Smart Homes stuff

[YeOldeStonecat]

With the interest in smart home/automation on the rise...good to see some of it starting to show up here in the news section at least.

Hope to start seeing more reviews, possibly a sub forum for it?

Myself....I've seen eyeballing something that will be "most compatible"...and so far that seems to be SmartThings.
http://www.smartthings.com/

 

[thiggins]

With the interest in smart home/automation on the rise...good to see some of it starting to show up here in the news section at least.

Hope to start seeing more reviews, possibly a sub forum for it?

Myself....I've seen eyeballing something that will be "most compatible"...and so far that seems to be SmartThings.
http://www.smartthings.com/

Thanks for noticing. First
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/smarthome/smarthome-reviews

Our coverage will continue to expand in this area.

At this point, the smart home / home automation market remains fragmented. You basically choose a vendor and live with that vendor's device ecosystem.

SmartThings (now owned by Samsung) has a pretty broad compatibility list. But it is by no means comprehensive.

I attended the Connections 2015 conference two weeks ago put on by Parks Associates and had two takeaways:

1) There is no Smart Home "killer app". I asked the Parks analysts and that was their response, too.

2) The market remains fragmented with each manufacturer building out its own product line.

The two elephants in the room, Google/Nest and Apple/HomeKit, were not represented at the conference and only mentioned in passing in one of the sessions. These two behemoths have perhaps the best chance of building a broader market, but there is no guarantee.

 

[htismaqe]

I can't even get into evaluating home automation stuff yet because none of these vendors have told my WHY I need it.

You said you have not seen the "killer app" yet. I haven't seen a use case yet that really justifies the cost. Most of us have already implemented "non-smart" technologies with similar functionality. And when it comes to smart outlets and lighting, they're talking about investment without a short enough payback. The incremental electrical savings isn't worth the up front cost.

 

[L&LD]

While it is inevitable that we will have this whether we want it or not (in the near future), I have not seen a 'Smart Home' that wasn't just plain dumb in actual usability.

Like using your smartphone to locate a McD's when just looking around would have saved you 5 minutes typing in your phone with McD's literally behind your back.

 

[CaptainSTX]

You have to be somewhat a gadget freak to be into home automation now.

Looking at a new home that includes some integrated systems. I can walk out of the house and when I activate the alarm system it automatically locks the doors and turns the AC up to save energy. When I arrive home and deactivate the alarm system some interior lights will go on, and the AC resets.

The garage door is setup to notify you if it is left open and can be closed using a phone app. It also makes it possible to let a delivery man call you and then you can open the garage door so the delivery can be left inside out of the weather.

Is this all worth $1,000? I don't know but it least it gives me something to do while the wife plays interior designer and tries to max out the credit card buying furniture.

 

[thiggins]

The dirty little secret none of the "smart home" product makers talk about is that they depend on a internet connection. In our Smart Bulb roundup, only the Belkin Wemo stuff still worked when we pulled the internet plug.

We pull the internet plug on all Smart Home products we test.

 

[htismaqe]

It seems to be the "door unlocked/garage door open" is the big selling point right now. It's almost like the sales pitch is "can't trust your lazy-butt teenagers to turn off the lights or lock the door? Do it yourself, from anywhere!"

Turning the lights off and adjusting the heat/AC, above and beyond what I'm sure most of us already do, saves so little money there's really no advantage to these things.

 

[System Error Message]

if you want to save money i think switching your home lights to LED would save more than smart home devices. You can also build them yourself for way cheaper and i hate the reliance of needing the internet to use such because if a catastrophe were to happen than all those expensive devices would just be rendered useless.

There are already smart devices for offices and i dont think those rely on needing the internet just to work locally. It really makes me think that these companies have a really sinister purpose requiring the internet just to use them.

 

[L&LD]

if you want to save money i think switching your home lights to LED would save more than smart home devices. You can also build them yourself for way cheaper and i hate the reliance of needing the internet to use such because if a catastrophe were to happen than all those expensive devices would just be rendered useless.

There are already smart devices for offices and i dont think those rely on needing the internet just to work locally. It really makes me think that these companies have a really sinister purpose requiring the internet just to use them.

Yes, they do have a sinister purpose. As soon as they collect the 'right' data, they will immediately render the current hardware obsolete so that they can sell you their next line of identical junk.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Agreed....it's still a market that needs to mature, and develop a more universal standard, instead of being fragmented by proprietary protocols.

Usefulness so far....agree, not really.

The interest is there for me more out of.....because I'm a tech geek by trade. ~20 years of doing IT consulting for SMBs has me interested in this different angle of techie gadgets. Bored with building and playing with different router distro's at home, just looking for something different to play with.

