[wpietri]

My guess is that for each person some small thing will make sense, which is sufficient to drive the costs down and the technology forward.

For example, good sleep is really important to me. So I used the Philips Hue bulbs and a NUC to build a smart home lighting system that behaves much more like daylight. When I describe it to people, quite a number really want it. Not bad enough to get my code off GitHub and install it, but they'd pay something extra for it. And I now see pre-packaged commercial products getting proposed, so I'm sure they'll have options.

The interesting thing happens when that cycle drives the costs a fair bit lower. Look at phones, for example. Smartphones were a weird, exotic thing. Then they were a high-end consumer thing. Now they're the default. A couple years back I went into a store looking for a cheap phone and asked for one without a web browser. The clerk looked puzzled and said, "Well, they all come with web access." I'm sure I could have ordered a dumbphone somehow, but it would have been harder and cost more.

So my question is: how much extra will you pay for your house not to be connected? Because that's the real test for me about where the IoT thing will end up.

[exelius]

I don't think so. Cost is one side of the equation, but usability is another. And at the end of the day, I don't think there's enough consumer demand to push IoT where it could be. I think eventually we'll get there -- at some point in the future, it will just be cheaper to buy an Android SoC than a handful of cheap analog micro controllers -- but for the next 10+ years we're going to keep hearing about IoT as "the next big thing" because there's no consumer demand for it.

The situation with your daylight system is a perfect example. People think "Oh, that's cool" but won't actually get off their ass and spend a few hours setting it up and configuring it to their liking. Unless it comes out of the box, it's a non-starter.

IoT devices as they are today require a systems integrator to come in and tie everything together and configure them. So your lighting system is integrated with a presence system that is also integrated with your thermostat. Each of these has to be configured on a case-by-case basis, because no two homes are alike. But if your products require an integrator, suddenly the integrator is your customer, and you begin sacrificing end-user focus for things that make the integrator's job easier.

And then you realize that the largest consumer of IoT platforms isn't consumers themselves, it's installers like ADT. Their focus is on selling simple products that require minimal support, not feature-rich ones. Why? Because users simply aren't interested in paying any amount of money for advanced features. Until that changes, IoT is going to be a niche hobbyist market. Even if it's built in to every device you buy, if it's not worth anything to you, you're not going to configure it in the first place.

[wpietri]

I think we might agree entirely. I think mobile phones were a relatively fast cycle because people were pretty happy to replace their phones every few years. That's not true with, say, washing machines or furnaces. So it will definitely take a while.

But if you look at devices with cycles in between, I already see it happening. 10 years ago when I bought a stereo receiver, I bought something entirely dumb. Last year I replaced it and ended up with something that was internet connected. Not because I really cared, but because the equivalent model came with that. And in retrospect I'm glad; their phone/tablet app is a way better remote control than punching a bunch of mysterious, no-feedback buttons. The same thing happened with my DVD player; when the old one died I just bought whatever Consumer Reports recommended and it too is internet connected.

I think that you're right that the development of pluggable Android is what will push this forward. And Google clearly agrees; their project Brillo is surely one effort among many.

[exelius]

Right; but in the case of a stereo receiver (or any TV-connected devices), the IoT model makes sense: this is a device you interact with on a regular basis. There is already an ecosystem of devices that support things like Bluetooth, AirPlay, etc. so when your receiver has them, it's actually kind of useful.

I've always thought that the reason for keeping Android as open source was to enable this use case. Eventually, Android-capable SOCs will come down to a very low price point, and for these use cases they don't need to push much more than a few kb per second. But it retains the advantage of having a development ecosystem that is well understood and widely available (you can't throw a rock in China or India without hitting an Android developer).

[walterbell]

> I used the Philips Hue bulbs and a NUC to build a smart home lighting system that behaves much more like daylight

Neat. Did you try to coordinate room lighting color changes with computer screen colors controlled by fl.ux?

[wlesieutre]

Flux can actually do that directly! https://justgetflux.com/news/pages/bigupdate/

[wpietri]

I didn't coordinate it, but they are roughly in sync because they're doing similar things. Code here:

https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise

It's minimally sufficient for my needs, but I'd be glad to work with others to expand it.