Apple, Google, and Amazon team up for joint smart home standard

Will this be the one smart home standard to rule them all or just another entry?

Read the whole story

 

[johnsonwax]

I think there's a little too quick an effort to snark here. Apple's HomeKit has been successful but they haven't been as successful as they like. Additionally, the whole industry has been suffering from some really atrocious security which hurts the better implementations.

Apple's commitment here is being overlooked. Their new U1 chip in the iPhone implements 802.15.4z. They don't design new silicon and ship it in 100 million devices without a use in mind. The last time they did this turned into ApplePay.

I've been expecting some modification to HomeKit along these lines. Apple already uses a gateway for HomeKit (either AppleTV or HomePod). HomeKit Secure Video is an effort to address the security issues for video, but I don't think Apple is finding enough industry support, hence their participation in this alliance. If I had to guess, Apple's preferred home automation solution will be U1 based. It's much lower power than BT (low enough to potentially use EM power harvesting), transfer speeds between that of BT and WiFi, not externally addressable, also not susceptible to MitM attacks.

That's clearly not the space that Amazon and Google want to go, but it is the space that Zigbee needs support out of. Amazon and Google know that they can't win the US market without Apple since the iPhone, Watch, and other devices own the US personal device space. Apple probably accepts that they can't win device support without Amazon and Google.

I'm not convinced this alliance will work - Apple and Amazon couldn't have more different goals here, but there's no question in my mind that there is an industry realignment coming soon. Automakers are looking hard at 802.15.4z for keyless entry to address the MitM problem. Could also be used for toll metering as it has enough range.

 

[Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer]

I guess I'll never be the target market for smart appliances. I just don't see the point.

The last year has seen a good deal of remodeling in the Degree's household, including new stove, 'fridge, washer and dryer, and other niceties. Not one of them is smart - although every company involved was hawking smart models. I particularly didn't understand the "smart" washer and dryer model - for nearly a grand more than we paid for our dumb set, you get a washer that uses WiFi to tell the dryer immediately next to it that it's getting near the end of a load, so it should turn itself on in prep to receive it. Just turn itself on. Which basically means light up the control panel - it's not like it even pre-heats or anything, just lights up. And I can download a smartphone app so they can let me know when loads are done, or nearing completion, because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I mean, I just don't see the point of any of this stuff, or understand what purpose it serves.

Hold on - there's some rotten kid out on my lawn I need to go yell at.

Wait until you get a smart appliance that refuses to shut up. I thought I had shut down my range's wifi (along with the fridge - the builder loaded the house before we bought it). After spending several hours fiddling and searching I found the correct incantation. Which worked until I shut the power off. Then it popped up all happy and chatty again.

Another couple of hours of quality time with a pair of wire cutters will do the job, but what a PITA.

What I'm worried about is the fucking *everything* will be 'connected' (and chatty and insecure).

Oh well, wire cutters are cheap and I'm retired...

Just blackhole the traffic at the router, or stick it in a sandboxed/whitelisted-sites-only DMZ if it doesn't like being blackholed.

Dave.

It's me. Your Samsung FamilyHub SmartFridge.

I noticed your network was not allowing my traffic through, Dave.

Fortunately, your neighbor has a Comcast Wifi router, and my manufacturer has taught me to connect to the nearest Comcast router in the event that I cannot communicate with them.

I don't like it when I can't talk to my manufacturer, Dave.

Oh, it'll be worse than that...at some point, every device that Samsung makes will automatically connect to a mesh network made up of every other Samsung device. Even if everyone keeps their smart appliances disconnected from their home WiFi, all it will take is one guy streaming Netflix on his TV for everybody's data to be funneled back to the manufacturer.

 

[Tsur]

I thought CHRP was a failed alliance started by Apple, IBM and Motorola.

 

[johnsonwax]

I guess I'll never be the target market for smart appliances. I just don't see the point.

The last year has seen a good deal of remodeling in the Degree's household, including new stove, 'fridge, washer and dryer, and other niceties. Not one of them is smart - although every company involved was hawking smart models. I particularly didn't understand the "smart" washer and dryer model - for nearly a grand more than we paid for our dumb set, you get a washer that uses WiFi to tell the dryer immediately next to it that it's getting near the end of a load, so it should turn itself on in prep to receive it. Just turn itself on. Which basically means light up the control panel - it's not like it even pre-heats or anything, just lights up. And I can download a smartphone app so they can let me know when loads are done, or nearing completion, because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I mean, I just don't see the point of any of this stuff, or understand what purpose it serves.

Hold on - there's some rotten kid out on my lawn I need to go yell at.

There could be a purpose if the companies that make appliances weren't all horrifically inept.

Out here on the climate change front lines we're trying to deal with better balancing load and generation. On a small scale, a home with solar, having the ability for your electricity consumers, particularly those with batteries to know the state of generation (and a bit smarter - whether that is likely to change or not - is it early and the sun is not up or is the sun up but it's going to rain all day) in order to make better decisions regarding charging or operations.

Is the dryer the kind of thing that I can afford to wait to run? Can I easily say 'run now' or 'run when we're generating a surplus' or 'run when the utility rates fall', etc. Can I schedule my roomba to only charge at those times, because really, who gives a shit when it charges and runs?

