What People Want From Smart Homes

Hallie Siegel writes: Despite the energy savings and environmental friendliness that has often been associated with smart home technologies, a recent poll showed that consumers primarily want their homes to optimize for their comfort level and personal preference (45%). Security/Safety and Energy Savings tied in second place (18%). Environmentally friendliness came in at only 11%. Note that the three most voted choices have direct advantages for the user, as opposed to Environmental Friendliness, which is primarily a societal benefit. What would you look for in a smart home?

Comments

Nothing.

[weilawei]

I want my home to be stupid, to not have a telescreen, and to not track me or sell my habits to third parties. ;)

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[Anrego]

Yup.

Personally I'd be way more open to this stuff if it didn't want an internet connection.

Ultimately I see very little practical application for any of this anyway. As I said in a previous comment, I played around with home automation "back in the day" and while it's nifty, it doesn't really add a whole lot of value outside of some very specialized use cases.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. No smarthome for me, thanks. Furthest I'll go is energy/water efficient stuff and LED bulbs.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I also want my home to work just fine during power outages and not cost $50K to fix when lightning strikes.

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[dAzED1]

you're a horrible person for wanting such unreasonable things. Clearly you just don't know how incredibly useful a "smarthome" is. And stuff.

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[Defenestrar]

I don't know - with the research they've done over the past few decades about circadian rhythm, I can see a lot of benefit from lighting that responds in both intensity and color to time and or motion. Likewise with HVAC. But neither of these needs the outside 'net.

Where I really see benefit from external communication would be mostly Boolean data such as whether the kids made it home from school, is there a break in the dog's underground fence line, is moisture pooling where it's not supposed to, or whether the CO/smoke detector has alerted. For information that goes in instead of out, I could also see a benefit for automatic storm shuttering when NOAA issues a severe thunderstorm warning and an automatic disabling of the sprinkler system if the county passes a watering moratorium (i.e. save me from fines if I'm absentminded and forget about turning it off).

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[TWX]

Knowing my luck, when I'd use my Internet-connected Clapper to turn off the last light when going to bed it'd start playing anti-gonorrhea ads due to the poorly programmed ad-personalization algorithm.

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[TWX]

Fairly simple sensor equipment on the house could help you with those though, and we've been able to send notifications via all manner of methods for years and years, via technology as low-end as 9600 baud TAP gateways through your cell provider worst-case.

You could monitor humidity in known problem areas like near hot water heaters and HVAC condensate drip pans with simple sensors fed by a two-wire solution. You could monitor wind speed and direction, plus temperature and rainfall through an automated weather station that sits on the roof. You could monitor basements and other low places for flooding with simple sensors that could also pack-in CO and fire safety. You could install RFID interrogators at the exterior doors and put RFID tags on your kids' backbacks (or use the ones built in to clothes or shoes or the like) to know when they've passed through the doorway, and you could even compare their RFID tag versus no tag when the doors are opened to know if someone else is entering. You could even use heat sensors to turn off lights in rooms that people have vacated and to turn off multimedia equipment like video projectors when no one is there to watch, if you're really feeling fancy, control the HVAC ducting to stop excessively cooling spaces that no one is using, like spare bedrooms, offices, workshops, dining rooms, kitchens, etc.

None of those features requires an Internet connection to use, though for convenience the ability to notify the owner could be handy. A quick e-mail or text message would be enough for most, and for things like potentially unauthorized entry, a camera picture could help the homeowner avoid false-positives with the alarm company and police.

What I really want a home to do though, is to clean itself. Self-clean the toilets, the sinks, the shower and bathtub, the tile, the carpet, the kitchen, and to be able to lift dust off of things and dispose of it. Do the laundry and sort/fold/hang it. That would be where the usefulness to homeowners comes in, not trinkets to automate processes that already aren't really inconvenient. It might also be convenient if the home recognizes the owner when he or she arrives, and lets them in without needing a key or other 'thing you have' on one's person.

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[Anonymous Coward]

A good air filtration system makes one hell of a difference. One of the few advantages of a forced air system, does wonders to keep the dust down.

Totally agree on the automated cleaning. The best we seem to have come up with is the roomba and those scrubbing bubbles shower cleaners, both of which are hilariously ineffective.

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[cayenne8]

Where I really see benefit from external communication would be mostly Boolean data such as whether the kids made it home from school,

You know, more and more I'm glad I grew up in a day before you could so easily be tracked as a kid, and no cell phones, etc.

It made it more fun to be a kid. Sure, I was mischievous, and well, frankly, some of the things we did as kids and teens would likely be categorized as borderline terrorism...but it was a part of growing up. Experimenting and well...just being a kid at the time.

When young, I would leave the house, go play with friends roam mine and the adjacent neighborhood...first on foot, then bike and skateboard. When really young, my Mom's basic rule was to call from a friend's home every couple hours to check in. When older, not really even that. My parents both worked, and I'd come home from school alone or go play with friends. During the summers as a teen...I'd be at home on my own, run with friends, make my own lunches...etc.

It was fun having that independence and I never got into what you would call trouble, no more than just being a boy growing up.

Nowdays...geez, I guess mine (and all my peers at the time) parents would be cited for child neglect.

Ok....now..GET OFF MY LAWN.

;)

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[ozmanjusri]

Personally I'd be way more open to this stuff if it didn't want an internet connection. Ultimately I see very little practical application for any of this anyway.

I bought and am using a Ninja Block, and use it for keeping an eye on my vegetable garden (soil moisture), remotely controlling appliances, hot water etc when I'm away, home security, and simple stuff like switching on overhead fans from my phone. For me at least, it's a very practical tool.
https://ninjablocks.com/#home/

Mine's connected to the internet so I can get alerts and manage my home from my phone, but I understand they can run air-gapped if you want to keep it off grid. In my case, given it's open hardware and open source, I'll take the risk.

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[xaotikdesigns]

In defense of the Roomba, I don't think it was ever meant to replace your upright. You run the roomba every other night, and instead of using the upright every week, maybe you can get away with every other week, or even every three weeks.

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[xaotikdesigns]

Does your home work during a power outage now?

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[weilawei]

In defense of the Roomba, I don't think it was ever meant to replace your upright.

You're darn tootin' it's not! There is one minor flaw; they left off the lasers.

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[weilawei]

Mine does. Wood stove. Kerosene lanterns. Generator. Puppies.

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[xaotikdesigns]

And you use kerosene lanterns all the time, or just break them out for outages? I've got lanterns and flashlights squirreled away too, that's not going to change if I happen to smartify my home.

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[TWX]

In defense of the Roomba, I don't think it was ever meant to replace your upright.

And that is why I never bothered with one. Now that I've seen how poor they are at actually covering a room in a sane, even manner I'm glad that I skipped it.

I really don't understand why they never built a good, upscale one that actually did the job well, especially now that we've got powerful appliances that are battery-powered, like those 48V lawnmowers. It should be possible to build an automated vacuum that's actually strong enough to achieve good results on a regular basis, so long as the owner is willing to dump the collection bin from time to time and to shut off the thing if a spill or other obstruction that can't be handled by the vacuum is addressed.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Now we just need to search for usage of "telescreen" to track you.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Not just that, but why have we not progressed past the "just bounce around the room and hopefully eventually everything" style of navigation.

Building a lawnmower that actually intelligently drives itself around my lawn is a project I've had in the back of my mind for some time, I'm just amazed I haven't seen any commercial (or even non-commercial) offerings of note.

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[weilawei]

I keep them around for outages which might be especially severe, not for regular usage. (Additionally, I collect and maintain antique lanterns because I like them.) I have a headlamp and AAA batteries out the wazoo too (as well as other flashlights). The headlamp sees a great deal of usage since I very often don't want to turn on the overhead lights and wake others up, being a night person. At the risk of stating the obvious, the house has grid electricity as well.

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[xaotikdesigns]

So what you are saying then, is that if the power goes out, your house does the same thing as everybody else's, and you switch to backups.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The "safety" option is probably the best one to focus on.

I just bought a new house less than a year ago. A new new house, not a new-to-me house. It comes with a built-in (AC-powered, battery-backed) smoke/CO detector system. But the county fire codes are pants-on-head retarded and require the CO detector to be in the hallway nearest the bedrooms. Why is that retarded? Because that hallway is on the upper floor and is a wide open atrium/foyer area. The detector is mounted on the ceiling, as such detectors always are. CO is heavier than air, so by the time it detects anything, I will have long since suffocated to death in my sleep.

So instead of relying on that, I'm getting ready to install another CO monitor, in the basement (where the furnace and hot water heater are, and where gravity dictates that the CO will go first), and I'm going to make sure that this CO monitor has an auxiliary contact that can drive an interlock relay to turn on all of the exhaust fans in the entire house, as well as make some noise and wake me up (if necessary). It will also have something else the current smoke/CO alarms don't have: a "STFU lockout" for those times when I'm completely aware that a patch of sugar syrup the size of a dime is burning on the bottom of my oven. This will also be retrofitted into the existing smoke/CO alarm system.

Eventually, these will all be battery-less and on a second electrical panel feed, that drives the "red plugs" (like a hospital has). This will be, not a failover, but a full-time off-grid panel that drives only a few critical things (refrigeration, fire safety, and heat ignition for furnace/HWH/stove/fireplace). Not sure how I'm going to generate yet, but it's likely to be solar or small-scale wind power.

This is how you automate sensibly. Having your appliances on a data network is stupid. Having critical interlocks to automate sensible safety and precautionary measures based on real feedback from sensors is smart. Thus, a "smart" house. IoT is not involved at all here.

Re:Nothing.

[BarbaraHudson]

so long as the owner is willing to dump the collection bin from time to time and to shut off the thing if a spill or other obstruction that can't be handled by the vacuum is addressed

People who buy Roombas are the ones the least likely to be willing to do any of that.

Re: Nothing.

[weilawei]

What's your point? I don't need or want my house monitoring my actions. Why should I bother buying all this extra garbage that I have no desire or use for? You're about as dense as the rocks in the field down below the house. You keep harping on one thing and not addressing the other point that the person you replied to made.

The poster you replied to made a point that there are extra failure modes because--get this--there's more stuff to go wrong! That's extra stuff to fix potentially, as well as consuming more electricity during an outage (where the electricity is supplied by the generator), unless I put in still *more* effort to program it not to do all this automation stuff during an outage. Yet another set of points of failure.

Why would I want any of this? The house works just fine. It will outlast me and still work just fine, regardless of whether or not the sawmill that supplied the lumber goes out of business. Much of this home automation stuff is complexity for the sake of complexity, with diminishing returns. I suspect you're a city kid, but I'm not. I live in a farm house, in a small farm town. I've got the modern comforts I need and want, and the old fashioned backups, and none of the shiny glittery crap I don't need or want.

