Yesterday, one of the younger electricians was telling me about the beauty of the new alarm systems he installs.
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Yesterday, one of the younger electricians was telling me about the beauty of the new alarm systems he installs. While acknowledging the quality of my current one, he said, "It uses a SIM card and calls you. The new ones are 4G or Wi-Fi and use the cloud, so notifications go straight to your smartphone, it's not calling anymore."
I asked him, "And what if the cloud stops working? Why should I have to depend on the company’s cloud to receive alerts from my alarm? My alarm is 10 years old and works perfectly. Can you say with certainty that the company’s cloud will still be effective 10 years from now?"
He looked puzzled for a moment, then admitted he had never thought about it.
The real problem is that people do not realize what this means until things actually happen.
@stefano Sure does seem like all this technology going wrong in unprecedented ways is because this seems to be the first time where we expanded technology this aggressively and just chucked the old system that could easily have been an emergency backup into a landfill.
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@stefano and he didnt say to buy a new one?
@antdude no, he suggested to keep this one. Honest guy.
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@stefano Isn’t it a matter of network infrastructure reliability and ubiquitousness more than the tech itself?
One could have said the same about cell phone networks when they first appeared.
Your data transits regardless via a network service provider…?
@tmstamp it's ok if it's using 4g instead of calling.
It's not ok if it needs to pass through the producer's cloud server to send me a notification. -
Yesterday, one of the younger electricians was telling me about the beauty of the new alarm systems he installs. While acknowledging the quality of my current one, he said, "It uses a SIM card and calls you. The new ones are 4G or Wi-Fi and use the cloud, so notifications go straight to your smartphone, it's not calling anymore."
I asked him, "And what if the cloud stops working? Why should I have to depend on the company’s cloud to receive alerts from my alarm? My alarm is 10 years old and works perfectly. Can you say with certainty that the company’s cloud will still be effective 10 years from now?"
He looked puzzled for a moment, then admitted he had never thought about it.
The real problem is that people do not realize what this means until things actually happen.
@stefano We're having a new kitchen, to replace one that's around 40 years old. The salesman was trying to sell us all sorts of gizmos. Our response to most was:
* Will the server still be working in 40 years time when this new kitchen wears out?
And even for things that didn't need servers
* Isn't that just another complicated gadget to break down? - will the spare parts still be available in 40 years time?
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Yesterday, one of the younger electricians was telling me about the beauty of the new alarm systems he installs. While acknowledging the quality of my current one, he said, "It uses a SIM card and calls you. The new ones are 4G or Wi-Fi and use the cloud, so notifications go straight to your smartphone, it's not calling anymore."
I asked him, "And what if the cloud stops working? Why should I have to depend on the company’s cloud to receive alerts from my alarm? My alarm is 10 years old and works perfectly. Can you say with certainty that the company’s cloud will still be effective 10 years from now?"
He looked puzzled for a moment, then admitted he had never thought about it.
The real problem is that people do not realize what this means until things actually happen.
@stefano SIM cards ain't perfect too. I remember you the case of the alarms of failure on the Italian railroad system: when a real failure happened no alarm was signaled.
People at RFI forgot to pay the annual subscription to the service for the SIMs, and they ended disabled. -
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@hackbyte @stefano @s1m0n4 @theolodian
Done it with an RS232 cable, an old Nokia and VB6 decades ago.I think some modules use like old modem AT commands.
EDIT
Modules have TTL Serial I/O & 5V on on DIL SOM socket and aerial connector. A small scrap of stripboard and cheap PIC running a simple C, JAL or Basic program can be done in a day or two. Arduino / ESP and Home Assistant is more complication than needed unless you want more than entry switches & movement sensors. WiFi is vulnerable.@raymaccarthy @hackbyte @stefano @s1m0n4 I don’t know how to code. I guess that I could try your approach by using AI, but using HA seems much more likely to work for me.
