I think it is the consumer IoT space which struggles for usefulness. In industry, IoT allows agriculture to use less water and get more yield, as well as monitoring civil infrastructure (roads, watermains, bridges, etc).
Consumer IoT is too expensive, not useless. Everything it can't do is a metric of the fact that computing on that scale actually isn't cheap enough.
Light control for example: people don't want to spend the $thousands it would cost to make it practical (i.e. every light in your house control) when the most common use-case it would solve is leaving your house and going "oh, I left the lights on - but click!". That's worth maybe $10 a light to me, not $70. Which in turn implies the wi-fi, compute and power has to cost cents, not dollars in the product.
Bathroom scales that log your weight to your health app automatically.
Lights that dim when the movie starts.
A front door that unlocks when you approach.
None of these are necessary, obviously, but they offer little conveniences. An iKettle is pushing it a little, but honestly, I'd quite like to receive a tap on my wrist when the kettle has finished or my toast has popped up.
There's plenty of utility to be had from IoT devices (although you're right about security being a concern) however, like remote controls and robotic vacuums, initially they are being dismissed as tools for the lazy. Soon I suspect they'll be part of everyone's lives.
All of these things sound like solutions that will take me a lot longer to set up than they will save me in time. A few years ago I messed about with "smart" lighting, and it turns out that all of it just unimaginably annoying. All of these "easy" devices are going to have horrific security, some day there's going to be articles about a doorknob botnet or exploits running on shovels.
I do not deny that there might be some useful applications for "IoT", but what I have heard / read about so far sounds mostly like solutions desperately looking for problems so everyone can ride the hype train.
Given the numerous security issues we have seen on the Internet so far, I have serious doubts about hooking up everyday objects or critical infrastructure to the Internet just for the sake of a little convenience.
I suppose a camera in a fridge would be handy, so you could have a peek at whether you were out of milk.
I believe there was a similar product, but you had to swipe product barcodes, to maintain a database. But I'm not the kind of person who keeps a database of the contents of my fridge, which might be why I'm the kind of person who forgets to buy milk.
My heuristic for coming up with that idea - when's the last time I called home, and ask someone to perform a simple task. Pet food dispensers might be another one. I guess a remote kill switch for irons, ovens, etc could be useful.
And then someone prevents you from running said oven until you pay them a ransom.
(Or just starts turning on peoples irons at random, if it can turn them on as well)
I personally think the security implications outweigh the potential benefits for most IoT devices. It's too bad, because the potential benefits are generally nice.
(And the other side is: I have no desire to "buy" a device that can have features remotely removed. It's why I ditched Windows, it's why I won't ever buy a Tesla or an iPhone, it's why I don't have any recent game consoles. And most IoT devices fall into this category. Among other reasons, it creates a perverse incentive for a company to break (intentionally or unintentionally) older models (or allow them to fall into disrepair) so that people will upgrade to this year's model.)
pedalpete|10 years ago
cptnbob|10 years ago
TheOtherHobbes|10 years ago
I get some use out of remote heating control. My hours are variable, so a dumb timer isn't ideal.
Lighting and the rest I have no interest in.
Useful consumer IoT is going to have to wait for useful consumer robotics, and that's 10-20 years away.
XorNot|10 years ago
Light control for example: people don't want to spend the $thousands it would cost to make it practical (i.e. every light in your house control) when the most common use-case it would solve is leaving your house and going "oh, I left the lights on - but click!". That's worth maybe $10 a light to me, not $70. Which in turn implies the wi-fi, compute and power has to cost cents, not dollars in the product.
acjohnson55|10 years ago
kaolinite|10 years ago
Lights that dim when the movie starts.
A front door that unlocks when you approach.
None of these are necessary, obviously, but they offer little conveniences. An iKettle is pushing it a little, but honestly, I'd quite like to receive a tap on my wrist when the kettle has finished or my toast has popped up.
There's plenty of utility to be had from IoT devices (although you're right about security being a concern) however, like remote controls and robotic vacuums, initially they are being dismissed as tools for the lazy. Soon I suspect they'll be part of everyone's lives.
steckerbrett|10 years ago
krylon|10 years ago
Mmmh, what could possibly go wrong with that?
I do not deny that there might be some useful applications for "IoT", but what I have heard / read about so far sounds mostly like solutions desperately looking for problems so everyone can ride the hype train.
Given the numerous security issues we have seen on the Internet so far, I have serious doubts about hooking up everyday objects or critical infrastructure to the Internet just for the sake of a little convenience.
aaron695|10 years ago
How does it know you want the lights dimmed? What if someone in the room is reading? This would be pretty high level AI.
>A front door that unlocks when you approach.
It has to know if you'll enter the house. What if you don't?
It could lock it again, but then what if someone else left the house assuming it was unlocked. Now they could be locked out.
These are hard problems to solve and more AI related.
wisty|10 years ago
I believe there was a similar product, but you had to swipe product barcodes, to maintain a database. But I'm not the kind of person who keeps a database of the contents of my fridge, which might be why I'm the kind of person who forgets to buy milk.
My heuristic for coming up with that idea - when's the last time I called home, and ask someone to perform a simple task. Pet food dispensers might be another one. I guess a remote kill switch for irons, ovens, etc could be useful.
TheLoneWolfling|10 years ago
(Or just starts turning on peoples irons at random, if it can turn them on as well)
I personally think the security implications outweigh the potential benefits for most IoT devices. It's too bad, because the potential benefits are generally nice.
(And the other side is: I have no desire to "buy" a device that can have features remotely removed. It's why I ditched Windows, it's why I won't ever buy a Tesla or an iPhone, it's why I don't have any recent game consoles. And most IoT devices fall into this category. Among other reasons, it creates a perverse incentive for a company to break (intentionally or unintentionally) older models (or allow them to fall into disrepair) so that people will upgrade to this year's model.)