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[weilawei]

Safety mechanisms are one thing, but that's clearly not what this article is focused on, and it's usually not what people mean when they say "smart home". This article is primarily about IoT.

Most of smart devices available today can be controlled and synchronized with your smart phone or your tablet, using frameworks such as Apple’s HomeKit or other. But we figured that one of the obvious extensions of home robots would be that it will act as the master control of your home’s smart devices.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a robot that does its own thing – perhaps vacuuming, or perhaps just being social – but that also smartly controls your home? In general, our readers seem to be open to having a robot that does the smart controlling (39%), as well as being able to use more recent technologies of using voice and gestures to command the system (32%).

For reference, the safety thing only got 18%.

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[Smerta]

When I lived in Germany I saw quite a few of them. Lawns tend to be smaller and flatter than in the U.S. Also, landscaping services are more expensive, in general, over in Europe. Last thing, and unfortunately I'm being serious, the U.S. is pretty litigious, so companies are hesitant to jump into the market.

I think there are about 10 companies or so making robotic mowers. Could be wrong, but I thought you could get a Husqvarna in the U.S. now. They require a wire to be buried along the perimeter of your yard so the 'bot knows when it needs to stop & turn around.

I';ve always wondered what happens if you lose power at home, and the buried wire no longer emits its signal. Probably a battery backup, and you have to tell the 'bot to run no longer than the battery can last.

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[plover]

You can certainly get some home automation systems that are cloud-optional. I have a Vera, which is an (overpriced) DD-WRT box, and it doesn't need internet access. You can get to it from outside the house via VPN, or you can use their SSL site to access it if you want. It runs the lights, sensors, and stuff like that. There are some proprietary devices with local interfaces of varying quality.

Some closed source devices want to phone home, just not to your home. Honeywell, Samsung, Craftsman, they don't have a locally accessible interface. You might want to avoid them.

I built mine initially to control greenhouse lighting, and liked it so much I put it in the rest of my house.

Re:Nothing.

[plover]

Knowing my luck, when I'd use my Internet-connected Clapper to turn off the last light when going to bed it'd start playing anti-gonorrhea ads due to the poorly programmed ad-personalization algorithm.

Perhaps it's better programmed than you think. Your wife called...

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[Noah Haders]

i would like to get an internet-connected thermostat that I could monitor from work. I live in a hot area, and I worry about the apt getting to hot for the cats. If I could watch the temp online and turn the unit on or off I would like that.

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[golodh]

@Weilawei

So do I, but the mainstream seems to be moving towards something very different.

As in: the majority of consumers seems to want maximum "comfort" (read: "ease of use and no hassle", a.k.a. "I'm lazy and dumb so I need smart appliances"), and that's what industry will provide (on pain of being marginalised and ultimately disappearing).

And guess what? Ease of use and "no hassle" means offloading lots of detailed control decisions to the manufacturer. And that means that said manufacturer has got to distinguish themselves by offering comfort and taking away decisions and cares from home-owners.

It is understood that home-owners are willing to pay for that and that manufacturers incur no penalties by offering dumb gear and putting the "intelligence" on their servers. Those decisions (blinds closed or open, heating higher or lower, anticipating the home-owner's homecoming, level of lighting, when to switch on the air conditioning, burglar alarms, suppressing false alarms cause e.g. by pets etc. etc.), still have to be taken of course. Just not by the home-owner.

Taken together this means a big fat premium on supplying dumb, (but sensor-rich) proprietary hardware, collecting as much data as possible on the habits and preferences of the home-owner, his/her family, children, pets, neighbours etc.etc., storing and analysing all that on the company's servers, and selling the resulting control information to the home-owner as a service. Look for upcoming legislation that not only allows but also compels "domestic service" companies to "share" their information with everyone from law-enforcement, insurance companies (think fire insurance, burglary insurance, health insurance (!)), medical care providing companies (think monitoring of elderly people), market research companies, advertising companies and any other interested party you can think of.

I'm pessimistic about being able to opt out, let alone to stop this kind of thing. For one thing, mass-production will drive down the price of the "mainstream" systems (whatever form they will take), thus marginalising any non-mainstream hardware. Of course manufacturers have zero interest in supplying hardware that will work without their (or another company's) service package so stand-alone or "user-controlled" hardware will come at a premium. In addition you may find that your insurance premiums are higher than without "smart home" automation.

All in all, the stable market situation will probably be a load black-box hardware that needs daily updates and tuning by proprietary off-site control software that eats your privacy for breakfast (on an ongoing daily basis).

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[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-American Luddite!

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[Gob Gob]

What about the 99% ppl who are not Tech Heads?

Encouraging this sort of thing just means they have to learn or pay for things that have been common sense for a very long time.

A tax on non geeks?

Re: Nothing.

[Barsteward]

isn't that what a thermostat is for?

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[AmiMoJo]

I'm currently installing a floodlight for my driveway so I can park a bit easier and see to plug in the car's charge cable. I'm using a standard RF remote control to turn it on manually from the car, because there isn't really any better option at the moment. PIR sensors seem unreliable with EVs, and you end up having them either turn on every time someone walks past or not come on until well after you need them.

I'd love a simple system that noticed my phone was pulling up to the driveway and turned the light on. Bluetooth might work, or just use the phone's location data. Even better, use the car's location data since it has GPS that is on all the time. Needs an internet gateway though, and unless I set up my own server it's going to alert some company that I'm home. Thing is, the mobile phone company already knows that, and Google knows because Google Now has figured out where I live. I'm not too worried about all that as long as I can reasonably trust the company in question, and am in full control of what I choose to share.

It's a trade off. If it were done securely I'd be happy with it.

Re:Nothing.

[AmiMoJo]

Taken together this means a big fat premium on supplying dumb, (but sensor-rich) proprietary hardware

The good news is that you can always hack that stuff, so we get cool hardware at low cost and can keep our privacy. It will be like all the hackable routers than can run custom firmware like OpenWRT. A few basic system-on-chip platforms and some common peripherals like wifi cards and an I2C bus for sensors.

None of my routers have run stock firmware for at least a decade. My home energy monitor uses custom software I control, rather than the manufacturer's supplied crapware. My weather station also uses unofficial software. I can't wait for home automation systems to come down in price too so I can hack one of those.

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[Translation Error]

What I really want a home to do though, is to clean itself. Self-clean the toilets, the sinks, the shower and bathtub, the tile, the carpet, the kitchen, and to be able to lift dust off of things and dispose of it.

But a really smart home will eventually realize the most efficient way to keep the house clean is to eliminate the people and pets in it...

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[g4sy]

You can build or buy a 100% open source one. Note: I have no affiliation with the project. Been in my bookmarks for a week or so.

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[robstout]

If it's anything like invisible fence, then yes, there is a battery backup. However, I can see them skipping that. I don't see mowing the lawn as something that requires critical uptime.

Re:Nothing.

[kheldan]

Mod parent up infinitely. I want the place I hang my hat and sleep to be secure against intrusions on my privacy. What one does or says in their own home should be their business and their business alone.

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[Anonymous Coward]

My robo-vacuum (a Roomba knockoff) cleans my floors just fine, but I have wood and tile everywhere so really it's just an automated dust mop. I wouldn't trust one to clean carpet effectively but as I don't have or even like carpeting that's a non-issue in my house.

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[Anonymous Coward]

It;s sounds handy to have electronics to warn of humidity, but those come with a hardware and installation cost, energy use, long-term support issues, added fire risk, added trade deficit (hardware or components likely imported), and privacy issues.

TV built in the wall with a cable interface and a cam for chat would be so cool. I heard software has already been written to integrate face recognition. That's needed to accurately profile you. It is also required to be certain that the ads are tuned for you and actually run when you're watching. It also makes possible charges based on the number of viewers in the room.. For products that a wife wants, but the husband would be against, the related ads can run when he's out of the room...

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[frank_adrian314159]

It's just a Costco-size Terminator in disguise.

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[Defenestrar]

I think the concern was more about when the power is lost when the mowing is in progress. "Ho hum, I'll just mow until I hit the line..." - three miles and a gas tank later.

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[tlhIngan]

Personally I'd be way more open to this stuff if it didn't want an internet connection.

Ultimately I see very little practical application for any of this anyway. As I said in a previous comment, I played around with home automation "back in the day" and while it's nifty, it doesn't really add a whole lot of value outside of some very specialized use cases.

Well, some things really are more convenient with a "smart" home. Sure you can always work around it, but sometimes the peace of mind is better.

E.g., verifying and setting the alarm - people still forget to set their alarms when they leave, and if you're going on vacation, checking to make sure while you're waiting for the flight can spare a lot of annoyed kids and other things. Plus, if you know a friend is coming over to take care of the place, you don't have to give them a code (many alarms have multi-user codes), you can always just disable it remotely then re-set it.

Or front door cameras - perhaps you're expecting something and the delivery guy is early. You can get systems that let you talk to the guy, even open the garage door so you can have them drop it off in there. Saves having to make it to the depot because the guy's a few minutes earlier than you, or having packages left out in the open ready for stealing since it'll be put in the garage (which you can shut remotely as well).

There's always the other ones - being able to come to a pre=cooled or pre-warmed house, for example.

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[Anonymous Coward]

My childhood was similar, and I'm a lucky devil for having such parents. But in today's culture, curiosity, exploration, experimentation, independence, and risk, are all evil notions that must be stamped out. Consequently, we're raising large quantities of stunted individuals. But who needs individuals anyway? They only weaken the mob/herd.

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[Defenestrar]

I'm thinking of when the kids are just old enough to start being latch-key. Myself, I'd set it up for passive data while only sending an alert if the difference is something like three to five standard deviations off the average. I specifically moved to a place where I feel comfortable about my kids (eventual) ability to run around until dinner time, but at least for quite some time yet, they'll be young enough that missing a bus transfer on the way home could be a time when my early intervention would really be appreciated.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Google House (tm): Free living for just a little bit of personal information.

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[ksheff]

Robot lawn mowers have been around for a few years. Or is it that you just don't like how they go around your lawn?

Re:Nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know - with the research they've done over the past few decades about circadian rhythm, I can see a lot of benefit from lighting that responds in both intensity and color to time and or motion. Likewise with HVAC. But neither of these needs the outside 'net.

But, that's just some simple timers. For me, I have lights dim and the heat go down about half an hour before I expect to go to sleep. Similarly, heat comes up a few minutes before I expect to wake in the morning. It definitely has made a difference easing into and out of sleep, but I don't see how "smart" technology would be more effective than the timers I currently use.

