Keep the utopians out of my fridge

What's not to like?

A box that will notify you wirelessly its batteries have run down. A sort modern day tamagotchi. Looks useful to me.

But yes, I agree that less dependencies makes a better design, and "cloud" is essentially "uncontrollable, unknowable, uncontainable dependencies" writ large. Still, as a tie-in it'll be wonderful for charging yearly subscription fees to keep the device working you paid for and thought you fully owned.

As an aside I recall a column (in Dutch) probably some score years ago about someone bemoaning the lack of home automation in a "natural speech like" language, proposing one with the name "eventjes" (event+diminuitive ending, also meaning essentially "shortly" or "quickly"; it's a multi-language pun, mate). So far few of such ideas have taken off, though we already could for a long time. Something as simple as a few parallel or serial port-steered relays and a bit of scripting would do (coupled with an ISDN card, someone cobbled up a way to open the $company[-N] gate by calling a certain number). Or one of those X10 things, though for some reason its use has remained mostly proprietary.

There probably will be a market for some sort of real world objects control automation language, but I fully agree there's really no need to pull external infrastructure into it. Addressing isn't important except that it would be useful to figure out where in the building a certain thing is. IPv6 won't solve that, and adding GPS chips to every fixture is equally silly overkill. A unique serial and a short excercise turning them on and off individually would be fine already.

In fact, I don't even want such systems to run wireless most of the time. This is one of the few applications where sending a few (coded, encrypted) pulses over powerline is just peachy as most devices that could use automation in the home are permanently hooked up to the grid anyway. It saves a lot of batteries, making it that much greener, and not clogging the waves is a good idea too. Why don't we have a standard for that, with a simple (programmable, interfacable) control unit on a din rail?

WHEN front door is unlocked AND Jesus not at home THEN tweet ‘Come home quickly Jesus before anyone finds out your house is unlocked and burgles it'

"into an Arduino again"

You say that kike it's a bad thing.

Not so newsy

Except for being hard-wired rather than wireless, mbed did this about a year and a half ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQm2B6BqU1I

So long as you trust your internet connection as much as mobile data, you can probably code to use a direct connection to your destination rather than a tweet.

Since it can also do USB host, you could use a 3G USB modem - http://mbed.org/search/?q=3G+USB&type=

Ah, politics

"The common justification is 'efficiency' – we will invite the Internet into things that don’t actually need it, yielding up vast amounts of data about our lives and behaviours in our homes, in exchange for energy efficiency. If that doesn’t sound a just little Stalinist, you’re probably too young."

Sounds like capitalism to me.

Whatever.

All the devices on my networks connect to my own servers as needed.

Devices that require connection to networks out of my control need not apply.

It's ain't exactly rocket science ... Keep local data local. How hard is it?

Li'l Correction

"The visionaries are just suckers who can only prophecy downsides in retrospect."

Well, as far as I can tell, visionaries also make piles of money out of this hare-brained scheming. After all, the ability to get media attention is a *marketable ability*.

Not only that, but it is my impression that the downsides of any given hare-brained scheme can always be remedied by a new hare-brained scheme, often proposed by the same coterie of (well-compensated) hare-brained visionaries. It's a, you know, malicious cycle.

Anyway, if you are in the UK, you are not supposed to be using electricity in the first place. And they are determined to prevent you. And they are going to succeed. So you can think whatever you want about Twine, but the "smart meter" program, giving the authorities the ability to turn off your power when needed, and which, for obvious reasons, should perhaps be called "Shackles", should be the actual focus of your attention.

Haven't we been here before?

Internet of things? Hmmm, maybe, but its not that long ago since the days of Windows for Toasters jokes and that didn't really get that far.

If it all goes......

Titsup, back to the dark ages, re-learn how to write a letter again. There maybe a delay.

Advantages of the Cloud

Seems to me there are some real advantages to using a cloud based service.

If the sensors are talking to a locally based server (even a small, low powered PC or laptop), that server is going to be constantly drawing power - even when the house is empty. even something as small as 45 watts is a lot when its on 24hrs a day.

You could offer a proprietary server unit with the ability to manage the system however, while this would reduce power demand over a PC based server, its going to add cost and its another piece of relatively complex kit that can crash/fail.

If you up the complexity of the sensor units and give them the ability to send out warnings etc themselves, you drive up the sensor unit cost (not good, when you are likley to want plenty of them) and drive up power consumption - either reducing battery life or requiring a mains plug. (reducing flexiblity and adding to power running costs) and adding lots of complexity as they all need programmed.

The advantage of cloud is you can allow the sensor units to communicate with the cloud server via your broadband router which many people leave on 100% of the time anyway, has a very low power draw, has already been paid for (or its been supplied by your ISP) and doesn't add another non standard piece of kit pushing up system complexity and opportunity for hardware failure.

Even with your own server, a proprietary server or a more complex sensor, the broadband router would need to be on anyway to allow comms - unless you want to add a 3G dongle, with the resulting complexity and the cost of a 3g data plan.

If reliability is the main concern, I am not sure why you think using SMS or 3G would be any more (or less) reliable than using Twitter, HTTP or some arbitrary proprietary mechanism? If the use case requires messages to be sent over a long distance, you will have to rely on some sort of upstream communication channel with multiple points of failure over which you have no control. For example:

Scenario 1 (Twitter):

Device -> Wireless Router -> {Phone Exchange} -> {ISP} -> {Internet} -> {Twitter} -> [Internet} -> {Mobile Telco} -> {Backhaul } -> {Base Station} -> Smartphone

Scenario 2 (SMS):

Device -> {Base Station} -> {Backhaul} -> {Mobile Telco} -> {Backhaul} -> {Base Station} -> Mobile Phone

Where anything in {} is a point of failure consisting of an arbitary number of complex components and is something over which you have no control. So in reality, there is only one extra point of failure which you control in the Twitter scenario vs. the SMS scenario.

Maybe you could use short-wave packet radio to do the job? But even that is subject to solar/atmospheric interference isnt it?

On the other hand, privacy and control may be a valid reason, but again I'm not sure what could be usefully gleaned from this class of device. After all, you can essentially wire the thing up to anything and program it to respond how you like . How would big brother know whether it was telling you that granny is about to drown herself in the bath or that your beer fridge is slightly warmer than you would like?

Standardised, centralised home automation is the thing that needs watching, as careless acceptance of 'install now for cheaper bills' might provide a channel for longer term monitoring and controlling of behaviour. One way reporting devices (e.g. remotely readable electricity meters) are probably not a concern, after all the power company will end up with data about your usage so they can bill you. Once it becomes two-way, then I would worry, since 'they' could then throttle your usage or cut it off as they see fit. (Sounds like broadband now doesn't it?)

It's not just twine, it's the whole home automation industry.

I worked for about 3 years in it before I left for greener pastures. My timing was excellent as about a year later the company I worked for went bankrupt. By the time I left I concluded that while there were some cool gadgets, and some cool work with programming languages and APIs being done, at the end of the day that was it. There were no useful THINGS being done for the home user at an affordable price. Oh, and the outfit I worked for was being backed by the US National Association of Home Builders. They had a better shot at putting all the pieces together than most outfits.