How is this getting investor money, and how are consumers seeing this as something worth paying for?
It's just not hard to flip the light switch when you leave the room, and you don't need an all-seeing eye uploading everything that happens in your house to a massive corporation.
I can't believe this is a feature that gets the hype that it does. It's almost as cliche as the example of making a dinner reservation.
I live in a 1700sqft space - not small, but not large. I have ~15 separate banks of overhead lights that were built into my builder grade condo when I bought it, and probably 20 light fixtures (lamps, accent lights, etc) I've added myself. If you are even remotely interested in design, decor or lighting it's easy to end up with a similar number of lights in an average sized space. When I walk through the door, the scene sets itself perfectly based on the time of day. If I didn't have that automation, I'd probably end up turning on the nearest 1-2 lights out of convenience. It's a huge quality of life improvement. Today it takes some up front effort to get it set up, but it's getting easier and easier and more people will realize the benefit.
I think their point is that a simple infra red sensor like outdoor motion detector lights will do what you need. There's zero need for a camera to do this. Massive, massive overkill.
There's a fairly large and thriving market in zigbee and/or zwave based "human presence" sensors which can serve dual duty as motion detection via infrared and also using very basic radar, for both turning on/off lights and also to provide data to a DIY security or automation system in Home Assistant.
There have been significant price drops in small modules for short range, rudimentary V-band (60 GHz) radar to do this sort of thing, which companies can built into their consumer-priced product.
I think some of the better ones are a little bit too power hungry to be entirely wireless on battery, and have a USB-C port in their rear, you're meant to plug it in persistently to a small USB charger and tuck the cable away somewhere.
> There's zero need for a camera to do this.
That's like saying that you don't need a whole PC to do local AI inference because it can run entirely on GPU. The point is that the lights example is just the beginning.
Fair, I won't comment on whether or not a camera adds any value to this use case specifically. I can imagine a lot of other ways that a camera could be useful. Today I only plug in a google home camera when I'm gone for extended periods of time (e.g., on vacation) because my partner and I don't want a camera pointing into our living space at all times.
This seems to be the first instance I can think of where a vendor is trying to take a middle road of extracting more value from a camera while also having a more conservative view on privacy. We'll need to see exactly what that means in practice, but I'm glad someone is finally broaching the question.
This sounds very cool. I have home assistant and have fiddled around with presence detection but I feel like its pretty niche and preference dependent. My gf did not like it in the bathroom and getting the timing to work perfectly required a ton of fiddling. Maybe apple will get it right but I don’t think their core customers care about home automation to this degree.
I have three lights in the living room that I toggle just before sunset manually with a switch. Instead of three separate switches, my electrician made it so that one switch turns on all three lights at the same time.
I really don't see it as a "huge quality of life improvement" to not have to walk to the light switch. I typically combine it with a trip to the kitchen to grab some water or a snack.
SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
How is this getting investor money, and how are consumers seeing this as something worth paying for?
It's just not hard to flip the light switch when you leave the room, and you don't need an all-seeing eye uploading everything that happens in your house to a massive corporation.
I can't believe this is a feature that gets the hype that it does. It's almost as cliche as the example of making a dinner reservation.
kbos87 · · focus · HN ↗
esikich · · focus · HN ↗
systoll · · focus · HN ↗
walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
There have been significant price drops in small modules for short range, rudimentary V-band (60 GHz) radar to do this sort of thing, which companies can built into their consumer-priced product.
I think some of the better ones are a little bit too power hungry to be entirely wireless on battery, and have a USB-C port in their rear, you're meant to plug it in persistently to a small USB charger and tuck the cable away somewhere.
garbagewoman · · focus · HN ↗
esikich · · focus · HN ↗
nickthegreek · · focus · HN ↗
lostmsu · · focus · HN ↗
That's like saying that you don't need a whole PC to do local AI inference because it can run entirely on GPU. The point is that the lights example is just the beginning.
kbos87 · · focus · HN ↗
This seems to be the first instance I can think of where a vendor is trying to take a middle road of extracting more value from a camera while also having a more conservative view on privacy. We'll need to see exactly what that means in practice, but I'm glad someone is finally broaching the question.
ishtanbul · · focus · HN ↗
kbos87 · · focus · HN ↗
artisinal · · focus · HN ↗
I really don't see it as a "huge quality of life improvement" to not have to walk to the light switch. I typically combine it with a trip to the kitchen to grab some water or a snack.
kbos87 · · focus · HN ↗
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