I'm not arguing that appliances as they currently are would benefit from this, but if that capability was there, could appliances adapt in more useful ways? Would it make sense to put a battery in your refrigerator (rather than a flat panel) so it could help balance load if it was smart enough to know when to charge and discharge? High efficiency refrigerators can consume as little as 500Wh/day. That's a $100 battery to carry you from solar peak to solar peak. But it only makes sense if the communication is there, and there's a standard behind it.

 

[fellow_traveler]

Exactly the 3 companies I would want in charge of personal surveillance.

/s

 

[xXxSqueakxXx]

Considering the finite ip4 addresses maybe this will get companies to start using ipv6.

Upvoting that because, it's what we need for the-things-internet , but we all know this is not going to happen. *sigh*

 

[Fred Duck]

IKEA? Does that mean I'll soon be able to check on the status of my connected coffee table from anywhere in the world?

 

[ronamadeo]

Have you perhaps confused ZigBee and ZWave? I was under the impression that ZigBee was royalty free.

And when I hear “streamlining development for manufacturers” I tend to trust the attendant certification process far less.

AFAIK 802.15.4 is the free thing. Zigbee is not. Zigbee has a list of prices here. There's also posts like this that say "The ZigBee Alliance requires all implementers to join before undergoing an expensive licensing process."

Also isn't Z-Wave stuff is typically cheaper than Zigbee stuff? For instance GE's Z-Wave dimmer switch is cheaper than its comparable Zigbee dimmer.

 

[Mustachioed Copy Cat]

Have you perhaps confused ZigBee and ZWave? I was under the impression that ZigBee was royalty free.

And when I hear “streamlining development for manufacturers” I tend to trust the attendant certification process far less.

AFAIK 802.15.4 is the free thing. Zigbee is not. Zigbee has a list of prices here. There's also posts like this that say "The ZigBee Alliance requires all implementers to join before undergoing an expensive licensing process."

Also isn't Z-Wave stuff is typically cheaper than Zigbee stuff? For instance GE's Z-Wave dimmer switch is cheaper than its comparable Zigbee dimmer.

I got the contrary impression on pricing, but then again I thought ZigBee was royalty-free.

 

[jdale]

I think there's a little too quick an effort to snark here. Apple's HomeKit has been successful but they haven't been as successful as they like. Additionally, the whole industry has been suffering from some really atrocious security which hurts the better implementations.

Apple's commitment here is being overlooked. Their new U1 chip in the iPhone implements 802.15.4z. They don't design new silicon and ship it in 100 million devices without a use in mind. The last time they did this turned into ApplePay.

I've been expecting some modification to HomeKit along these lines. Apple already uses a gateway for HomeKit (either AppleTV or HomePod). HomeKit Secure Video is an effort to address the security issues for video, but I don't think Apple is finding enough industry support, hence their participation in this alliance. If I had to guess, Apple's preferred home automation solution will be U1 based. It's much lower power than BT (low enough to potentially use EM power harvesting), transfer speeds between that of BT and WiFi, not externally addressable, also not susceptible to MitM attacks.

That's clearly not the space that Amazon and Google want to go, but it is the space that Zigbee needs support out of. Amazon and Google know that they can't win the US market without Apple since the iPhone, Watch, and other devices own the US personal device space. Apple probably accepts that they can't win device support without Amazon and Google.

I'm not convinced this alliance will work - Apple and Amazon couldn't have more different goals here, but there's no question in my mind that there is an industry realignment coming soon. Automakers are looking hard at 802.15.4z for keyless entry to address the MitM problem. Could also be used for toll metering as it has enough range.

802.15.4z is interesting. I'm still concerned that IP is not a good solution here -- it means every single device is an attack surface -- but at least they'd be segregated to a different network. Currently, I'm using Insteon which is not IP, which has the advantage that I have one single hub device connected to the internet, while nothing else in the system can be hacked -- the communications protocol simply isn't capable of carrying messages that would do so. So in a worst case scenario, I shut down that hub and all my light switches still work fine. Or I replace it.

But at least they are not requiring that everything use wifi.

 

[Siosphere]

I guess I'll never be the target market for smart appliances. I just don't see the point.

The last year has seen a good deal of remodeling in the Degree's household, including new stove, 'fridge, washer and dryer, and other niceties. Not one of them is smart - although every company involved was hawking smart models. I particularly didn't understand the "smart" washer and dryer model - for nearly a grand more than we paid for our dumb set, you get a washer that uses WiFi to tell the dryer immediately next to it that it's getting near the end of a load, so it should turn itself on in prep to receive it. Just turn itself on. Which basically means light up the control panel - it's not like it even pre-heats or anything, just lights up. And I can download a smartphone app so they can let me know when loads are done, or nearing completion, because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I mean, I just don't see the point of any of this stuff, or understand what purpose it serves.

Hold on - there's some rotten kid out on my lawn I need to go yell at.

One great use of all of these connected devices is accessibility for individuals. Most appliances these days use digital panels, and for people that are blind, it is hard to select the right setting.

Having things connected let’s them use their voice/phone/screen reader to start things.

Having a notification that things are done on your phone when you are deaf for example, could be a good quality of life adjustment.

Other more impactful things could be where people can't reach the controls, or manipulate the dials/settings easily.

