If trying to provide all the other things besides text causes the system to be unstable, then maybe those things shouldn't have been added. We need text. We just want the other things.
I saw a t-shirt the other day that said "friends don't let friends sell bitcoins". At first I thought it was anti-bitcoin, but then I realized that they were advocating "hodl". Yeah feels like a cult to me.
First, ESPN is expensive. I read in a trade magazine not too long ago that it's the most expensive cable channel for providers to carry.
Second, it is very hard for television providers to carry ESPN without also carrying a massive bundle of other marginally-popular ESPN channels that few people want. This is because some cable channels base their advertising rates on the number of subscribers, not the number of people watching a program. Though sometimes it's a combination.
Third, (and this is really the suck) if a television provider provides local TV channels that are owned by a company that also owns cable channels (Disney, Kabletown, Cox, etc...) then usually they aren't allowed to carry the local OTA channel without also carrying a bunch of cable channels the provider doesn't want.
For example, if a local cable company wants to carry KTRK for its subscribers in Houston, Disney requires it to also take ESPN and DisneyXd and a bunch of other unrelated channels, which the local cable company has to then pass the price of on to its subscribers.
AT&T not providing sports or local channels with its new plan keeps the price way way down.
it is very hard for television providers to carry ESPN without also carrying a massive bundle of other marginally-popular ESPN channels that few people want. This is because some cable channels base their advertising rates on the number of subscribers, not the number of people watching a program
The reason you get all the ESPN "Ocho" channels is because ESPN requires cable companies to carry them in order to offer ESPN at all. Cable companies pay ESPN for the privilege.[1]
yeah, this is probably why it compares so favorably with YouTube TV which I'm using for my first month for $40. I did the trial just to play with it; accidentally let it run over by a day but I'll keep it for FS1 during the world cup.
Imagine French or Russian drones flying around remote parts of the US taking out targets that have been classified as criminal by that particular government. And then imagine your family lives in the same remote area. No one should be happy this is happening anywhere in the world.
I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce individual components that I can trust to piece together.
> I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce individual components that I can trust to piece together.
You don't need cameras for that, just motion sensors.
> That server makes decisions on if lights should be on...in that room.
You don't need a server for that, just a motion-sensing switch. They can be totally offline. My office has them to shut off lights automatically when a conference room becomes unoccupied.
That's the main problem with motion activated office lights tbf, especially when you're doing software development for example - not enough motion to keep them on.
My problem with the motion activated office lights (at least the ones at the wework my company is located) is that you can't turn them off. The button appears to turn the lights off and disable the motion sensor for some (short) period of time, then movement turns the lights back on again. Very annoying.
Every time! The coffee shop by my old house had motion sensing lights in the washroom, and every damned time I would be plunged into darkness half-way through my visit... Urgh.
Ours does too, but there's no sensors inside the stall... You can wave all you want, there's no way to turn the lights back on without opening the stall door.
OSHA also requires a minimum light level in the US but I believe it only pertains to hazardous working environments (like on a production floor in a manufacturing facility for example). Either that or the enforcement in white collar environments is so weak that literally no one cares to follow the law which is surprisingly common with reagrd to many workplace regulations.
FLIR for turning off a light in a room seems like a ridiculous amount of overkill. I don't know numbers off the top of my head but I feel like at that point you're using more energy for FLIR than the light itself. Not to mention the cost of a single FLIR sensor is probably pretty high.
One reason you might want a server is to have more expressive power than "if someone literally enters the room, turn on the lights". You might want to turn on the lights and run the AC a little before you predict people will arrive, for example.
> One reason you might want a server is to have more expressive power than "if someone literally enters the room, turn on the lights". You might want to turn on the lights and run the AC a little before you predict people will arrive, for example.
Maybe, but that seems like a lot of work for little gain.
You probably don't actually have that much control over the AC in your rooms unless you have zoned heating and a lot of zones, regardless of how smart your sensors are.
Intent is a very important factor when answering the question "should the lights be on," I don't think you'll be able to predict that. For instance: if movement is detected in the bedroom at 2AM, should the lights come on? The answer is: a very strong maybe.
