Re: IOT=Crap
@Alister
I think you are missing the point. It is perfectly possible to have all these conveniences, to control your lights by voice or from a smartphone app, and all the other things, without the need to use the internet or someone else's server.
I don't think I am; I'm fully aware of the options for home automation, and have decided that for the time being at least the best balance of functionality and ease of use is to be found with some internet-based components.
That is why people on this forum are disparaging of IoT, it is unnecessarily complicated and prone to being made obsolete or unusable at the whim of the manufacturer or service provider, much more so than discrete electronics or equipment based on internal WiFi connections.
Hubs, and the external things that tie into them, may go obsolete; that's why all the in-house stuff we use here is based on a non-proprietary communication protocol. If one hub goes dark we can swtich to another, if they all die a death for some reason I'll get a Z-Wave module for the Pi, install the appropriate public domain packages and use that as the controller.
If you think that what has happened to the Honeywell thermostat is acceptable, then fine, carry on as you are, but understand that a lot of the technically minded people who post on the Reg have seen this coming for a long time, and it won't be the last time this happens.
I have to admit that I'm a little amused that you're presenting this as "the technically minded people" vs me - without going into details I really have got a fairly technical background myself. I've got no illusions about cloud-based systems being perfect, but find their flaws and potential future issues worth it for the advantages they provide.
As far as what I find acceptable goes, the original Reg article describes a problem where the control system's entirely functional locally, just not accessable remotely via the app - given that any remote system's going to be dependent on the house internet working, and probably my phone being on the internet too (so already vulnerable to several external points of failure), I'd say the Honeywell issue would be annoying but not a deal breaker.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