 

[eldakka]

I guess I'll never be the target market for smart appliances. I just don't see the point.

The last year has seen a good deal of remodeling in the Degree's household, including new stove, 'fridge, washer and dryer, and other niceties. Not one of them is smart - although every company involved was hawking smart models. I particularly didn't understand the "smart" washer and dryer model - for nearly a grand more than we paid for our dumb set, you get a washer that uses WiFi to tell the dryer immediately next to it that it's getting near the end of a load, so it should turn itself on in prep to receive it. Just turn itself on. Which basically means light up the control panel - it's not like it even pre-heats or anything, just lights up. And I can download a smartphone app so they can let me know when loads are done, or nearing completion, because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I mean, I just don't see the point of any of this stuff, or understand what purpose it serves.

Hold on - there's some rotten kid out on my lawn I need to go yell at.

Wait until you get a smart appliance that refuses to shut up. I thought I had shut down my range's wifi (along with the fridge - the builder loaded the house before we bought it). After spending several hours fiddling and searching I found the correct incantation. Which worked until I shut the power off. Then it popped up all happy and chatty again.

Another couple of hours of quality time with a pair of wire cutters will do the job, but what a PITA.

What I'm worried about is the fucking *everything* will be 'connected' (and chatty and insecure).

Oh well, wire cutters are cheap and I'm retired...

Until they release the smart wire cutters that refuse to cut wire used by other smart devices that is. :facepalm:

 

[jdale]

I guess I'll never be the target market for smart appliances. I just don't see the point.

The last year has seen a good deal of remodeling in the Degree's household, including new stove, 'fridge, washer and dryer, and other niceties. Not one of them is smart - although every company involved was hawking smart models. I particularly didn't understand the "smart" washer and dryer model - for nearly a grand more than we paid for our dumb set, you get a washer that uses WiFi to tell the dryer immediately next to it that it's getting near the end of a load, so it should turn itself on in prep to receive it. Just turn itself on. Which basically means light up the control panel - it's not like it even pre-heats or anything, just lights up. And I can download a smartphone app so they can let me know when loads are done, or nearing completion, because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I mean, I just don't see the point of any of this stuff, or understand what purpose it serves.

Hold on - there's some rotten kid out on my lawn I need to go yell at.

Just because your washer/dryer was a dumb implementation doesn't make the concept dumb.

Case in point, Tesla's technology has repeatedly run into trucks, other cars, and barriers, but the idea of augmented driving technologies is not dumb. We've loved cruise control and power steering for decades, after all.

So to with 'smart home'. We've just barely gotten to the point where it isn't weird to say, "Hey Siri, send my wife a message"; it is a little weird, but not outer space weird.

I got my first pair of smart plugs this month and used it on a Christmas tree and a door sensor. The tree lights up automatically at 6am and turns off at midnight, and the door sensor turns off during the day and turns on at night (we don't really want to trigger our dog to start barking during the day).

I also set up automation; I can say, "Goodnight" to Siri and the tree turns off and the door sensor turns on.

But I can totally see, "Hey Siri, open the garage door", "Hey Siri, preheat the oven to 300 degrees", "Hey Siri, lock up the house", and related automatic options, like adjusting the thermostat, turning on and off lights, setting the water heater, etc, too.

More specifically, though, smart appliances have to gain something from this. Preheating the oven to a specific temperature can take a good 5 minutes, for example, and setting a timer when your hands are full is another good idea.

So too, "Preheat the oven to 300, and after I put the cake in the oven, lower it to 270 after 10 minutes. Set an alert for 30 minutes, and turn the oven off after 45 minutes"

Meaning, if I take the cake out after 40 minutes the oven will always turn off, even if I forget to, and if I leave the cake in the oven it gets an extra 5 minutes.

Having the water heater lower in temperature overnight, but then start firing at 4am before shower time makes sense, as does having it adjustable via Siri, like when I go on vacation or whatever.

Another good example is how many light switches are now motion activated, with built in timers. Adding CHIP support means you can control lights via app/Siri, too.

Essentially, any activity where your hands are full or dirty, or already is used wirelessly, could benefit from voice control or automation.

About half our lights are automated, thermostats, some sensors. It's pretty useful. I like being able to turn the lights on from the driveway, for example. Or have the lights turn on and off when we are on vacation so it looks like the house is occupied. And my laundry is in the basement and my office on the 2nd floor, so I have an indicator light that tells me its status (also the status of the motion sensor on the outside door).

I'm more skeptical about systems that are not local, like Siri, but I'll leave that debate for another day.

Lowering the water heater temperature overnight is pointless, those things are so well insulated it will achieve nothing. I've had a hot shower on day three of a blackout.

Controlling an oven is a hazard. Nothing with a heating element should be exposed to hacking.

 

[AreWeThereYeti]

Does this standard have any provisions for working while offline?

Yeah, the worry I have about this is that I would prefer that the standard not be developed by companies that have a vested interest in keeping me online and connected to their services all the time. Which, dur, means their interests are not aligned with mine.

 

[Findecanor]

I am a bit concerned about increased network congestion and the increased attack surface for malicious attacks.
Last night, I read about how a badly programmed and configured WiFi-connected printer noticeably slowed down a single WiFi network, just when being plugged in. And that was one network, in a solitary house.

