I already use Indigo to control my home automation items (irrigation system and landscape lights for now). It lets you create web pages to control your devices. I created a version that is made for an iPhone, accessible via Safari. You can even make it password protected so someone else cannot control your devices. It may not be the slickest of apps, but it certainly gets the job done and gives the designer lots of flexibility.
You are pretty narrow-minded. You deserve to be stuck with 20th century thinking.
As energy prices are rocketing up, that infinitesimal number will become appreciable. Also, if electric companies everywhere start charging differently for peak hour usage from off-peak and middle-of-the-night usage, then you might find a lot of people scheduling tasks when electricity is cheapest. Unless there is a quick, consistent and easy way to schedule water heaters, clothes dryers, ice makers, etc. to work at the optimal time, people will continue to waste money operating those appliances with expensive power.
Finally, as home power generation starts to take off (solar, maybe some wind turbines) people may want to use as much of their own power as they can until net metering laws become fair for the homeowners.
From a practical standpoint --- the cheapest electric rates are after 9pm weeknights and basically anytime in the weekends. Even the cheapest dishwashers right now have a 2-4 hour delay button.
People do their laundry in the weekends anyway --- they don't schedule their washing machine to do the wash some time after midnight and then leaves the clothes in the washer until the next day when they schedule their cloth dryer to dry the already washed clothes after midnight 24 hours later.
Fridges and ice makers run 24 hours a day --- or else things melts.
Add a European style "tankless" electric water heater.
Europeans have survived for 50 years with higher petro and electric prices without these kinds of fancy home automation technology --- that's why they have dishwashers and cloth washers that use less energy and water and they have tankless water heaters.
I believe his point was cost. How much money people are welling to pay for the controlling devices compared to the simple schedule ones? What about maintenance and support?
Few years ago I was part of the design team for a 20,000 sf. Villa. I remember the owner wanted to control every room temperature, lights, AC, TVs, speakers, power outlets, and security system from a handheld tablet like device. It was an amazing custom made system for which he paid a LOT of money.
The technology is there. The question is how many can afford it?!
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich
Right on target.
But isn't the idea. If all of this can be done through your iPhone (which everyone is going to have anyway) and the proposed software then won't the cost become negligible? Instead of the custom built extremely expensive house system that Nasser wrote of, you will be able to have the same thing at software pricing on your iPhone. What may be an infinitesimal minority of people may become a real market if the cost factor disappears.
They way I look at it, the apps that you want most right now, are probably being developed by companies that have the resources to do it already. Other killer apps will be developed by low-cost programer/entrepreneurs and will grow into something big because they had a great idea or plan. But there are some fliers that will need resources and time to create a market that does not yet exist. Both of the examples listed are going to need time (and money) to integrate all the information/functions before they even have a chance to be compelling to the average iPhone owner.
I would agree with the slew of early posters that the two announced projects do not sound earth-shattering. However, remember that we are looking at a 2 or 3 line write-up by somebody who (probably) has not seen the full proposal. And none of us know what these ideas could grow into.
Remember, if it was an obvious pitch or a guaranteed hit, they wouldn't need VC money--they could go to the bank with a business plan.
From a practical standpoint --- the cheapest electric rates are after 9pm weeknights and basically anytime in the weekends. Even the cheapest dishwashers right now have a 2-4 hour delay button.
People do their laundry in the weekends anyway --- they don't schedule their washing machine to do the wash some time after midnight and then leaves the clothes in the washer until the next day when they schedule their cloth dryer to dry the already washed clothes after midnight 24 hours later.
Fridges and ice makers run 24 hours a day --- or else things melts.
Add a European style "tankless" electric water heater.
Europeans have survived for 50 years with higher petro and electric prices without these kinds of fancy home automation technology --- that's why they have dishwashers and cloth washers that use less energy and water and they have tankless water heaters.
1. My electric rate is uniform. I have one $/KWH rate on my bill.
2. The freezer would obviously stay cold 24 hrs a day, but the energy used to move the latent heat of fusion from liquid water (i.e., make new ice) would be left for nighttime operation.
3. Tankless water heaters are ridiculously expensive here. One of the ideas I was echoing was that the French set their water heaters to start when EDF set the lowest rates. And, by the way, tankless is not a "no-brainer", current water tanks are very well-insulated so heat only gets wasted if the water is not used for several days.
