[donutte]

I think about this sometimes.

I put together my own IoT infrastructure in our apartment. I did everything by hand: I wrote the embedded code, I wrote the server code, I pieced together the hub with a router and RasPi I had lying around. I spliced cheap WiFi relays into our IKEA lamps— and just to keep things simple, I also removed the original hardware switches.

The upshot is we have this nice web-accessible home automation system for a total parts outlay of probably under $100. It works really well! (As long as the Let’s Encrypt cron job is set up properly...) And most importantly, I know that I own it.

The thing about that is... I own it. I’m the only one in the world who understands how it works. I’m the only one who can fix it if it breaks. But I don’t live alone. If I pack up and leave, my partners aren’t going to be able to turn the lights on without going out to buy brand new lights.

And wow, that’s a huge amount of trust to put in me! Of course my partners do trust me that much, but it’s striking that I didn’t take that into consideration at all when I started the project.

[pasbesoin]

I appreciate that your abilities in this are beyond my own.

I think what is absent in your cost description is the value of them.

And in the commercial world, we seem to have products that ameliorate that cost in part through the state of their security. Whether neglectful, or deliberate (e.g. the whole "advertising model" with respect to much Web content). I don't know enough to describe how this works in the hardware/firmware world, but I suspect nonetheless that it's a factor.

I'm not saying anything novel, here, except that often we leave the cost of expertise out of our pricing and expectations.

Whether our own, or paying for someone else's.

And... marketing too often attempts to substitute image for reality. High prices, with just a showman behind the curtain.