While I haven't had the urge to get any 'smart speaker', I have a hunch that the current hype* around these devices comes mainly from the novelty of being impressed with voice recognition.
As someone who doesn't have a voice for radio, I much prefer being able to interact through dexterity. Besides, I'm very picky when it comes to which specific track of music is to be played (out of various similarly named pieces of music).
* I don't think take-up is quite as big as the tech world currently makes it out to be. People in my circles don't really have that kind of disposable income and are prioritising other purchases first.
So yeah, Alexa is a lot of extra literal work for little gain.
If you don't have multiple zones you can still effectively have zones by opening/close the registers/vents. This will prevent hot or cold air from entering the room. However, it will also increase duct pressure and that could be somewhat problematic. Either way, "smart vents" are on the market. They're ridiculously overpriced though and one could hack together an alternative for under $50 per vent (source: personal experience). Probably less if they are clever. Of course then there is the problem of running power to the vents or having sufficient battery. But that's an exercise left for the reader.
> Intent is a very important factor when answering the question "should the lights be one," I don't think you'll be able to predict that. For instance: if movement is detected in the bedroom at 2AM, should the lights come on? The answer is: a very strong maybe.
You would be collecting data from many sources in order to predict intent. This is why you need a centralized server.
> You would be collecting data from many sources in order to predict intent. This is why you need a centralized server.
Please explain, exactly, what other sources you would collect data from and how the central server would process it to determine if I want the lights on in the middle of the night.
IMHO, determining intent in this scenario is impossible without...
1. a mind-reading sensor, or...
2. an explicit user signal, such as a button-press or command.
The only realistic option is a user signal, and most of those options obviate a lot of these prediction ideas.
I think there's a lot less practical value to having a "central server" controlling everything than you seem to assume.
> Please explain how, exactly, what other sources you would collect data from and how the central server would process it to determine if I want the lights on.
Machine learning navel-gazing is the new "throw a start-up at it", so I'm guessing the answer to this is going to be "if we have enough data..."
> Please explain how, exactly, what other sources you would collect data from and how the central server would process it to determine if I want the lights on.
The more data, the more smarter. In fact, the only difference between a thermostat and the human mind is the number of datas. This is because the Law of Averages predicts that half of all datas will be relevant.
Your solution is simple. However, it doesn't allow for as much modification as the original poster's idea. With his idea it could be modified in so many ways to add functionality because it wouldn't be limited by the technology. The solution you supplied will eventually be limited by the technology if the original poster wants to add other functions.
> The second advisor, a software developer, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. [...] "A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."
YAGNI. You can get to a 90% solution today at 10% of the cost and effort. If, later, you want to extend the system you’ll not only have learned a lot about the operations and failure modes of the current system, but hardware purchased later will be cheaper and may support even more functionality.
Sure, but what is the value gain/opportunity cost between a simple, two hour installation that achieves a majority of the desired outcome with nearly rock-solid stability vs. sinking a massive amount of time into a bespoke and likely fragile system?
> However, it doesn't allow for as much modification as the original poster's idea.
My main point was the original poster's idea was probably focusing on the wrong kind of sensor for what he wanted to do. He could still network a bunch of motion sensors.
Also, I'd dispute the idea that my proposals were less "modifiable." If only because they're far easier to implement and a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper, so it's practical to replace if more capabilities are needed.
There may be a market for something between a standard one-bit low-rez motion sensor and a full color TV camera. Maybe a 16x16 pixel IR sensor with a fisheye lens and a puny CPU that reports an approximate number of people in the area, for HVAC and lighting control, and security.
Reporting an approximate number of people is not a trivial task, even with a real camera. Depending on what exactly you mean with "approximate", of course.
> 0, 1, a few, many. Just enough to tell you how much to crank up the HVAC.
I don't think the number of people in a room will give you meaningful information to tell you "how much to crank up the HVAC." Also, the HVAC systems in most homes aren't capable of even cranking up the HVAC in a particular room.
https://www.home-assistant.io doesn't have computer vision, but can use motion sensors and the like to tell where people are, and use that to activate/deactivate devices. It's all open source and runs entirely locally.