Re:Nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

some of the things we did as kids and teens would likely be categorized as borderline terrorism...but it was a part of growing up.

We shot bottle-rockets out of our old gas guzzler. On 495, aka "the Capital Beltway" when we were teen-agers. It was the 4th of July. What better way to celebrate? OK, maybe you wouldn't get sent to Gitmo for that but....

...there was another guy that mixed up a batch of some home-made explosives and set it off in a county park as part of their on-going wargame/fantasy activities. Nobody got hurt. One of the guys got shot in the neck with a b-b gun one time. It just left a really bad mark, I forget if the b-b actually broke the skin.

Anyway, yep; terrorists; but it was the 80s, so law enforcement would have gotten involved if people were caught; but it probably wouldn't have resulted in anybody gettting sent to an adult prison and being ass-raped.

For cryin' out loud, one guy from our school actually POINTED A GUN at a New York state trooper and somehow managed to not get shot. He did spend a year in juvenile though.

Re:Nothing.

[lsatenstein]

I want my home to be stupid, to not have a telescreen, and to not track me or sell my habits to third parties. ;)

I want my mortgage paid.

best example

[Anonymous Coward]

For what I want: see Star Trek: TNG

Re:best example

[jtownatpunk.net]

Yep. Replicators and a holodeck. A self-cleaning holodeck.

Re:best example

[wisnoskij]

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/e...

Re:best example

[Anonymous Coward]

I was referring more to near perfect voice recognition and control of the house/hvac/appliances, coupled with an AI that can interpret and learn what I prefer.

But I'd give that all up for a (self cleaning) holodeck. ;)

Re:best example

[xaotikdesigns]

Wouldn't any holodeck be self cleaning? All it would need to do is create a field starting at the outer boundary, and shrink it down, lifting any... stains... that happen to have accumulated off the outer walls, until it has everything in a ball a tthe center. It then would move that ball of... stains... to what ever it uses for garbage collection, or simply incinerates it mid air.

Re:best example

[xaotikdesigns]

or at the worst, you just get a program that creates a maid to clean it for you.

Re:best example

[Noah Haders]

you guys are really gross.

Yup

[Anrego]

Isn't this what we all figured out back in the x10/smarthome days. After you get over the gee-wiz star trek appeal, there's very little that we actually want to automate, and most of those things are already well handled by stand alone devices which benifit very little from integration. My automatic coffee maker and thermostat don't need an internet connection, and having lights come on automatically when you walk in the room is cool and nifty, for about 20 minutes, then it is overcome by the annoyance of the lights turning off all the time because occupancy sensors suck. Sure we can try to make up justifications, and there may be some people who legitimately have a valid use case, but I think this is gonna be home automation fad part 2.

My old x10 gear still makes an appearance around Christmas, and I still use some of it in my bedroom to control the lights and ceiling fan from my bed, but my (at one time) expensive ocelot controller and like a few dozen various bits sit in a box collecting dust.

(Also usual warning that x10 is a terrible system that I wouldn't recommend to an enemy).

Re:Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I forgot all about X10. Yeah, that stuff was SO bad.
Also, it never worked properly Star Trek. It was more like having to do tech support for your damn house 24x7

Re:Yup

[Dutch Gun]

From the article:

General Electric, in particular, entered smart lighting market with the introduction of GE Link, a smart LED bulb that consumers can remotely control from anywhere in the world and sync with other connected devices.

Wow, really? A bulb you can remotely control from anywhere in the world, huh? And I'll bet the service that let's us do all that will only cost us $9.99 a month, right? What a bargain. I mean, I've always wanted to turn my kitchen light on or off from the grocery store. That's going to be so handy!

Meh. At some point, this phase 2 of the home automation fad will probably boil down to a few practical gizmos that people find useful, and history will simply laugh at our "smart bulbs" for the ridiculous overkill it represents in attempted convenience.

Re:Yup

[Anrego]

Anything where the accepted standard is to send a command 3 times to increase (not even guarantee but just increase) the probability of it getting there is a bad sign.

Not to mention just about anything that produces electrical noise can interfere with the damn things. About a year ago that fan I mentioned in my bedroom would randomly turn off and on. It wasn't really all that annoying (not nearly as annoying had it been the light), but none the less it bugged me and I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. About a month later, the UPS I had connected to my network gear died, and the problem went away.

I know people who spent a great deal of money buying filters and bridges and amplifiers and all kinds of things to try and make the damn system work. I have to assume that just like the Nigerian 419 scams, after you've bought so much into it, you can't help spend "just a little more" to see the promised light at the end of the tunnel. Luckily I didn't have too many of those kind of problems, but the system even when working was still slow and unreliable.

Re:Yup

[xaotikdesigns]

I could see some automation being nice if you traveled a lot, or if you had a large house. For instance, an RFID tag that would adjust the temperature of the room that you are in, while letting the rest of the house be a little hotter/cooler depending on the season. If you have a single bedroom apartment, that's not that good of a feature, but if you have a two story home with multiple rooms? The ability to adjust each room independently could be worthwhile, and having each room adjust to when it is actually being used (with a manual over ride of course) would be nice.

Re: Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? So I come into a room and now it has to cool the 35C oven down to 25C. When thats done I leave for a different room and it has to do the same again. All the while ignoring that cold air sinks down anyway since I don't have hermetically sealed rooms. Same thing the other way around in winter.

  We already have this problem because of where the sensor for the thermostat is. The colder air from upstairs (forced air system with bad ducts - we rent) will come down and your feet get cold. Yet the thermostat sensor says alls fine still.

Because of the bad vents/air pressure it will never reach the temperature set on the thermostat upstairs as it will shut off way before that. This is solvable without me carrying an rfid though.

Re: Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you notice his username? It sounds like "Exotic Designs". Otherwise known as "solutions in search of a problem". See his other comments. The guy probably sells home automation kit.

Re:Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

> A bulb you can remotely control from anywhere in the world, huh?

Forget about anywhere in the world, I want a smart bulb that knows when I am approaching the room, when I am in the room and when I leave the room. I want light-switches to be a thing of the past, I want the light in the house to "follow" me around so that I never even have to think about turning the lights on or off.

Re:Yup

[drinkypoo]

I think that we figured out that there's nothing we'd spend the money to automate well, and it's not worth automating things poorly.

Sooner or later it will be cheap to automate it all, and then we'll have automated stuff. And for a long time it will be a security nightmare.

Re:Yup

[Anrego]

That may be fair. In my case I accepted the shittiness of x10 and actually had a working system, I just hit the "ok, now what" point. Of course I don't really fall into a lot of the use cases where automation would be useful, it was just a fun toy to play with.

I can accept that products will get "smarter" over time, and centrally controlled lighting/temperature with some smart elements will just become the norm. I can also accept that more and more devices will become internet connected and have gimmicky phone apps, some of which may actually be useful, but most I think won't be.

I just don't think that the current set of things we have in our houses benefit much from automation or remote access. Most appliances you kinda have to be there to use anyway. Being able to access my oven or washing machine from around the world doesn't do much much good if I have to physically be there to make use of it, and receiving a text message from the oven to let me know my food is done sounds nifty, but being far enough away from the oven that you can't hear the buzzer/beeper/whatever we currently have is probably not a great idea.

When we have robots that buzz around our homes, maybe this stuff will be worth it. Right now, it just doesn't seem to really solve a problem.

Re:Yup

[Noah Haders]

home automation will explode when apple home kit comes on the scene. that will be when everything starts to make sense.

Re:Yup

[Barsteward]

I'd rather insulate the house to an inch of its life and install air heat recovery systems that recycle the air X times an hour and keep the whole place either cool or warm. If houses were insulated really well there wouldn't be any big temperature variances. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Re:Yup

[6Yankee]

the annoyance of the lights turning off all the time because occupancy sensors suck

...which is why the one in my office has a paper coffee-cup duct-taped over it and I bought a small desk lamp with an old-school switch. All the offices here have these sensors. But all the toilets, where you don't want to touch anything, have wall switches - even in the individual cubicles.

Re:Yup

[Neil Boekend]

I would love my coffee maker and thermostat connected to the Internet, assuming that it would come with an alarm clock that sets my coffee to be ready the moment my alarm clock rings and my thermostat to have the house warm at that same moment.
That way if I sleep in it will be automatically ready at the right time.

Having said that: the only internet connected coffee maker I have seen was incredibly stupid. It was an office automated thing that needed internet to work but didn't tell the supplier that the coffee was running out. I still don't know what benefit the internet connectivity offered to the end user.

Re:Yup

[Dutch Gun]

Maybe. Apple has a way of bringing established technologies and making them appeal to the mass market rather than a geeky niche. That's exactly what they've done with Apple Pay, for example - their contribution wasn't inventing the systems, but integrating it and bringing together the coalition of banks to support it. They'll take the basic concepts X10 pioneered, except it won't be crap. They'll be expensive high end toys, but they'll probably work extremely well and will be relatively simple to use.

Moreover, they've gained a lot of privacy and security-related experience, so they'll probably get that part of it right. Or at least have a better shot than someone dealing with security for the first time - they're obviously not immune to mistakes as well. Moreover, they're in the business of selling hardware, not tracking you, so they have an incentive for making that hardware secure.

All that being said, I think the "smart home" is still going to be limited to a few interesting devices people pick up and use here and there, not the completely integrated "home of tomorrow" that some people imagine. Things like smartphones are a "no-brainer" sort of technology, where the utility of a universal computer and communication device has been obvious for a long time (look at Star Trek's communicator and tricorder, or Dick Tracy's communication watch).

I just don't see the home automation market that way. Probably the only point it will really take off is when the electronics are so cheap that it's not much more expensive to get the automated version of various devices, and at that point, the completely ubiquitous nature of it will allow people to do some clever things with it. Who knows? I could be wrong, and people are actually clamoring for ways to turn lights in their home on or off from across town or the other side of the planet.

Re:Yup

[AmiMoJo]

My car can be controlled remotely from my phone. I can turn the heating/air-con on, monitor the charge level and see where I parked it. I'm hoping that one day when I roll into the driveway the garage door will open up and the lights come on automatically too.

I have a sleep monitor made by Omron. I have to keep in under my pillow. It's really helped me improve my sleeping patterns and habits. Hopefully in the future I'll be able to buy a smart bed with this functionality built in, because having the monitor under my pillow is a bit annoying.

Re:Yup

[coofercat]

Rumour is they're working on a bulb you can control from anywhere in the world, but it can also shine on you anywhere in the world. Can't wait for that one ;-)

Re:Yup

[internerdj]

I've got a couple places where I would really like some smart bulbs but it is just under the threshold that the price isn't worth the convenience.