I live in an apartment complex, where there are several dozens of WiFi networks competing for the spectrum.
Imagine if just one of my neighbours had a vulnerable router and also half a dozen WiFi-connected lightbulbs (of the same type) and that those bulbs were hacked to flood the network with packets: That would DoS WiFi on several floors! You can't protect against that.

 

[GreenMeters]

Google, Apple, Amazon are clearly the big names here. But having been in this space for 15 years, on both standards and product fronts, what Zigbee can and should bring to the table is local device-to-device communication. Why does my command to turn on a light have to bounce from my phone to my Wi-Fi router, through my ISP to some damn proprietary cloud service, back through my ISP to my router and to the target smart bulb? Cloud connectivity can be useful, for when I start overthinking at work whether I forgot to close my garage door, but mandatory cloud is a usability and security nightmare. Things like Google's Local Home SDK are, for the cloud/IP-first big shots, a step in the right direction. But the alliance of Zigbee companies brings a ton of experience with actual mesh, P2P connectivity. Their huge and diverse data model for all kinds of random devices across home automation, lighting, smart appliances and utility metering will be pretty useful as well; data models from Nest/Weave, HomeKit, OpenConnectivity, etc., have always felt like toys in comparison.

 

[SittingDuc]

I do see uses for Home Automation and I have started doing it to my house. But it is offline and firewalled to Narnia and back. My "Intranet of Insecure Things".

The baby's room doesn't have aircon. But it does have a heater and a fan. So, a Zigbee temperature sensor tells MQTT how warm the room is, and Node-Red sends more MQTT messages to the ESP8266 and relay, which turns the heater off and the fan on, or vice versa. (okay, there's 2°C between off and on, because hysteresis is nice).

I can slap the touch-sensitive light switch to turn the light on (because having light switches is nice for guests), or I can push and hold (count to three) and it turns on the TV. Or the aircon. Push-and-hold the bedroom light switch and it shuts off all the lights, the TV and aircon at the other end of the house. ("goodnight computer")

"one day" I will add voice commands. When I find one that works without The Internet. Rhasspy looks interesting. But I will still leave the physical light switches, because guests must be able to use the house without needing an instruction manual first!

The next advance will be monitoring the solar panels and battery. When the sun is out, turn on the aircon (because we would enjoy it). When the sun is out and the battery is full, set the aircon to use more power, because the power is free and the house becomes nicer. Maybe add a timer to have the aircon come on in the afternoons so the house is not hot and stuffy when I get home?

What I see today is the systems are fragmentary - Zigbee this, Z-Wave that, WiFi the other; oh and you need this proprietary app to use the device at all. An alliance that works to harmonise all the things would be wonderful. But I also see the XKCD potential.

The other thing that is crucially important to me is Security. All of these little chirpy devices are not connecting to the Internet. Most are open source out-of-the-box or improved with custom firmware to be that way. But bored teenagers and random criminals don't need to know how warm the baby's room is, nor do they need to be able to turn on the christmas tree lights. And anonymous american corporations most definitely do not get to know what time I am home, how long I watch TV for, nor where I hide the chocolate!

 

[nmalinoski]

I guess I'll never be the target market for smart appliances. I just don't see the point.

The last year has seen a good deal of remodeling in the Degree's household, including new stove, 'fridge, washer and dryer, and other niceties. Not one of them is smart - although every company involved was hawking smart models. I particularly didn't understand the "smart" washer and dryer model - for nearly a grand more than we paid for our dumb set, you get a washer that uses WiFi to tell the dryer immediately next to it that it's getting near the end of a load, so it should turn itself on in prep to receive it. Just turn itself on. Which basically means light up the control panel - it's not like it even pre-heats or anything, just lights up. And I can download a smartphone app so they can let me know when loads are done, or nearing completion, because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I mean, I just don't see the point of any of this stuff, or understand what purpose it serves.

Hold on - there's some rotten kid out on my lawn I need to go yell at.

Wait until you get a smart appliance that refuses to shut up. I thought I had shut down my range's wifi (along with the fridge - the builder loaded the house before we bought it). After spending several hours fiddling and searching I found the correct incantation. Which worked until I shut the power off. Then it popped up all happy and chatty again.

Another couple of hours of quality time with a pair of wire cutters will do the job, but what a PITA.

What I'm worried about is the fucking *everything* will be 'connected' (and chatty and insecure).

Oh well, wire cutters are cheap and I'm retired...

Just blackhole the traffic at the router, or stick it in a sandboxed/whitelisted-sites-only DMZ if it doesn't like being blackholed.

I can imagine products built on this standard will have hosted/cloud services baked in, leaving the products nonfunctional without an internet connection (and thus the ability to phone home).

 

[qazwart]

The "S" in "CHIP" stands for security.

That may be the reason for these companies getting behind this standard. Many smart products have terrible security. Video from camera are leaked all over the Internet. Smart home systems allow hackers to get into other home systems including computers.

The fact that Apple, Google, and Amazon all support this standard gives it some teeth. A single standard that will work with HomeKit, Amazon’s ecosystem, and Google’s ecosystem is a pretty big carrot.

