You want to have your lights come on at a certain time.

You want to add motion detection to lights turning on.

You want to attach light sensors to have variable intensity bulbs be brighter or dimmer depending on ambient lighting conditions.

You want your lights to turn on inside your garage when the garage door opens.

You want your front hallway light to come on when your door is opened.

You want to be able to check all the lights in your house at a glance to make sure you did not accidentally leave any on.

You want to have all your lights auto-off when your kids should be in bed.

And of course, most importantly:

You want to turn your house into a rave party, or an epileptic seizure inducing disaster, and I don't think there is actually a difference there.

Your networked toaster might have online profiles for how to optimally toast bread, bagels, rolls, etc based on the type of bread and they would be available on a per-toaster basis. Rather than just odd balling how you want your toast done, you could buy a toaster that has profiles with high ratings that will toast your bread to your exact desire with your given model of toaster.

For your fridge, it could have isolated temperature and humidity per compartment, give alerts when different foods are low in quantity / going bad, track the expiration dates of all your food, and have the same lighting features as your house lights.

There are plenty of applications of "smart" devices. The problem with the IoT is that once you put software in a device you need to be responsible for it, and I don't believe there is actually a single hardware manufacturer on Earth right now who is legitimately responsible for their hardware and respectful of their users (particularly their software freedoms in relation to that hardware).

None of these things sound like killer applications, and few of them require any kind of computational power let alone networking. There are much simpler ways of accomplishing the same things. That is my point; IoT proponents are adding unnecessary complexity for dubious gains. Some examples:

You want to have your lights come on at a certain time.

I can get a timer at a hardware store.

You want to add motion detection to lights turning on.

I can get a motion sensor switch at a hardware store.

You want your lights to turn on inside your garage when the garage door opens.

Yep. That happens with most existing garage door openers.

You want your front hallway light to come on when your door is opened.

I've never seen this implemented, but it could be done in a multitude of ways such as the motion sensor or a simple contact switch on the door itself.

I've long been interested in "home automation" stuff, so I'll give you a quick example of what I have at my house now that can't be done with timers/motion sensors from the hardware store.

There's keypad in the entrance to the kitchen, with buttons labelled "Bright" "Dim" and "All off". If you press Bright, all of the lights (sink, under-cabinet, range hood, and island) turn on 100%. Dim sets just the under-cabinet lights are on at 50% and island is 10%. Without this keypad, you have to walk to 3 different switches on opposite sides of the room.

There's also a keypad by the front door. It has an 'all off' button which is great when we're leaving, and as we also walk by it on the way upstairs, handy when we're going to bed.

The front door keypad also has a "Garage" button. It lights up red if the garage door is open (as we can't see the door from anywhere inside the house). Press it and it'll toggle the door to open/close.

That stuff is just simple scenes, but I also have some more complex things..

The outside lights go to 20% from dusk until midnight, then turn off after midnight. On top of that, at any time between sunset and sunrise, if the garage door is open, or if the outside motion detector sees motion they go to 100%, and once the door is shut or no motion is seen for a few minutes, they return to previous level.

At sunset, if none of the lights in the house are on, one of the lights in the kitchen and one of the lights in the living room turn on (to make it look like someone is home).

At ~midnight, if only the one kitchen light and living room light are on (and nothing else has been adjusted, indicating someone is home), turn the lights off.

At sunrise, turn off all lights. (This used to be 3am until we had a baby, then it was annoying because, well, crying baby + preparing bottle + 3am + lights suddenly turning off = ..not good).

At some point I will also set up a motion sensor in the front hall (or maybe a door open sensor), so if the outside motion is triggered followed by the inside motion (or door opening), the inside front hall light turns on. A bit tricky, since I don't want to happen if I'm just walking around the house (or leaving).

Is any of this game-changing? Not really. It's interesting to me, it's not overly expensive (especially as I have built this up over time), and it's a nice albeit minor quality-of-life thing.

Btw, I can control this from a PC/phone, although I basically never do (the keypad/switch on the wall is always going to be faster). I could also set it up to work via internet, but I don't, because 1) there's an attack vector and extra security to worry about, 2) adjusting the lights while I'm not home is pointless, 3) I believe a key to home automation is the automation part. If I have to control it manually, it's by definition not automated.

Thank you. Genuinely interesting, and in my opinion, one of the few examples of the technology done right.

I would point out that the three different switches on opposites sides of the kitchen sounds more like an issue of poor switch placement (admittedly, a common problem) than anything crying out for automation, but the ability to control sets of lights with one button is intriguing.

I think the take-away is this:

> Is any of this game-changing? Not really. It's interesting to me, it's not overly expensive (especially as I have built this up over time), and it's a nice albeit minor quality-of-life thing.

Which I contrast with: "Let's hook my toaster up to the internet because: Internet of Things!" which seems to be the prevailing attitude.

> I believe a key to home automation is the automation part. If I have to control it manually, it's by definition not automated.

Yup, this.

I built an automated heating system. It does all the right things at the right times. I never touch it; it has some graphs if I want to see what it's doing.

The shoddy consumer systems all have manual control and an app, because you just spent all that money, you want the warm fuzzy feeling of having an app to fiddle with.

Marketing is why everything has to be networked.

I wouldn't pay a dime for most of those features, even if it worked perfectly. Where I can see the use is doing things remotely, as in when you're far away: locking/unlocking the doors, making sure the lights and appliances are off when you're traveling, turning on/off the heat remotely etc. IF you could do those things securely.

Too lazy to walk up to the light switch when I'm at home? Just no.

This is not "Internet of Things", this is "Building Automation" and it's been the norm for decades.

Yes, but now it's "on the internet". Therefore it can be called Internet of Things.

IoT is an amazing, awesome, innovative and entirely new concept. Just like "The Cloud" was.

/s

Depends what you mean by "Building Automation." If you mean things like a thermostat to control my heating, sure that has been around for decades. However, it can be a very simple mechanical device. Even for the computerized ones, I see little advantage to networking it (at least compared to the disadvantages).

If, however, by "Building Automation," you mean networked computers controlling your lights and every other aspect of your environment, this is not the norm now, never has been, and I would hazard a guess that it won't be any time soon because the cost and complexity is not worth the marginal advantages. Yes, some elements are creeping in: particularly systems to shut off lighting and environment control in office buildings at night because the power savings are worth it, but those systems are relatively simple and closed. There is no need to connect them to the sort of network that is featured in the article let alone the internet at large.

Lighting systems are very common in the building automation industry but they're typically connected to physical switches. Placing a computer or tablet there doesn't really change things - this could have been hacked regardless of the end-user input. The core protocol Modbus/TCP has been available and easily hackable for decades.

Building Automation is exactly what your describing and it is the norm. It's common for schools, hotels, and commercial buildings to be "smart", with something like Modbus or BACnet connecting lighting, HVAC equipment, smart meters.

I will defer to you re: Modbus/TCP as it is outside my area of expertise. Even if these systems are "common," I would still claim that they are not the "norm" for the simple reason that I have been in buildings that were clearly "smart" buildings and ones that were clearly not, and the latter outnumber the former. However, even if it were the norm for commercial buildings, I was thinking far more generally and that may be the source of our disagreement. Automatic doors, for example, are the norm for major retail stores (as well as airports, et cetera), but they just don't exist in private homes. It would be expensive and serve no purpose, and that is how I feel about most "Internet of Things" devices [EDIT: and most "home automation" devices].