A lot of home automation stuff seems like something that would be fun to make, but not something I really want to have. I mean, the AC might be a good energy saver (a smarter thermostat) but that's not something I want, more like something that I would buy if it was cheap and practical enough.
To some extent, this is a phenomenon of early technology. It feels full of potential, so you want to play with it but it doesn't really do anything you really need yet. The early web was ki d of like that. We made sites because we wanted to make sites, moreso than because we wanted to have them.
Home automation though... Im kind of skeptical that this goes anywhere useful. The useful examples people think of (eg remote close all the windows and lock the doors) are more about mechanisation than automation.
At my house, we have blinds installed on every window, and every evening I go around the house, pressing 12 switches (2 for every blind, because UX is obviously optional) so it's perfectly dark in the bedroom. In the morning, I go around the house and press those 12 switches again, to let the sunshine in. Now that's a task I would love to automate!
Alas, remote controlling those blinds would be a major hassle since AFAIK I would have to install 6 wifi-enabled devices and tear holes everywhere (not even sure there is a powerline near) - and likely do all the programming myself. Thanks but no thanks.
If it bothers you enough, take a look at ZigBee switches. Not sure I understand how you operate the blinds (since the current switches are apparently not on powerlines?), but you could still make a centralized solution to control them over ZB. There's https://www.home-assistant.io/ if you don't want to program (much), and probably others. And you will smile every evening and every morning for the next few years, thinking of the time when you had to do it manually... not to mention, it's cool. :) You might need to invest something in these devices and controller though.
Yeah it's not really relieving a pain point. I've never thought "O why lord, why must I toil away flipping these light switches as I enter and exit rooms?"
Another pain point with making is that it's really hard to get it integrated with stuff you have bought. I built my own garage door automation with a Particle Photon board. It works great and can do things like text me if I leave the house with the garage door open using the IFTT support from my WiFi router. The problem is that it's really hard to get it integrated with any other control system that the rest of my house uses like my ZWave light switches and Hue lights.
I've been working on a custom UI that sits on top of the Wink Hub API to unify everything, but I'be been stuck with their almost completely undocumented Pubnub event API.
I would check out https://www.home-assistant.io/ for integrating multiple systems together. I use it on a RasPi to integrate a few disparate systems (Amazon, Nest, RadioRa2) and it works very well. There are modules for most existing systems and it's easy to write your own in python.
I probably should try it. I've been writing my own partly as an excuse to learn React. I've already got a Pi with a touchscreen and a 3d printed enclosure setup to run whatever solution I actually end up using.
I know I’m a little late here, but I would look into MQTT as a transport layer for messages across your different devices. It’s super easy to interface with via python or a host of third party services.
> "That server makes decisions on if lights should be on [...]"
Why would you even want such a system?
My flat uses the Button-Framework which provides a really convenient UI/UX. The edge between 2 nodes (rooms) has a button (a haptic device to switch between boolean states) at around hand-height that you can press to switch the light on or off. It works quite well (it uses a switch-system technically) and the user decides by her/himself if the light should be on or off and just presses the button after careful reasoning.
Granted, it doesn't use Docker, but it really works well and needs low-maintainance. My model is running since 23 years and I never had any issues - it's even open source.
There's a whole class of tech like this for me. An Alexa/Echo/etc, a fitness tracker with GPS and sleep monitoring, a maps program that learns my routine and integrates with a weather app, and so on.
And ideally? All of it integrated. It actually sounds nice to say "I'm going home", and have Maps say "today that will take 35, should your oven start preheating when you're 20 minutes out?" IoT devices are overrated, but I can absolutely imagine a critical mass of integrated tools being very useful.
But I'm not even slightly willing to do that. It's too much information and too much risk surface. I'd pay a hefty premium to get local-data-only versions of these products, but no one is offering that, and it doesn't look like they're going to start.
