Internet of Things...

Most of you know I'm not into any of the social media stuff...

But now there are more and more items that are Internet of Things stuff.

Just got an offer for a thermostat that is wi-fi enabled. See TV's that have cameras to show you what is inside on your phone. And there's tons more than that. Most fast food places allow you to order on line. As if fast wasn't fast enough.

Anyone using stuff like that?

I just can't see having my home thermostat connected to the internet making it that much better. It would better if I could control the house temps regionally- but my house is too old to do that.

alfadriver wrote: I just can't see having my home thermostat connected to the internet making it that much better. It would better if I could control the house temps regionally- but my house is too old to do that.

Ever been cold in bed in the winter and wished you'd turned the heat up?

Not worth it for me, but still...

EDIT: Also would be wonderful for my inlaws since my MIL has MS.

I'm a bit of a skeptic, both of IoT thermostats and IoT items in general. From what I've read, heat pumps like what I have in my house apparently don't gain very much in efficiency by trying a set-back strategy and work best if you try to hold them at a constant temperature. They may work better with other heating systems though.

I do place pizza orders online frequently - that helps me check the latest specials and I don't have to waste their time asking what's on sale - but in general a lot of IoT items seem to be neither worth the expense nor the security risks.

alfadriver wrote: It would better if I could control the house temps regionally- but my house is too old to do that.

It might be a good candidate for ductless mini-split heat pumps, if they're in the budget. They have tiny heating / cooling units, one for each room or area, hooked up to a condenser / evaporator outside. No ductwork, which can be a big efficiency boost in older houses that put ductwork in an uninsulated attic. You just plumb up the refrigerant lines. They're also lot easier to install if you bought a house that never had central heating or A/C to begin with.

IoT suffers from a nasty mismatch between price and usefulness, and the uniquitous model for how these things operate (connecting through remote servers for no good reason, other than as a lock-in mechanism) is a security and privacy nightmare. I'll happily stay far away from this stuff.

alfadriver wrote: I just can't see having my home thermostat connected to the internet making it that much better. It would better if I could control the house temps regionally- but my house is too old to do that.

IoT doesn't mean your thermostat can show YouTube, it's more about interconnectivity.

For example, we have a Haiku ceiling fan in our bedroom and another in the living room. I can program them via smartphone to only run when there's someone in the room, or to have a motion sensitive light that shuts off at certain times on certain days, or to maintain a certain temperature in the room at various times, etc. It's great. They can also talk to a NEST thermostat so the furnace, AC and ceiling fan are all working together for best efficiency and most consistent temperature control.

I do have a wifi thermostat. IMO, not worth the $.

It is nice that after I go on vacation and realize I left the A/C on I can just pull out my phone and change it. Then 4 hours before I get back home I can turn it back on.

The features that I most like are how its programmed - via a web interface instead of an extremely E36 M3ty monochromatic LCD like the $25 thermostats you get at home depot. You can set different schedules for different days, temporary, upper/lower limits, track usage, etc. But again, not worth the $

That said, once IoT & home automation standardizes some stuff and comes down in price, I'll jump in for a few more things. Wouldn't mind a programmable controller that would handle lights as well as thermostat, maybe garage doors as well.

For a lot of the supposed benefits, the risk to security far outways the advantages to me. Would it be nice to have the heat kick up before I get home in the winter? Sure. Save many wasted trips to the kitchen to dig through the fridge? Probably. Do I really want to give others access to these things? Not in the least.

It's kind of a double edged sword of convenience and intrusion. As you mentioned also, it's not exactly easy to retrofit some of these technologies into older houses as well. I just see it as an easy backdoor into a network though. For the amount of people that don't even change the default security settings on their routers, I can't imagine many would bother going through and patching/privatizing their devices. And if you can get into one point, you can get into the whole thing.

One thing I've been curious about is how much bandwidth a lot of these devices take up. A constant stream, only a blip when you access it? It would be pretty annoying if Netflix or YouTube or whatever bogged because my thermostat was always on or the fridge was always streaming.

Maybe if I could lock the devices to a local intranet or VPN, and had a house not built in the 40s(by our estimates based on wiring and plumbing) I would be much more inclined to adopt the tech. The thermostat is a nogo, I have a pellet stove and no central air, but washer/dryer, fridge, lights, or anything that could break(hot water tank, electric furnace, water softener, etc.) that could maybe throw a code like a check engine light to save troubleshooting time would be kinda nice to have. Maybe if I ever build my dream home.

