[jsondata]

I also mentioned this in a recent blog post: https://www.jsondata.io/blog/2016/iot-needs-a-cloud/

> Right now, the cloud - especially for IoT - isn't a healthy ecosystem. Your shiny new smart thermostat might as well be dialing into AOL on a dedicated landline. And unlike public services, these proprietary service providers lack long-term guarantees of service availability.

> What we need is a push for openness and interoperability in the cloud, and that will only happen if consumers demand it. The service providers are incentivized to do just the opposite.

[staticvar]

If we can empower users build their own pipes between devices and online services, then we spur competition which could lead to better security. We need a gateway that gives users that choice. I've been working on command line interfaces for devices that can be used to pipe data/state back and forth between command line interfaces. These interfaces to devices and online services can be written in any language and run nicely on small computers like the $35 Raspberry Pi. The downside is setting these pipes up requires familiarity with the command line... But if there was some funding there we could build a UI that was easy to use... So I actually built that, but don't have the time to maintain it. For the time being I'm maintaining these command line interfaces.

https://openpipekit.github.io

[daveguy]

>What we need is a push for openness and interoperability in the cloud

Personally I think that is the opposite of what we need. Most IoT devices should be local-network-only. So if by cloud you mean a personal cloud (local network or VPN), then yes, I agree. Otherwise keep the interwebs away from my thermostat.

[jsondata]

That's a fair point, and I agree. However, the reality is that a major selling point for these things is along the lines of "control it from anywhere", and whether people actually need remote access or not, it seems that a lot of consumers still see it as a major upside.

Maybe what we really need are more consumer-friendly, self-hosted (and secure) home VPN options. That way you can just run your services on the local network, and still have remote access without opening your devices to the world (or to other companies' servers). Until the average grandma can do that, the "personal cloud" idea will probably be overshadowed by manufacturers' desire to provide proprietary remote access options, because those go hand-in-hand with things like subscription pricing models, data mining, etc.

[tdkl]

Or change the marketing from cloud connected to owning the cloud. I mean, for someone who would depend on stable Internet connection to be able to control all this shit, he'd be off hosting a personal cloud on the same connection as well. Even better, because if there are operations happening in a local network and WAN goes out, the devices will still operate inside the LAN.

[theseatoms]

This sounds like the intended use case for urbit.