>a maps program that learns my routine and integrates with a weather app
That sounds awesome until the company providing that service starts abusing their knowledge of their location. That abuse doesn't even have to necessarily be malicious in nature either. For example, Google Maps on Android started asking me to rate, review, and/or take photos of my present location if they deemed it a point of interest (certain restaurants, parks, etc). I never opted in to this feature and the only way to disable it that I've figured out is to literally disable all location services on the phone.
I really dislike the idea of Google storing a timestamped record of almost every place I've ever visited. Tt has to beconstantly phoning home in order to deliver the request to document my visit within a minute or two of my arrival and that constant reminder that Big Brother Google is tracking me at every moment is just disturbing on so many levels. Even if they aren't using that data right now, remember the "data is never destroyed" principle of the internet.
On a side note, I would have ditched Android if I didn't need it for work simply because use of the GPS radio is hidden behind the acceptance of enabling Google's Location system and all the invasions of privacy that entails.
I feel the same way. Between that and my overuse of my phone for checking hn, reddit, etc. I am considering trying to make a habit of leaving my phone at home when I leave the house, at least some of the time. It's a shame that I feel that way about such an incredible useful device, but there it is.
Maps currently does do what you're saying - Google knows the time I'm going home and displays current traffic information and estimated time to arrive, at least for me.
Same. But it gets such obvious things wrong. Instead of "traffic to [daycare center] is light" it says "traffic to [some weird company name probably registered in the same building] is light".
Waze also knows where I'm going in advance and most of the time it gets it right, like every Thu evening "are you heading to [evening school] ?". My weekly schedule is exactly the same 99% of the time but sometimes it still makes obvious mistakes. If you need an AI for that it must be a very simple one, yet it still fails.
Google maps also auto saves my parking location most of the time but other times it doesn't, for reasons unknown. Things like that make it hard for me to have faith in future versions of this stuff.
I actually used to have a solution with home-assistant, find (uses wifi signal fingerprinting for location) and hue. It worked okay with very little work (sometimes 1-5s delay turning lights on/off) but I never cared enough to put more work in to get it better.
I think "find" and similar tools are now much more advanced so it might work better out of the box now.
They should feel more comfortable than an equivalent system built by a company that is looking to profit off of your data - and additionally, you can give the guest stronger guarantees that when you say that the system is "off", it actually is.
>> Even if you build it, knowing guest may never feel completely comfortable visiting your house.
> They should feel more comfortable than an equivalent system built by a company that is looking to profit off of your data - and additionally, you can give the guest stronger guarantees that when you say that the system is "off", it actually is.
The chance that a random implementer has a security vulnerability is much higher than that Jeff Bezos is listening to me watch TV. A private system is more vulnerable to target attack and an Amazon system is more vulnerable to mass surveillance.
You are on the right track, but I don't think you are quite right. Amazon like systems are more vulnerable to mass surveillance.
Your vulnerability isn't a targeted attack: you are not valuable enough to be worth the effort to figure out your system. As an attacker on your system I'd have to figure out how to break in, and then how to use the hardware you have. You are more valuable as part of a botnet - attacks that already exist. (if you are a politician then maybe, but that person is also vulnerable to a targeted attack on their amazon system - probably more so because the target is easier to figure out).
And what exactly does this "vulnerability" mean in real terms? Let's be honest. No one cares what conversations are going on in your house _unless_ you're someone specifically targeted. There's little use in mopping up data with no goal.
If I'm using a dragnet to grab every conversation and filter it for things I personally care about, your conversation could make you someone I want to specifically target.
As a random example: let's say that I want to kill someone who lives in your neighborhood. I could analyze your conversations, comings and goings to figure out when and how to kill that person, and blame it on you. I could on a continual basis run numbers on everyone emitting data in your neighborhood, until someone had arrived at a point where their friends would testify against them on the basis of conversations with the potential patsy, that patsy had no alibi, and tailor the murder on the basis of the means that the patsy had available to them at the time.
I could also just be trying to figure out if you were a homosexual, or muslim.
