This video perfectly captures why ‘smart’ homes have never caught on

TECH

This video perfectly captures why ‘smart’ homes have never caught on

Todd Haselton@ROBOTODD

KEY POINTS

  • GE recently published a video on YouTube explaining how to reset its smart bulbs.
  • It shows why smart homes can cause headaches, requiring you to reset seemingly mundane things, like your lights.
  • The process requires you to turn your lights on and off at different intervals.

CNBC why smarthomes have never caught up

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First off, the assertion that that smart homes “have never caught on” is demonstrably false. And even if it weren’t, claiming that it’s because of the onerous reset procedure required by a particular make of light bulb is…quite frankly…just plain dumb.

The piece linked to is just another in a long line of examples of utter cluelessness on the part of self-proclaimed “tech” writers.

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Except that smart homes have caught on, with increasing adoption rates, mostly driven by the voice assistants.

Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, Walmart, and Amazon all featured “smart home“ sections in their Father’s Day ads this year.

What that video mostly shows is why Phillips hue continues to be the market leader for smart bulbs even though they are more expensive than other brands. Because they always focus on making it easy for the customer.

https://www.the-ambient.com/how-to/reset-philips-hue-1565

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We need their cluelessness to keep in check the ridiculousness. :slight_smile:

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Division by zero, or…something.

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I’ve been on the “bleeding edge” of a lot of things and, in more than a few of those, I’ve accepted quirky behavior and the need to “coddle” the equipment at times. My first attempt at Home Automation was an example of that (using Insteon devices).
I don’t find that the current state of Home Automation falls into that category any more. I’m able to do a lot of set-it-and-forget-it configuration. I’m able to set up things that don’t require tricks to get them to work. Consequently, my wife is far more supportive of my latest setup, even to the point of suggesting some things she would like to be automated.
Home Automation isn’t to the Arthur C. Clarke state of “indistinguishable from magic” yet, but it is to the point where a lot of ordinary, non-early-adopter folks are embracing it.
This is a long-winded way of saying that I agree that the assertion that that smart homes “have never caught on” is rubbish.
I worry about the current state of journalism. Sometimes it seems to me that an awful lot of opinion is sneaking in disguised as statements of fact. It’s possible that the tech writer just didn’t know anyone who has implemented a smart home yet. If so, I think he needs to widen his observed group a bit.

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I know it’s only June, but I think that’s a strong contender for the 2019 Understatement of the Year Award.

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