Netflix Switch – dim lights, turn on the TV, order food, and silence your phone

[daenz]

It's really great to see a company's engineers given the time and resources to do some fun tech project like this. Sometimes it seems like unless a project is about directly increasing revenue, its incredibly difficult to get buy-in from management. These projects are great for culture.

[johnhkg]

Netflix seems like a great company to work for. Recommend reading Reed Hasting's presentation on their culture: http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664

[chipperyman573]

From what I've heard Netflix has a great culture surrounding it.

[aaggarwal]

Indeed, this is a cool project. Netflix seems to have a great work culture. The button design is neat, it can be used for different projects. A button can do many things :)

[renon]

I agree, I didn't realize Netflix did side projects like this, it definitely makes the company feel personable.

[hugh4]

Is it really just a fun project? Or is Netflix trying to use this as the nose of the camel to get into the house automation business?

I've always thought house automation was cool, but a lot of trouble and likely to wind up a waste of my time and effort once I stop using it in three years because whatever standard I was using became obsolete. But if Netflix can start automating my house one bit at a time and slowly sneak up on me...

[jakobegger]

We're in the golden age of DIY home automation. Wifi-enabled microcontrollers like the particle photon are a game changer; it's never been easier to make a connected device yourself.

Using the Photon I've built a device that connects to my doorbell and sends a push notification to my mobile when someone rings. (Might be useful when you're in the back yard and don't want to miss the delivery guy)

Yes, most of the stuff is still gimmicky. But when you're tinkering, it's not necessary to turn everything into a product that will change the world or earn a billion dollars. We can just have a bit of fun, and enjoy the things we can do.

I think that hackerspaces might be todays equivalent to the homebrew computer clubs where enthusiasts dabbled with early home computers...

[kefka]

I agree and disagree with you at the same time. IoT, especially with things like the Photon and ESP8266 are major game changers. However, the idea of a baked-in WiFi stack with little/no way to update protocol bugs is rather scary proposition. And I'm also against giving IoT devices a directly routable IP address, even if they are behind a NAT.

I'm looking more at things like the nRF24L01+ board combined with MySensors, which seems to be rather mature. It is a self-healing mesh network with encryption and signing support. And I can get all the data from the net mesh with a serial gateway (inputs/outputs via USB serial). I can connect that gateway to a Linux machine running Node-red and use the MySensors encoder/decoder.

Hook up a relay and you can toggle electronics on and off, or you can make a manual high voltage switch using a servo and 4 contact switches. I'm also using PIR for occupancy along with temp sensors for zone acquisition. I'm looking at developing my own thermostat as well to see if I have the chops..

[SEJeff]

FYI for the DIYers, there is a little project that I contribute to on the side for fun. I also use it to do things just like the title suggests:

https://home-assistant.io/

[jon-wood]

That looks fantastic, I've been hunting for a home automation controller with a modern architecture for ages, and I think you've just pointed it out.

[mattbettinson]

Looks cool! One question - Why android switches on an iphone app? Is it just for the screenshot?

[rrrx3]

This is really cool, thanks for sharing.

[lamby]

Speaking of which, do food APIs exist? I've often been tempted to make a generic pizza API that — by limiting options — will deliver a pizza to almost any address via Just-Eat or whatever is local to you.

[qq66]

In 2005, my friends Dave and Adam built a pizza button in our dorm, it actually used the modem to send a fax to a local pizza place because that's all they had. Pushing the button ordered a cheese, but there were two auxiliary buttons underneath to select a topping via a Huffman code. (0 for pepperoni, 10 for sausage, 110 for anchovy, etc.)

I presume there are better APIs today :)

[mulander]

There was this old Perl script for ordering Pizza at Domino's but I don't think it used an API (web scraping if I recall correctly).

http://www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/pizzaparty/

https://github.com/coryarcangel/Pizza-Party-0.1.b

[pkfrank]

Push for Pizza? https://www.pushforpizza.com/

[ykguler]

Haven't really seen any food api's. It would be cool if it did exist though.. But I don't think Just-Eat like services will bite since you'll be driving traffic away from their website..

[dannymick]

Gives new meaning to Netflix & Chill.

[oskob]

This can already be achieved with Flic: http://flic.io Flic is a Bluetooth button which uses your smartphone to communicate with smart electronics. If you have Philips Hue or LIFX smart lights and a Logitech Harmony Hub (for IR), this would work straight out of the box! (Disclaimer: I am associated with Flic)

[joezydeco]

But you're not shipping Flic yet, are you?

[StavrosK]

Does that require a phone nearby at all times?

