>to my first disappointment, it wasn't wireless. You had to plug an Ethernet cable

I've had the exact opposite where devices that could easily have had Ethernet (i.e. enough space on the device) were Wi-Fi only >:(

For stationary devices, Ethernet seems perfectly fine to me. Why force me to use Wi-Fi?

Who's got it wired throughout the house?

Some houses we "grew" up with had phone sockets in every room, the modern equivalent would be an Ethernet socket.

And we should also work towards making that a standard, too (i.e. like wall sockets are standard for power, Ethernet sockets should be for data). I'd agree with the notion that "smart" (I'd prefer to say home automation) devices are the way to go, but highly disagree with everyone "Oh just key-in your Wi-Fi password, and good to go!".

Air is a shared medium with inherent collision problems. Avoid it at costs that slightly exceed convenience.

EDIT: Also, home automation. In most people's lives, one's "home" is one of the most static things in life. If anything, your home would be worth spending an additional thought or two on proper planning, to avoid headaches that'll haunt you later.

I've run drops to any place where I have a static device (a couple desktops, several Chromecasts, etc).

I know just about everyone in my circle, in tech, filled the walls with smurf tube when finishing basements and any other wall they could get away with.

Pretty much every house built in the last 25 years does at least.

Not in the houses I've been looking at. Out of dozens I looked sty built within the last 10 years, only 1-2 had it. And the current owners weren't using it.

AFAICT, They're built with the presumption of wifi.

That's weird. It's not expensive to wire houses, and you can't get gigabit fibre speeds with ethernet. You certainly couldn't get anywhere near it 5-10 years ago, but gigabit fibre was available then.

Not true in my mid-sized city in the Pacific Northwest.

WiFi is much more convenient if you live in an apartment, or if you're renting and can't tear down the walls to run ethernet.

> ...can't tear down the walls to run ethernet

You can use "fish tape" to run wires in walls, mostly non-destructively. Many fish tapes glow in the dark so you can drill 2 small holes, do what you need to do, spackle, and paint.

You probably still wouldn't do any of this in an apartment of course, but I figured I'd throw out the pro tip.

One example among many:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm5zUCca7jM

Vertically, sure, but not really horizontally. Aside from just going through a wall, I'd expect most ethernet runs to be more horizontal than vertical, since you're often running it between rooms?

It's easy to run horizontally in an attic or basement.

The hard part is getting off your butt and doing it. Like every other side project.

My apartment complex doesn't really care about how off-my-butt I am.

If you have forced air heat or central air conditioning, you probably have a reasonably direct route from your basement/attic to any given room. Just use plenum rated cable, and it's generally pretty straightforward.

Cutting in the box and making up either end of the cable generally takes longer than running the drop.

The future of Sonos?

I rented an AirBnB filled with a few thousand dollars worth of Sonos speakers. Some issues...

1. I was traveling with an older Android phone (Android 4.4.4). I couldn't install the latest version of the app. I tried installing an older version, but it simply said I needed to upgrade. So, I couldn't play any music from the phone. I checked online and a number of people were complaining they used their older phones and tablets in the house as simply a Sonos remote, and they now had to upgrade all of those devices after support was dropped.

2. I installed the Windows app on my laptop to play music. This worked, but then I noticed the subwoofer wasn't plugged in (likely so people didn't annoy the neighbors). I thought I would briefly test it out to get an idea if Sonos would be a good future purchase for myself. Well, I plugged it in and I needed to do a setup process from the app. Well, apparently that can't be done from the Windows app, and I couldn't install the app on my phone, so the subwoofer just sat there as decoration.

3. My partner came home and she had a newer phone, so I had her install the Sonos app so we could setup the subwoofer. She installed it, I went to the app to configure the subwoofer, and it said it couldn't be done unless I updated the speakers to a newer software version. Well, this wasn't my apartment and the owner lived there when it wasn't rented, so I figured it wasn't my place to update their speakers.