4. My wife does laundry almost every day. She may be OCD.
5. We don't follow Europe's lead. Otherwise, we'd all have kings! Why would we need those fancy-schmantzy iPods when FM radio gives you music for free? I'm surprised you didn't mention hanging the clothes out to dry!
But isn't the idea. If all of this can be done through your iPhone (which everyone is going to have anyway) and the proposed software then won't the cost become negligible? Instead of the custom built extremely expensive house system that Nasser wrote of, you will be able to have the same thing at software pricing on your iPhone. What may be an infinitesimal minority of people may become a real market if the cost factor disappears.
Well, there are 2 issues.
Some anslysts have just stated that Apple is going to plaster your home with a lot of technology. If that is true, then you will have a Apple home automation system made by Apple --- thus rendering this 3rd party iphone home automation app dead on arrival.
Secondly, prices for consumer electronics go down a lot in a short time. Prices have drop so much that almost every kid's room has a phone, a computer, a tv, a vcr and a dvd player. Don't need a fancy expensive structured wiring to route your dvd's from the living room dvd player to your bedroom tv when you can buy a dvd player from walmart for $20. Same thing is going to happen to tivo's and blu-ray player.
I already use Indigo to control my home automation items. . . It may not be the slickest of apps, but it certainly gets the job done and gives the designer lots of flexibility.
And that is exactly what Apple has excelled at for it's entire history -- taking obscure, difficult technology and making it accessible to the masses. Years ago, I had a Rio Volt MP3 player and even with a whopping 32MB capacity, it was a confused mess: hard to load, hard to navigate. The iPod took that fringe concept and made MP3 players very popular.
Home automation could be so cool, easy and useful. I think Apple is probably the only company around that can make it so. Smaller companies who may have the talent to do so won't be able to achieve critical mass and other big companies have shown no ability to be so innovative.
1. My electric rate is uniform. I have one $/KWH rate on my bill.
2. The freezer would obviously stay cold 24 hrs a day, but the energy used to move the latent heat of fusion from liquid water (i.e., make new ice) would be left for nighttime operation.
3. Tankless water heaters are ridiculously expensive here. One of the ideas I was echoing was that the French set their water heaters to start when EDF set the lowest rates. And, by the way, tankless is not a "no-brainer", current water tanks are very well-insulated so heat only gets wasted if the water is not used for several days.
4. My wife does laundry almost every day. She may be OCD.
5. We don't follow Europe's lead. Otherwise, we'd all have kings! Why would we need those fancy-schmantzy iPods when FM radio gives you music for free? I'm surprised you didn't mention hanging the clothes out to dry!
We should follow Europe --- because they have 50+ years of experience in this area. If only we can get home owners association to allow clotheslines in the backyard.
Current home automation systems are even more ridiculously expensive than tankless water heaters.
Some anslysts have just stated that Apple is going to plaster your home with a lot of technology. If that is true, then you will have a Apple home automation system made by Apple --- thus rendering this 3rd party iphone home automation app dead on arrival.
I think that may be partially true, but I think Apple will go after the car audio and navigation system next. In conjunction with a killer GPS system by a 3rd party, having your car's audio (and videos if you have video screens) sync via secured wifi to your home's iTunes account (where your playcount and prefernces are all synced) seems to be the next move. It could also update contacts for handsfree dialing and easy GPS locations to contacts and let's passengers watch video you purchased or rented using iTS. Perhaps even reading your mail to you.
Since we know MS has already launched such a service I can't imagine that Apple isn't working on it too.
I don't think Apple is going to be successful in the auto industry --- because the auto industry has very thin profit margins. Even Microsoft is going nowhere in that industry.
Basically the telematics industry is dominated by QNX.
You thought wrong. You're dealing with investors here. Most are wealthy because they are dull
Not sure I would have said it that way myself.... but, yes, the investors are mostly people without a fraction of a clue about applications on the iPhone.
I don't think Apple is going to be successful in the auto industry --- because the auto industry has very thin profit margins. Even Microsoft is going nowhere in that industry.
