SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
One of the leading thinkers in the new computing sector known as the internet of Things (IoT) can't help but look at all the flashy, expensive, feature-packed gadgets on the market today – things like Google Glass or the Apple Watch – and keep coming away with the same thought: too many device makers keep getting it wrong.
Given the nature of his chosen field, serial entrepreneur David Rose – who's also a researcher with the MIT Media Lab, where he's taught for six years – might be expected to want the next generation of connected devices to pick up where smartphones leave off. Indeed, that seems to be the nature of the race to figure out what the next dominant computing platform looks like, whether it's Facebook snatching up Oculus or Microsoft working to bring its HoloLens to fruition.
...
In a book he published last year, Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire and the Internet of Things, Rose sums up his hope for the future of technology: he wants it be dominated less by glass slabs and more by tools and artefacts, just like his grandfather's space was filled with.His grandfather, for example, never hunted for the one tool to serve as an all-purpose tool hub or for a tool that would eliminate the need for other tools. His shop was filled with hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, clamps and more – and they all enchanted the young Rose because even in their simplicity, those tools could lead to a multiplicity of imaginative creations.
The Internet of Things could also, beyond proving a privacy debacle, be a walled garden whose walls reach to infinity.
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @11:33PM
You got it quite nicely.
The IOT has to beat simplicity and cheap. That is hard to do.
A toggle switch costs a couple bucks at most. A connected one? Start around 15-20 at a minimum. Then needs another 200-500 dollars worth of controller to keep up with it. What does it do? Oh the exact same thing but from across the room.
I want a 'connected' house. But for the life of me can not figure out how to make it cost effective and worth doing that makes it better than what I have which is simplicity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @01:33PM
The IOT has to beat simplicity and cheap. That is hard to do.
A toggle switch costs a couple bucks at most. A connected one? Start around 15-20 at a minimum. Then needs another 200-500 dollars worth of controller to keep up with it. What does it do? Oh the exact same thing but from across the room.
When it comes to price and reliability it's hard to beat simple discrete I/O. I work in the process control industry where despite advancements like Fieldbus plain old twisted pair and 4-20mA signals remain king even on newer projects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @02:13PM
where despite advancements like Fieldbus
You have also almost hit on why there is no 'smart home' sort of thing.
Every manufacture wants to be 'the owner' of the bus. Each one with its own protocol. Each one with its own SDK. Each one that you need to buy into their eco system for it to work right. The only ones getting any traction are the 'free' ones where the manufacture said (go for it I do not care and will not sue).
This sums it up https://xkcd.com/927 [xkcd.com]
plain old twisted pair and 4-20mA signals
That is it right there in a nutshell. You have to beat simple and cheap. The systems I see out there are massive complications on a very simple idea.
Many of these companies of 'value add' is I give them money for a proprietary system that only sorta works and is out of date and EOL in 3 years.