If mopping up everybody's conversations is cheap enough Russia/Iran/China/(insert your favorite large evil) does. If you happen to run of political office 15 years from now having all your conversations available to analyze will be useful. If they don't like you, you might find some out of context snippet of "private conversation" all over social media killing your campaign. (or alternatively the blackmail threat if you don't X)
That is they will target everybody because they know in a few years that will include somebody who they currently think is a nobody.
Of course as AI gets better and cheaper they may eventually listen to everything to see what who can be targeted automatically for what.
A secure language does not protect you from insecure design. I could very easily build a system in Rust with gaping security holes, purposefully or accidentally.
I like the idea (though I think with enough abstraction, you could have it also replicating itself to "regular" cloud).
The main fight needs to happen at application level, not infrastructure. Cloud services are already mostly transparent and interchangeable. But applications aren't. The problem is, it's the application vendor that owns the code, determines where's going to run, and asks you to send over the data. How it should be working, is that you own the data and determine location of computing, and own or rent code to be run on that data.
Any idiot who breaks into your home would be well positioned to steal your server along with all of your memories and use them for ransom/blackmail/etc.
As opposed to any idiot who breaks into your IoT provider's server?
An encrypted hard disk with the key on a USB stick would be enough, just keep the key somewhere separate and you'll only have to plug it in when there's a power outage.
You don’t need to use cameras for this. A simple speaker and microphone is all you need to make a functioning motion sensor. Just exploiting the doppler effect. And even better, you can do it all outside of the human audible spectrum. And it can work with capturing motion around corners, too, since sound bounces off walls.
I’d recommend something like this in every room, or even IR sensors, over cameras. You don’t want to capture video of your children jerking off.
This is eerily similar to the concept of a 'cookie' seen in the Black Mirror episode, White Christmas.
(Spoiler Alert)
A cookie is a device "that is inserted under the clients head by the brain and kept there for a week, giving it time to accurately replicate the individuals consciousness. It is then removed and installed in a larger, egg shaped device which can be connected to a computer or tablet (to automate their smart house controls as if the house was knew their personal preferences moving from room to room.)"
IR camera would probably make this simpler than a visible-light camera. You want to know if there are people in the room, you don't really care who they are specifically.
I had exactly same idea just about the lights but am too lazy to even try to implement it. Plus sensors require power and that requires cables and that's way too much bother.
Low tech alternative solution from my friends? Get LEDs. Never turn off the lights. This way the room you are going to will always be lit.
From what I gather, if you need fine-grained location information in a building, you can do this without cameras and just a handful of strategically placed wireless access points.
Less likely to be seen as creepy and such systems already exist.
If you just need 'is a person in this room' or 'how many people are in this room' levels of data, solutions to this problem have existed for decades. No need to over complicate a solved problem.
If you are cleaver you can use the wifi signals as a radar and find people/objects even when they don't have a wifi device on them.
I'm pretty sure all current technology only works with the have a wifi decide on your person. It is significantly easier to do this and for the most part good enough.
Sounds far-fetched to me. If you are cleaver, you are also likely to get stuck in a coffee cup billboard or Eddie Haskell will trick you into insulting your Spanish-speaking friend.
Not only can you detect motion and objects through physical mass using WiFi spectrum with a properly equipped device, you can detect if someone is breathing.
“What's more, this "Time Reversal Machine" technology is essentially just some clever algorithmic work with little burden on the processor, so it can potentially be added to any existing WiFi mesh routers via a firmware update. In other words, security system vendors should take note.”
Such a system would be a huge GDPR nightmare. You'd need consent from every visitor to your house to collect data on them, and also you have to delete it if they ever request you to. Best not to even try.
Interactions between private individuals are out-of-scope.
The following processing is outside the scope of the GDPR:
- any activity outside the scope of EU law (e.g., activities of a Member State in relation to national criminal law);
- any activity performed by Member States when carrying out activities in relation to the common foreign and security policy of the EU;
- any activity performed by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity;
- any processing by the EU itself;
and
- any activities performed by national authorities for the purposes of prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences, or performance of judicial functions.