[iraldir]

Nice, seems like a cool startup.

[Agathos]

> order food, and silence your phone

Really? Around me, delivery drivers have pretty much given up on doorbells. If your phone is silent you may not get your food.

[johnmaguire2013]

In my city, it's fairly uncommon for any delivery person (pizza or shipping) to ring the doorbell, but it's quite likely they'll knock.

Lots of delivery drivers do call phones, but I see that happening more often when there are many places you could be (e.g. ordered to work, but are they going to come find you at your chair?)

[robwilliams]

Delivery drivers don't use doorbells where you live? What do they do, call you instead? That seems odd to me, even Fedex and UPS ring my doorbell when dropping off a package.

[inopinatus]

Can only be called a Chill Switch.

[dreeves]

Others have mentioned the Flic and Amazon's Dash buttons. Here's the one I'm most excited about, which should (when they have an IFTTT channel) make things like the Netflix Switch doable for non-nerds: http://www.dropletlife.com/

[dmritard96]

A number of years ago I made a project that let me do this for ESPN using IR (Ken Sherrifs awesome library) and x10 units. Rather than a physical button I just had a shortcut on my phones home screen.

https://github.com/dandroid88/webmote

[Animats]

It would be cooler, easier, and would yield better battery life to reprogram an Amazon Dash Button [1] to do this. Most Samsung TVs can be controlled from the network side, as well as with an IR remote.[2]

Of course, the Netflix button just brings up power and puts you at the Netflix menu. At that point, you need another device to tell Netflix what you want. Authorized Netflix-compatible TVs already have a Netflix button.

So the logical thing is to have something listening to the TV's state to dim the lights, close curtains, and such. There are home theater accessories for that.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=10667898011 [2] http://www.gemote.org/

[gregmac]

This all sounds great -- until, for example, you are trying to eat a snack while also watching TV. Or one of a dozen other things where the automation gets in the way. Or, equally worse -- it's not perfect. Sometimes the lights don't change, sometimes there is a delay (so user presses the button multiple times) and suddenly everything catches up and curtains are closing and opening and closing and opening..

Any of these cause WAF to go to zero, at which point, you rip it all out.

So many times when it comes to home automation, otherwise rational software developers forget what people actually want to do, and skip to what the technology makes possible but doesn't actually make anything easier.

[semi-extrinsic]

There's HDMI CEC which could let you do that even better: the TV remote could have a "cinema" button that sent the signal over CEC to an RPi which controls the lights and curtains.

[harryf]

Step 15: Spend 2 hours browsing for something to watch

[grouma]

Reminds me of something I built: http://garyroumanis.com/2015/03/15/TVRemote-app/

[dschep]

The silence your phone step[1] is much easier if you use something like Tasker[2].

[1] http://makeit.netflix.com/the-switch/do-more#silence-your-de... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....

[joeevans1000]

My guess is that this was the result of an internal hackathon. Makes me think working at Netflix could be fun.

[PascLeRasc]

Yeah, they've had other hackathons before with good results: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/03/10/a-netflix-hack-day-pro...

[yoda_sl]

Most likely the initial prototype was done during an hacktaton... I remember many years back someone that came up with a small TV on a toaster so we could say you can watch Netflix on your toaster, later on that toaster made it into a T-Shirt for the next hackaton!

[chrissnell]

Any ideas what they might be using to mill the wooden enclosure? I have a few projects that need enclosures and it's been a few years since I looked but the CNC mills were still thousands of dollars.

[DannyBee]

Why do you believe that wooden enclosure needs a CNC mill?

It requires a few miter cuts and a good chamfer bit.

That's it.

Heck, you could do it with all handtools pretty darn quickly.

(If for some reason, you really want to CNC mill it, and are in the bay area, contact me and i'll mill it on my CNC mill for you)

[reportingsjr]

You could just use regular woodworking tools to get it done.

If you really want to CNC mill something like that then maybe look at the inventables x carve.[0] I got to use a shapeoko for a while which was the previous inventables CNC and it was pretty OK.

I would highly recommend looking in your area for a hackerspace that may have tools like these.

[0] https://www.inventables.com/technologies/x-carve

[barrecan]

CNC would be one of the better routes. Like you mentioned, the cost is a barrier. Luckily you can rent CNC time at some hardware stores, university wood shops and some local hacker-spaces. http://100kgarages.com/ can locate you a CNC and answer any questions you may have.

[mpg33]

"Get rid of all distractions, to be distracted."

[dpieri]

Like the Amazon Dash Button, this is a great reminder of how hardware is still useful in the age of touchscreen interfaces.