jay (support) wrote:
Great post.
2 points. I'd be curious about the discussion of.
1. People used to say the same thing about electricity until it became ubiquitous. Sure having the internet isn't the same as a service company that is cloud based, but then again, having electricity isn't the same as having a service provider have some sort of maintenance issue. How far as are we to where the internet doesn't become a luxury or even a need, but an essential requirement? I would say, choose your provider carefully... if you have locks or cameras indoors, make sure you trust the service or keep those out of the cloud altogether.
2. While there are more "islands" of services both software and hardware based than you can shake a stick at, some companies are trying to bring these islands together. There are very valid reasons certain companies have gone this route. There are plenty of internet services out there that aren't necessarily hardware rooted. Weather reports (if you don't have a weather station yourself), google services, find my iPhone, the list can go on and on. Right now, a large part of my home automation system is very reliant upon these services for it to function properly... I'm sure I'm not the only one in the same boat. Having everything in the cloud gives a "friction free" communication (as long as that particular cloud service is working *Google*) between each "thing". Granted, it would be nice if this stuff were pulled down locally and controlled, even at a rudimentary level in case of an outage. While this can still be done with a central controller such as indigo running on a mac, it also adds significantly more complexity in setup than some of these "home automation in a box" type of deals for the average consumer.