back to article Back to the Future: the internet of things as imagined in 1985

There's a peculiar thing going on at the Internet of Things World 2015 conference this week. As the buzz around this nebulous concept has reached fever pitch, it seems that dozens of tinkering dads across the US have looked up from their newspaper, exclaimed "my time has come!" rushed down to the basement, and pulled out the …

  1. Mark 85

    IoT is questionable...

    Maybe not right now since it's in it's infancy. I'm not a Ludidite but I can visualize what will happen. Couple "A" buy a new house with all new, built-in IoT.. appliances, power, everything imaginable. They get a pile of manuals and have to have it set up with a wifi router (maybe 2 or 3 even for coverage). What happens when the IoT things start breaking? Or dying? Or they need new router(s)? Will they still have the documents? Will things be able to be repaired or replaced without having rip open walls, toss major appliances?

    Some years down the road, couple "A" sells their house to couple "B". Did couple "A" keep all the manuals on the equipment? Do they even remember what they have? Couple "B" moves in... new router(s)? Re-set everything up?

    Maybe by the time these things become as ubiquitous as a ceiling light, it may not be a problem. But having bought a 30 year old house, I'm finding problems getting regular things serviced. Companies out of business and no replacement parts, or newer models and the old ones are now junk. What was 'in code" isn't anymore. Will we be creating problems or solving them with IoT?

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: IoT is questionable...

      I don't see that as a problem. Rarely does stuff disappear entirely and if you're that bothered you do just replace it. If you bought your house because it has fancy-garage-door-opener-X, then you'll make sure you know how to work it or have the manuals and support for it, etc. If you bought your house and it just happened to have it, it's no big deal to replace it if it breaks.

      There are much bigger things you can buy a house for and then not realise how they are operated. Swimming pools, hot tubs, fancy showers, all big-ticket items. A few old CCTV cameras or a couple of access control switches aren't going to figure on the radar and, again, are easily replaced or upgraded.

      More importantly is just how much of that stuff is worthless junk. Do you really need to change your kitchen lighting through a potential 16 million colours using RGB LED strips? No. Do you really need to have smartphone-controlled end-of-bed rising TVs? No.

      My house is 80 years old. The boiler is standard, the mains is standard, the bathroom is standard, etc. Houses are updated by their owners, it's inevitable. What was a mess of weeds and a falling-down shed is now a pottery studio with kiln and potter's wheel, lighting, tool storage, wifi, etc. It's how it works (and if you think you have a hard time getting things serviced - find someone who can service an electric kiln that they didn't personally fit!).

      The next guy is either going to a) pay for that because he knows exactly what it is and wants that, b) not get the option because we'll take it with us or c) not figure it into his pricing and thus not care if he loses the manual or has to re-run the cable to fit his standard garden tools. The CCTV, access control, etc. I've put in? It'll either go with me, or fall into disuse when I move out. If the next guy wants CCTV, access control etc. he's not going to WANT my control box talking out to the Internet anyway - he'll tie his own into the existing fittings.

      Standards are nice but inevitably obsolete themselves. Remember when X10 was the ONLY way to wire your house for automation? It was prohibitively expensive, however - still is. So the £10 boxes and cheap remote took over with their non-standard stuff because they're so cheap that if they break you just buy another and wire it in.

      The IoT concept is really "tech is so cheap, we get too much stuff for free when we buy a cheap chip, and we can afford to put them into anything and everything". As such, the problem solves itself quite quickly. Nobody's going to care about the previous resident's equipment because it'll be so common that you'll just re-buy or bring your own stuff that you know how it works.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: IoT is questionable...

        "My house is 80 years old. The boiler is standard, the mains is standard, the bathroom is standard, etc."

        Define "standard". In the UK the electricity wiring originally would have been rubber which perished. Power plugs would have been 5 amp and possibly 15amp round pins. Even rewiring to the standards of 40 years ago would not meet modern standards for the diameter of earth conductors in cables or straps. An electrician apparently won't give you a certificate with a new RCD fuse box because they don't know your house's wiring standard.

        If you apply for regulatory approval to make a small change to the house - you are likely to find you will be forced to make an unrelated major upgrade to fit a modern "efficient" boiler.

        I can't even buy new toilet seats to match the once standard "Primrose" and "Rose" colours of the two perfectly functional bathroom suites.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: IoT is questionable...

          "In the UK the electricity wiring originally would have been rubber which perished."

          And as a reminder of that, a burning rubber smell in my kitchen and occasional breaker pops were eventually traced to a rubber cable which was left connected in the 1960s and had been quietly burning itself away ever since.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: IoT is questionable...

      UK garden fence panels can still be replaced by standard ones that fit the 6' (1.8m) gap between the concrete posts. An innovative recent design is metal panels with a plastic coating - with a spacing of 7 feet. Was that size chosen to minimise having to dig out existing concrete fence posts? Supposedly "maintenance free" - the small print says the guarantee is void if the panels are not maintained as instructed.