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@stefano We're having a new kitchen, to replace one that's around 40 years old. The salesman was trying to sell us all sorts of gizmos. Our response to most was:
* Will the server still be working in 40 years time when this new kitchen wears out?
And even for things that didn't need servers
* Isn't that just another complicated gadget to break down? - will the spare parts still be available in 40 years time?
@TimWardCam @stefano You can't count on spare parts over 40 years no matter what it is. We have that problem with our old Wolf range. Sub-Zero doesn't have the parts for older models. If someone knows where I can get a toggle switch for a 35-year-old Oster blender, I'd like to know.
But I do adhere to the general principle of if it needs an app and/or wifi, it is not allowed in my kitchen.
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Yesterday, one of the younger electricians was telling me about the beauty of the new alarm systems he installs. While acknowledging the quality of my current one, he said, "It uses a SIM card and calls you. The new ones are 4G or Wi-Fi and use the cloud, so notifications go straight to your smartphone, it's not calling anymore."
I asked him, "And what if the cloud stops working? Why should I have to depend on the company’s cloud to receive alerts from my alarm? My alarm is 10 years old and works perfectly. Can you say with certainty that the company’s cloud will still be effective 10 years from now?"
He looked puzzled for a moment, then admitted he had never thought about it.
The real problem is that people do not realize what this means until things actually happen.
@stefano The lifts in my building were out of commission for a day or two when the company that owned them suddenly realised, right *after* the phone company had switched off the 3G network in favour of 5G, that the lifts' alarm systems relied on 3G....
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@TimWardCam @stefano You can't count on spare parts over 40 years no matter what it is. We have that problem with our old Wolf range. Sub-Zero doesn't have the parts for older models. If someone knows where I can get a toggle switch for a 35-year-old Oster blender, I'd like to know.
But I do adhere to the general principle of if it needs an app and/or wifi, it is not allowed in my kitchen.
@maccruiskeen @stefano Ah, not necessarily like-for-like spare parts, but if all that's needed to fix the kitchen is carpentry and glue and screwdriver that doesn't always matter too much.
Yes, appliances mostly don't last that long any more, unlike the built-like-a-tank gas stove that my grandma had.
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@raymaccarthy @hackbyte @stefano @s1m0n4 I don’t know how to code. I guess that I could try your approach by using AI, but using HA seems much more likely to work for me.
@theolodian Maybe you can look for some espressif ESP32-C6 DevKit and flash it with esphome right from your home-assistant as a first step .. and then explore some few basic configurations from the examples in the esphome community.
Instead of actually programming your esphome image, you primarily configure it to behave in some wanted way... Like blinking a LED, make it a h-a controllable RGB led ... and later on communicating with stuff you connect to the board. (Like WS2812 controllabe RGB Led strips and similar).
It won't be a ideal start into IoT stuff, but it's at least a pretty low level one.
(I personally got into esphome on h-a because my ceiling fand controller burned out within days after arrival and playing around with it ... instead of sending it back for a replacement, i bought a SonOff iFan-04, which is a ready built fan controller based on a ESP32 ... all i needed to get it working in h-a was, connecting 3 wires to a serial-usb adapter, opening esphome in the h-a webinterface, go do the web-flasher and having a browser with serial support (sadly only chrome/chromium based do that).
I then had the device live on my wlan, downloaded a ready build config file for the ifan controller, twiddlet a bit with some parameters (beep duration, hig-power-boost-time when starting in lowest power mode and so on) and sent the automatically compiled firmare OTA (over the air, or wlan in that case) to the controller..
There are lots of resources out there to get a simple project started and get a feel for some basics ... who knows where that journey might end?
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@raymaccarthy @hackbyte @stefano @s1m0n4 I don’t know how to code. I guess that I could try your approach by using AI, but using HA seems much more likely to work for me.
@theolodian @hackbyte @stefano @s1m0n4
No, AI only works when the code is copies (stolen) from a website by the company building it and then needs check by an expert anyway.
