The fact that there is basically no good "premium" options for smart devices, just cheap adware trash or more diy type stuff with home assistant and the like, tells me there is not much of a mainstream market for most of these devices to begin with. If your only niche is just the hobby crowd or shit that has to be so cheap that you can't make a profit without riddling it with ads then it might not be a market worth getting into.
I'm converting from Firesticks once the new Apple TVs come out. I'm sick of the constant upselling and Amazon's been putting much more effort into blocking me from using a custom launcher than basic stability and usability.
Anyone who's serious about home automation eventually realizes that the only way to do it effectively is with locally controlled standards based devices like zwave and zigbee, and open source projects like home assistant and esp32.
Anything else will eventually be corrupted or abandoned by its corporate sponsor, as anyone who's tried it the other way can tell you.
The best case scenario is: when they cut off access there is a large enough public outcry that they immediately reverse position (until the next attempt).
Lots of these companies just go out of business and leave everyone stranded. But companies like Google don't give a fuck when they leave open source projects stranded like they did with the Nest API.
The issue is really with the business model of most IOT device makers. They sell you one device once and they're basically committing themselves to running cloud services for that device indefinitely. This only works while you're growing, and when sales start to plateau you're suddenly paying huge amounts of money to maintain the infrastructure with no money coming in.
Companies like Google, Apple and Amazon are big enough to absorb that, but the smaller ones will quickly start looking at ads and subscription fees.
It would be a lot better if device makers could just stick to building the hardware, after which the user just plugs it into their IOT provider of choice (which would be a subscription or something self hosted like Home Assistant).
Normally I'm a pretty earlier adopter of new technology but home automation doesn't appeal to me because I don't want to have to constantly pay a subscription to someone to process my commands when I have a perfectly functional computer.
I want to have a doorbell that does not financially commit me to a monthly fee I do not think that's too much to ask.
Agreed, but there are choices. Even for the Ring doorbell, you can choose not to have a subscription if it suits your bpberds to have live video only, no history. But there are also full featured choices that do not require a subscription.
For me, I haven’t yet upgraded from Ring because I’m not ready to take on an NVR, nor build out the full system I want
To be fair, I use a simple smartlock whose only purpose is so I alone can unlock my bedroom door without needing my physical key duplicated for others to enter at desired times.
To also be fair, I have a hodgepodge of smarthome lights and plugs linked via ifttt that I am now worried will not have any replacement option in 15 years. Maybe I made a mistake, but I do actually have a need to rely on a smartswitch to turn off the lights when I leave home.
i really sympathize with folks who go down an iot rabbit hole only to find it's a huge disaster.
Most iot use cases are incredibly simple, like turning on a light in the morning. implement should take a handful of minutes.
but the more complicated the technical debt, i imagine the less satisfying the whole experience is. it's a fun whimsical hobby that quickly becomes a farce.
I just want my damn blinds to open in the morning and close at night automatically, without needing a goddamn proprietary "app," or a "cloud" connection, or a bunch of batteries I have to change (i.e., I want it wired to either 120VAC or PoE). Is that really too much to ask‽
No. The lack of variety in options is honestly astonishing. I'm looking for a cheap zigbee button that is wall powered. They don't really seem to exist. Who the fuck wants to be constantly replacing batteries in smart things? Probably the same people who don't want wires running everywhere, but their priorities are in the wrong place imo.
I'm also kinda shocked that a product doesn't exist that's just a AA or AAA fake battery with wires hanging off of it that you could plug into the wall. Probably a safety hazard or something.
Still something I'd have to think about in 5 years. Also, if I use rechargeables, which I would, it'll potentially be less.
I don't want to have to think about it. Ever.
Also, if you have a bunch of switches in your house, even at 5 years you could be replacing batteries in one switch or another every few months.
At 10 battery operated smart things in the house, thats - on average - swapping batteries every 6 months. As you add more smart things, that frequency goes up. I don't want to be doing that, ever.
One of the first automations I installed in my Home Assistant, was a community contribution to show a table of devices by battery level, and alert when low. You shouldn’t have to think about replacing the batteries.
