No company has successfully marketed an actual smart home system. Google Home and Amazon Alexa are, in reality, personal data collection systems that utilize convenience to get consumers to use them. The goal is not to help consumers, but to collect data.
And from an economical perspective, this makes sense. There's great money in gathering massive amounts of person data about people. Who would have imagined 15 years ago that we'd let Amazon and Google know about what time we get up and go to bed, what time we use our microwave, what sports games we watch, when we call our mothers.
I want something simpler, local-network-only. Not a 'smart' home but an obedient home. Ideally something like an Event Bus with a basic protocol for events and some safety controls to prevent chaos. But there's no economic incentive to build or sell such a thing.
> No company has successfully marketed an actual smart home system.
No company has successfully marketed an _affordable_ or middle-class smart home system. These systems do exist and have for years, and they largely work exactly as you described. The big three companies for such solutions are Crestron[0], Savant[1], and Control4[2]. It's been awhile since I've checked, but if I recall correctly they run on average anywhere from $5-$25k (or more depending on the size of your home and scope of automation). Much of the cost comes from all of the bespoke devices they build to automate existing products e.g. a proximity sensor that goes in your car to trigger presence automations, as well as the cost of the (very granular) white glove setup you get from the installer to prevent the possibility of the chaos you described.
Indeed, the post’s title and source are very misleading, pretty close to pure clickbait. The fully integrated smart home has been completely realized and functioning ever since Bill Gates built his ‘Xanadu’ home back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s.
The fact that at least 95% of that setup has filtered down to be affordable to the average multi millionaire showcases the incredible progress made in the last 2 decades. And this dynamic was evident at least a decade ago for anyone who bothered looking (e.g. me circa 2011 on a slow evening).
It's kind of a PITA to setup and maintain, but for technically inclined folks, I've found HomeAssistant to be a great tool for gluing together a lot of local-only devices into a semi-coherent interface.
I bought a house last year and the first thing I did was remove the Ring video doorbell. But if it hadn't been a company with an Amazon or Google type reputation I'd have at least tried using it for a while.
I would think the odds are much higher of a smaller company either a) selling your data to everyone that they can get money from, or b) just not having the tech skills to keep secure.
Note that I am not criticizing you not wanting to use it at all. Just curious that if it was another name, you would have been ok with it.
I think the point was that with Google or Amazon, you know what their real motive is. With another product, they might actually just be selling a security camera.
Maybe you're right that the odds that another company could be trusted are low enough not to be a distinction compared to companies I know I don't trust.
That said, I mind signing up for throwaway services less because it's easy to use a fake name/email, which is becoming less an option for the major services, who try to enforce real identities and revoke accounts without consequences.
I don't know about that. Amazon and Google have a decent track record of being bad about data privacy, and the size of a company by itself says nothing about that company's expertise.
I checked a while back, and there are at least a couple of smart video doorbells that can be made to work with a local IPTV system. I didn't end up doing it[0], but it does seem possible.
[0]- I wanted to monitor for deliveries, but COVID kind of trivialized that for a year.
And from an economical perspective, this makes sense. There's great money in gathering massive amounts of person data about people. Who would have imagined 15 years ago that we'd let Amazon and Google know about what time we get up and go to bed, what time we use our microwave, what sports games we watch, when we call our mothers.
I want something simpler, local-network-only. Not a 'smart' home but an obedient home. Ideally something like an Event Bus with a basic protocol for events and some safety controls to prevent chaos. But there's no economic incentive to build or sell such a thing.