Re:Yup

[gregmac]

I've done some X10 in the past, but now all my stuff is Insteon (and most dual-band, which actually works quite reliably). I have a few things installed in my house now, which while they are part of an "automation system" I'm not sure I'd call it a "smart home":

* Keypad by the front door
* Has a button that both shows if the garage door is opened/closed and can open/close it
* Has an 'all off' that turns off the kitchen / living room lights
* Can control the outside soffit plug for x-mas lights
* Outside lights
* Turn on to 50% when it gets dark (ISY99 controller that automatically accounts for DST changing of daytime throughout the year), turn off at midnight
* Quickly go to 100% when there's motion outside, OR if the garage door is open, anytime when it's dark out
* All transitions fade: eg, After motion stops, they take ~1min to slowly fade from 100% back to 50%. This is subtle and just a nice touch that's easy because of the system
* Kitchen keypad has 'bright', 'dim', and 'off' buttons, which control the lights over the island, sink, range hood and under-cabinet.
* There's also a button used to indicate if the garage door is open, so we can see from the back half of the house

I haven't installed it yet (change of season made it not important now) but I will be adding a keypad to the bedroom to control the fan/lights. Right now there's just one switch and if you want fan/lights you have to pull the chains. During the summer we are constantly walking into the dark room, turning the switch, and all that happens is the fan turns on.

I think for me, a lot of the use case behind using insteon, is less about 'automation' and more about being able to make virtual 3/4/5-way switches and scene-based lighting without having to rip apart drywall and rewire.

Heck, one really convenient thing is that the switch in the living room controls lights on the other side of the room -- without a plug-in module, I'd either have to adjust those lights manually (meaning they'd be left off and/or on all the time), have an extension cord running in front of my fireplace, or open up drywall to rewire. I didn't build the house or choose to make the switch operate a plug on the same wall 6ft away, but at least I can make our lives easier with very little effort.

A lot of this is really just laziness in way, but at the same time, when you have to use 4 different controls in the kitchen to get all the lights on/off you simply don't turn them on and/or leave them on most of the time. One button gets better use of what's there, and just makes life a tiny bit more pleasant.

----

One thing I really don't get is the fascination with using smartphones to control. I've tried it, I just don't find it useful or convenient. Assuming I have my phone on me (I don't always, while at home), I have to take it out, swipe to unlock, wait a second for it to load, find the control app, wait a second for it to load, find the lights/scene I want, then change it. How the hell is that more convenient than the switch/keypad that's always on the wall right next to the door that I walk by as I am coming into the room? Seriously, I don't understand.

This whole 'you can control the lights from anywhere' thing is just a non-existent use case, as far as I'm concerned. We accidentally leave the lights on maybe a handful of times a year.. that is not a primary case of why to install these types of systems. I haven't even had my system exposed to the internet for the last couple years (changed my router, and never set up port forwarding again) because I NEVER used it remotely.

----

I have a wifi-connected thermostat, which is great for exactly 3 reasons: It is miles easier to program than the cheap piece of crap it replaced; I have a linux cron job that turns on the fan a few times through the day that greatly helps balance out the temperature (otherwise the back of the house facing the

First thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Wipe my ass

Two Things Only

[jamesl]

I want a home that cooks and cleans. Cooks and cleans. I can take care of the rest.

Re:Two Things Only

[iggymanz]

I think there's a little bit about the circle of life you're forgetting resulting from that ramming, that can cost a whole lot more money.

Re:Two Things Only

[Anonymous Coward]

You know there's this thing called birth control. It comes in all sorts of different styles, shapes, colors, sizes, implementations, etc.. When you're ready to start a family, you stop using it.

Re:Two Things Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Same AC here. Also, just wanted to point out that adoption is good too. Lots of kids need a good home, and not everyone is capable of having children naturally or wishes to do so.

Re:Two Things Only

[iggymanz]

And that birth control is 100% effective, in the world between your ears. For every 100 couples who use condoms, 17 get a surprise after a year. For every 100 woman who has an IUD, 3 get a surprise. For every 100 women who use the pill, 3 get a surprise at the end of a year.

Re:Two Things Only

[mythosaz]

If 100 couples use all three, they can expect 23 surprises!

Re:Two Things Only

[iggymanz]

I know one doctor who had method of 100% effective birth control, to "eat an apple". "Before or after" the couple asked. "INSTEAD!" said the doctor.

Re:Two Things Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay statistics :)

But seriously, given the amount of sex going on, the remaining side of any effectiveness statistic actually translates to a sizable number of babies.

In the very unlikely category, I've got a friend who had a kid while using what I thought was the ultimate in birth control (vasectomy) while his wife was on the pill! (apparently it has other benefits or they were just very paranoid?)

Re:Two Things Only

[Anonymous Coward]

And for the rest, there's abortion. I'm sorry if your religion doesn't permit it, but most religions that don't permit abortion also say you're not supposed to have sex for pleasure.

Sucks to be you. I'll continue happily leaving the unanswerable questions unanswered.

Re:Two Things Only

[Anonymous Coward]

That's called "someone else's kid" and a lying, cheating spouse. Option B is malpractice.

Re:Two Things Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like everything else, it has a failure rate, and when applied over the number of people who get a vasectomy it becomes significant. A failure rate of %0.05 sounds low, but your talking 1 out of 2000.

There's also a bunch of testing you are supposed to get done afterwards, because early failure is a lot more common, and apparently a lot of guys don't go for a variety of reasons. It is possible he was one of those guys.

But yeah, I'd probably still put my money on cheating.

Re:Two Things Only

[Anrego]

I'll admit this sounds like a plot out of Jerry Springer.

And if she was cheating, letting him go through the second operation was cold as fuck.

Re:Two Things Only

[vlad30]

I want a home that cooks and cleans. Cooks and cleans. I can take care of the rest.

you know they already invented that, the only payment is you gotta ram your dick into their pussy from time to time.

Basement dwelling slashdotters have that already including laundry and ironing and they shouldn't be doing that second bit to their mum

Re:Two Things Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples. So wet and juicy. Just dripping, ready to be licked or sucked. So hard yet sometimes so soft. Parting the skin to reach the lush inner nectar or penetrating it with my knife. Mmm, tasty. Wrinkled with age or dangling from the trunk. I want one inside of me.

I think the Doctor was onto something. It works for both sexes.

FOOD

[Anonymous Coward]

If there was some way to have food scanned and listed on an app that you could check at any given time, for either future food prep or just to see whats missing when you drop by the shop.

Re:FOOD

[Anrego]

Ah, the old "smart fridge" fad.

For my use case, this would be impractical, as I tend not to have many "staple" foodstuffs and tend to shop for the meal(s) I intend to make in the near future, and I've usually got a good idea of what's in the fridge.

Back when "fridges with screens that will manage your grocery list for you" was being talked about a lot, some people described situations where it could be helpful, but they all seemed to involve adopting a very rigid protocol around fridge use ("remember to punch in the percentage of ketchup remaining when you are done with it Billy!", to which my response was "screw that shit".

Re:FOOD

[chronoglass]

we just need everyone to use this ipackaging and gpackaging.. they will only work with the correct fridge though so make sure you get a compatible model!

Re:FOOD

[Anonymous Coward]

"Open the refridgerator door, HAL"

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave. You are already 2.5 kilos overweight, and besides, you'll spoil your dinner."

I am going to live in the dumbest home

[FudRucker]

i am basically going to buy one of those big fancy storage buildings that dont have plumbing or electric installed, park it on some land in a secluded spot out in the middle of nowhere, buy some insulation and sheetrock, and some wiring 12vdc and fix it up with solar panels, but i am only going to run automotive grade stuff, like a AM/FM/CDplayer made for a car for a home stereo unit, 12 volt DC lights, etc... and use solar panels to keep a bank of batteries charged up, i am going off the grid (mostly) soon, i got to cut my living expenses or end up living on skidrow with the rest of the homeless, i already am working on drawing up plans for solar heated water and a composting latrine (all legal too)

Re:I am going to live in the dumbest home

[Sri Ramkrishna]

Make sure you also write a manifesto and grow your beard.

Re:I am going to live in the dumbest home

[FudRucker]

ill just borrow Henry David Thoreau's

Re:I am going to live in the dumbest home

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck to you.

Curiosity, what do you plan to do about heating and/or cooling, or do you live someplace where neither are really an issue? Up here you could probably survive the summer albeit you'd be really uncomfortable, but you'd be fucked in winter.

Personally I think I'd lose my mind in a few months. I like my creature comforts. I've spent a lot of hours working hard so I have money to have the things I want. I don't think I'd want to live like that even if it meant never having to work again.

I guess you can always start on that manifesto you've been putting off.

Re:I am going to live in the dumbest home

[FudRucker]

a small house only requires a small heater, since i am going to insulate it and hang drywall (sheetrock) i will also install a small wood stove, something like a ben franklin stove that i can also cook a meal on, i got to cut costs or end up homeless, it is not a matter of choice it is a matter of necessity for survival, i can tolerate heat, if i can get a water well drilled and a manual pump i will get a livestock tank and put some water in it and during the hottest time of the day during the hottest time of the year i can dip in to the water and cool off a little,

Re:I am going to live in the dumbest home

[z0idberg]

Manifesto or beard?

Re:I am going to live in the dumbest home

[FudRucker]

manifesto, i dont grow a good beard, but i got whiskers like gabby hayes

Re:I am going to live in the dumbest home

[westlake]

i got to cut my living expenses or end up living on skidrow with the rest of the homeless

To me this reads as money-management problem, which means that moving into a storage shed is an evasion not a solution.

I was raised on a farm --- and like our neighbors ---- the question was never "if" you would need the volunteer firemen, an ambulance, a sheriff's deputy, or the state police, but only "when," and "how soon can they get here?"

Star Trek Doors

[Anonymous Coward]

If my "smart" home can't open my doors with a whoosh sound when I walk toward them, then it's not good enough.

Re:Star Trek Doors

[weilawei]

Congratulations, your prayers have been fulfilled! Check these out. All you really need to add is a photoeye or a proximity sensor, although this particular person decided to go with a manual switch.

Re:Star Trek Doors

[Barsteward]

thats easy, take 2 pieces of A4 paper, put one on top of the other then slide them apart

What I would like?