Basically the telematics industry is dominated by QNX.
you could be right. Besides the margins there are plenty of technical issues that need hurdling. Converting iPod playlists to register as multidisc player is nothing compared to what would be required to make it happen. But I sure hope it does happen.
iControl sounds cool. I've been wanting to get into home automation, but it's hard to know where to start. If there were a known device, such as iphone, out there that would act as a control, I think more people would get into it.
imagine remotely from your iphone to VIEW and monitor several functions of your home or OFFICE have alerts to tell you of intruders, monitor devices hooked to a HOME SERVER wirelessly, maybe even remotely access your HOME SERVER for movies, music DVR like slingblade. and stream to your iphone. streaming to the iphone would be very useful.
imagine remotely from your iphone to VIEW and monitor several functions of your home or OFFICE have alerts to tell you of intruders, monitor devices hooked to a HOME SERVER wirelessly, maybe even remotely access your HOME SERVER for movies, music DVR like slingblade.
Mmmhmmm. Some people call it a sickle, I call it a slingbox. Mmmmhhhhmmm. About four cows worth.
Seriuosly though, that would be nice. Windows Home Server can already stream your content over the web to your phone and the web interface is quite nice for a MS product. Of course, it doesn't stream live TV like SlingBox but if you are recording or DLing your video you can access it with the domain name they give you. It's a good product and it looks like Apple has no interest in competing here either.
I agree with macFanDave. IControl is a natural progression of what we should be able to do with our electronics and appliances. But you are right, at this time the user base would be very small. We'll need to get some new standards in place to make it ubquitous. I think Bonjour networked devices would be a good start. It'll take a decade before we start to see any real change, but I think it's inevitable.
I'm a little confused by this other app. Maybe it does offer some things that Google doesn't. I guess I'll have to see it first. I wonder if this is an indiavation that the 3G iPhone won't have true GPS.
So you guys are adhering to the monopoly principal? One to rule them all?
What ever happened to competition where the best app wins?
Is it just cheapness ruling here?
One thing I've been afraid of, with Apple controlling which apps get to be sold, is that we will have that very thing. One app per function. I would just hate to not see apps vying with Google, or Apple.
I want as many apps available to do that same thing as there are developers with ideas. Who knows which app will be the one you want until it's available?
Why is there this assumption that Google maps is the be all and end all? Maybe it's a really crummy app, but you don't know it, because there's nothing else available for the iPhone yet.
Besides, people are different, some people might like the way one app does something, while others hate it, and prefer the way another does it.
Imagine, for you game players out there, if there was just one game out in each category, with no new ones in sight. After all, one game should be enough, as long as the company gives an upgrade once a year, or so.
Comments
You are pretty narrow-minded. You deserve to be stuck with 20th century thinking.
As energy prices are rocketing up, that infinitesimal number will become appreciable. Also, if electric companies everywhere start charging differently for peak hour usage from off-peak and middle-of-the-night usage, then you might find a lot of people scheduling tasks when electricity is cheapest. Unless there is a quick, consistent and easy way to schedule water heaters, clothes dryers, ice makers, etc. to work at the optimal time, people will continue to waste money operating those appliances with expensive power.
Finally, as home power generation starts to take off (solar, maybe some wind turbines) people may want to use as much of their own power as they can until net metering laws become fair for the homeowners.
From a practical standpoint --- the cheapest electric rates are after 9pm weeknights and basically anytime in the weekends. Even the cheapest dishwashers right now have a 2-4 hour delay button.
People do their laundry in the weekends anyway --- they don't schedule their washing machine to do the wash some time after midnight and then leaves the clothes in the washer until the next day when they schedule their cloth dryer to dry the already washed clothes after midnight 24 hours later.
Fridges and ice makers run 24 hours a day --- or else things melts.
Add a European style "tankless" electric water heater.
Europeans have survived for 50 years with higher petro and electric prices without these kinds of fancy home automation technology --- that's why they have dishwashers and cloth washers that use less energy and water and they have tankless water heaters.
I believe his point was cost. How much money people are welling to pay for the controlling devices compared to the simple schedule ones? What about maintenance and support?
Few years ago I was part of the design team for a 20,000 sf. Villa. I remember the owner wanted to control every room temperature, lights, AC, TVs, speakers, power outlets, and security system from a handheld tablet like device. It was an amazing custom made system for which he paid a LOT of money.
The technology is there. The question is how many can afford it?!
Right on target.
But isn't the idea. If all of this can be done through your iPhone (which everyone is going to have anyway) and the proposed software then won't the cost become negligible? Instead of the custom built extremely expensive house system that Nasser wrote of, you will be able to have the same thing at software pricing on your iPhone. What may be an infinitesimal minority of people may become a real market if the cost factor disappears.
iControl is a killer domain btw
Hey fellas, lets keep it civil in here!