Don't add SMS, just dumb relay wiring if you can't program.
One relay is changeover and powered on by tamper wires (all sensors in series) & when of the NC contact powers the double pole siren relay. Across that are all the open sensor contacts in parallel.
The extra pol on the siren relay holds it on.
Key operated on/off. -
@stefano many telcos have migrated their SMS infrastructure to the cloud as well.
@bewo001 @stefano that's not really the point here. It's less "cloud is bad" and more "relying on a specific company's infrastructure is bad". If the alarm system requires that the company you bought it from stay in business to work, then it doesn't matter if they host on AWS, Azure, or a Dell under Dave's desk.
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Yesterday, one of the younger electricians was telling me about the beauty of the new alarm systems he installs. While acknowledging the quality of my current one, he said, "It uses a SIM card and calls you. The new ones are 4G or Wi-Fi and use the cloud, so notifications go straight to your smartphone, it's not calling anymore."
I asked him, "And what if the cloud stops working? Why should I have to depend on the company’s cloud to receive alerts from my alarm? My alarm is 10 years old and works perfectly. Can you say with certainty that the company’s cloud will still be effective 10 years from now?"
He looked puzzled for a moment, then admitted he had never thought about it.
The real problem is that people do not realize what this means until things actually happen.
@stefano "You always live your life, never thinking of the future" as the band Yes once sang.
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Yesterday, one of the younger electricians was telling me about the beauty of the new alarm systems he installs. While acknowledging the quality of my current one, he said, "It uses a SIM card and calls you. The new ones are 4G or Wi-Fi and use the cloud, so notifications go straight to your smartphone, it's not calling anymore."
I asked him, "And what if the cloud stops working? Why should I have to depend on the company’s cloud to receive alerts from my alarm? My alarm is 10 years old and works perfectly. Can you say with certainty that the company’s cloud will still be effective 10 years from now?"
He looked puzzled for a moment, then admitted he had never thought about it.
The real problem is that people do not realize what this means until things actually happen.
@stefano
The problem is that people don't realise that that cloud being owned by a private company is a problem.
We need our digital infrastructure to be a common (just like our physical infrastructure, education and journalism, healthcare, and security guard). We need our society to be social. -
@stefano
The problem is that people don't realise that that cloud being owned by a private company is a problem.
We need our digital infrastructure to be a common (just like our physical infrastructure, education and journalism, healthcare, and security guard). We need our society to be social.@elfburgerman @stefano and also we need our devices to be designed to work right away and self sustained.
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@stefano We should stop calling cloud-dependent devices "smart" (smart thermostat, smart doorbell, smart oven, ...).
If the intelligence is not in the box, they're just "puppet" devices. -
Yesterday, one of the younger electricians was telling me about the beauty of the new alarm systems he installs. While acknowledging the quality of my current one, he said, "It uses a SIM card and calls you. The new ones are 4G or Wi-Fi and use the cloud, so notifications go straight to your smartphone, it's not calling anymore."
I asked him, "And what if the cloud stops working? Why should I have to depend on the company’s cloud to receive alerts from my alarm? My alarm is 10 years old and works perfectly. Can you say with certainty that the company’s cloud will still be effective 10 years from now?"
He looked puzzled for a moment, then admitted he had never thought about it.
The real problem is that people do not realize what this means until things actually happen.
@stefano I buy white goods—household appliances like freezers, washing machines, central heating—with an expectation that they will work without upgrades for 20 years. I have yet to buy a piece of computing hardware with an expectation that it will work for more than 7 years. (And this is why I refuse to have "smart" gas or electricity meters installed.)
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@stefano I buy white goods—household appliances like freezers, washing machines, central heating—with an expectation that they will work without upgrades for 20 years. I have yet to buy a piece of computing hardware with an expectation that it will work for more than 7 years. (And this is why I refuse to have "smart" gas or electricity meters installed.)