[Bin_jammin]

I want a house that will allow me to be as lazy as I want. A TV room on every floor, with room for a couch big enough to stretch out in? I want that. Dishwasher with garbage disposal? Yep, that too. Enough counter space so that I can make dinner with enough horizontal space that I don't have to use the kitchen table too? Yes please. I'd also like a large detached garage, as laziness is an indoor hobby (or at least in the house) and the garage is where work happens. Running water, electricity and plumbing? There's a reason the "homes of the future" from as far back as memory and history will go really only have such usable innovations as microwave ovens and garage door openers. Being able to turn my lights on from the office? I don't really need that, and if I ever do I can get a programmable timer for lamps. Programmable thermostat? I can get one now for $30 for a REALLY nice one at Home Depot or anywhere else. I suppose a smart meter will tell me when I'm using the most electricity or gas, but SURPRISE, it's probably when I'm at home with all the appliances on! The law of diminishing returns for retrofitting a house with programmable toys will be in effect in short order, and money will be better spent adding better insulation or a roof, not a light switch so my dog doesn't feel unloved for 20 minutes before I get home.

Re:What I would like?

[Anonymous Coward]

not a light switch so my dog doesn't feel unloved for 20 minutes before I get home

You MONSTER! /s

Low maintenance

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a house that is as low maintenance as possible so that I can be even lazier.

what companies/the NSA wants from smart homes

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great! Now that we know what people want from smart homes, here is the matching list of what major corps / the NSA wants from smart homes:

* Knowing when you are home or away (43%)
* Being able to monitor and data-mine any in-house audio (88%)
* Locking down your stove/microwave into a "pay per cooking-minute plan" (55%)
* Facial recognition of your real-life friends network (66%)
* Ability to turn on any web cams remotely for terrorist protection (51%)

I predict one of these groups will get their wishes...

Re:what companies/the NSA wants from smart homes

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict one of these groups will get their wishes...

Over my cold dead skilsaw. Among the jobs I've worked in my life, I've been a framing carpenter. It's not hard to learn if you're reasonably intelligent (I'm not the smartest cookie, but I know how to pay attention and work hard) and don't mind a little sweat. It's also cheaper to build it yourself if you're qualified to do the labor, even though you'll likely need to hire a licensed contractor and a few extra hands for the crew.

I got lucky, and my father was (is; still hasn't retired!) a carpenter, and his father before him was a carpenter, too. My mother's father was also a carpenter and a school teacher. Sadly, this is not an option for many, because extreme specialization is promoted as the One True Way. But, if you've got the work ethic, you can get paid to learn this stuff by apprenticing yourself out, hauling a lot of lumber, and not griping--rather than spending a small fortune to go to school for it.

secret passages

[Sri Ramkrishna]

I want a home with secret passage ways.

Re: secret passages

[corychristison]

My wife is quite adamant about having the entryway into our bedroom to look like a TARDIS.

Re: secret passages

[karnal]

I'm confused. Adamant that she WANTS it to look like a TARDIS, or adamant that she DOESN'T WANT it to look like a TARDIS?

Cause choice #1 above isn't the worst thing in the world.

Re: secret passages

[corychristison]

She wants it to look like the TARDIS. :-)

She's more of a Whovian than I.
I'm just not much of a television watcher.

Re: secret passages

[CanadianMacFan]

She just hasn't added that the cloaking circuit in this TARDIS is working so it will look like an ordinary bedroom entryway.

Re: secret passages

[frank_adrian314159]

Hell, just tell her you built her a TARDIS and that's what DID happen. She'll be sooooo grateful!!!

Re: secret passages

[Anonymous Coward]

If only because she hopes it'll look bigger on the inside?

I expect it to 3D print itself

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed people still think the Luddite way, that somehow people will come by in "trucks" and bring "building materials" and use "workers".

Hilarious.

By spring, flying quadcoper 3D printers will buzz in the skies using power beamed down from space solar arrays and materials from asteroids. You just yell at the sky "House! Here!" and it will be 3D printed right there.

Re:I expect it to 3D print itself

[Anonymous Coward]

You still haven't found any Space Nutters.

Re:I expect it to 3D print itself

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

"I'm however also certain that I don't want to crawl on this tiny poor earth forever. We deserve this entire universe and beyond."

That's psychiatric right there, and that's just in the last few hours. If that's not a Nutter, what would it take to satisfy you?

It's OK to want the universe and beyond, but wanting more life is bad?

How's the Mars condo coming along? Got the building permits yet? Figured out the common areas? Martian marble looks good with carbon dioxide snow, UV radiation, and corpses.

Automatic sliding doors

[vadim_t]

I think that would be one of the most convenient improvements. If you're carrying something like a plate into another room, doors open in front of you. And automatically closing doors would improve climatization.

Also, automatic windows in hot countries. Where I live it's still hot at the time to go to sleep, but cool during the night. So I rigged my windows to automatically open when outside temperature falls enough. Integrating with the AC is my next project.

Re:Automatic sliding doors

[Zynder]

When you say "rigged" what do you mean? Did you just use linear actuators like these or was there a more MacGyver type solution?

Re:Automatic sliding doors

[vadim_t]

I used a rack and pinion driven by a motor with a gearbox, with the hardware installed in the window blinds box. Unlike the linear actuator, there's no position sensing, so it uses limit switches.

I also installed temperature sensors and a RTC chip for scheduling, plus a control box with buttons and a LCD. The brains is an Arduino.

My next step is figuring out the AC's IR protocol, and adding an IR led to make it control the AC. After that, maybe replace the window blinds with motorized ones, and add a light sensor to automatically close them when the sun is shining right into the window.

Actually I want a smart home

[dixonpete]

At the heart I want a super computer running the house in much the same way that Jarvis does in Tony Stark's home. Voice recognition and good sound in every room. A house database that keeps track of everything about the house and captures information for prosperity about my life. It should handle all communications, voice, video and fax and keep records of all that. I've started to build a website to capture all the ideas for it. I'm a currently homebody living out of an apartment. I see customizing a small but comfortable smarthome for myself to be an excellent hobby.

Re:Actually I want a smart home

[weilawei]

With my luck, I'd get The Toaster.

TT helped Holly double his original IQ but shortened his life to three and a half minutes. He won 793 consecutive chess games against Holly. During this time, the Toaster also saved the crew from death: while Holly was a genius, he explained to the Toaster how to escape from a Black Hole, information which later came in useful when the crew encountered one. The Toaster did not, however, merely volunteer this information: it practically tortured the crew by forcing them to eat ridiculous amounts of toast before talking (The Cat later explains that the toast was burnt, cold and soggy). When the crew is attacked by a polymorph, and the crew loses a certain emotion (Rimmer loses his anger, Lister loses his fear, The Cat loses his vanity and Kryten loses his guilt), the Toaster is destroyed by Kryten before the Polymorph is destroyed and their personalities are returned to normal - except for Talkie Toaster.

Talkie Toaster was subsequently repaired, but its personality circuits were damaged to the point where it believed it was a moose, and was reduced to making loud bellowing noises and threatening to charge the crew with its antlers.

Help me find my smartphone

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, losing it inside my smarthome will help me recover my smartphone quicker. I see no reason to object

Re:Help me find my smartphone

[xaotikdesigns]

google device manager is your friend

"environmental friendliness"

[iggymanz]

My home is made of wood, iron nails, a mix of sand/limestone/rocks, baked clay, and some asphalt coated fiberglass pads on top. Bacteria might have a time eating the asphalt but I'm confident they'll eventually get the job done.

Residential energy use is about 22% of all energy use in the USA, and half of that is from natural gas. Yay, it's environmentally friendly.

Re:"environmental friendliness"

[mspohr]

Unfortunately, natural gas is not environmentally friendly. We've been lied to by the fracking industry (surprise!). Natural gas does have less CO2 than coal but it still emits CO2. The worse part is that natural gas itself is 34 times as potent as CO2 in the global warming department and fracking is particularly "leaky" leading to lots of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
So... we need to get off of all fossil fuels, including natural gas.

Re:"environmental friendliness"

[iggymanz]

Natural gas is far more friendly than coal or oil. It is a minor player in global warming compared to co2 and water vapor. Fracking has exaggerated issues in most cases, as for real probable problems just some few local ones.

We're not getting rid of fossil fuels for the next half century at least, and the only viable alternative for driving civilization and progress forward is nuclear fission, while "green" energy maybe getting to twenty percent of the total.

Re:"environmental friendliness"

[xaotikdesigns]

That's why I only use clean burning propane. Taste the meat, not the heat, I tell you what.

Just one thing

[sjames]

I want a candelabra. When I turn the switch on, gas jets should light the candles. When I turn the switch off, a snuffer should put them out.

But I'm not willing to spend the kind of money it would take for a novelty item, so I guess nothing.

Vitamin D

[Anonymous Coward]

One that would adjust a supplemental output of Vitamin D based on the current amount (or lack there of) sunlight.

Selfish?

[gstoddart]

Environmentally friendliness came in at only 11%. Note that the three most voted choices have direct advantages for the user, as opposed to Environmental Friendliness, which is primarily a societal benefit.

So, in other words, the smart home is a self-indulgent thing, then?

What would you look for in a smart home?

Privacy and freedom from external entities having analytics data about how I live in my home.

Pretty much the exact opposite of what the people pitching the smart home want. Google and Nest and all of these other companies want access to your data, not to make your life any better.

Sorry, but I don't trust the players enough to care about the game.

Re:Selfish?

[R3d M3rcury]

So, in other words, the smart home is a self-indulgent thing, then?

Yes, frankly. Welcome to the human race.

I'm old enough to remember when TVs had dials on them to change the channel and it was only the invalid who had remotes for the TV. Show a person a TV with a remote and the first thing they'd say is, "I'm not so lazy that I can't get up and change the channel." A remote for the TV was an indulgence. Nowadays? It's a requirement.

So, yeah, first priority for me would be convenience. But much of that convenience would be in the realm of saving energy--which could be considered "environmentally friendly" if I'm using less electricity and gas in my house. Imagine the house that turns off the lights when I leave a room. That adjusts the air conditioning/heating in the room based upon occupancy history. I don't need the living room to be a comfortable temperature when I'm sleeping at night. It's certainly more efficient to heat/cool just one room of the house at night than the whole thing. But I'm not going to run around the house and open and close vents before bed.

Re:Selfish?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'm not going to run around the house and open and close vents before bed.

You could probably use the exercise. Especially because of the bit about being unable to turn off your own lights when you leave a room--since light switches are typically placed next to the door.

Who asked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody asked for a "smart home". Or a self-driving car. Or phones that track us. Or cameras on every corner. Or internet activity records. Or the smart TVs and appliances with mics that will record our coversations (it's in the EULA for smart TVs - "be careful what you say around our TV") NO ONE asked for these things. They are being rammed into us.

Re:Who asked?

[Gavagai80]

Lots of us ask for self-driving cars. The rest perhaps not.

Re:Who asked?

[Khashishi]

Speak for yourself. I want a smart home and self driving car.

Re:Who asked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody asked for...cameras on every corner...