They way I look at it, the apps that you want most right now, are probably being developed by companies that have the resources to do it already. Other killer apps will be developed by low-cost programer/entrepreneurs and will grow into something big because they had a great idea or plan. But there are some fliers that will need resources and time to create a market that does not yet exist. Both of the examples listed are going to need time (and money) to integrate all the information/functions before they even have a chance to be compelling to the average iPhone owner.
I would agree with the slew of early posters that the two announced projects do not sound earth-shattering. However, remember that we are looking at a 2 or 3 line write-up by somebody who (probably) has not seen the full proposal. And none of us know what these ideas could grow into.
Remember, if it was an obvious pitch or a guaranteed hit, they wouldn't need VC money--they could go to the bank with a business plan.
I agree with everything you said, Bagel-man.
I thought the idea of the iFund is to help small developers get their software on the iPhone and to encourage new ideas not existing ones!
You thought wrong. You're dealing with investors here. Most are wealthy because they are dull
Same here... but it looks like Apple is not a part of this fund, only tangentially through Al Gore's involvement.
http://www.kpcb.com/team/index.php?all
In this case they have no involvement. It's merely a private fund for him.
From a practical standpoint --- the cheapest electric rates are after 9pm weeknights and basically anytime in the weekends. Even the cheapest dishwashers right now have a 2-4 hour delay button.
People do their laundry in the weekends anyway --- they don't schedule their washing machine to do the wash some time after midnight and then leaves the clothes in the washer until the next day when they schedule their cloth dryer to dry the already washed clothes after midnight 24 hours later.
Fridges and ice makers run 24 hours a day --- or else things melts.
Add a European style "tankless" electric water heater.
Europeans have survived for 50 years with higher petro and electric prices without these kinds of fancy home automation technology --- that's why they have dishwashers and cloth washers that use less energy and water and they have tankless water heaters.
1. My electric rate is uniform. I have one $/KWH rate on my bill.
2. The freezer would obviously stay cold 24 hrs a day, but the energy used to move the latent heat of fusion from liquid water (i.e., make new ice) would be left for nighttime operation.
3. Tankless water heaters are ridiculously expensive here. One of the ideas I was echoing was that the French set their water heaters to start when EDF set the lowest rates. And, by the way, tankless is not a "no-brainer", current water tanks are very well-insulated so heat only gets wasted if the water is not used for several days.
4. My wife does laundry almost every day. She may be OCD.
5. We don't follow Europe's lead. Otherwise, we'd all have kings!
But isn't the idea. If all of this can be done through your iPhone (which everyone is going to have anyway) and the proposed software then won't the cost become negligible? Instead of the custom built extremely expensive house system that Nasser wrote of, you will be able to have the same thing at software pricing on your iPhone. What may be an infinitesimal minority of people may become a real market if the cost factor disappears.
Well, there are 2 issues.
Some anslysts have just stated that Apple is going to plaster your home with a lot of technology. If that is true, then you will have a Apple home automation system made by Apple --- thus rendering this 3rd party iphone home automation app dead on arrival.
Secondly, prices for consumer electronics go down a lot in a short time. Prices have drop so much that almost every kid's room has a phone, a computer, a tv, a vcr and a dvd player. Don't need a fancy expensive structured wiring to route your dvd's from the living room dvd player to your bedroom tv when you can buy a dvd player from walmart for $20. Same thing is going to happen to tivo's and blu-ray player.
I already use Indigo to control my home automation items. . . It may not be the slickest of apps, but it certainly gets the job done and gives the designer lots of flexibility.
And that is exactly what Apple has excelled at for it's entire history -- taking obscure, difficult technology and making it accessible to the masses. Years ago, I had a Rio Volt MP3 player and even with a whopping 32MB capacity, it was a confused mess: hard to load, hard to navigate. The iPod took that fringe concept and made MP3 players very popular.
Home automation could be so cool, easy and useful. I think Apple is probably the only company around that can make it so. Smaller companies who may have the talent to do so won't be able to achieve critical mass and other big companies have shown no ability to be so innovative.
1. My electric rate is uniform. I have one $/KWH rate on my bill.
2. The freezer would obviously stay cold 24 hrs a day, but the energy used to move the latent heat of fusion from liquid water (i.e., make new ice) would be left for nighttime operation.