Of course, I immediately found out the remote sensors for my Ecobee don’t seem to report battery level …. Or maybe the integration is incomplete: my thermostat also doesn’t report battery level but was able to notify when low
Installing an automation and checking battery level manually, or even having an automation tell me to replace the batteries in devices means I'm thinking about it... Not to mention that I still have to replace the batteries which, shockingly, involved thinking about replacing the batteries.
I can't replace the wall switches, as I'm renting a manufactured home, which has some really wackily wired light switches, likely to save money. If I owned a home I'd definitely install some smart switches and utilize those.
Your wall outlet is AC but a battery is DC, so a pure wire setup is not so much a safety thing as it is just incompatible. A good fire starter.
So you'll have to convert it, which makes for a big, bulky plug.
On top of that, you'll need prior knowledge of the battery layout, including whether they're parallel or serial. Usually parallel, but not a guarantee.
You may want to look into Shelly relays. You wire them to the physical switch in the wall and can control them locally with Home Assistant or just individually via WiFi. Only downside for most folks (especially in the US it seems) is that they generally require a neutral wire to work.
The only absolute with these devices is that you don’t get what you pay for. Inevitably it will completely change without your consent, and generally it will deliberately be for a worse experience since you’re captive.
Yeh. Never truely completely captive, but the potential shaftings they give us are hard to take. Full on denial can set in, I’ve noticed with some I know, the more we have invested into the given shittersphere. Understandable and sad. We are also talking about a relatively niche area here unfortunately. Obviously for the likes of google, amazon et al., we aren't the customer. Our relative loyalty to their walled shitterspheres are unlikely even a metric to them other than as ad / clicks/ conversion, as they'll just replace this week’s initiative with a shinier (to the masses) gadget next week. I really hope that whole industry’s days are numbered, but unfortunately all of it is a feature of consumer capitalism and not a bug. Competition, regulation , and DIY are our only defences. The fact that to varying degrees these big tech players are in control of information itself ( to anyone silly enough to consider using the yellowpages/google a fair and factual info source ) , helps them no end with whatever strategy they're onto this week.
Regarding not getting what you pay for. Ive often thought that having to pay the nominal cost price for say the firestick is merely to obfiscate what it really is. ”They should pay me for embedding this spy stick in my house” is the natural feeling, so paying some arbitrary amount to ‘purchase’ immediately elicits some sort of entitlement ( which should totally be the case ! ) in the consumer. The psychology behind such corporate behaviour is fascinating but it’s probably as much to do with regulation, ironically.
Open-source is the only way to get a decent product. Being locked down by proprietary software from a few companies with an oligopoly over the market and the growing culture of disposable devices means they don’t give a fuck if works well or if it works past a year or two.
damn, that sucks. similar to why people are averse to getting a Lucid car right now. people don't trust that the company will be around in the near future and they'll be left without any support.
I'm getting sick of this yet we are backed into a corner. I never had to set up my old 21" CRT, yet LG forces me to fuck around with pointless settings to get an image I'm still not happy with.
My Xbox pushes ads. My Mac has stuff built in which I'll never use yet I cannot remove. Windows is a joke but has compatibility I may have to return to. My phone asks me to review applications I just want to use and not be bothered by.
I've had a few smart TVs, and none of them have ever bothered me with ads I don't know what TVs people are getting. But currently I have a Panasonic TV and a Samsung TV and both of those are fine.
Mine is not ads as I haven't connected it to the internet, but the fact that the settings out of the box on a so-called state-of-the-art TV are absolutely fucked and contrary to how it should be.
My cars have all been relatively stupid, by modern standards, my motorbikes too, as I've never owned anything younger than ten years.
Linux would be great if... I could get it on great hardware, and have it play VR games (plus any modern titles). I'm teetering on a second hand Razer Blade running W10 to get my fix.
I did, when I bought the device. And if the manufacturer does a good job, I'll recommend them to friends and family and likely buy more of their products.
The FOSS community does most of the heavy lifting with security updates anyway. Most of these things are running Linux, so they've already helped themselves to that community's work.
I actually dont understand why news and such written blogs stopped with sponsors. I dont want tracking pixels, autoplaying videos and all that bullshit. Have a static small paragraph with a referral link, thats it.
For example on adventofcode, there was a static ad for spotify job application. This is an ad which i can advocate for. Creator of the site gets money, the ad is not intrusive, and it targets programmers who would just naturally navigate to this site.
