Cheap Willl Be Smart. Expensive Will Be Dumb.

Re:Cheap Willl Be Smart. Expensive Will Be Dumb. by fragsworth on Sunday December 04, 2011 @02:47PM (#3311560)

The technical culmination of this vision would be that all of our expensive devices (i.e. refrigerators, air conditioners, heaters) will have simple APIs that can be controlled by any administration tool on any device.

For instance, our heating/air conditioning systems can have a standardized API that really only has the following functions, available (with some simple authentication) over any wifi connection:

1. Turn on 2. Turn off

Then an administration tool (probably on the cloud) can handle all the daily/weekly/monthly automation, provide a clean and easy to use interface, with all the complicated and special features we would like to see. We could change and upgrade our administration tools as we see fit. We would access them with our smartphones, home PCs, or for old schoolers, the wall mounted device.

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Re:Cheap Willl Be Smart. Expensive Will Be Dumb. by ams6110 on Sunday December 04, 2011 @06:23PM (#3312247)

Sigh. I have a simple device that does that already. It's called a thermostat.

Edit: I have the simple device, not a device that can be controlled from anywhere. But that's not a problem I have or need to have solved.

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Re:Cheap Willl Be Smart. Expensive Will Be Dumb. by fragsworth on Monday December 05, 2011 @02:44PM (#3316110)

> But that's not a problem I have or need to have solved.

Sometimes it's hard to be aware of problems that exist. The fact that we have to interact with a thermostat on a regular basis is a problem. To save energy and reduce the need for us to remember to interact with the device, it might be nice for software to figure out when we leave or enter our homes (perhaps via GPS on our phones, or by some other detection mechanism) and control the device automatically. I am almost positive that your thermostat doesn't do this.

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Re:Cheap Willl Be Smart. Expensive Will Be Dumb. by dangrossman on Sunday December 04, 2011 @09:11PM (#3312642)

AC systems are an example of a dumb, expensive device that do come with an API... in the form of the built-in wiring for a thermostat. The thesis is that all your dumb, expensive devices should have something similar (preferably wireless rather than wired). Today you just connect it to a thermostat; in 10 years you might still have the same AC/heater and connect it to something smarter.

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