Their entire ecosystem together have less devices shipped than even some OEM nonames, not to say of Xiaomi or Huawei or Tuya who tower over them.
All kinds of "smart assistants" like Alexa end up in drawers very quickly after initial novelty passes, and it creeping up you in the middle of a conversation gets annoying. From data I have, sales of those smart speakers is already starting to taper off.
In Russia, there is an idiom "to divide the cake before it's baked." And those guys are doing exactly that: people don't even know what those "connected home" devices are and which ones sell well, yet they are already eager make up standards for them.
That's the guy who flopped with Silk Labs labs.
I genuinely think the Amazon team (at least in that particular regard) want to do some good. But until they can teach their machines how to understand context, I just don't want my unfiltered conversations going around potentially to medical institutions or law enforcement.
It would be far more palatable for the devices to wait for a command cue ("Computer--") to respond with an activation bleep. After the bleep, the commands begin to be interpereted.
Instead we have a listener always awaiting commands. What could be a helpful and invisible servant is instead some kind of jerk who interjects with the most literal interpretations of normal conversations.
If I wake up in the morning feeling grumpy (every day) and say some crazy crap (totally possible) on my way to the can, will an apple contractor employee be able to figure out what the hell I really wanted by reviewing the seconds of audio?
I have made death threats to wall hanging photographs in those 30 minutes before my medication kicks in. There is no checkbox for this in the privacy settings. I know with some of these smart things you can change the prompt, but this feels like not the best we can come up with.
This can be turned on in the Home app → Accessibility → "Play start sound" (as well as "Play end sound").
Wait, what? Please explain more.
It feels like you're saying Alexa heard you being ... passionate, and got concerned. But my understanding was that Alexa listens only after the trigger word. I'm really confused by what you've said and wish to know more context.
What I can say about the google equivelent is that I find saying 'Hey Google' everytime I want it to do something is a bit of a mouthful especially if you want to do several things is shortish succession.
And my other problem is that I apprently say 'OK Cool' too often when I'm on the desk phone at work as my google account is full of recordings of bits of my work phone convo's where I've triggered it unwittingly.
Whoa, is it really necessary to call BlueTooth out like that?
“It's easier to tell when you're not using BLE. :) The Tesla Model 3 uses traditional Bluetooth for phone calls and streaming but the Phone as a Key functionality is BLE. When you walk up to the car and try to open it and the car says FU then BLE isn't working. When your Xiaomi Mi Band smartwatch hasn't buzzed all day but you pull your smartphone out of your pocket and have 8 missed calls, 100 messages, and 500 emails then BLE isn't working. When you're at a Tech Conference and the Conference App uses BLE Beacons to help navigate you indoors and it can't determine your location then BLE isn't working.”
This seems like a fair compromise to me.
I've been using it on a Raspberry Pi to control various things and recently decided to shape it up and release it to the public.
You can access stuff remotely if you have an Apple device which is paired to the homekit stuff and connected to the internet (e.g. an Apple TV, we use an iPad which is always at home).
I've deliberately designed my system to work offline as while our connection's pretty reliable I don't see why I should need an internet connection to turn on a light! :)
I hope manufacturers see it the same way.
I don't mind devices having to be certified, I mostly want to buy hardware of the shelve anyways for safety and convenience reasons and build the controlling/automation part myself. So my biggest worries are not having a local API, data exposure and having to invest in a ecosystem and having the manufacturer brick it remotely, wasting my money.
So only the "device" part, sadly not the "controller" part. So you'll still need a iOS device to setup stuff in your house, I tried it yesterday with only my iMac to no avail.
But still it's a step in the right direction.
Not a good idea with OEMs, and that's why I believe they gave up the white flag now: no adoption.
They are either jump on the smart home bandwagon now, or never.
Most OEMs chose APP + own protocol approach
Here's a discussion of the master key being leaked:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753
But I looked it it before that and never tried to look it up again.
So likely so, and with today's encryption it probably won't get hacked for hobbyists to use/learn/play but of course I guess the argument is that the Hue Bridge and other devices will have an API.
I’m still looking for other devices to mesh into a ZB3 network: I’d love to see an Opentherm capable controller able to use any connected thermometer and heating element valves to modulate heat flux production and distribution around my flat. Might be overthinking though... it’s so well thermally insulated.
oooooo.
Also, using mobile.twitter.com (as linked) I see a single reply, if I delete `mobile.` I see no replies. Interesting.
I.e. I just want a thermostat the is a big rotating button and speaks mqtt. It does not exist. If you want it to look good you end up with a Nest thermostat. Home Assistant needs to talk to the Nest online API, not to the device itself. Really annoying and unnecessary. I wish I could just pay 50$ more and get a Nest that does let me talk to it locally. Or whatever are they going to earn with my data? I'd probably pay it straight up.
That does mean some systems are not available at all, so "luckily".
GDPR is a joke and easily bypassed because users are overwhemingly dumb and agree to anything without reading. By making it online service dependent they don't have to care, the experience will be horribly degraded without signing in.
> The industry working group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol and increase compatibility for consumers.
Curious if I as a hobbyist will benefit from this? Or if this will become a: it works perfectly, but only if all your devices connect to our certification servers kind of thing, like Chromecast is becoming.