In the end, I never got a chance to test out that subwoofer, and I lost interest in Sonos because I felt like for the investment, the rug could be pulled out from under me at any time. I hooked up some of my 15 year "dumb" Klipsch speakers in my new apartment instead. Didn't need a new mobile phone to set them up, didn't need software updates, just plugged them into the wall. It sure felt easy. I can't help but feel like we lost our way a bit in recent years.

Good bet. See recent criticism here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21895086

"Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused" Fuck this kind of masquerading profit hunger as environmental responsibility.

Just buy some wired, maybe simple Bluetooth speakers for cheaper (eg. Sennheiser, Audio-Technika or JBL) and enjoy their fine sound.

"Recycle mode" is intended for devices that people are trading up to newer devices. In return for enabling it, you get a 30% discount on any newer hardware, the idea being that you either ship the item back to them, or take it to an e-waste recycler.

Nobody is forced to do this. You're more than welcome to sell/give/etc your speakers to someone else.

The thing is that e waste recyclers generally try to re sell working electronics and have come out hard against Sonos's recycle mode.

There's a reason why the saying is "reduce, reuse, recycle" in that order.

They also don't verify that you recycled it, practically it only makes sure that the otherwise working speaker is removed from the market so that Sonos isn't competing with itself. I'd imagine that a lot of these just end up in the garbage.

They promote it as a sustainability initiative. Turning functional devices into e-waste is anything but that, and rightfully criticized and mocked.

Yea. This is very clearly an attempt to cut into the second-hand market, certainly not recycling.

Sorry for the late reply, I agree with the others.

If this truly was an environmental initiative, Sonos would rather take a proof of receipt of you giving your previous speaker to an e-waste recycler or even giving away to some place like Goodwill where it'll get reused.

They could just make sure that you were nice and gave away your device for free and/or charity purposes, instead of bricking it forever.

Controlling your home solely from your phone is overrated. I installed a smart home system and one of the first things I did was buy a cheap tablet that could control everything. I always have my phone on me for work but I don't want to pull it out everytime I need to do something. And when the in-laws are over they need to be able to do stuff. So does my 5 year old that obviously doesn't have a smart phone.

I have a Denon receiver. It has some nice connected features, like Spotify Connect and Airplay, but it’s also a completely functional dumb receiver that will work with equipment, input and output, from decades past and future.

I buy my own speakers and plug them into it. It also supports some Denon wireless speaker standard that lets it hook up to other Denon receivers and/or any speakers with the special adapters attached. But the crucial thing is that at the end of the day, all that fancy pants crap can stop working and you still have a bunch of bog standard speakers and receivers that can be hooked up any other way.

Now I’ll concede that maybe I’m ignorant or misinformed or a grumpy stubborn old man, but I’m not sure why anyone technically competent would buy a Sonos or Bose system with their crazy lock-in. It wasn’t so long ago that Sonos made you use Spotify through their awful reimplemented UI. It seems they have relented on that front and now allow use of Spotify Connect, but why would you want to be at someone else’s whim like that? Bose uses non-standard wiring and electrical specs to make sure that you can’t use their speakers with standard receivers. You either have to trash the speakers or keep buying Bose receivers when you want new features (4K, 8k, Atmos, HDR, etc.) Even when money is no object, I feel like a sucker when I buy artificially locked-in products like that. Maybe others don’t feel the same way?

For the not-so-tech-savvy, I concede that home audio gear is still a little difficult to set up. The common practice of making your own banana plugs is ridiculous and pre-made audio cables should be the norm instead. The receiver UIs leave a lot to be desired, even when they are ultimately good enough once configured. Shopping for speakers is like choosing fad diets: you have to sift through outrageous amounts of bullshit to find any useful advice.

I’d like to understand some more of the sociology and economics of why Denon and Yamaha and such can’t get their act together to produce something as user friendly as Sonos but that degrades nicely into standard A/V equipment when desired. If anyone with industry insight sees this comment, please fill me in.

One exception: Turning the coffee machine on so that it’s how when you get home.

I plugged a $15 Bluetooth receiver into my 11 year old stereo receiver and it works pretty well. The 30-pin iPod connector built into it is not seeing much use these days however.

