits. I feel veering towards both extremes of universal connectivity and knee-jerk rejection born from fear are both not good. Each person must think things through and decide what they desire for themselves and market forces shouldn't dictate things. There's also a certain joy in doing things manually and not sitting uselessly like a lump of flesh surrounded by a sea of robots, feeling useless. Life is there in small tasks too, not just grand flights of fancy.
I was thinking of submitter + editor(s), but since the editors are actually Mechanical Turks, I must concede your point that there was only a single entity involved.
Why does this not exist?
Just Google zigbee temperature sensor.
I don't even know where to start with how bad an idea this is. Going to try, though:
There's nothing stopping you from doing this already (for example using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard) ) - the fact that many people don't is primarily because it's expensive and the result isn't actually that useful. Heating controls are already sufficiently advanced to know that I want to have the house at a certain temperature when I'm likely to be around it, and I don't really want to micro-manage my heating. I can see use to having lighting turn on just before I get home, but that's about it; there's no way in hell I want to be digging through menus on my smartphone just to turn the light on/off.
Appliances tend to require manual intervention anyway; a toaster requires bread, a cooker requires food, the coffee maker coffee... I might as well set them up while I'm there.
TV/DVD player - okay, we're getting somewhere at least. However, you are going to be physically present when you want to use these devices, and they're easily controlled by well designed, purpose-specific devices of an appropriate device (remote controls). I can actually control my TV from my tablet; I believe I did this twice, once to discover I could, and a second time to show someone else.
Thank you!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
So I can use it to control my heart beat, blood pressure, etc.?
Or someone else's?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
So you were off-topic AND wrong. Congratulations!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'm sorry, we seem to have mistaken you for someone who has a life (and a knowledge of grammar).
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That is what we're here for.
-- Nate
That is why we are here. Your choice.
-- Nate
You, Sir, are a scholar and a gentleman.
-- Nate
So you're always safe and secure. Sprint's data network is a Fisher-Price fake network that works in maybe 3 cities in America so you're always assured of complete security.
The real issue here is Money. Simple.
Vendors out there can produce a product without the expensive user-interfacing bits. A couple hundred dollar item is available for them to leverage their sale of inexpensive software. Add on the fact that consumers are in the mood to spend money quickly on smartphone-related items and bang, money maker!
Never mind how crappy these products turn out. I mean, take a look at a Radio Control car monitoring system, where a phone is used to display and interface. LIkely the phone might get dropped taking it in/out of the radio or some other damage? Nah!
Anything is possible given time and money.
The phone is not the only element that you can not trust.
The SIM card you put inside is even less trustable.
Ask for a quantity 10,000 quote for this:
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/624954111/ZigBee_wireless_Temperature_and_Humidity_sensor.html
There's another model which is available from multiple sources, which incorporates an LCD display. It goes for FOB $28 for quantity 10,000. However, ask for their pricing on quantity 100,000. If you really care, track down the OEM who is providing these guys with the unit instead, and keep the middleman unit profit as well.
This isn't rocket science; the actual answer to your question is that there's no real market for the damn things, and so they have not hit commodity pricing. No one wants something that will communicate ambient temperature changes in any room of their house wirelessly to a central monitoring station so that you can know the temperature of every room of your house.
Mostly the people who would be geeky enough to want this would also realize that it enables anyone outside your house with a parabolic antenna can track the movement of above-ambient (e.g. 98.6 degree) objects as they move between rooms within your house and know the best time to break down your front door and drag you off into the banjo-woods or whatever.
PS: No one really likes yet-another-wireless-device-for-no-reason-Zigbee either.