Internet connected things

SSID and password with one button? WPS (Wireless Protected Setup) handles that nicely - it’s how I configure my Electric Imps…which have no buttons whatsoever. :slight_smile: (Yes, yes, you can also send SSID+passphrase to them but WPS is a bit more reliable.)

If you have a local service and want to make it cloud-accessible really quickly, there’s LocalTunnel - https://github.com/progrium/localtunnel - you can also do this using SSH and the correct arguments if you’ve got a VPS somewhere. Obviously not quite as convenient as other options (and localtunnel only operates on services running on the computer/device you’re running localtunnel on.)

This is really inspiring me to take some time and write a proper library set for the electric imp…

WPS is said to be highly insecure and recommended to be disabled, though in reality, I guess average home users use this feature…

I suppose that its all relative. I live literally in the middle of nowhere. A wifi sniffer who’s my wifi network and no others and I’m in the middle of 15 acres of wooded property. If I was in the city and surrounded by other wifi networks id worry about WPS but at least for me, you couldn’t get close enough to my house without being detected and raising all sorts of hell so I trade convenience for security to a degree. I personally don’t have a problem with WPS. I use allot of Netgear Ethrnet to WiFi adapters - push button A, push button B and I’m on the network,

I have 6 to 12 WiFi networks visible from the center of my home at any time, including my own.

I certainly think that WPS is probably enabled on most home networks, since manual configuration is, relatively, a lot of trouble; but the standard may start to be disabled by vendors if they decide the risk is too great.

http://www.esecurityplanet.com/wireless-security/exploit-wifi-protected-setup-wps-protocol-poses-risks-for-consumers-not-enterprises.html

…CP.

Yeah, like I said, I’d be concerned if I was in a densely populated area but I’m literally in the middle of the woods. I had I install a 20 foot antenna mast with a Wilson Cellular repeater on the roof of a 2 story house just to get a decent cell signal - I was at 0-1 bar before, now I’m at 5 bars at all times. I scan the 2GH band and I see my network and my microwave - that’s about it. I don’t think security, at least WPS security between connected devices is putting me at any risk (from a practical standpoint).

@chrisb - nothing in particular at the moment but having BT would be nice to have been included. Say I wanted to use my cell, phone the way a presence tag is used - BT would be a perfect choice. Rumor has it the apple watch will employ BT, same thing - it opens possibilities. I just read an article (or saw it on one of the crowd funding sites) on a ring (like the kind you wear on your finger) with embedded BT. Might be perfect to unlock my door or detect what room im in. Near field BT has some advantages over z-wave/ZigBee and the more options in the box, the more flexibility one has in developing or implementing solutions. I’m still major bummed they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the millions of x-10/Insteon devices that people have been installing for 30 years. I consider it an epic fail to just dismiss that protocol which is what ST has done.

@solardave1: Are there patent restrictions on the use of X10 and/or Insteon protocols?

Regardless, SmartThings obviously had to prioritize and be selective as to what they included in their initial product launch (it was a Kickstarter for gawdsake!).

The community here can certainly discuss incessently which choices SmartThings made and/or continues to make that seem not to … make any sense.

I definitely find the long delay for the release of the Android Client (and the complete lack of a pure Web & mobile Web client) is baffling, and, to me, a lot more important than obsolete weak HA protocols (e.g., X10 with major range and interference issues and next to no acknowledgement of commands from devices), or newer protocols (Bluetooth 4.0 LE) which are considered inferior to ZigBee and highly popular Z-Wave.

At this point in time, however, I am most interested (and perhaps, concerned) as to the impact of competition in a similar timeline. WigWag’s architecture has some major differences (some are silly, some are genious), and promises to support multiple protocols on their “relay” (hub) via USB dongles.

http://www.wigwag.com/

Their primary programming interface is graphic (GUI) based, with a customized “DeviceJS” for hackers. The product description addresses our (my?) ongoing concerns with SmartThings mysterious hub and cloud:

DeviceJS ties Javascript to the physical world, by providing hooks for protocols like IP, 6loWPAN, Bluetooth™, Zigbee™, RS-232, and devices such as the Belkin WeMo™ and Phillips Hue™ light bulbs. Because the system is centered on Javascript, it is very easy for anyone to extend.

WigWag Cloud pushes Javascript to your Relay (or a Raspberry Pi using the Dev Kit’s board), which executes distributed Javascript. Because of this architecture, the same code can execute across multiple locations, whether those are floors in the same house, or buildings in different countries. Moreover, even when the Internet is down, rules still execute on the Relay thanks to DeviceJS’s caching.

In other words: From a net features standpoint, I consider WigWag to be neck & neck competitively with SmartThings … except that SmartThings has several months’ head start.

And, in other words yet; competition is a good thing, as THAT is what will drive market based priorities for features, and/or give consumers (and Developers, etc.) the option of a mixed “best of breed” vendor environment.