  2. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Saw hole, stuff in IoT, fill gaps with silicone

    I'd like to see big names come out with standards for modular and easily replaceable devices. Putting Cat6 in a house means drilling holes and crawling in spaces so tight that it's best to bring a small shovel or axe. Why do houses still not have conduits for easily snaking new low voltage wiring? How about getting the IoT into your car? Or maybe upgrade that Bose to something that doesn't sound like an old AM radio tabletop? That requires sawing, hammering, some complicated fiberglass work, electronic signal adaptors, rewiring, and not minding that there will be inoperative digital gadgets everywhere. What happened to CAN bus standards, line audio level standards, and DIN size units?

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Saw hole, stuff in IoT, fill gaps with silicone

      "Putting Cat6 in a house means drilling holes and crawling in spaces so tight that it's best to bring a small shovel or axe. Why do houses still not have conduits for easily snaking new low voltage wiring?"

      Because "building companies" build down to the lowest figure possible and that costs extra.

      It's not uncommon to find they've cut corners on mandatory stuff like inner-outer wall ties, let along anything optional (I know of 3 houses which were condemned and had to be demolished because the walls weren't secured properly and risked blowing out in a gale)

  3. Christian Berger

    actual IoT would require custom solutions

    Of course you can just use apps as remotes, but what do you gain there? If you want those systems to be of any use they need to be programmable by the user/installer.

    Otherwise all you get is this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CQA3X-qNgA

  4. Richard 12 Silver badge

    Odd

    IoT is simply a buzzword, with no meaning and no genuine products.

    The companies making the genuinely useful "Internet of Things" hardware and software don't use the buzzword.

    They are lighting and HVAC control systems, integrated alarm systems and the like. The real product is called a "building management system".

    1. Doctor_Wibble

      Re: Odd

      > IoT is simply a buzzword, with no meaning and no genuine products.

      I disagree! These items of discardable electonic tat are indeed genuine products that reshape the consumer experience paradigm of the dynamic reshapeable domicile marketplace.

      There are two groups of people interested in "IoT" - those who sell/fit it (and know its limits and lifetime) and those who are wowed by it (and do not), and the intersection between them is nil. Neither of these is likely to include people who understand the phrase 'building management system and if they do, expect it to answer to the name of Cortana, Siri, or Ockygugle.

  5. All names Taken
    Paris Hilton

    Odd 2

    Or even remote operational management system?

    Or perhaps supervisory control and data acquisition?

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: Odd 2

      I'll give you those

  6. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Boffin

    But it *must* be wonderful

    It has a blue LED...

    1. Chozo

      Re: But it *must* be wonderful

      I'd laugh but I've had people give me this as reason for ordering new kit.

      1. Martin
        Thumb Down

        Re: But it *must* be wonderful

        Urgh. Blue LEDs.

        I bought a useful 4-way usb charger from Maplin. It's great - plenty of power to charge four phones or Kindles - means I can take it on holiday and only have one adaptor instead of four. But the blue LED is so bright, it literally illuminates the whole room - enough to make it impossible to sleep.

        1. jeffdyer

          Re: But it *must* be wonderful

          We took one to the US last August.

          It was kind of useful to have some light in a strange Motel room!

        2. TotallyInfo

          Re: But it *must* be wonderful

          That's why Gaffer tape was invented!! All of my travel power has a liberal (am I allowed that word on El Reg?!) helping over the stupidly bright LED's that would quite happily double as street lighting in many countries.

        3. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: But it *must* be wonderful

          "But the blue LED is so bright, it literally illuminates the whole room "

          Blue LED, meet Blu Tak.

          Works for me.

        4. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: But it *must* be wonderful

          But the blue LED is so bright, it literally illuminates the whole room - enough to make it impossible to sleep.

          Yes. The power connector on my new Dell laptop1 has a blue LED that burns with the brightness of a thousand suns. They used to put the stupid things on the transformer brick, so at least you could flip that over and hide the LED, but this one is a ring around the connector. Mind-bogglingly stupid design. First time I travel with this machine I'll have to wrap it with electrical tape.

          1Supplied by my employer. I wouldn't buy Dell myself. I've used too many of their machines.

  7. Tony W

    Real problem, sensible solution.

    Leaving stoves on is a real problem. And as with many other problems that IoT is invoked to solve, that's probably the wrong answer. How about a motion sensor? Or even a rethink of stoves? You can't set a microwave oven to run with no time limit so why shouldn't stoves be the same?

  8. jake Silver badge

    In the mid 1980s, I was using X10 kit.

    I am still using X10 kit. It just works.

    ::shrugs::

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: In the mid 1980s, I was using X10 kit.

      I'm going to dig out my old X10 stuff for next Halloween.