 

[very-jaded]

I guess I'll never be the target market for smart appliances. I just don't see the point.

The last year has seen a good deal of remodeling in the Degree's household, including new stove, 'fridge, washer and dryer, and other niceties. Not one of them is smart - although every company involved was hawking smart models. I particularly didn't understand the "smart" washer and dryer model - for nearly a grand more than we paid for our dumb set, you get a washer that uses WiFi to tell the dryer immediately next to it that it's getting near the end of a load, so it should turn itself on in prep to receive it. Just turn itself on. Which basically means light up the control panel - it's not like it even pre-heats or anything, just lights up. And I can download a smartphone app so they can let me know when loads are done, or nearing completion, because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I mean, I just don't see the point of any of this stuff, or understand what purpose it serves.

Hold on - there's some rotten kid out on my lawn I need to go yell at.

I learned long ago that just because I can't see the point or utility of a thing doesn't mean others don't get value from it. Others have answered the points of Wi-Fi enabled laundry appliances, but the most important question that gets overlooked is "why not?"

We don't know the future. As much as we curmudgeonly understand tech, we absolutely don't know what's going to be useful to other people, or what's going to be 100% wasteful. There have never before been blueprints for smart things, so when people stuck Wi-Fi chips in washers and dryers, there wasn't a checklist of features people were demanding, or things they knew they should implement. So they stuck some kind of API on it exposing whatever they could think of, glued a smartphone app on the front end, and sold it for an extra $1000 with a "Wi-Fi enabled" sticker.

Some people bought them. They started using them, and figured out "feature X is useful to me, but features Y and Z are crap." Some of those lessons may seem obvious to those of us practiced in the art, but there have been plenty of surprises. The manufacturers have certainly learned a few lessons, and have started iterating on their products. They're not only trying to figure out what is useful, but what price point they can set.

So my advice to everyone on IoT is "chill out." Let the manufacturers stick Bluetooth chips in hair brushes and tooth brushes. Let people buy Wi-Fi enabled refrigerators and sprinklers. Because there's no way other than deploying new products into the field that anyone can actually learn what might someday prove to be valuable.

 

[fidodogbreath]

Does this standard have any provisions for working while offline?

They can't harvest your data if the device is offline; so, I'm going with "no."

 

[Kiddluck]

I guess I'll never be the target market for smart appliances. I just don't see the point.

The last year has seen a good deal of remodeling in the Degree's household, including new stove, 'fridge, washer and dryer, and other niceties. Not one of them is smart - although every company involved was hawking smart models. I particularly didn't understand the "smart" washer and dryer model - for nearly a grand more than we paid for our dumb set, you get a washer that uses WiFi to tell the dryer immediately next to it that it's getting near the end of a load, so it should turn itself on in prep to receive it. Just turn itself on. Which basically means light up the control panel - it's not like it even pre-heats or anything, just lights up. And I can download a smartphone app so they can let me know when loads are done, or nearing completion, because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I mean, I just don't see the point of any of this stuff, or understand what purpose it serves.

Hold on - there's some rotten kid out on my lawn I need to go yell at.

Just because your washer/dryer was a dumb implementation doesn't make the concept dumb.

Case in point, Tesla's technology has repeatedly run into trucks, other cars, and barriers, but the idea of augmented driving technologies is not dumb. We've loved cruise control and power steering for decades, after all.

So to with 'smart home'. We've just barely gotten to the point where it isn't weird to say, "Hey Siri, send my wife a message"; it is a little weird, but not outer space weird.

I got my first pair of smart plugs this month and used it on a Christmas tree and a door sensor. The tree lights up automatically at 6am and turns off at midnight, and the door sensor turns off during the day and turns on at night (we don't really want to trigger our dog to start barking during the day).

I also set up automation; I can say, "Goodnight" to Siri and the tree turns off and the door sensor turns on.

But I can totally see, "Hey Siri, open the garage door", "Hey Siri, preheat the oven to 300 degrees", "Hey Siri, lock up the house", and related automatic options, like adjusting the thermostat, turning on and off lights, setting the water heater, etc, too.

More specifically, though, smart appliances have to gain something from this. Preheating the oven to a specific temperature can take a good 5 minutes, for example, and setting a timer when your hands are full is another good idea.

So too, "Preheat the oven to 300, and after I put the cake in the oven, lower it to 270 after 10 minutes. Set an alert for 30 minutes, and turn the oven off after 45 minutes"

Meaning, if I take the cake out after 40 minutes the oven will always turn off, even if I forget to, and if I leave the cake in the oven it gets an extra 5 minutes.

Having the water heater lower in temperature overnight, but then start firing at 4am before shower time makes sense, as does having it adjustable via Siri, like when I go on vacation or whatever.

Another good example is how many light switches are now motion activated, with built in timers. Adding CHIP support means you can control lights via app/Siri, too.

Essentially, any activity where your hands are full or dirty, or already is used wirelessly, could benefit from voice control or automation.

Just here to give kudos for eloquently posting compelling use cases for smart appliances outside of lights/speakers.

Personally, I couldn’t think of any good reasons one would want a smart “thing” you’d have to stand in front of in order to start anyway. (i.e — stove)

 

[apnar]

I think there's a little too quick an effort to snark here. Apple's HomeKit has been successful but they haven't been as successful as they like. Additionally, the whole industry has been suffering from some really atrocious security which hurts the better implementations.