Might want your foil hat for this last part, but can having even more wireless waves at even more frequencies constantly streaming through the house and everything in it really be that good for us physically? We're all still acting out that experiment, so it's hard to say and maybe a little over the top.

Keith Tanner wrote:

alfadriver wrote: I just can't see having my home thermostat connected to the internet making it that much better. It would better if I could control the house temps regionally- but my house is too old to do that.

IoT doesn't mean your thermostat can show YouTube, it's more about interconnectivity. For example, we have a Haiku ceiling fan in our bedroom and another in the living room. I can program them via smartphone to only run when there's someone in the room, or to have a motion sensitive light that shuts off at certain times on certain days, or to maintain a certain temperature in the room at various times, etc. It's great. They can also talk to a NEST thermostat so the furnace, AC and ceiling fan are all working together for best efficiency and most consistent temperature control.

Ceiling fan in house

Haiku brand it works by phone

Technology? yes

Nice

As far as I know, the Haiku fans aren't communicating with the mothership and they're not available outside my WiFi network. I don't have them talking to anything else like a NEST (as noted, they're pricey devils and don't work well with swamp coolers and hot water heat) so I don't know about the network traffic. Given their current role, very little if any.

Edit: apparently, they only speak when spoken to at the moment.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1UDLG_1bPnIJ:bruce.pennypacker.org/+&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

As far as I am concerned the internet of things is just another way for the the NSA to illegally spy on us without a warrant, our knowledge or our consent. No thanks.

I'm generally not a fan of most of the commercial IoT things, but I'm using a Raspberry Pi and the OpenSprinkler board & software to set up my own internet-connected sprinkler controller. It's half the price of a commercial one (although once you count in my time that's not a win), but A) it's fun and B) since I control it I know who it's handing data to.

In reply to MadScientistMatt:

Forced air means little space control...

In reply to codrus:

Totally understand the controllable sprinkler system. More so the DIY fun of your project.

What I am trying to figure is the connected part of systems.

Even for light timers, I have a multi way programmable one that ends up being used like a normal on-off style analog device.

So the question is- what is gained by being connected. And, yes, I see the risk, so talking more about that isn't needed. I want to know the gains of systems.

I've been thinking I should upgrade to a fridge with built-in interior camera, then live-stream it to YouTube.

alfadriver wrote: So the question is- what is gained by being connected. And, yes, I see the risk, so talking more about that isn't needed. I want to know the gains of systems.

The idea is that you can improve efficiency by timing when devices are used (don't activate a sprinkler when it's rainy, don't activate lights when nobody's in the room, preload laundry and run it during off-peak hours) and improve convenience and security through remote control (check how much of something is left in the fridge from the grocery store, look through your front door peephole/security cameras while on vacation)

For a thermostat specifically...there's not much to be gained. You can control and check it from your smartphone, which saves a little walking I guess, and theoretically you could save a little by doing some extra heating or cooling during off-peak hours and easing back on it when electricity is more expensive.

codrus wrote: I'm generally not a fan of most of the commercial IoT things, but I'm using a Raspberry Pi and the OpenSprinkler board & software to set up my own internet-connected sprinkler controller. It's half the price of a commercial one (although once you count in my time that's not a win), but A) it's fun and B) since I control it I know who it's handing data to.

Sprinklers are a lot more fun if you think of them as fuel injection systems. We need someone to adapt a Megasquirt to run their irrigation.

Now, a sprinkler controller that talks to soil moisture sensors, that would be smart. More than just "it's not raining", but actual control of the moisture level of the soil for maximum growth and minimum waste - that's a good use. While it may not be as clickbaity as being able to flush your toilet from the next state over, it's the sort of thing we're really going to see. And we won't think of it as being IoT, but it is.

GameboyRMH wrote:

alfadriver wrote: So the question is- what is gained by being connected. And, yes, I see the risk, so talking more about that isn't needed. I want to know the gains of systems.

The idea is that you can improve efficiency by timing when devices are used (don't activate a sprinkler when it's rainy, don't activate lights when nobody's in the room, preload laundry and run it during off-peak hours) and improve convenience and security through remote control (check how much of something is left in the fridge from the grocery store, look through your front door peephole/security cameras while on vacation) For a thermostat specifically...there's not much to be gained. You can control and check it from your smartphone, which saves a little walking I guess, and theoretically you could save a little by doing some extra heating or cooling during off-peak hours and easing back on it when electricity is more expensive.

I get the efficiency thing. But you don't need the internet to detect rain (or amount of rain) nor to detect if a person is in a room or not.