They did here. Some college kid got mugged hard in a parking garage, and the muggers were caught because of a security camera. Then the (helicopter) mom pushed hard for city cameras throughout the downtown area. She didn't get all she wanted, but we got a bunch of them still. I couldn't vote against it because I lived outside city limits at the time, but it was around 2-to-1 in favor, so apparently I'm in the minority for not blindly trusting authorities and thinking that the budget could have been put to better use.

TL;DR: Plenty of people ask for that shit.

- T

Reliability

[Overzeetop]

When I flip an old-fashioned switch, the lights turn on. Every. Single. Time. For 50 years without fail. I want that kind of simplicity and reliability. But I want it to do everything. Temperature, lighting, music (or silence), automatic maintenance, fix/change/update without interaction from me and with mission critical fail safe reliability.

Re:Reliability

[rthille]

In 50 years you never had a bulb fail? I'm skeptical...

Re:Reliability

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's on the probability bell curve...

Re:Reliability

[Anonymous Coward]

To add to what you said every company is wanting to be 'the market leader'. So they also have 50 standards. None of which work very well with each other. Or the glue ones are terrible and do not do things correctly.

The auto lights thing is neat for about 2 seconds. Until you realize it is just a dumb gimick.

Energy savings falls on its face if you have anyone at home all the time.

Thermostats with 4 to 8 timer settings are pretty good to almost perfect. But need very little interaction once setup.

Some sampling would be interesting. But like I said no one wants a good interchangeable data format. Everyone wants to be 'the market leader'. So they rarely interconnect very well. They want that so they can sell you the 'service' for 10 bucks a month.

Look you can turn on things from your smart phone while you are at work. I ask time and again why would I do that? The *only* reason I can come up with is to play a prank on my wife.

Re:Reliability

[ledow]

Bulbs are consumables.

And any automated system would have the same number of failures in that regard.

The SWITCH however, and the electrics behind it - no problem going 50 years without maintenance.

I've been in houses with 1920's wiring. With 1930's plug sockets. Nobody bothered to change it because it worked.

Re:Reliability

[ledow]

I can't come up with good reasons for remote control of a house. I struggle to explain why I need a remote control for my car (To unlock doors? What's my VERY NEXT step? To approach the door and physically open it!). I can't even begin to fathom why I need some complex RF control to do that, that's open to scanning and replay attacks, when I can quite happily just put the key in the lock. Hell, my previous car had infrared door locking... worked just the same but from a slightly reduced distance (and no doubt is just as easy to attack, and just as easy secure properly if someone bothered to try).

I always think of the scene in The Big Bang Theory where someone from China is operating their lights. That's about all you can do with it.

I'm sure there are use cases. I'm sure there's a guy who religiously programs his lights and heating on the way home from work and sees a benefit to him. But, to me, a timer is much more reliable and works just the same. If I'm getting home at midnight for some reason, chances are my house is warm enough anyway - certainly warmer than the outside, and warm enough to go to bed and go to sleep. And if I want to change that, it could start to heat up before I've even took my coat off if I touch the heating controls as the first thing I do when I get in.

In my country, the energy suppliers are trying to sell you smart meters on the basis you could use smart control as well and turn your heating up before you get home. I absolutely can't fathom the link there at all. But because it's my ENERGY company trying to promote that, I can only assume they are in compliance with their shareholders wishes, which just makes me think that they know it will mean more energy used overall (because I'll turn the heating on on a whim and cost more energy than if I'd just left it alone).

Re:Reliability

[Barsteward]

he's talking about the switch, not the bulb

Status Updates

[cdu13a]

Pretty much all that I want from a smart home, is the ability to be notified if things break or go wrong when I'm not there.

I couldn't care less about anything else, I just want to know when I need to get my ass home to fix something, or deal with a disaster.

Being able to get a notification as soon as the freezer fails, or the sump pump fails, or the furnace fails would make a big difference in just how shitty your day is going to end up being.

Re:Status Updates

[vux984]

Being able to get a notification as soon as the freezer fails, or the sump pump fails, or the furnace fails would make a big difference in just how shitty your day is going to end up being.

Murphy's law dictates that whatever you aren't monitoring will be what fails. And if you monitor "everything" then the monitoring system itself will fail.

I generally share your sentiment, but reality is a bitch sometimes. :)

Re:Status Updates

[phantomfive]

Being able to get a notification as soon as the freezer fails, or the sump pump fails, or the furnace fails would make a big difference in just how shitty your day is going to end up being.

lol True point.

Re:Status Updates

[CanadianMacFan]

Actually finding out if something was going to fail before it does would be even better.

Re:Status Updates

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive my shameless plug, but I just finished programming this product and figured it might benefit you:

http://www.metropolitanind.com/blog/2014/02/04/duplexing-plug-in-pump-controller/

It was originally designed for commercial use, but can be used in a residence without modification.

Need vs Want

[MrKaos]

What people need vs what they want are two different things.

Same as my smart phone, of course ...

[BarbaraHudson]

More battery life!!!

To actually be smart

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what would be smart? Blinds that reacted to the morning Sun by opening, so that I'd get solar heating in the living room before I woke up. Now that we're on DST, the Sun is up before I am. A simple solar cel or perhaps even bi-metallic strips could do this. It doesn't require a lot of power. Of course it should be possible to easily over-ride the open/close state for when I do things like peal off all my grubby clothing when coming in from the yard.

You know what wouldn't be smart? Blinds that cost 10X more than manually operated blinds, can't change state without power, send activity reports back to Central, and require an Internet connection.

The blinds example is on my mind because I'm actually looking for plain old blinds, and have thought that some automation actually would be nice if it were sensible. The same reasoning applies to pretty much anything though.

Tea, Earl Grey, hot

[BenSchuarmer]

That's what I want

Resource management

[Trogre]

I want my house to manage:
How much water to use for washing dishes/clothes, and at what temperature (more a function of the individual appliances than the house really).
Power sources (grid, solar, wind, gas), and when each should be used.

And that's about it. I really don't want my house trying to decide for me when my lights need turning on and off, or telling someone else about it.

Re:Resource management

[Oligonicella]

Your wife is wrong. Nine times out of ten you can sit and watch the fire and forget about the problem. It will go away or someone else will address it.

Save money

[penguinoid]

I want my smarthome to save me money overall, while also being more comfortable and convenient. And maybe healthier as well. If it can't do that, maybe is isn't as smart as people would have you believe.

Re:Save money

[bzipitidoo]

That's what I want. These "smart" homes are the wrong kind of smart, when it means stuffing the house full of expensive gadgetry of little practical use. A house like that is designed to extract the maximum money from home buyers, by dazzling them with ostentatious "tech light" junk. It's not actually meant to be more liveable or something.

One luxury house built around 1880 that I looked over was full of hokey gadgetry that makes us all laugh today. A laundry room with a wood burning heater for the irons (sad irons) so the residents could have the wrinkles removed from their clothes the moment they were out of the wash! This house was built with gas lights, and that was later upgraded to incandescent lighting. Curiously, it had some silly centralized control. By the front door was a large panel of switches for turning on and off all the lights in the house. Does that sound sort of familiar, like maybe even "smart"? 19th century style "smart" home? Also in a room near the front door was a large clock that tracked phases of the moon and sunrise and sunset times. Today, there's an app for that, no need to waste valuable floor space on such a clunky apparatus.

As far as low hanging fruit goes, housing in the US is a target rich environment. There are so many stupidities in how homes are currently constructed. Yeah, LED lighting is good, but you know what? A skylight is even better. Also, so many people in the biz, including the buyers, are really stuck on antiquated and exremely inefficient construction methods. Don't have a brick layer work with tiny bricks, at the least use cinder blocks! Even better, just make entire walls off site, truck them in, and erect them. Can have the walls up in hours. That method works great for commercial buildings, why can't the same thing be done for residential? No reason at all, it's just inertia and custom. Also explains why we still have fireplaces everywhere. Ben Franklin complained about their inefficiency and wastefulness all the way back in the 18th century, and here we are today, still shoving those things into new homes! Then there's the roof. Why, why do people just have to have a complicated roofline? More expensive and less durable at the same time.

Re:Save money

[Anonymous Coward]

Also explains why we still have fireplaces everywhere. Ben Franklin complained about their inefficiency and wastefulness all the way back in the 18th century, and here we are today, still shoving those things into new homes!

I agree with your post, but I think you are wrong about fireplaces only being installed because of inertia. Fire holds a very special place in the human psyche. For millennia, fire was the primary fixture of "home". It cooked our food, kept us warm, lit up the night, and chased away dangerous predators. This intimate relationship between fire and human's well-being is ingrained in our subconscious and likely our genetics (anyone with a distaste for fire during the stone-age would not prosper as much as the fire users). In the modern world, having a fireplace is not about efficiently heating your home or cooking food, it is about cultivating a sense of comfort, which one ought to have for their home.

Re:Save money

[bzipitidoo]

You touch on the perils of our unprecedented increase in our power to control our environment. We do all kinds of things not because they are a good idea, but out of instinctive prejudice. For instance, mowing the grass. One idea I have heard is that we like grass short because poisonous snakes can't hide in it. We couldn't do much to satisfy that prejudice before the advent of powered mowers, just took way too much labor. Now that we can mow quickly, we do so with a vengeance, to the detriment of biodiversity, the environment, and even our own health and well-being. We've even anointed a few species of grass, shrubs and trees as desirable, and call all other plants weeds. In many cities, it's even against the law to let the grass get too high. Crazy.

I thought of fireplaces as primarily entertainment devices, but I like your take on it better. So many people really like to watch the pretty flames. I confess I like it too, but not so much that I'm willing to work for it. Once again, we have gained the power to have far more fire than we need, and have let our love of fire lead us into unthinking wastefulness.

Light is another of our prejudices. We are not nocturnal. Darkness has become associated less with rest and sleep and more with crime and evil, and plain inconvenience. In our eternal drive for more security, we've done all in our power to banish darkness. Who's afraid of the dark? We are. We have streetlights everywhere. Keeps crime down, they say. Maybe we should not drive at night? What if it was the custom to not drive at all in the dark, and cars did not have headlights because they are not needed? Before artificial lighting, people didn't travel much at night. And now? We don't have to quit when the sun sets, we can keep working. We could do that before the incandescent light, with candles, but candles were inconvenient enough that we usually didn't. Now, it's so easy to stay up late. We don't give ourselves enough sleep, and we're finding out what that does to us. It could be one of the factors causing the obesity epidemic. One popular idea for the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire is lead poisoning. Lot of the emperors behaved in just plain crazy ways that could be explained by mental problems caused by lead poisoning. Doubtless most of the elite of Roman society suffered the same affliction. In the future, will America decline and fall because of sleep deprivation empowered by artificial lighting?