The "save money" concept is certainly not my driving force. I know spending a grand or more on these gadgets.....I'm certainly not ignorant enough to believe I will recoop that money in lower electric bills. It's things like thermostats that can be controlled remotely...(granted you can do that individually)...as my wife and I travel a lot, it would be nice, while on the plane back home, to remote in and turn up the heat in the winter when we're a few hours away from home, or in the summer turn the AC back on a few hours before we arrive home. Luxury..I know. But I'm not about to plop 250 bucks a pop (I will need 2) for those NESTs. Honeywell has a few I might drop 160 bucks on though.

Those light bulbs that can hop on the program...even change hues and colors....just a neat thing to play with.

Remotely managing the door locks and garage door could be neat. Furnace guy needs to get in the house between 10am-12am...and we're away...no problem!

Needing an internet connection does not bother me....broadband has gotten quite reliable in recent decades. Myself, for our business, I've built many of our MSP/RMM tools up on cloud servers, for universal access from anywhere.

It's a growing market, expanding in uncontrolled different directions. There are not a lot of articles/reviews out there now, save for affiliate driven "blog" reviews....so it could generate a lot of traffic here.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks Stonecat. I agree companies are pushing the rope on adoption of these products.

But we're on it for coverage. You'll be seeing more.

 

[htismaqe]

The interest is there for me more out of.....because I'm a tech geek by trade. ~20 years of doing IT consulting for SMBs has me interested in this different angle of techie gadgets. Bored with building and playing with different router distro's at home, just looking for something different to play with.

I've been doing this for 20 years as well, although I'm in large enterprise consulting rather than SMB. Maybe that's the difference, I don't know, but playing with gadgets is about the LAST thing I want to do anymore. I've become rather utilitarian over the last few years. I want it to work for its specific purpose and I don't want to have to mess with it.

Remotely managing the door locks and garage door could be neat. Furnace guy needs to get in the house between 10am-12am...and we're away...no problem!

Um yeah, maybe I'm old fashioned or paranoid or whatever but I'm not letting anybody in my house when I'm not there.

 

[htismaqe]

But we're on it for coverage. You'll be seeing more.

Awesome. Don't take this discussion as an indication we don't want to see more, we absolutely do. We've come to trust you guys for the information you provide.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Um yeah, maybe I'm old fashioned or paranoid or whatever but I'm not letting anybody in my house when I'm not there.

I'm "older-older fashioned"....came from the days of letting people in the house when I wasn't around, never locked doors, etc. I bill by the hour, I lose money if I have to run home to wait for a few hours to let the furnace guy in, or some floor guy redoing the floors.

 

[htismaqe]

I'm "older-older fashioned"....came from the days of letting people in the house when I wasn't around, never locked doors, etc. I bill by the hour, I lose money if I have to run home to wait for a few hours to let the furnace guy in, or some floor guy redoing the floors.

Ah yes. Doing that around here is a good way to end up with all your home automation gear missing!

Definitely billing by the hour makes a difference, I'm on salary so I get paid the same no matter what. It's great when I want to take off at 2pm on Friday (infrequent) but sucks when they want me to work all weekend (frequent).

 

[System Error Message]

The biggest feature i dislike about all these "smart" devices is that an internet connection is required for them to work. I understand about accessing them remotely but when you're in the house you should be able to access them from local network without the need to access the internet. Broadband may be reliable but its not unusual to encounter frustrating problems such as with the quality of consumer router stability or even line issues for DSL and cable. Theres also the the issue of powering them whether the house will be filled with power cables instead of a broader and more universal use of POE.

Sometimes really bad weather can damage internet cabling making the devices useless during very bad weather especially if you need to control things like windows, thermostats or even lights. Security devices also shouldnt rely on an external host for logging as well just to function. If i had an automated light i wouldnt want it to stop functioning just because my internet is down or fully used.

The price of them is currently a lot more than if you designed and built them yourself.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

A lot of devices don't need additional power, depends what peripherals you want. And of course, many smart devices are wired into the house already (wall switches for example)...or via battery, so it's not like you're stringing tons of extra wall warts around like some pizza tech.

Some devices are accessible on the LAN, via IP/browser. Don't always need to go through the central smart hub.

I'm not looking at it for security....for that I believe in hard wired land line...as one of our clients is the best of the best alarm company around and I've learned about security from them for around 20 years.

Internet uptime...I've lived and breathed routers for 20 years....no faulty router will cause me grief, and the phone company neighborhood box for the fiber is right in my front yard, it really doesn't go down....being phone company it's backed by genny during storms. The 2x blockbuster storms we had rip apart the northeast several years ago for weeks on end...I always had internet.

For me it's a "fun geek toy" thing....not a service I'd rely on for critical important things. Being able to set lights in the house to "follow the wife around" at night....

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I must have had ESP....made this post less than 1 week ago and a review is up.