      Last year when the SFX display was tested it was found that the Byron remote switches using 433mhz wireless were swamped by the EMI from the standard xmas tree strings of LED lights. A lot of last minute reconfiguring to space things physically was needed.

  9. John 110

    Why the obsession....

    Why the obsession with using smartphones as remotes? If I use my phone for stuff like that there's a good chance the battery will run out before I run out of waketime. I suppose I could always go and get the phone off the charger, and while I'm up anyway, I can turn the light on/off digitally (using a digit...)

    1. DropBear

      Re: Why the obsession....

      I suppose because any remote slightly more complex than "on button + off button" is already closely resembling a smartphone: the higher-end stuff is already touch-screen equipped (to be able to show you state info, multiple menus etc.) and of course connected via RF (to avoid having to point it, have two-way comms for feedback etc.) That, in effect, is a smartphone - and since everybody already has one, it just gets defaulted into the role of the remote, especially since being cell-connected it works over arbitrary distances for IoT stuff.

      None of which takes into account however that fumbling with a phone you don't even keep at hand while at home to turn lights on or off via ten pokes through complicated menus instead of a flick of a local switch always at hand by definition is not exactly "making things better".

      The elephant in the room though is that you'd need nothing short of an android butler to enable your house to do anything remotely resembling actual usefulness for you - the dishes don't jump into the IoT dishwasher nor out of it by themselves, and the IoT fridge can still neither resupply itself nor cook me lunch - all they can do is remove predictability from objects that should be simple and utterly predictable and nag me endlessly with "important information" about the state of things I couldn't care less about. So do please forgive me for not being overly enthused by bedside lamps that change colour according to the state of the weather outside, m'kay...

    2. Cuddles

      Re: Why the obsession....

      Smartphones as remotes is actually one of the more sensible parts of the whole IoT thing. The alternative would be to have a different remote for every single device you want to control, which would quickly turn into an epic clusterfuck with piles of remotes everywhere and no idea which one you actually need in any given situation (inevitably it will be the one you can't find and/or the one with the dead battery). Of course there's the possibility of getting a significant proportion of manufacturers to agree to a standard and allow everything to be controlled from one remote. Which is exactly what phone already are.

      Sure, phone batteries don't last forever. Neither do any other batteries. Since everyone interested in IoT stuff is guaranteed to have a phone, coming up with competing standards, extra remotes, and so on, just makes everything massively more inconvenient while not bringing any actual benefit.

      The real problem you raise isn't with smartphones as remotes, it's with using remotes at all. If turning my lights on using a remote is no more convenient than doing it normally, then what is the point? Whether that remote happens to be a phone or not is irrelevant, it's the lack of benefit regardless of the specific device that is the issue. There's almost certainly a place for smart building management - lights that turn on and off automatically when you enter and leave a room certainly are more convenient than using a switch, for example, even if the benefit is somewhat minor - but faffing around with remotes and apps just doesn't make things any easier than a simple physical switch.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Why the obsession....

        "Smartphones as remotes is actually one of the more sensible parts of the whole IoT thing."

        Agreed. So long as there's a some from of standard so a single app can talk to all the devices instead of having a screen full of app icons, a separate one for each device. And that the device or app icons don't change colour and design every time it must be upgraded.

        Of course, each manufacturer will create their own unique and incompatible standard because only their app will be the one you simply must have. Along with their entire product line.

    3. Pete 2 Silver badge

      Re: Why the obsession....

      > Why the obsession with using smartphones as remotes?

      It's arguable that a true IoT device shouldn't even need a remote. In fact, most of them shouldn't need a person to tell them what to do, at all.

      Take an IoT'd lightswitch as an example. Instead of a boring old PIR to detect the presence of people and then turn the light on or off accordingly, a better solution is to design in a $5 ultrasonic Doppler sensor to detect the direction of people: into or out of the room. When $number_of_people == 0 OR $light_level > daylight then turn off the lights.

      All that this obsession with remote controls does is to add one more level of indirection into the equation. Instead of a person making a physical action to control a device, they are now required to do so by means of another piece of equipment. As a design concept it's as daft as calling for your butler to do these trivial things for you: more trouble than it's worth, so I'm told.

  10. Andy 73 Silver badge

    Been there, done that..

    My FIL was developing home automation, switches and sensors back in the 80's - you could switch on your kettle from across the Atlantic, answer your door with a remote control and all of the 'not quite useful' concepts that the IoT brigade are currently getting over-excited about.

    The point has to be that we build our environment to suit the simple needs of a simple bag of flesh - simple light switches, the front door not so far away from the rest of the house, the heating more or less able to keep the temperature within tolerable bounds and so on. Sure, you can impose multi-zone ultra-precise control and feedback on all that, but (a) we don't naturally think that way and (b) we don't actually care. Do I want complex lighting schemes controllable from a smart-phone? No - I switch the light on when I walk into the room, and off when I walk out. A bit brighter, or a bit dimmer occasionally, but none of that justifies spending several hundred pounds to make a job that is already pretty convenient more complex and more prone to problems.