You can infer that it's raining via a weather app- but I'd rather measure it directly. And you can infer someone is in the room since you can see a new wi-fi device, but that does not detect a person without one- so it's not robust either.

For the groceries- yea, I suppose that is an advantage, but given some of the rules to prevent binge buying- most should go by a schedule and a fixed list before going in. It should prevent overbuying in some cases.

The security one... ok.... if you need it. More importantly- you need to vacation in a place that HAS internet at the time it's needed. Some guy coming to your door when you are not near connected does you no good- so one will have to have vacations "in range" so to speak.

Keith Tanner wrote:

codrus wrote: I'm generally not a fan of most of the commercial IoT things, but I'm using a Raspberry Pi and the OpenSprinkler board & software to set up my own internet-connected sprinkler controller. It's half the price of a commercial one (although once you count in my time that's not a win), but A) it's fun and B) since I control it I know who it's handing data to.

Sprinklers are a lot more fun if you think of them as fuel injection systems. We need someone to adapt a Megasquirt to run their irrigation. Now, a sprinkler controller that talks to soil moisture sensors, that would be smart. More than just "it's not raining", but actual control of the moisture level of the soil for maximum growth and minimum waste - that's a good use. While it may not be as clickbaity as being able to flush your toilet from the next state over, it's the sort of thing we're really going to see. And we won't think of it as being IoT, but it is.

I don't see your example as IoT. I see it as a closed system that works on it's own. It may use wi-fi or bluetooth, but not the internet.

(a very cool, high tech, closed loop system that is very useful, BTW)

To add IoT to that mix...

If it looks like its about to downpour in the next 2 hours, system doesn't water. So more than "its not raining", but also more than "the soil is dry".

alfadriver wrote: I don't see your example as IoT. I see it as a closed system that works on it's own. It may use wi-fi or bluetooth, but not the internet. (a very cool, high tech, closed loop system that is very useful, BTW)

I think it comes down to your definition.

Wikipedia said: The internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical devices, vehicles, buildings and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity that enables these objects to collect and exchange data.

That definition doesn't say that these networked devices need to use the global internet, only that they are networked and able to exchange data. The Wiki article goes on to talk about unique addresses and the ability to interoperate globally - but I don't consider that a requirement. The RFID tags being used in warehouses don't need to talk to the outside world, but they're in the IoT category as they allow the warehouse to monitor its own inventory.

Although if those soil sensors were globally networked, it would give all sorts of useful information for planning water distribution on a larger scale.

I think systems like this will be the first ones most of us invite into our homes. We might not think of them as IoT, but they'll function like it and the functions will gradually spread. The more obvious Things like the Amazon Echo or the NEST thermostat will be for the early adopters, and some of them (like an always-on mic belonging to Apple or Amazon) will give folks the heebie jeebies from a privacy standpoint.

It will be convenient when we can check to see if there's any milk in the fridge when we're at the store, which would have prevented The Great Mango Glut Of 2016 in our house as both my wife and I went shopping after a particular miscommunication. But I think the big benefits will happen on an enterprise level first.

ProDarwin wrote: To add IoT to that mix... If it looks like its about to downpour in the next 2 hours, system doesn't water. So more than "its not raining", but also more than "the soil is dry".

Tie the water sensors into the weather network, yes. And it could go both ways - instead of reporting on how much rain fell, you could report on the average moisture content of the soil which might actually be more useful in agricultural regions. Colorado snow reports work like that, we hear about the percentage of average snowpack instead of the amount of snow that's fallen as that tells us how much water is being stored in the mountains.

The other IoT-ish aspect to the OpenSprinkler software is that there's an option to set the watering schedule using a Google calendar. This is a good choice, it leverages an existing, free, well-known and well-documented user interface rather than reimplementing it (badly) using arcane combinations of tiny buttons on the front of the box. You can set the watering schedule using your phone or your laptop or whatever, and you can look at them from anywhere. You can also turn on the sprinklers from your phone to verify that they're working, rather than turning on zone 1 in your garage then running around to the back yard to check, then running back, etc.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

I guess I see IoT as using the Internet by definition.

An internet (lowercase i) is a network of networks. The Internet (capital I) is the global network of networks that are running IPv4 (and, increasingly, IPv6). If you've got a home network with a broadband connection, there's a case to be made that your home network is a part of the Internet.

So if a sprinkler controller is communicating with sensors using IP over your wifi, then yeah, it's got the "I" for "IoT", even if it's not connecting to a server out there.

I see it as a buzzword. It's not Things on the Internet, it's the "Internet" of Things. The information superhighway isn't an actual road, either