Microsoft Wants To Crush Google Home And Amazon Echo With Home Hub

simko1ra said:
Why anyone would want a device or piece of software constantly listening to everything, while always being connected to the internet is beyond my ability to comprehend.
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Because I'm nobody. Who would bother to hack that, and what would they gain? The only concern was botnets, as was mentioned in a previous thread.
 
Xrave said:
I still don't see the benefit of these hub devices. Is the only point to be able to turn on/off lights and change the thermostat with your voice? And that's assuming you spend the additional money to buy the wifi/bluetooth adapters for the lights/thermostat/whatever device you want to control?
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Remote control, and automation.

You say "Lucy, I'm hooooome", and fifty different smart devices respond accordingly.
 
And then of course there are all of the dangers associated with home automation that Hollywood envisioned in the 80's :p



The trailer is terrible at conveying what the film is about, but It's worth watching for its groan-worthy take on technology, as well as the amazing Human League soundtrack.
 
I tried Homeseer, MainLobby and another software to do home automation. I got away from it because I don't want a PC running 24/7 to have to control this crap. Home Hub is going to be the same. I don't want to run a full PC to listen for my commands. At least the Echo and Google device are low power useage with no spinning devices (fans or HDs).
 
S-F said:
And that's the big thing. Most of these systems are glorified remote controls for light switches. Home automation can be done in a way that it does simplify life. It's all about sensor density. When I get in bed my system turns off the lights, locks the door and puts my PC to sleep for example. Or if my calendar has work scheduled for the day the system wakes me up not with an alarm (which it could do) or by talking to me (which it can also do in any room of the house and outside via in-wall/ceiling speakers) but by slowly ramping the lights in my room up from 0 - 100% over 30 minutes. And the house is already warm. It shut the heat off after I'd been in bed for a while. That right there is priceless to me. I can talk to it and tell it to do things but I very rarely do. That's just a novelty. My opinion is that if you have to touch a light switch or a thermostat (or the remote control for one) you're doing it wrong.
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Or you don't live by yourself. I have a lot of sensors and automate everything I can, I agree that is the ultimate goal, but when you need to accomodate the requirements of someone other than yourself, it gets drastically more complicated and limited in what you can accomplish.

For example(one of many for me), in my case that someone refuses to leave the GPS or wireless enabled on her phone. That removes my ability to detect the presence of someone in the house, which has implications around completly automating my security system, thermostat and countless other things. Yes, I have several motion sensors and open/close sensors, but they do not work as persistent long term presence sensors and do not establish an identity of the person triggering them. Or I have it in place so when someone walks downstairs in the morning the weather is played automatically from a speaker, triggered on motion. How do I get that to work for 2 people though? I can certainly set it to trigger twice, but that doesn't guarentee that it doesn't just trigger twice for the same person.

The day someone releases a sleep sensor that can reliably monitor 2 people in 1 bed, I'll be first in line, the use cases you listed are not new ideas to me. But last I checked the options out there only support 1.

Spending $100-$150 adding voice activation as a catch all to everything that's not automated or does not have a physical switch is very useful.

Honestly, designing a smart home that can accomcate people other than just yourself is a fun challenge to tackle in and of itself. Certainly not impossible, but does require more creative thinking and taking time too understand how other people behave and how that will impact the systems you put in place.
 
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Taco said:
Or you don't live by yourself. I have a lot of sensors and automate everything I can, I agree that is the ultimate goal, but when you need to accomodate the requirements of someone other than yourself, it gets drastically more complicated and limited in what you can accomplish.

For example(one of many for me), in my case that someone refuses to leave the GPS or wireless enabled on her phone. That removes my ability to detect the presence of someone in the house, which has implications around completly automating my security system, thermostat and countless other things. Yes, I have several motion sensors and open/close sensors, but they do not work as persistent long term presence sensors and do not establish an identity of the person triggering them. Or I have it in place so when someone walks downstairs in the morning the weather is played automatically from a speaker, triggered on motion. How do I get that to work for 2 people though? I can certainly set it to trigger twice, but that doesn't guarentee that it doesn't just trigger twice for the same person.

The day someone releases a sleep sensor that can reliably monitor 2 people in 1 bed, I'll be first in line, the use cases you listed are not new ideas to me. But last I checked the options out there only support 1.

Spending $100-$150 adding voice activation as a catch all to everything that's not automated or does not have a physical switch is very useful.