Ah patents on X-10 expired long ago. There are plenty of third party x-10 devices being manufactured and sold. Don’t know about Insteon. I was an early backer on Wigwag - curious to see what they finally deliver. Don’t know what the holdup is with the Android client at ST, doesn’t make sense but then again,I’m not working at ST. I’m baffled as to why there isn’t a web portal for lack of a better term for ST. I should be ale to log into the IDE from any device/browser and control my hub - doesn’t seem to be rocket science, I can change device types, push apps, do just about anything - except- click and control something. They’re also not very good about laying out a roadmap on anything they are doing which s annoying but there might be NDA issues that prevent them for being more forthcoming. More likely, I think they have other reasons for not reveling future plans, perhaps they don’t have any solidified. Seem like a nice bunch of guys but seriously, tell us what to expect - if you are collaborating with another product for interoperability, why keep it a secret? Good for both parties to be shouting it from the rooftops. If you have new cool devices in work or nifty features in Beta, tell us. Unless of course, ST is really a front for the NSA and this is a tool for them to get connected to our lives. hmmmm. Need to get my tin foil hat. My hub is humming strangely and I Think it just unlocked one of my doors and disarmed my alarm. I also backed Canary to make it easier for Eric Holder to watch what I’m doing.

@solardave1 re: Bluetooth

Okay, that’s fair. I guess I agree for the most part. Can’t see a use for BT right now, but that doesn’t mean it might not make good sense in the future. I think the range of BT is a bit limited for things like presence tags, at least how I use them. But the lack of great range might make them perfect for things like locks or even the ability to sense which room you are in in your house.

Exactly. The short range is an advantage when you wAnt to detect which room someone is n. lights can follow you, air vents an open or close depending on occupancy, lots of things.
In the mean time, people keep reporting erratic activity with the smartsensor tags so those dont do the trick.

@tgauchat re: WigWag

Wig Wag is certainly interesting…

Drag and Drop “programming” is slick looking though I do have some real questions here and how well that will work for most people. I worry that drag and drop will be too limiting for most things. As an extreme example, with my modified garage door opener… how do I, via drag and drop, tell the program not to open the door if I haven’t been gone longer than 10 minutes? Or on a less extreme, how do I tell it only to turn on my light when I open my door if it’s after sunset?

I think Drag and Drop will work for the most basic user, but I fear that even an average user will quickly become frustrated with the limitations imposed by a simplistic if->then structure.

And yes, of course there is the DeviceJS for people who need more power. But I guess my point is: If 90% of the people aren’t going to be satisfied with the simple Drag and Drop, then is Drag and Drop really a plus?

In other words: From a net features standpoint, I consider WigWag to be neck & neck competitively with SmartThings … except that SmartThings has several months’ head start.

I disagree here. I think SmartThings has at minimum of a year head start. Perhaps I’m wrong and WigWag will break the mold here, but I’d be shocked to see this ship before May of 2014. The pattern for any complex thing like this on KS is to be several months minimum behind the release dates.

And then of course the assumption is that WigWag is released with all the options hinted/promised. We know SmartThings didn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if WigWag doesn’t either.

I’m not saying WigWag is a failure… far from it. I see some real positives: I love that WigWag loads (at least some) of the apps on the hub so it can operate without a cloud connection.

The sensor block is an interesting thing too… on one hand you have the fact that it packs a LOT of sensors into one package. This is good. On the other hand, it makes it expensive and wasteful if you’re not using all those sensors. (It’s also a bit of an eye sore… I mean, it isn’t terrible looking, but it also isn’t in anyway anonymous. You couldn’t have it in the corner of the ceiling on a counter top mostly forgotten, just doing it’s job. Between the size and color scheme, it’ll stand out.)

@solardave1

In the mean time, people keep reporting erratic activity with the smartsensor tags so those dont do the trick.

Yeah, there’s erratic behavior, but it can be dealt with via software. The tag would never work for room occupancy though, even if they worked perfectly. Too much range.

(Damn this single non-tree Forum system; two threads here now, and no way to properly nest them. Sigh.).

@chrisb & @solardave1: Regarding Presence Tags … WigWag has their own ideas.
Not only did WigWag add “presence tags” to their system, but they added triangulation between their Sensor Hubs, thus providing “vicinity” determination (not just which ROOM, but within 2 to 3 meters!!!).

----------------------

They ALSO have put a simple push button / panic button on their tag design, something that people here have been searching for.


…CP

@ChrisB: Regarding WigWag’s “Drag & Drop” rules programming vs. DeviceJS… you said:

And yes, of course there is the DeviceJS for people who need more power. But I guess my point is: If 90% of the people aren’t going to be satisfied with the simple Drag and Drop, then is Drag and Drop really a plus?

IMHO: I disagree on the proportions. I believe in the 80/20 rule, especially for consumer electronics.

80% of people never learned how to set the clock on the VCRs! … In this case, over 80% of Users will NOT have any interest or ability to writing a single line of code.

SmartThings solves this by encouraging the publication of highly use-case specific Apps, that are nevertheless flexible due to their preferences selection screens, using “capability” compatible device lists.