I've got this tiny device that plugs into those 30-pin connectors to make them Bluetooth, really nice solution to utilise redundant tech (originally bought it for a 2015 Maserati that couldn't play music through its Bluetooth sigh talk about shitty consumer experiences).

But yeah, I'm a massive believer in keeping things un-integrated. Need a feature, but a component and plug it in

> thousand dollars worth

So that must be at least, what, 3 of them?

>I was traveling with an older Android phone (Android 4.4.4). I couldn't install the latest version of the app. I tried installing an older version, but it simply said I needed to upgrade. So, I couldn't play any music from the phone. I checked online and a number of people were complaining they used their older phones and tablets in the house as simply a Sonos remote, and they now had to upgrade all of those devices after support was dropped.

Reminds me of a similar frustration with OS X. In December 2017 I was trying to use bluetooth headphones with a MacBook that was still on Mavericks or Yosemite (10.9 or 10.10, latest version at the time 10.13), so yeah, a little behind the times.

But when I tried to connect, it said I had to upgrade the OS to use bluetooth with those headphones. What? I'd connected to my phone with it with no problems, and the protocols for the connection are like 10 years old, and almost certainly existed in that version of the OS.

I have a system from Sonos. Their app to set-up the wireless speakers adaptive sound feature didn’t (at the time - not sure now) work with the latest iPhone. I dug an iPhone SE out of a drawer to set it up.

The semi-future is that some of the Sonos gear supports Airplay 2 (and possibly some Google format, but I wouldn’t know.)

I only ever use them with Airplay 2, and they are firewalled off from the Internet. I also don’t have the Sonos app installed on any of my devices, so it can’t brick my speakers and insist on my signing a new TOS to get an update I didn’t ask for to provide features I didn’t ask for.

I fell right out of love with Sonos the first time they pulled the “your devices will have limited functionality until you agree to our update TOS” stunt, especially because that TOS seemed to be all about agreeing to even more data collection.

Then they stated shipping speakers with microphones, and it was clear which direction they had chosen as a company. They aren’t a hardware company. They’re now a surveillance capitalism company that uses hardware to collect data.

I bought an Apple HomePod, foolishly thinking it'd have some hardware inputs as well. Obviously that's not the Apple thing to do these days. But it has Airplay 2, so I figured there'd still be a way to interface with it easily. My macbook worked fine, but there was a 2 second delay for every input unless you used Siri.

Funnily enough, my Windows computer streams to the HomePod in real time, so now it's a pretty overpowered gaming speaker. But at least that's all it does; there's no bespoke Apple software that has to be installed and updated. And it's fairly dumb in terms of what you can manage with it (none of this stuff like yelling your shopping list at it.) Before I found that particular software, I was about ready to return the thing and switch to a Sonos... until I remembered what they were doing with legacy devices.

It would be nice to know if there's a way to build anything custom for it at some point though, since it's just a massive speaker with iOS inside it.

If you ask me, there should be regulations about providing a reasonable fallback when selling physical products that depend on some internet service to work. If the service is shut down, the device should be made functional without it (or with a custom thing you can host yourself).

The HomePod has it’s own ios fw that is updated via OTA like all the other apple ios devices

Isn’t the point of the microphone to allow the speakers to adjust based on the placement of the other speakers in your toom?

Oh and also for alexa integration if you enable it?

Well, when I first set my speakers up, they used the Sonos app and my phone’s microphone for setup.

I don’t believe the speakers I own have microphones (although there is probably some way to hack the speaker into detecting sound, after all... It has a coil, a magnet, and a diaphragm that moves...)

And I’m now extremely wary about buying devices with cameras and microphones, especially for my home.

The future of all non-FOSS electronic equipment. And all things that use electronics, like cars.

"...only FOSS survives" But yeah on of the many learnings of the long now foundation is that for things (wind Mills, businesses, etc.) To survive over a thousand years they need a community to maintain them.

Netscape died and yet we still have Firefox.

Editor have come and gone and Emacs is still here, and I'm sure it will be here in 10 years.

While I agree with your general sentiment, this is also a huge overstatement, especially when it comes to cars.

Cars aren't currently like that, but if the manufacturers could build in adware, prevent resale, and trigger obsolescence, do you think they wouldn't?