Even indoor climate control may not be pure, unadulterated goodness. I've read that it's actually healthier to swing a bit with the seasons. Don't try to force the house to be a constant 75F year round. Let it drop to 70F in the winter, and rise to 80F in the summer, or more.

So many of our modern conveniences have non-obvious dangers. Bisphenol A sure is convenient, but now we are more aware of problems with it. We would be wiser to fear those dangers more, and worry less about other dangers, particularly foolish ones like that gay marriage could somehow be a threat to the family.

HUGE HELP

[JimSadler]

Think about what a smart home can do and then think about cars and stores being smart as well and combine the results. For example Joe Good is a suspect in a crime. Joe lives alone so no in the flesh alibi exists to testify as to where he was at the time of the crime. But a smart home could recall the number of times the refrigerator door opened, how many times the toilet flushed, when the doors opened or closed and much more. So we would have a really strong proof that Joe was at home at the time of the crime. If there is an identity theft and Joe's credit is misused down the road Joe has real proof of where he was at the time. Suppose Joe is married and their is a divorce and custody battle. Joe claims his wife was straying and staying out until dawn etc.. A smart home or car could verify that she was not at home as accused. Health and safety issues are also abundant. Joe slips and falls in the shower. The smart home senses the problem and dials it as an emergency. A window slides open while Joe is at work and the police are dispatched and Joe is notified that his property has been violated. I think most people would far rather gain all that a smart home can offer and might be more than willing for some sales outfit to gain the fact that I like cherry life savers or whatever.

Re:HUGE HELP

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious troll is obvious.

Re:HUGE HELP

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that you would marginalize all data collection as being limited to candy preferences, or whatever. While being a registered Facebook user, too.

Hint: Just because you don't care about your privacy doesn't mean it's not important.

anti dust nano liquid

[cheekyboy]

You spray it on stuff that you want water free , dust free, mud free, oil free. Everything will run off it and stay clean.

http://www.nanotec-usa.com/

Re:anti dust nano liquid

[Zynder]

Holy shit! That stuff is hella expensive! Have you personally used it?

Re:anti dust nano liquid

[Defenestrar]

Yeah - but does it work on children?

smarttv will be the control hub

[cheekyboy]

As smart tvs get better and more capable, built in wifi/bt android OS etc...

They will be the control hubs of the home, they will IP chat to your consoles, or PCs, or wifi lights, anything. Even running the apps when tv is off (no power even, with 2 AA batteries to keep running during outages/storms)

Of course the korean companies will all talk to each other. Sony will make something totally custom and 3x the cost.
China will make it on every tv, but with poor security.

Naturally

[russotto]

If you want "environmental friendliness", get rid of your AC and set your heat to just warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing. Cold? Wear a sweater. And some gloves. And long johns. And an overcoat. Won't kill you.

Re:Naturally

[Hypotensive]

Or this.

Unlike "smart" TVs

[petes_PoV]

What would you look for in a smart home?

First of all: reliability. The house must be able to retain all its functionality during a power outage.

After that I want security. It must be impervious to unwanted intrusion: either physical or hackers.
Next comes self-cleaning - probably the biggest chore after home maintenance. This would include cleaning the household appliances, too
Talking of maintenance, the house must never, ever require a software upgrade.
After that we can start talking about useful features such as tending the garden, washing the car, cooking meals, collecting, washing, ironing and re-storing clothes - picking up dishes, pans, cutlery, cups and glasses, cleaning them and replacing them in the correct cupboards.

At this point we have a house that just about qualifies as "smart". The key problem is not the simplistic features such as turning lights on or off, setting room temperatures and the like: these are the domain of little 8-pin microprocessors. Describing those functions as "smart" is as sensible as talking about a "smart" amoeba. The big problems are associated with moving household items in a safe and reliable way and it's only what a house can operate on that level that "smart" begins to cover it.

Re:Unlike "smart" TVs

[ledow]

Personally, my first thought is "control".

When I don't want something to happen, I don't want to be overridden... ever.

When I do want something to happen, I want it to happen, no matter what.

The problem I see with smart homes, and automation in general, is that we're considered too stupid to have control of such a complex system, so we don't get it.

With control can come reliability. If I can control what stays up and what doesn't in a power cut, that's useful to me. If the lights stay on but the heating goes off, that's useless if I'm in the middle of winter.

Control can be opposed to security, if the system design is that awful. Most smart home gadgets I see rely on some remote control or RF control and that's just asking for trouble. Authenticate me, then give me control.

And you can't have evolving security without software upgrades unless you literally air-gap everything.

However, I agree with the sentiment of your last paragraphs. Controlling some LED light is the domain of a GBP10 kit from Amazon. GBP20 if you want wifi. Tying the home into the Internet for things like smartphone control brings enormous security and reliability problems (my friend has a NEST fire alarm... it has to talk home to Google).

But the real "smart" functionality either comes from contorl of things I'd rather have control of (temperatures, timings, etc.) or something that we just don't see - automation of manual tasks.

Automating the lights to come on is a parlour trick that anyone with a GBP20 gadget could do from the other side of the world. Automating the dishwasher to load and wash the dishes itself is something you could put into every home, smart or not. Just have a "dirty plate" box and let it work out how to get them into the washer and wash them and check whether they are clean yet.

We're decades, if not centuries, from that level of automation being mainstream.

A long list

[Anonymous Coward]

To have a roof to keep rain and snow out
To have doors to keep people out
To have windows to see though
That's all folks!

Re:A long list

[Anonymous Coward]

you realize doors are meant to let people in...

if you just wanted to keep people out then it shouldn't have any doors at all.

What I look for in a smart home

[fustakrakich]

A warm toilet seat in the morning. Be smart enough to let the spouse use it first.

Shitty Website Alert!

[Zynder]

What a shitty website. It's like Windows 8 threw up all over it. I'm sure these are probably neat devices but I'll be damned if I could tell anything from that website. It's unusable!

Re:Shitty Website Alert!

[Anrego]

Largely my reaction.

This terrible style is kinda popular right, where all the "pages" are on one page, separated by big half page images, with links just jumping to different sections and very low information density.

Re:Shitty Website Alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

Largely my reaction.

This terrible style is kinda popular right, where all the "pages" are on one page, separated by big half page images, with links just jumping to different sections and very low information density.

I don't know why they do that, I can't even read it...... makes my eyes all wonky.

Re:Shitty Website Alert!

[Noah Haders]

dude that's the new style for internet start up sites. stop being old.

Re:Shitty Website Alert!

[RavenLrD20k]

No. That's the style of site built by marketers who don't know what the fuck they're doing with Bootstrap. "Oooh...that's a nice feature, throw it in. I like how that moves, throw it in. What? Organize thoughts into actual informative pages? Screw that, we'll just put everything we have out there on one page and make the user scroll for miles and we'll just dazzle them with all the cool moving images and eye candy! Beats having to work to actually compile information." And it's not just start ups that fall victim to this bullshit. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are just as guilty, though MS shows a bit more restraint on the flashiness. It shows a complete lack of self control and critical thought in their product message. Seriously, dude, I've seen geoshitty sites that were built better and actually conveyed meaningful information about what they were selling.

Re:Shitty Website Alert!

[Zynder]

One simply cannot stop being old...now get off my lawn! Take yer hula hoops and yer pet rocks with ya too!

Most people understand comfort

[aaarrrgggh]

Energy efficiency is a hard concept to directly explain. One of my favorite energy savings devices is a dimmer for the front light that is 100% just before dusk, and ramps down to 60% when I am generally home, then 25% until an hour after bedtime, then off. My neighbor has a bright bulb that she just leaves on all the time. When it comes down to it, efficiency is comfort people don't underst.

Re:Most people understand comfort

[Barsteward]

why not just have the light connected to a motion sensor?

Re:Most people understand comfort

[wkearney99]

Because not all lighting is coupled to motion detection. Some of it is just vanity, lighting up the facade of the house. Some of it is safety, for those in the house and walking along outside.

It's annoying to just be walking along the sidewalk and have someone's overzealous motion sensor light up their house like a damned Christmas tree.

Or maybe I just want to walk out into my backyard at night and not have all the lights come on (emptying trash in PJs, or using the hot tub in less). But once we've gone to bed at night, and the alarm is set, then have it light up like the FACE OF THE SUN if someone's skulking around the windows.

The very hard part of the equation is making a system capable of being smart when necessary, but dumb otherwise. Learn from activities and user input and don't keep plodding along when told otherwise. As in, learn that people are (legitimately) present and the activity levels might require adjusting the scheduled automation tasks. Recognize there's a party and don't trip the outside floodlights. Or note that nobody's been around and it'd probably be a good idea to go into 'away mode' (but get out of it when people return).

The biggest problem with lifestyle devices is they're often engineered and programmed by people that don't have lives. At least not ones that bear any semblance to those of the customer. This is like asking deaf people to make violins. No insult intended toward the hearing impaired, of course. Sure, it might look, smell, taste and feel right... but the sound.... well it might not be what the customer actually needs.

Re:Most people understand comfort

[aaarrrgggh]

Weren't some of the best violin makers deaf... Or was it just the composers?

Re:Most people understand comfort

[wkearney99]

Indeed, there have been rare cases of both composers and builders. Thus like many analogies there's always edge cases. It doesn't change the problem that a great number of devices or efforts targeted toward automation are often created by folks with very little in common (lifestyle or sense) with the intended audience.

It'll be good to see what develops with more devices on the market at lower-than-previous price points. There's likely to be a lot of stunted efforts, but then automation has seen more than it's share of that already.

A Smart Home . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . implies a smart homeowner. So far I'm not impressed.

I'd like a house with a moat

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a minefield. Preferably a minefield.

Sales talk

[jandersen]

Oh gods, another sales drone trying to raise the non-issue of how we can cram irrelevant technology into people's lives, so they can suck a larger part of our blood?

I think most of us realise that the home serves a number of intensely practical purposes: preparing food, eating food, sleeping etc. Just take the kitchen, where probably the most technical gear is concentrated, even if we don't quite think of it as such: cookers, ovens, mixers and what have you. A good kitchen is a workshop, first and foremost, and what do you need in a good workshop? Good tools: pots, pans, bowls, knives; how much better would it be to have a networked knife or a spoon with a host of remote sensors built in? Not a lot, I bet.

I can think of several things

[Begemot]

For example:
- Manage inventory of groceries (I hate to discover that there's no milk in the morning with hungry kids and no time for shopping)
- Warn if I forget to lock the door and started moving away it (I hate to go back up just to check I haven't forgotten)
- Turn off ALL lights when I'm going out (hate to scan all the rooms or feel bad if I don't)

There's more, of course.

