this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Ah the internet of infected things. Everything a mash up of open and closed source, old and new, then abandoned by the manufacturer after a few years for the next shiny.
Probably Linux based, wait to be taken over by a few botnets...
What is needed is an open, standardized hardware platform. You should be about to flash on the IoT OS of your choice that will be kept up to date.
You mean like KNX?
Which we have for 3 decades now, is totally offline if needed and can by design not leak data without the user noticing, is available both wired an non-wired, is compatible across hundreds of manufacturers and even has some open source projects, is totally backwards compatible and does not require a fancy "central component" that might stop the whole system functioning?
Seriously: The whole smart home world is a scam. 90% of all products that are new and fancy are nothing more than "voice/mobile remotes" and not truely intelligent. They are used because people refuse to do their homework in terms of smarthome.
There is a number of options, but not all hardware is flashable and some that is can be work.
What I want is autodisoverable hardware open to be flashed by owners, by law. I want it for all devices to be honest!
I understand your intentions, but there question is why add this layer of complexity. A switch that is a switch and switches everything I want no matter what because it is forced by the common standard to do so and can not send any data ever is a good switch.
And tbh, while I am an absolute advocate for OSS I rather have a switch that is not depending on a possibly abandoned OSS project (been through that) - hardware in this field has incredibly long lifetime, much longer than almost all OSS projects (remember, EIB is older than Linux!) and does it's complete job from day one. There is no evolution in some hardware in this field and all evolution that did happened did not happen hardware side but communication wise - where we are also hardware limited. It is therefore much more important to define a common standard for communication - which we have - than have flashable components (exceptions apply,sure). We need to force legislation to get a common standard of communication or at least mandatory offline gateway availability to prevent thousands of components going to waste in a few years.
It does not help your cause when you can flash the hardware but the hardware is still talking to the wrong, proprietary communication channels.
I want hardware platforms standardized and autodiscoverable. These things need to get updates after the manufacturer ceases to care. Also, these hardware manufacturers can be terrible at software. It should be like PCs. I think that is end point anyway. It's just unmaintainable any other way, even if these are intended to be e-waste after only a few years.
Could you elaborate on how the room presence and positioning in rooms is done? Would love to have that.
Regular presence detectors (MDT 4 zone presence detectors, 120€ each) for the bigger rooms with some additional single zone detectors( mostly MDT as well around 75€) for some special applications (e.g. Sofa). Used those as well for some really small rooms (loo,etc.)
For the home office rooms and general presence in the bedrooms we used Steinel True Presence (around 300€ but includes air quality sensors - in the end they aren't much more expensive if you plan on measuring air quality there anyway). They are dumb in terms of positioning in the room but superior for detecting people who do not move for a long time.
In addition to these I have normal KNX motion detectors(mostly MDT for about 90€) for some areas (as mentioned elsewhere: Next to the bed at ground level to detect your motion when you get up at night and switch on the light with 5% red so the wife does not wake up)
In terms of how it works:
Presence detectors (excluding the Steinel) are basically pimped infrared motion detectors. They detect your signature against the background and unlike motion detectors kind of remember your signature for a while. Each one has one or more "zones" it can detect you in. The "minis" mentioned above have one, the 4 zone ones have,well,four which are aimed at 45,135,225,315 degrees in case of the MDTs. This allows the detector to basically differentiate between someone being "in my right upper corner", "in my left lower corner" etc. (Especially as detection ranges can be varied between zones but also for various applications and even day/night mode).
With a bit of clever positioning e.g. my presence detector in the kitchen has four zones: at the stovetop, workspace one and workspace two and "entry". The detector sits on the ceiling right where these zones meet (which is not the middle of the room in this case!)
If anyone registers a presence the normal light goes on (when it's dark enough). If you go into workspace one (where most cutting is done) the under-kitchen-cabinet light goes on. The sensitivity for that is much smaller as I don't want it to go on if you just pass through, though. Additionally the sensitivity of the "entry" is smaller as I don't want the light to go on if someone just passed the kitchen in the hallway.
The Steinel works a bit different as it is radar based and has only one zone, but is therefore able to recognise ones breathing movements/minimal movement while e.g. working. Otherwise it works the same.
The additional ones I use are there to recognise people better, e.g. my living room is fairly big and I want the system to specifically recognise people being on the sofa so the mini looks straight down only - while the big 4 zone detector is only able to see if people are "in the direction of the sofa".
Hope that describes it somewhat, let me know if you have any questions!