You only have to look at John Deere to see what manufacturers will do without sufficient regulation in favour of consumer rights.

https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repa...

Not to worry: once there is sufficient regulation in a given product category, said regulations may eventually mandate that products refuse to work without server connections and kill switches. You know, for consumer safety. Or to combat wrong information. Or whatever it is that decade.

I acknowledge that this is a huge problem, but I can't help but feel like this is a massive opportunity for a competitor to charge a premium for a saner, more consumer friendly business model. So it might take a couple years but I'm not convinced yet that regulation is necessary - especially considering said regulation in the long run can have unintended side effects and chances are because of lobbying and regulatory capture it won't actually benefit the consumer much, if at all. Legislation is much more difficult to overturn than shitty market forces if consumers are savy and willing to vote with their wallets.

There was a good point raised about this very idea on an earlier thread, which resonated with me based on other things I've read.

Basically, small and medium sized family farms, (i.e. the hearty, resourceful folk who want to fix their own damn tractors, thank you very much (e.g. my father and grandfather)), are disappearing.[0] They are being replaced by large, corporate "factory" farms, who have little interest in doing repairs on tractors that go beyond basic maintenance. Rather than building a staff of what are becoming increasingly sophisticated (i.e. expensive) technicians, along with the necessary facilities that meet all safety regulations, etc., a simple "tractor service" is preferred.

So, the customer base of the "consumer friendly business model" may not be large enough to support such an endeavor. The times, they are a-changin'...

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american...

*edit: typos

I don't see any reason to be optimistic about consumers guiding the market. It seems like everything points to cheap, ad-filled crud winning out over premium "ethical" alternatives all the time. Apple might be a counter example, but I think many would debate that.

I think the problem is you get crushed by the incumbents before you have a chance to take off. John Deere has lots of infrastructure (manufacturing, service) already in place. In a different market, see Google trying to break into the ISP space.

Was Google's failure there due to lack of technical infrastructure?

They had plenty of expertise but an extremely hard time securing utility pole right of way, IIRC, to the point of being sued my incumbents to stop them providing service.

There should also be a room for third party to do a complete replacement of electronics, for a tractor this seems quite viable.

I test drove a Tesla. That thing is constantly calling home and it's only a matter of time before it starts snitching on drivers who break the speed limit, run red lights, or park incorrectly.

How did you know that it was phoning home from a test drive?

There's a story someone wrote in a comment or otherwise posted here about Tesla telemetry identifying an employee who crossed one of the SF bay area bridges at 130mph

The Tesla salesman told me when I asked.

What would be the motivation for Tesla to "snitch" on their customers and kill sales?

Legislation requiring them to do so. If they have the capability, eventually law enforcement will start asking for the data. If Tesla don't provide the data, you get a lot of headlines about how police are unable to solve hit-and-run cases etc. because they're not getting data that's just there for the taking. Cue legislation.

Then all car manufacturers would have to as well. (Tesla is not the only car that "phones home", others do as well, and increasingly so.)

So, to avoid this type surveillance, you would need to forego driving, which is completely your choice. However, this is not merely a "Tesla" problem.

Sure, fully agree. I didn't mean to imply it was just Tesla's issue, it's an issue with "Smart tech" in general, which was the topic at hand.

Cops asking politely! If you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to hide, etc.

If Tesla goes belly up, a LOT of their features (like keyless driving, remote start, summon, ota updates etc. etc.) will all stop working.

Although perhaps to a lesser extent, (but probably not for long as they adopt these features), the same goes for other car manufacturers.

Tesla or not, if the company from which you purchased your car goes away, you're gonna have a bad time.

What is the guarantee that FOSS electronic equipment will survive any longer? Just because someone could support it doesn’t mean someone will, right?

As with all of life there is no guarantee.

The difference is that with FOSS anyone in the world with the skills and the disposition can help maintain a thing. With closed systems you are always at the mercy of a single bean counter somewhere.