I programmed an automation system

[msobkow]

I programmed an automation system for a 1.5 million dollar house a few years back. The owner spent gobs of money running extra wiring from every light, outlet, and socket to the central control circuit panel that ran most of the functionality. They sprang for 4 CAT6 lines to each room, with a fiber drag to supplement "future expansion", all of which ran to a router in the basement (Cisco, no less) and to a PBX system.

After the whiz-bang wore off in a month, the owner really regretted spending close to $150,000 on the automation. In the end, the only thing even his wife really liked was the automated drape controls and the cameras monitoring the property. All the fancy light dimmers and thermostats were more of a pain to use and set up than their analogue counterparts, and the remote was so complex that they didn't use it at all because it was far easier to just walk to the wall controller and use that.

Automation has always been more of a whiz-bang for a select few than a real necessity for anyone. For the most part, having tri-wired switches with switches at each of the two entries to a room is more than adequate for "automation."

The owner's kids absolutely hated the automation -- it was impossible to sneak in late at night without all the lights coming on and alerting Mom and Dad to just how late it was when they got home. :D

Re:I programmed an automation system

[Anonymous Coward]

This, perhaps, says more about the programming of the system than anything else. And not in a good way.

Re:I programmed an automation system

[msobkow]

You overestimate the flexibility of the hardware. You have pushbuttons, sliders, and meters available for use in the control panels. You have a primitive scripting language for assigning those controls to specific wire ports/devices, and the crudest forward/backward navigation buttons you can imagine.

If you think you're going to get a powerful and flexible tool you can extend and embrace from the manufacturer of a home automation hardware platform, you've got another think coming.

Don't think for me.

[Controlio]

The reason I don't own Nest or any other "learning" gear is two fold. First, I don't want any third party to know my settings and be able to deduce when I'm home. Second - and more importantly - I don't want my devices to "think" for me.

I keep a very irregular schedule that is the polar opposite of my wife. I work nights, she works days. My work nights vary wildly (I'm a contractor), hers do not (minus holidays or professional development days). Any "learning" a thermostat does in our household will be wrong.

For this purpose, I homebrewed a thermostat. I have an Omnistat with serial control, and I wrote a Raspberry Pi interface to talk to it. I then wrote an Android app to interface to the Raspberry Pi, so I can control the thermostat from inside the home or outside.

Why did I go to all of that trouble? Because there is no product on the market that fits my two criteria - no outside party data collecting, and no "thinking".

Seriously, why is this so hard? I understand the want to make things simple for the non-techies out there... but why in the world can't you offer me the option to strip everything away and use the thermostat in the simplest manner possible?

I'm having the same problem with lighting control right now. I would like a GPI contact closure to turn on/off an LED light dimmer, but never inhibit its ability to be turned on locally. You may say "Z-Wave!" or any of the other RF controls out there. The problem is that none of these meet my criteria for dimmable LED lighting: the fact that I hate software dimmers, and the ability to turn on/off a light to the set dim point without being able to inhibit the light from being turned on locally. All I want is a physical dimming slider and an on/off switch - not a software dimmer that gradually fades the output up and down and that you have to stare at LEDs to set once the unit is on. If I can't hit the switch and have an instant on with 100% certainty at what dimming level the light will pop on at, I don't want it.

My next house project will be a low voltage relay to grab the sunrise/sunset times, and turn my exterior LV lights on at sunset + 30min, and off at sunrise - 30min. Nothing outside of a photosensor does that now, and it doesn't do it reliably (think cloudy days, snow cover, etc). So I will homebrew it. And be happy.

Give me total control of my devices, with no "thinking" whatsoever. That's all I want in home automation. No one is doing that right now, and it frustrates me to no end.

Re:Don't think for me.

[wkearney99]

Look into Lutron's RadioRa2 dimmers. No analog position dimmers, but those are more problematic than you might first guess. Bump into them and they lose their setting. Or the slider rheostat in there craps out over time. To say nothing of the power wasted on that kind of circuit.

RA2 dimmers have a dimmer on the side, you set it to a value and the switch remembers it. Press the button again in the future and it'll come on to that level. Want 100% light, just double-tap (without that changing the remembered dim).

Or send a command to it via an IP/RF bridge and set it to whatever you like (along with being able to see how it's currently set; 2-way). Without the speed and reliability problems of z-wave.

That and their IP bridge has a time clock and you set it's location for sunrise/sunset related programming. I've got a bunch of stuff triggered at various intervals tied to them. Bring the lights up to 25% a half-hour before, then up to 80% a half-hour after, down to 25% again in another 30 and then off completely. Brings the lights up without being too bright, adds more as the sun sets, dims as the evening winds down and then off. All without intervention. Home, Away and Alternate modes too. I program Alternate for holiday lighting like Halloween & Christmas.

There are ambient light level sensors, but to get sophisticated conditional programming you'd want to add something 3rd party (which you no doubt sound capable of doing). The front porch light has a motion sensor that's smart enough to realize it doesn't need to turn on the lights when there's enough ambient light. But on a very overcast day, it will.

Software dimmers are capable of doing some clever stuff. Like setting the low threshold on the dimmer so you don't under-drive LED lighting. An LED light might only need dimming down to 30%. Dropping lower than that causes them to blink or worse. RA2 dimmers can do this.

Sure, they're pricey, but good, fast, cheap... pick two... still applies.

Better at the dumb stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't give a crap about new gadgets. Make the existing stuff work better. Modular home construction so that when an outlet fails, I unplug the existing one and plug in a new one. No service calls, no rewiring, no tools. Ditto for plumbing. Ditto for doors and windows. Ditto for floors, walls and ceilings. Lego construction. If I want 5 foot high ceilings for my kids' rooms, let me do that. When they outgrow that, let me easily move the ceiling up. Round rooms? No problem. Running wires or plumbing lines? Work in the passages inside the walls. Or take the covers off the wall and gain access to its innards. Or...

I don't need lights that I can control from Zimbabwe or a thermostat that tells a company the temperature at which I keep my living room. Get away from me. Make things that enhance MY life, not yours. Unfortunately, the companies that are prepared to innovate and in a position to innovate are the tech companies, not the folks making plumbing fixtures, Romex or dimensional lumber.

Specific use cases

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Zwave for my home automation, for my vacation home. I can turn on/off the lights, thermostat, and even lock/unlock the doors and open/close the garage doors. It has been well worth it, I can watch the cameras to let a service guy into the home, or turn down the heat if it was left on high.

For my primary home, there is no need. I did install lots of lights and such, but I never use the zwave bits anymore. I think for most people it isn't necessary.

Coordination of power usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Many places charge by peak power usage. Having smart fridge that speaks to an air conditioner so they can take turns using the power. To those two appliances you can dryers, ovens, toasters etc.

Make service complaints w/o me

[gelfling]

I want a smart home to call Time Warner or the bank or my mortgage company or Anthem health care or the city or Met life insurance or the 500 dozen other people I spend all day on the phone arguing with after they fuck something up. And then I want my smart home to personally rain death down on them.

The inventors did

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody asked for a "smart home". Or a self-driving car. Or phones that track us. Or cameras on every corner. Or internet activity records. Or the smart TVs and appliances with mics that will record our coversations (it's in the EULA for smart TVs - "be careful what you say around our TV") NO ONE asked for these things. They are being rammed into us.

Nobody forced you to buy them, did they?

Same thing they wanted in 1954

[unfortunateson]

http://www.dailymotion.com/vid...

No actually, there's only a few things I want:
* Control of lights with common "scenes" such as turning on the outside lights from more than just the one switch, and turning on lights "ahead" of me when I come in the door
* Monitoring key safety items, such as leaving my garage door open, water in the basement
* One app to rule them all, one app to find them, one app to bring them all and in the darkness bind themL I've got a Nest, a Squeezebox, a Twine, but each app is independent from everything else

energy savings is environmental friendliness

[Khashishi]

right?

Siri / Cortana

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to be able to talk to my house and have it respond in a useful way. I want totally integrated voice control over my tvs / music / electronics / lighting / etc. I want to be able to ask for information, book plane tickets, send messages, make calls. Should this really be so difficult? It's mostly available technology (see Siri / Cortana/ etc.) Except that instead of Siri or Cortana, I think the personality and voice should be those of Greg House, M.D. (for obvious reasons).

Automated lawn removal of those pesky kids!

[Anonymous Coward]

Remove those damn kids from my lawn!

smart... clever. And private.

[Mirar]

I want my smart home to be clever.

For instance, I have my tea kettle turn on when I usually get up (different depending if it's a workday or not). It also turns on when I approach home from leaving it a longer time. Of course it's still stupid and all that's controlled (and measured) is the power, so I still have to fill it with water and turn off the relay. But the rest is scripted using razberry, linux and android stuff.

I have lights coming on on motion sensors. Which lights turn on depends on the ambient light level (they don't turn on if the room is in bright sunlight). They don't turn off if I just pushed the button to keep them off, and they don't turn off quickly if I used the button to turn them on (60 minutes timeout before resuming normality).

I have a radiator maintaining the bedroom temperature within ±0.1C. It was quite tricky to get that slow feedback system to work properly, but fun. Which temperature is the goal temperature vary over the day and my sleep cycle.

I have a XMBC, a receiver and a TV where the two later ones are turned on and off depending on the screensaver state of the XMBC. The subwoofer/bass level is lowered on a timer to not to disturb neighbours. I will hook that into the lighting as well, but haven't done that yet.

I wanted to install a door and motion sensor so the system would know when noone was home, but the daft sensor from Philio didn't work with neither the razberry nor the aeon labs stick. That's for some other day.

What I mainly want from a smart home is
1. scriptability (duh)
2. security. Neither z-wave nor tellstick/nexa is secure. Anyone could easily control or read anything. A little trickier with z-wave, but not very.
3. privacy. I don't do "live" or "net" stuff. My stuff stays here.
4. expandability. I want everything to be able to trigger everything. The location of my phone should be able to be scripted to trigger the kettle. The temperature in the living room can alter the state of the rice cooker. The moisture level of my strawberry plant can trigger a warning SMS. The motion detector in the kitchen can raise the bar for when the smoke detector in the kitchen goes off. But everything would need to talk, and they should talk in all ways they can talk.

5. reliability. Things that need to work should work without the network. The smoke detector settings could be altered from the network, but if the network isn't there it still needs to go off. Timer-relays should still trigger on the time set by the network. Thermostats should still trigger on the temperature set by the network. And above all, things shouldn't randomly hang and not do what they are supposed to do. (I haven't had a single digital thing that hasn't hanged at some point. That include frost guard thermostats and timers. Every single piece of z-wave equipment has hanged at some point. Not smart.)

How environmental it is is up to the user.