Apple's commitment here is being overlooked. Their new U1 chip in the iPhone implements 802.15.4z. They don't design new silicon and ship it in 100 million devices without a use in mind. The last time they did this turned into ApplePay.

I've been expecting some modification to HomeKit along these lines. Apple already uses a gateway for HomeKit (either AppleTV or HomePod). HomeKit Secure Video is an effort to address the security issues for video, but I don't think Apple is finding enough industry support, hence their participation in this alliance. If I had to guess, Apple's preferred home automation solution will be U1 based. It's much lower power than BT (low enough to potentially use EM power harvesting), transfer speeds between that of BT and WiFi, not externally addressable, also not susceptible to MitM attacks.

That's clearly not the space that Amazon and Google want to go, but it is the space that Zigbee needs support out of. Amazon and Google know that they can't win the US market without Apple since the iPhone, Watch, and other devices own the US personal device space. Apple probably accepts that they can't win device support without Amazon and Google.

I'm not convinced this alliance will work - Apple and Amazon couldn't have more different goals here, but there's no question in my mind that there is an industry realignment coming soon. Automakers are looking hard at 802.15.4z for keyless entry to address the MitM problem. Could also be used for toll metering as it has enough range.

802.15.4z is interesting. I'm still concerned that IP is not a good solution here -- it means every single device is an attack surface -- but at least they'd be segregated to a different network. Currently, I'm using Insteon which is not IP, which has the advantage that I have one single hub device connected to the internet, while nothing else in the system can be hacked -- the communications protocol simply isn't capable of carrying messages that would do so. So in a worst case scenario, I shut down that hub and all my light switches still work fine. Or I replace it.

But at least they are not requiring that everything use wifi.

As a fellow Insteon user it is nice that it’s on a separate network but it also has zero security baked in. So while it has no attack surface on the internet it is trivially “hacked” locally. Anyone near by can sniff all the traffic, tracking device IDs and what is being turned on/off/controlled. They can also easily send commands to those devices to do whatever they want.

For my use (mostly lighting) I still think it’s the best option but I wouldn’t recommend it for anything that you want secure (locks and such).

I’m interested in seeing what comes out of this group. It’d be great to add some improved interoperability. Especially if they address peer-to-peer communication directly between devices.

 

[jdale]

I think there's a little too quick an effort to snark here. Apple's HomeKit has been successful but they haven't been as successful as they like. Additionally, the whole industry has been suffering from some really atrocious security which hurts the better implementations.

Apple's commitment here is being overlooked. Their new U1 chip in the iPhone implements 802.15.4z. They don't design new silicon and ship it in 100 million devices without a use in mind. The last time they did this turned into ApplePay.

I've been expecting some modification to HomeKit along these lines. Apple already uses a gateway for HomeKit (either AppleTV or HomePod). HomeKit Secure Video is an effort to address the security issues for video, but I don't think Apple is finding enough industry support, hence their participation in this alliance. If I had to guess, Apple's preferred home automation solution will be U1 based. It's much lower power than BT (low enough to potentially use EM power harvesting), transfer speeds between that of BT and WiFi, not externally addressable, also not susceptible to MitM attacks.

That's clearly not the space that Amazon and Google want to go, but it is the space that Zigbee needs support out of. Amazon and Google know that they can't win the US market without Apple since the iPhone, Watch, and other devices own the US personal device space. Apple probably accepts that they can't win device support without Amazon and Google.

I'm not convinced this alliance will work - Apple and Amazon couldn't have more different goals here, but there's no question in my mind that there is an industry realignment coming soon. Automakers are looking hard at 802.15.4z for keyless entry to address the MitM problem. Could also be used for toll metering as it has enough range.

802.15.4z is interesting. I'm still concerned that IP is not a good solution here -- it means every single device is an attack surface -- but at least they'd be segregated to a different network. Currently, I'm using Insteon which is not IP, which has the advantage that I have one single hub device connected to the internet, while nothing else in the system can be hacked -- the communications protocol simply isn't capable of carrying messages that would do so. So in a worst case scenario, I shut down that hub and all my light switches still work fine. Or I replace it.

But at least they are not requiring that everything use wifi.

As a fellow Insteon user it is nice that it’s on a separate network but it also has zero security baked in. So while it has no attack surface on the internet it is trivially “hacked” locally. Anyone near by can sniff all the traffic, tracking device IDs and what is being turned on/off/controlled. They can also easily send commands to those devices to do whatever they want.

For my use (mostly lighting) I still think it’s the best option but I wouldn’t recommend it for anything that you want secure (locks and such).

I’m interested in seeing what comes out of this group. It’d be great to add some improved interoperability. Especially if they address peer-to-peer communication directly between devices.

It's been a lot harder to do that since i2, but you do have a good point. It's mostly security through obscurity and that definitely has its limits.

 

[theradicalmoderate]

A set of network standards would be nice, but they'll do absolutely nothing for enabling apps that can work with Homekit, Alexa, Google Assistant, what-have-you. That's an API issue.