And why do these things need support? If you build them with open standards and protocols they will continue to work until they break, no support required

Even if Sonos went belly up you’d still have airplay and tv/line in, along with direct control from stuff like Spotify (until Spotify inevitably change their protocols). But I don’t see airplay ever quitting until the hardware does

Does AirPlay not require software updates or certificates? There are a lot of things which are fairly robust but still fail when things like certificates or NTP servers disappear.

No, my first generation airport express from 2009 still works as an AirPlay device from the latest iOS. Sure you can’t configure it from latest macOS, but airplay still works. I can’t recall when the last software update was, but I haven’t done any updates for at least 3 years - it’s unplugged most of the time.

To Apple's credit, they have released fairly recent firmware for all their airport devices, even adding Airplay 2 support to (either 2nd or 3rd gen?) Airport Express' that had the hardware to support it, despite the devices not being mfged anymore (for many years) and the entire product line discontinued. Fwiw, I just used a 1st gen Airport (>$20) as a wifi to ethernet bridge to get a GoldenTee machine online for a client. They also work great as a wireless airplay receiver for older stereo equipment using the 3.5mm output from the Airport!

> airplay

Yes, because Apple is a company known for their commitment to longevity and compatibility.

> tv/line in

Many of their devices don't have any line in ports.

All streaming integrations in Sonos (like Spotify) communicate with the Sonos backend rather than the device directly. So that would fall apart too.

I thought Airplay requires that both devices are on the same network.

Can a person configure the wifi settings for an Airplay-capable Sonos speaker without the Sonos app?

> tv/line in

Most Sonos speakers do not have any inputs, sadly.

Sonos devices can play local music as long as you have a Wi-Fi LAN. They don't need an internet connection, except maybe for setup.

“except maybe for setup”?

Surely you see the problem, right?

Reset your sonos, then get it to just play music without setting up a sonos account.

Huh, I saw this comment 5 days ago, and noted the name "westinghouse". Today I was researching an "ACME.eu" "cloud" camera, discovered it contacts ubia.cn, which is specified in a listing on the FCC website by Southern Telecom for a "Sharper Image" camera that is my exact model just with a different brand name.

Apparently, Southern Telecom has bought some American brands and sells spyware "cloud" devices to end-users.

You can see the list here: https://southerntelecom.com/brands/

I still haven't found a way how to watch the camera stream without the app. It's possible, but it's a UDP protocol that I do not understand. It works with or without Internet, so I'm sure I could watch it without giving it Internet access...

The same thing happened to my Turtlebeach Audiotron.

Tesla cars are in this category too

I was extremely skeptical of this, so I googled it. Seems like Tesla owners have had no problem starting their cars without an internet connection, though obviously the internet dependant features don't work.[0] This doesn't seem comparable to a CD player that won't play CDs without an internet connection, it's more like a CD player that gracefully degrades to not showing the extra info it would get from the internet while still playing the local media.

[0]: https://forums.tesla.com/en_AU/forum/forums/can-you-disconne...

So that’s a lie. I drove through Arizona and Colorado on a hiking trip last year, and frequently camped in places with no service. Worked just fine.

Did you try using keyless start from your phone? I’ve relied on this before when I forgot my key but I’d worry about lack of service making it ompossible to start my car.

I did not. I have a Model S. The unlock-when-you-get-close thing worked, since it’s Bluetooth.

It is not a lie. The idea is that Tesla would go out of business and a vulnerability in the car would be found and exploited to kill you in the absence of security updates. Similar to how the article says:

> We're guessing a Charter alarm would still be able to make loud noises when someone breaks into a house, but that doesn't mean it'll work with an alarm-monitoring service.

That’s a lot of assumptions. The point stands that Tesla’s perform just fine in the absence of a network.

What lots of assumptions? that's a single inevitability that a self-driving car manufacturer, Tesla or otherwise, will go out of business, rendering the car offline only (the point made in the article) or worse, like the case with Android phones, you'll have plenty of vulnerable cars on the street and some community updates (like the work of LineageOS for instance).

It's the same point made in this computerphile video[1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLiE0Nr8VOE

Wow, that's the epitome of ungraceful failure right there! :D

I'm making a smart home device. Is there a solution to the domain/IP problem?

I'm not the embedded guy on the project but my thought was to use a domain name and have it check a DNS every hour.