3. Tankless water heaters are ridiculously expensive here. One of the ideas I was echoing was that the French set their water heaters to start when EDF set the lowest rates. And, by the way, tankless is not a "no-brainer", current water tanks are very well-insulated so heat only gets wasted if the water is not used for several days.
4. My wife does laundry almost every day. She may be OCD.
5. We don't follow Europe's lead. Otherwise, we'd all have kings!
We should follow Europe --- because they have 50+ years of experience in this area. If only we can get home owners association to allow clotheslines in the backyard.
Current home automation systems are even more ridiculously expensive than tankless water heaters.
Some anslysts have just stated that Apple is going to plaster your home with a lot of technology. If that is true, then you will have a Apple home automation system made by Apple --- thus rendering this 3rd party iphone home automation app dead on arrival.
I think that may be partially true, but I think Apple will go after the car audio and navigation system next. In conjunction with a killer GPS system by a 3rd party, having your car's audio (and videos if you have video screens) sync via secured wifi to your home's iTunes account (where your playcount and prefernces are all synced) seems to be the next move. It could also update contacts for handsfree dialing and easy GPS locations to contacts and let's passengers watch video you purchased or rented using iTS. Perhaps even reading your mail to you.
Since we know MS has already launched such a service I can't imagine that Apple isn't working on it too.
Basically the telematics industry is dominated by QNX.
You thought wrong. You're dealing with investors here. Most are wealthy because they are dull
Not sure I would have said it that way myself.... but, yes, the investors are mostly people without a fraction of a clue about applications on the iPhone.
I sense a Mac touch in the wings
iControl is a killer domain btw
So is "iRule".
I don't think Apple is going to be successful in the auto industry --- because the auto industry has very thin profit margins. Even Microsoft is going nowhere in that industry.
Basically the telematics industry is dominated by QNX.
you could be right. Besides the margins there are plenty of technical issues that need hurdling. Converting iPod playlists to register as multidisc player is nothing compared to what would be required to make it happen. But I sure hope it does happen.
iControl sounds cool. I've been wanting to get into home automation, but it's hard to know where to start. If there were a known device, such as iphone, out there that would act as a control, I think more people would get into it.
imagine remotely from your iphone to VIEW and monitor several functions of your home or OFFICE have alerts to tell you of intruders, monitor devices hooked to a HOME SERVER wirelessly, maybe even remotely access your HOME SERVER for movies, music DVR like slingblade. and stream to your iphone. streaming to the iphone would be very useful.
now that would be cool AND usefull
imagine remotely from your iphone to VIEW and monitor several functions of your home or OFFICE have alerts to tell you of intruders, monitor devices hooked to a HOME SERVER wirelessly, maybe even remotely access your HOME SERVER for movies, music DVR like slingblade.
Mmmhmmm. Some people call it a sickle, I call it a slingbox. Mmmmhhhhmmm. About four cows worth.
Seriuosly though, that would be nice. Windows Home Server can already stream your content over the web to your phone and the web interface is quite nice for a MS product. Of course, it doesn't stream live TV like SlingBox but if you are recording or DLing your video you can access it with the domain name they give you. It's a good product and it looks like Apple has no interest in competing here either.
I agree with macFanDave. IControl is a natural progression of what we should be able to do with our electronics and appliances. But you are right, at this time the user base would be very small. We'll need to get some new standards in place to make it ubquitous. I think Bonjour networked devices would be a good start. It'll take a decade before we start to see any real change, but I think it's inevitable.
I'm a little confused by this other app. Maybe it does offer some things that Google doesn't. I guess I'll have to see it first. I wonder if this is an indiavation that the 3G iPhone won't have true GPS.
So you guys are adhering to the monopoly principal? One to rule them all?
What ever happened to competition where the best app wins?
Is it just cheapness ruling here?
One thing I've been afraid of, with Apple controlling which apps get to be sold, is that we will have that very thing. One app per function. I would just hate to not see apps vying with Google, or Apple.
I want as many apps available to do that same thing as there are developers with ideas. Who knows which app will be the one you want until it's available?
Why is there this assumption that Google maps is the be all and end all? Maybe it's a really crummy app, but you don't know it, because there's nothing else available for the iPhone yet.
Besides, people are different, some people might like the way one app does something, while others hate it, and prefer the way another does it.
Imagine, for you game players out there, if there was just one game out in each category, with no new ones in sight. After all, one game should be enough, as long as the company gives an upgrade once a year, or so.