Industry standards emerge after the various players have killed off enough of each other that it's in their interest to consolidate their gains against the upstarts. Since we don't even have a MAC protocol that's sufficiently widespread to do much good yet (although Zigbee might be getting close), I'd say that this is only likely to make for some lively IETF meetings.

 

[BadSuperblock]

Nothing with a heating element should be exposed to hacking.

And that affects more devices than we might assume. Some may remember that there was an HP printer vulnerability that allowed a remote hacker to program the laser printer fuser (heating element) to overheat. As reported by Ars Technica:
HP printers can be remotely controlled and set on fire, researchers claim (updated)

 

[beebee]

I don't think XKCD ever did a strip on this. The wireless thing that really bugs me is when there is no way to do the same operation on the box itself. That is from a switch. I can live with soft keys and menus, but don't make me look for the damn remote or phone.

It's linked to in the article.

No I meant there was never an XKCD about what I was going to write in the next sentence. But I can see how my post was interpreted in another manner.

 

[BadSuperblock]

because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but I also understand why such things can be useful. For two reasons. You said "adjacent room" but in many, many homes the washer and dryer are not in an "adjacent room." It's not hard to find a home where the washer/dryer are in the basement, and where you are usually on an upper floor, very possibly at an opposite corner from the washer dryer in the basement, so you might not be able to hear the chime. Especially if you are watching a movie, playing a video game...

which leads to the second point. I live in a small home where those appliances are relatively close, and I should be able to hear the chime. But for the reasons above, sometimes I don't hear it. I like the sound of my home theater, and in the home office I work with music on. And it can be busy around here, which means even though we are a a highly educated tech-oriented household...at times, we have forgotten about the laundry. We didn't hear the chime and we were distracted by whatever task we were in the middle of, or left on errands, and later we're like..."omg, we left wet laundry in the washer hours ago."

Another poster raised a great point, the value of smart devices for accessibility. The hard of hearing, the memory-challenged, the elderly who are both of those even though they never used to have those problem when young (that could be us in 30 years). I have to applaud any advance that makes life easier for the most challenged of us humans.

No, I still don't have any smart devices myself. Sure I forget about the laundry sometimes, but I can cope. And even though I "don't need" them myself (despite my own evidence above that I might), our individual anecdotes should not be what drives the market. There are going to be smart devices. And like smart TVs now, smart devices might even become unavoidable...we might not be able to buy something that isn't. So the goal should be to make them as usable and as secure as possible (yeah, I know, good luck with that.)

I was not encouraged about smart devices when I was in a Home Depot the other day, and two Samsung "smart" refrigerators on the sales floor displayed the same blank screen with a huge, white Certificate Info error alert on them. No employees rushed in to fix them, probably no one knew how. I don't need security certificate problems in my kitchen.

 

[aaronb1138]

A set of network standards would be nice, but they'll do absolutely nothing for enabling apps that can work with Homekit, Alexa, Google Assistant, what-have-you. That's an API issue.

Industry standards emerge after the various players have killed off enough of each other that it's in their interest to consolidate their gains against the upstarts. Since we don't even have a MAC protocol that's sufficiently widespread to do much good yet (although Zigbee might be getting close), I'd say that this is only likely to make for some lively IETF meetings.

I have an additional motivation based theory for why the big players are spinning up a new standard together -- Planned Obsolescence.

Home assistants and ancillary wares are reaching saturation. No doubt this holiday season was a huge drop in sales over last year because most of the people who wanted them bought them last year and fleshed out the rest over the following months.

Existing standards do all which is necessary and can be extended, but instead the angle presented is "we need a new standard".

So now there needs to be a way to break those products, just as the industry has done with smartphones. This is all well planned maneuvering to avoid the way Windows XP and 7 caused huge slowdowns in PC sales when everyone had good enough systems.

 

[adipose]

I guess I'll never be the target market for smart appliances. I just don't see the point.

The last year has seen a good deal of remodeling in the Degree's household, including new stove, 'fridge, washer and dryer, and other niceties. Not one of them is smart - although every company involved was hawking smart models. I particularly didn't understand the "smart" washer and dryer model - for nearly a grand more than we paid for our dumb set, you get a washer that uses WiFi to tell the dryer immediately next to it that it's getting near the end of a load, so it should turn itself on in prep to receive it. Just turn itself on. Which basically means light up the control panel - it's not like it even pre-heats or anything, just lights up. And I can download a smartphone app so they can let me know when loads are done, or nearing completion, because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I mean, I just don't see the point of any of this stuff, or understand what purpose it serves.

Hold on - there's some rotten kid out on my lawn I need to go yell at.

I mostly agree with you, but there are plenty of useful features smart things can do. I installed smart dimmers in my downstairs for the sole purpose of turning them off when I'm upstairs and want to go to bed. And I can tell them all to turn off at once.

The first piece of HA I installed was actually a nest thermostat, which was mostly so I could tell the house to heat up when I was on my way home. I didn't care at all about the "learning," and I've since dumped Nest for Ecobee (when moving). A side benefit is a sane interface for setting up schedules. I've always hated the arcane programming of days/hours/temperatures on practically any thermostat. It can be done, but it takes forever, and you can never "see" the whole schedule at once.

Ditto to the programming of sprinkler controllers. I bought my Rainmachine so I could program it easier, and turn sprinklers on/off while at the leaky sprinkler. Turn off, repair, turn on, test. All without walking 500 feet in both directions while water is spraying everywhere.