That would solve it?

Don't make the network a hard dependency. The device should work as fully as possible even if offline.

Not only should it be offline-first, but it also should have fallbacks options like self-hosting.

Also, if it supports any outside protocols (for example: Airplay speakers) those should still work on a totally isolated network out of the box.

Make it offline-first.

And allow a local connection to edit config files, letting users point it to an arbitrary IP.

That might solve it.

To add to this, a good idea would probably be either a physical "allow access" button on the device (think like the clicky button on top of the Philips Hue hub), or a secure random password physically printed on the device that's the default access password.

Think carefully and lock-it down (not as an afterthought), because unsecured IoT can be exploited to cause devastating harm.

Phoning home should be disclosed and disable-able because you're opening up an attack surface and a privacy risk. And, if there's no clock synchronization, it will be impossible to check the validity of X.509 certificates used in https://.

You should support APIPA and Zeroconf.

Bonus points for Bluetooth to allow configuration from a mobile app. The mobile app should also be able to securely download and send a firmware update.

ZigBee is also low-power and mesh oriented, but will need a bridge/gateway to the internet to be connected.

Device pairing like NetVue cameras having QR barcodes and/or Bose headphones with NFC might be Good Ideas™ too.

What info are you using? If it's weather, let me pick a provider. If it's satellite imagery, let me update the domain if necessary manually. If it's something that only you provide, put it on github. If it constantly needs updating, find a place that will re-index it. Doi.org is a suitable solution for a lot of things, is there a case that i am not covering?

The device can simply startup as an WiFi access point with a preset name. The only requirement is that a user must have a WiFi client.

That's the "smart" appliance past, present and future. Big NO from me. Less is more

Not sure why the future should be this way.

The issues mentioned are all bad design decisions. For it to work in the future, they just need to be executed well.

IMO, it's because most manufacturers' main goal with "smart" devices isn't making better products; it's designing products that are less expensive to manufacture, but bring in at least as much revenue.

A device that's controlled using the owner's phone (or a web application, etc.) is cheaper to produce in bulk than one that has a built-in interface to interact with.

A security camera system that stores all its data in cloud-hosted storage is also cheaper to produce in bulk, because it doesn't need to include storage hardware of its own. That has the added benefit (to the manufacturer) of tying the customer into ongoing service fees.

In other words, while I agree with you that they're bad design decisions from the consumer perspective, they're good design decisions (at least in the short term, which is all most corporations care about now) from the manufacturer's perspective.

Unfortunately, at least for a lot of manufacturers, the decision process is going to go something like, "Should we make sure this can operate even if that domain goes offline?" "Nah, if that happens, the company will be belly-up, so why should we care?"

(And yes, that is assuming that they'll never accidentally—or intentionally—fail to renew their domain name...)

Like coyotes, each one too clever by half until the entire Smart Potrzebie market vanishes from under their collective feet

Because people keep falling for it, so manufacturers do not build independence features.

For now, because it still sounds cool and futuristic, but if the whole audience of HN is already rejecting smart devices wholesale, that's a bellwether the industry might want to consider before the attitude percolates out to public at large.

Or...there are engineers who realize this regardless of hacker news and push better design factors by communicating customer needs and impact on branding. Hacker news is not as influential as we may believe.

The public at large does not care what we think.

Of course not, but they care when the stuff they buy bricks within a few years.

Sadly, unless we as engineers, or ideally some broader body promotes some standard of device independence -- customers will eventually reject all such devices regardless of where they reside on the spectrum of cripple-able <---> independent.

For many of these products it was a very deliberate design decision, both in order to lock-in the user and also to be able to collect the data on them.

I literally just did a search for "Westinghouse radio hub" and other variations and this post was the first thing that came up, the rest was all about 1940s Westinghouse electric tubes and things like that. Westinghouse effectivly went out of business effectively in 1995 as they were bought by CBS, when the Gopher protocol had more users than the WWW. This just sounds like such an outdated argument or example it does not make any sense. Sure, network connectivity has disadvantages but refusing all connected products because of oulier examples is extreme paranoia.