I believe that WigWag has a simpler and more direct strategy; Though “drag & drop rule building” can be a little more complex than installing a “SmartApp”, I’m sure WigWag’s vision is to stretch the limits of drag & drop to facilitate the building of rather complex rules, not just if-this-then-that.

As far as I’m concerned, SmartThings’s “SmartApp” paradigm is “sketchy” and cumbersome. I’ve used “macros” in the X10 world, and “scenes” in Z-Wave lighting; … and all I can say is that the little icon based drag/drop rules depicted in the WigWag Project are tremendously appealing to me (even though I don’t mind writing Groovy code) – Rather: WigWag’s rules engine just feels much cleaner; easier to get an overview of what the app does just be looking at the arrangement of the objects in the rule layout.

Put another way: For every SmartApp developer writing Groovy code to come up with a unique use case rules; there will be dozens of use cases that can be implemented solely by drag and drop in WigWag.

But … it certainly is hard to compare one company’s vision (WigWag) with another that is already in the wild (SmartThings) – even though the latter also still has a lot of evolution ahead of it, and the former is vaporware.

…CP.

LOVE the push button idea. I really really want a push button for SmartThings.

Skeptical about how well Vicinity will work. First, unless the Sensor block is dirt cheap, I’m not going buy a bunch of sensor blocks for my house. I’m surely not going to have enough for one is every room… maybe one or two per floor.

(This goes back to my earlier negative about the sensor block. I don’t have a need for a motion sensor, tag sensor, temp sensor, vibration sensor, etc. in each area that I want a sensor. Now, if these blocks end up being $40 even $50 then they are just as cheap as similar multi- or single-sensors for Z-wave or Zigbee. But if they are $70 or more then I’m not going to buy a block just to get motion detection in my hallway or bathroom.)

The second problem is how well it will work through walls, doorways, etc. Again, unless I have a block in (nearly) every room of my house, it’ll have to calculate where I am. How will it tell the difference between 15’ away from the block line of sight and 4’ but there’s a wall between us?

Sensor Blocks are $50 each during the Kickstarter campaign.

Yes – you probably know from many of my posts that I think a key success factor is the availability of CHEAP devices, with the appropriate level of complexity (range, battery life, reliability) for their use.

The WigWag Sensor Blocks are based on an alternative strategy (I have commented on their Kickstarter a few times…); since the wireless/RF and related hardware is required in every sensor/controller, then the incremental cost of adding motion, tag, temperature, digital and analog expansion, relays, etc., is so small … if mass produced there is not much difference.

Consider that an Aeon Motion+ Multi-Sensor (motion, temperature, ummm… humidity?) is only has a third of the sensing ability of a WigWag Sensor Block, but costs $55+.

WigWag Sensor blocks would (or do?) make for great cost effectiveness if people don’t mind hard wiring (e.g., one WigWag + the 4-relay expansion = 4 on/off Z-Wave outlets). But that’s not a real world scenario: running high-voltage wire around the room to your WigWag?!

…CP.

$50 per sensor is not bad at all.

Still don’t love the look of 'em, but that is a good price for what you’re getting.

I know its natural to compare products (even if wigwag is still vapor ware) but is this really an apples to apples comparison? I re-read everything and I see them as completely different products. You really would need a bunch of wigwags to “cover” a house/business/location. The price adds up quickly. Z-wave prices are projected to come down and ST has their own goal of “affordable” sensors for the ones they manufacture so there’s that. A typical mistake/shortfall/strategy error is to build something that is all things to all people and that’s the impression I get here. Yeah, triangulation is cool but how many units would you need to have it be functional to, for instance, know which room in a house is occupied and turn on the lights or fan or electric HVAC louvers? I can do that with a single aeon. If the smart tag was BT, I cold do it that way. The drag/drop may not be as bad as you may think - back when OO programming was first introduced, you dragged and dropped major functional modules and then “tweaked” the parameters within he module so you developed the functionality you wanted. (If sensor is on) --> (turn on fan {variable} minutes) – (then turn off fan) - so modifying the variables within the object gives you the flexibility / behavioral control that you want and the OO drag/drop helps you build the framework of the application quickly and easily with very little coding knowledge required. That’s sort of how the NEXT dev environment worked (RIP Steve Jobs). But to my point, there are allot of similarities but as many differences between the products and again, its still “vaporware” - you don’t know what the final product will or won’t do. I backed the project because I back these kind of projects but I really don’t think this will be a game changer. I’m very concerned that to do anything really meaningful, you’ll need a boatload of these things. Im more excited about Canary. My 2 rubles.

@solardave1:

Ah … but you overlook the key point (that is hammered at us by SmartThings as well…):

The WigWag Relay (their equivalent of SmartHub, though it officially does DeviceJS rules caching) and Cloud will have the ability to talk to other vendors devices.

This INCLUDES Z-Wave and ZigBee (via USB dongles added to the Relay).

This means that you could use the WigWag ecosystem (drag & drop rules, DeviceJS, and cloud) without needing a single WigWag Sensor Block!

…CP.

@cp. OK - interesting to see what the final product does and doesn’t do and at what price. Remember when ST was going to have BT and Cellular :slight_smile: