Comment by vineyardmike
2 days ago
> It's wild to see how for no reason other than marketing, we're seeing devices with a static feature set being bricked
I work in the smart home space. Your sentiment is reasonable and understandable but, respectfully, you’re wrong.
First, all these devices will continue to work locally. They’re just killing the server, which has continual real costs. They’re not being bricked, they’re just regressing to their static features.
Second, ZWave and Zigbee were never the future. It’s very hard to convince consumers they need a hub. My firms market research indicates that most consumers think it’s a cash grab. And the return rate of Zigbee products because they “don’t connect to WiFi” is scary high.
Finally, you need an app and cloud of some sort for controlling the device. Consumers expect that app will control the device and it will work anywhere in the world, because that’s why they bought it. That’s just the basic market research on the majority of consumers of smart home products. Users need a way to control the device (or at least set it up), and that means an app, which means continuous updates as app stores change. Global control means cloud relays and server costs.
Matter (the protocol) was inevitable. Consumers already have an IP network, and the big tech companies can afford to build and distribute apps and relay servers built into their phones and cloud offerings. This minimizes the risks of device manufacturers and maximizes compatibility.
> market research indicates that most consumers think it’s a cash grab
This I 100% believe and it's so sad. I'm clearly suffering from the fact that smart home enthusiasts, while being the only ones who can even build an even remotely useful smarthome setup, are a minority, and by the numbers, probably 10x the devices are purchased by very nontechnical users who say things like "I just paid the wi-fi bill" and who would buy and return devices that need hubs. And yeah, we all need those people to make a product 'mainstream successful.'
Among enthusiasts of course, we all know a hub basically gives you (the user) control, rather than being reliant on some cloud server that will be turned off (like this article illustrates). (And they're usually like $30 so I'm astounded at how cheap people are. I've had Hue and Lutron hubs for literally 8 years and I suspect they'll last 10 more.) The problem of NAT which I didn't remember to talk about, created a lot of this, as obviously some kind of cloud thing needs to be involved for out-of-home control, but yeah, I think you and I agree that we're better off letting Apple and Google and Amazon be the cloud relays for things that connect to some device in our home that can serve as a hub.
The thing that's the most irritating is that without standards and hubs, you either have to go all in on one company's ecosystem, and none of them are the best at everything, or you have to use 12 different apps: this one for lights, this one for smoke alarms, this one for audio, this one for cameras, this one for smart speakers, this one for that one switch that you bought because they're the only one who offered a really specific type, etc.
> First, all these devices will continue to work locally. They’re just killing the server, which has continual real costs. They’re not being bricked, they’re just regressing to their static features.
What do you mean by "static feature"? Like that I can still press a button on my wall and it will toggle the status of my lights? Or that I can use my Wemo app when I am at home (but not elsewhere) to control my lights?
I have noticed that even when my wifi goes out, my programmed Wemos will still turn on X minutes before sunset and off X minutes after sunrise. Do you think this sort of operation requires the server (either always, or every once and a while) to be available?
I am trying to figure out if I should get new devices on Black Friday or if it's likely enough these will still work fine for my purposes come next Jan.