Pretty wild. I used to have one of these beds, but it was before everything got "smart". It had two corded controller's hooked up to the pump. The controller displays the number and had up/down arrow buttons to adjust.
No internet required.
No Linux powered microcontroller required.
My bed couldn't get hacked.
I slept in comfort.
What I’m trying to teach myself to do whenever I think “this is ridiculous overcomplexity” is to imagine whose life it might make simpler.
Let’s assume I have some sort of motor disability: it could be anything from Parkinsons to quadraplegia. Having a bridge out to a common controller that maybe works on speech or some other standardised input method that works for your disability is a massive benefit. And avoids having to deal with the complexities of each individual products’ inability to meet your own accessibility needs in different ways.
So much smart home stuff is basically pointless to those of us fortunate enough to have currently able bodies, and a lifesaver to the rest.
You certainly don't need a cloud defaulted device in order to do what you describe. There are plenty of assistants, Google and Alexa being two, that can talk to things on your local network with a REST API. That controller also has a gig of memory, plenty enough to run a little API.
What manufacturers like about cloud enabled devices is that they can automatically upgrade the firmware and they can get semi-accurate counts for usage.
I think this goes right back to the parent's point.
I presume you personally could set that up. I probably could too. But 99% of the world isn't tech experts and can't do that. Or fix it if something goes wrong. Even if you can, you might just want to go to bed and not have to debug a broken assistant integration first.
The benefit of cloud integration, for that 99%, is that there is a professional out there to keep it working.
Maybe. My point is that there wasn't really an attempt at solving those things locally first. They just went straight to cloud with the reasoning you mentioned.
A friend of mine spent $10k on a sleep number bed a couple years ago. I'm not sure I could ever get a restful night sleep again on a $10k bed, thinking about the cost! ;)
I got a fancy new one a bit later with an adjustable frame and remote control and all that... $2200, and even that felt crazy expensive!
1. That's exactly why I prefer a plain old analog mattress that needs zero tech or support from anyone ever
2. Even with that being the case, for the average consumer who wants an electronic/controllable bed, it's still a better deal than anything that requires a custom home automation setup. Check out the prices for hiring somebody who can actually troubleshoot that.
> What manufacturers like about cloud enabled devices is that they can automatically upgrade the firmware and they can get semi-accurate counts for usage.
What they like is that they can charge you a recurring subscription for "service"
> What I’m trying to teach myself to do whenever I think “this is ridiculous overcomplexity” is to imagine whose life it might make simpler.
I prefer to think "How can this be used against someone" because while there are a lot of "smart" devices that can help people, they are often also being used to exploit those same people by collecting massive amounts of data and using that data against them or selling/leaking it to those who will use it against them, or allowing hackers to gain access to their data/network.
People with a disability or those with accessibility needs shouldn't need to give up their right to privacy or security to take advantage of every technological advance that might make their lives easier. Even people without a disability don't need some company collecting a detailed record of when/how often/how long they have sex, or how many nights they sleep alone, or what days/hours they spend in bed, or what times they go to sleep or how much sleep they get.
Devices should be designed to protect users and not to collect as much data as possible, or push ads, or expose them to hackers.
Have you considered talking to people instead of imagining their response? Because regular people seem kind of fed up, and we're still over here cramming insecure computers into everything.
Those outside of tech could not care less about anything discussed on this forum.
They may care in a passive sense -- the same way that most people care about social causes. They (myself included) agree that some situation is bad, but they don't inconvenience themselves improve the situation.
As an example, many people have some story about creepily being shown ads after talking about something with a friend. It's concerning to them, but no action is taken.
I'm currently recovering from some foot and knee injuries that seriously limited my mobility for the past few weeks, the fact that I can adjust my thermostat from my phone has been a Godsend.
This is a nice point that is often missed in the cacophony of complaints about complexity. If companies are not simply leveraging complexity for the sake of profit, restricted use or repair, etc. then these complaints, as feedback, should still be worthwhile in order to employ complexity.
Extending this idea to how devices operate or are maintained it seems like we're still in a nascent stage. I benefit from a few smart devices but even in a very simple setup, things fail sometimes and then I have to fix it. My mom might benefit from some of these things but she feels better off foregoing the benefits because resolving any issue would be far more costly or impractical.
That's all well and good until it's smothered in surveillance capitalist garbage. There's a thin veneer of helping the disadvantaged/vulnerable group du jour that is used to justify abusing everyone that interacts with it. You see the same crap with "think of the children" panic.
Unless these devices respect their users, they're simply profiteering off of the disadvantaged, which in my mind should be just as rage inducing.
This line of thinking is similar to "wont someone think of the children!" where harmful things are done in the name of good and designed so fighting them puts one in a precarious position.
A bridge to a common controller doesn't need an applications processor with millions of bytes of memory to run millions of lines of code to change the firmness of a stupid mattress. Stop using hammers to solve all your problems, other tools exist.
This is the kind of bed I would buy. Imagine having to buy a bed with access for Wi-Fi. That’s crazy because that’s more hardware needed than just plugging the freaking thing in the wall.
No internet required. No Linux powered microcontroller required. My bed couldn't get hacked. I slept in comfort.