Honestly, designing a smart home that can accomcate people other than just yourself is a fun challenge to tackle in and of itself. Certainly not impossible, but does require more creative thinking and taking time too understand how other people behave and how that will impact the systems you put in place.
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I have a family. I have a woman here and I also have three children here. Of course it's not 100%. It's still a hobby at this point in the development of the technology but I'm getting close. I have occupancy sensors in every bed and two in ours. The bed sensors are one of the more reliable parts of the situation. PIR motion detectors though, they are still pretty dumb.
 
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S-F said:
I have a family. I have a woman here and I also have three children here. Of course it's not 100%. It's still a hobby at this point in the development of the technology but I'm getting close. I have occupancy sensors in every bed and two in ours. The bed sensors are one of the more reliable parts of the situation. PIR motion detectors though, they are still pretty dumb.
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Ha, if I'm not at or very near 100% I'm going to catch shit for any minor nuiscance. If something undesirable happens, I need to disable until fixed.

My wife does close the bedroom door at night, so I use an open/close sensor on that to signify people are up in the morning and run some routines, but it's not as granular as a bed sensor. The Nests have mostion sensors and can be tied into other sensors in the system, but if I'm not home and she's relativley idle(or sleeping and I'm out of town), the nests will switch to away mode and turn off(which saves money). I put that one her for refusing to enable anything on her phone that would establish presence.

Kids will come in the future and once they are moving around on their own I'll likely have to re-design most everything to accomade everything. Depending on the tech available then.
 
Taco said:
Ha, if I'm not at or very near 100% I'm going to catch shit for any minor nuiscance. If something undesirable happens, I need to disable until fixed.

My wife does close the bedroom door at night, so I use an open/close sensor on that to signify people are up in the morning and run some routines, but it's not as granular as a bed sensor. The Nests have mostion sensors and can be tied into other sensors in the system, but if I'm not home and she's relativley idle(or sleeping and I'm out of town), the nests will switch to away mode and turn off(which saves money). I put that one her for refusing to enable anything on her phone that would establish presence.

Kids will come in the future and once they are moving around on their own I'll likely have to re-design most everything to accomade everything. Depending on the tech available then.
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I don't know what system you're using but look at geofencing solutions as they can operate fairly well on cell tower triangulation alone to determine location so no need for wi-fi connectivity. Just install the utility on her phone and she never has to think about it again. iThings, for example, don't respond to a ping when they haven't been touched for a while so geofencing or tracking software is needed.
 
Not 100% sure how SmartThings handles locale, quick google search wasn't terribly enlightening, but when GPS is not on it does not work. When GPS is enabled, presence is updated immediately. If it utilizes other functionalities within the phone, she must have those disabled as well. SmartThings app is installed and her phone configured as presence senor.

I think I could probably do something with IFTT, but my experience with IFTT is that there is too much of a delay on the polling and/or triggers, so I've tended to avoid.

Anyways, getting off topic.
 
I'm torn on the subject of home automation.

Some of it is pretty awesome and useful. Smart thermostats - for instance - help you save money on heat, which is huge in the Northeast part of the country. On the other hand I'll never fucking buy a "smart light bulb". That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard of.

I'm also not crazy about the whole "voice control", "AI" and "assistant" trend though. I'd much rather configure things using a keyboard and mouse. it is always going to be more precise and detailed, and details - after all - are what really matter.

I also don't like that all of these devices have to connect to some god damned cloud service. I wish they would be designed to be self contained in the house. I'll run my own server to manage them if I have to, but having them constantly ping the outside world for a cloud service is only negative.

There are:
  • Privacy concerns
  • Security risks
  • Potential service interruptions if the internet goes down

not to mention that I don't like it when the control of my stuff is taken out of my hands.

I'm much happier with enterprise type solutions. I wish I could run an enterprise building management system at home. I mean, I guess there is nothing stopping me, but they tend to not have any good licensing options for small/home users.
 
Smart light bulbs, unless you have a very specific use case, cause more issues than they solve. My first foray into this stuff was some smart bulbs, once you got over the cool factor they were more of an inconvenience than anything. On the other hand, smart light switches paired with standard bulbs work great. Adds intelligence to all bulbs, easier to manage, likely will work out to be much cheaper and does not remove the ability for people to turn on/off lights the same way they always have.

Other than that, your concerns are valid and I would not argue against them. Everyone has a different level of tolerance for balancing those negatives with the potential positives.
 
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