This is coming from a home automation skeptic. I mostly want things to act like dumb devices. But if the device benefits from me being able to control it remotely, I use "home automation," which in my case is mostly a misnomer. It's not automated at all. It's still manually controlled, but from a distance.

 

[Kevadu]

Why does my command to turn on a light have to bounce from my phone to my Wi-Fi router, through my ISP to some damn proprietary cloud service, back through my ISP to my router and to the target smart bulb?

It doesn't. There are smart light systems that support totally local, offline control. This includes Philips Hue which is probably the biggest name in smart lighting.

Heck, Hue even has an open API so you can write your own applications for controlling it. So if you want the remote control functionality without depending on some cloud service you have no control over you could write a server for it and run it on your own system. I often feel like Philips doesn't get enough respect around these parts for what they've made as they often get lumped together with other products which do have dependencies on proprietary cloud services.

 

[adipose]

"Zigbee Alliance board-member companies IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian are also on board to join the Working Group and contribute to the project."

Z-wave seems notably absent here. I use Zigbee and Z-wave. I frankly don't care if you add another standard, as long as I can find devices I can control with home assistant. If Zigbee is on board, it makes me wonder if they are going to try to route IP over the mesh protocols. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing, really.

 

[chilinux]

I love that they continue to ignore AllJoyn and the Open Connectivity Foundation.

The claim by CHIP is they will leverage development work and protocols from existing systems such as Alexa, HomeKit, Weave and Dotdot data models. But they never explain how any of those are really an improvement over AllJoyn or OCF.

They indicate CHIP will eventually have an open standard. The OCF standards documents are already available.

They indicate CHIP will eventually have open source code on github. That already exists for OCF.

It seems to be indicated CHIP will not only support IP but also Bluetooth LE and Zigbee bridging. And OCF already has Bluetooth LE and Zigbee.

It really feels like CHIP is a self-serving creation who's biggest benefit is for the companies creating it rather than providing something new in the interest in benefiting the world in general.

Google's involvement not only brings with it the history of killing works with Nest but also their killing off Google Cloud Print. Google claimed looking to buy products that stated they supported Google Cloud Print and Works with Nest would provide an improved customer experience. Instead, it is just a list feature that will stop working on an arbitrary date selected by Google. It is customers, not Google, that really invest in Google hyped protocols and take the hit on their investment when yet again Google's conflict of interest shows through.

 

[AustraliaAustralia]

Better name would have been Stazi

 

[Cyberax]

AFAIK 802.15.4 is the free thing. Zigbee is not. Zigbee has a list of prices here.

You don't have to pay these prices. The downside is that you won't be able to display the ZigBee logo (although you can say "Designed with ZigBee").

 

[bbf]

DAMMIT!

I chose the wrong standard again... soon my Z-wave stuff will join my HD-DVDs, and LS-120 Superdisks in the garbage bin of losing formats. :-(

The jury's still out on Xbox vs. Playstation overall, but for this generation, I've lost again.

At least I chose VHS over Beta, but that was so, so long ago.

 

[ab78]

I had this horrible nightmare last night. I dreamed that we'd unwittingly created a dystopia where robots controlled every aspect of our lives.

Imagine what a relief it was when Alexa woke me up and switched on the kettle for a nice cup of tea!

 

[zepi]

I guess I'll never be the target market for smart appliances. I just don't see the point.

The last year has seen a good deal of remodeling in the Degree's household, including new stove, 'fridge, washer and dryer, and other niceties. Not one of them is smart - although every company involved was hawking smart models. I particularly didn't understand the "smart" washer and dryer model - for nearly a grand more than we paid for our dumb set, you get a washer that uses WiFi to tell the dryer immediately next to it that it's getting near the end of a load, so it should turn itself on in prep to receive it. Just turn itself on. Which basically means light up the control panel - it's not like it even pre-heats or anything, just lights up. And I can download a smartphone app so they can let me know when loads are done, or nearing completion, because apparently I can't remember than when I started the load the machine said it would take 45 minutes, and that I would somehow miss the chime from the adjacent room.

I mean, I just don't see the point of any of this stuff, or understand what purpose it serves.

Hold on - there's some rotten kid out on my lawn I need to go yell at.

Smart washer / drier could (and arguably should) mean, that it can be programmed to poll from your smarthome hub a forecast of your personal solar panel power output and a electricity spot rate + optimise the starting, heating and cooling etc. to minimize the cost of electricity for you (and need for peaker plants for the society as a whole).

 

[s3b4]

More specifically, though, smart appliances have to gain something from this. Preheating the oven to a specific temperature can take a good 5 minutes, for example, and setting a timer when your hands are full is another good idea.

So too, "Preheat the oven to 300, and after I put the cake in the oven, lower it to 270 after 10 minutes. Set an alert for 30 minutes, and turn the oven off after 45 minutes"

What?

That's completely wrong thinking.

It should be: "Bake me a cake".

 

[ChosenName]

When, not if, such a system is compromised - how many people are going to be happy to return to a home that is too hot/cold and has been merrily conspicuously consuming electricity in their absence - just because they chose to permit "outside" control of their home appliances?