    I don't doubt that someone will come up with something interesting eventually, but unless the device makes a significant difference to the way you live your life, there's no reason to spend so much effort and money when there are simple alternatives in the depressingly analogue world.

    1. Stoneshop

      Re: Been there, done that..

      I'm gradually putting Intranet of Thingies into my house, but most of what it's doing is enhancing existing infrastructure, and monitoring. If I walk into my workshop I just want to hit a switch to turn on the lights (because maybe there's sufficient ambient to see by, so they don't need to come on automatically), but motion detectors switch them off if I forget, or have walked out with my hands full. The garage door opens and closes with buttons on the wall, but it also closes if I hit a central switch indicating I'm leaving.

      It's built with gear that's been around for 25 years now, probably will be for at least another 25 given its ubiquitous use in building control, and tends to be understood by a competent electrician who's familiar with the stuff. It's not open as such, but it's been sufficiently reverse-engineered that I can plonk a RasPi in and write my own control and monitor programs. And there are dozens of vendors, which means that one manufacturer dropping the product line or going titsup is hardly going to be a problem.

      And in my case none of this is going to be accessible from outside the house, let alone from Inner Elbonia.

  11. John Styles

    ha

    Many years ago I had a meeting in what we then Swiss Bank. The meeting room had no external windows. The lights were integrated with the booking system, so that when the meeting was scheduled to finish the lights went off and someone had to go looking for a remote control to turn them on again.

    We actually have some remote control plug sockets, you just plug them into the socket and plug the device into them, then you use a remote to turn things on and off - the remote has 4 pairs of on and off buttons. I suspect it came from Maplin, it has a Maplinesque air about it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: ha

      If your switches use 433mhz then they can be prone to EMI - which reduces their range dramatically even in the same room as the control. Strings of flashing LEDs are particularly bad for that.

  12. Mage Silver badge
    Devil

    IoT

    Junk gadgets for the home that expose you to Criminals. Criminals can hack them, or just used them to decide when you are out and if the house is worth robbing.

    Evil Corporations will sell you the gadgets and support on subscription.

    Most of the products are pointless and wouldn't even get a mention in a School science fair.

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: IoT

      Criminals, by their very nature, do this to anything you put in place anyway.

      But, equally, criminals don't like alarms going off (even if alarms are next to useless). They certainly don't like the ones that inform the owner or summon help when the alarm goes off. They don't like that I can see them approaching my front door and have months of video to trawl to find that guy that I was sure walked past four times the day before that house was robbed, etc.

      Criminals aren't going to stop just because you don't have this gear. And the real fact? Criminals are so simple (that's not an insult, their methods are NOT complex) that they don't need to have IoT to do all this stuff. Decide when you're out? Knock on your door. If no answer, then look around side-alley. Nobody will be the least bit suspicious. If you answer, "Hi, I'm just the area with a company called..." and nobody's any the wiser. Or look for a light on or (more relevant nowadays) a car in the drive (or absence of one).

      And it's precisely the point of the IoT (that things are SO cheap that they are ubiquitous) that proof that you actually have money doesn't come from the camera in the porch or the lock on the gate or the smartphone gadget you took in, but by the size of house and what car you drive.

      Hell, if they WANT to get into YOUR house, sorry mate, there's nothing to stop them. They can just wait for you and your family to leave in the morning if they're really that invested in taking YOU specifically.

      Criminals work by simple methods. They aren't going to sit hacking your remote-control RFID gate-entry lock. They'll just look around innocently and then jump the gate or kick it. I guarantee you that nobody will notice until it's too late. The only way to stop them is to discourage them. And CCTV - though far from perfect, as those simple criminals have worked out to wear a hat to hide their faces! - is something that puts them off. Alarm system put them off. Especially if they suspect the guy in there is smart enough to connect it to his smartphone, and has CCTV that he might be able to see, and that he - as a burglar - will not know anything is raising alarms with the owner until the plod (or, worse, the owner!) pull up outside.

      You know you can get fog-security kits for tiny prices now? CCTV is dirt cheap. Alarms, maglocks, RFID entry, GSM relays and alerts - some of these are in the £10-20 range now. An enterprising geek with a bucket of cheap gadgets and time on his hands is likely to be the worst person to try to target. (But they don't target. They're mostly opportunist when they see that the back-gate - which you could have just put on an automatic spring and maglock - is left open by mistake). Same with cars - the junkiest old car, for £20 on Amazon and bit of wiring - can be silently GPS-tracked live on the owner's smartphone and they can cut the fuel pump with a text message or just send the live Google Map to the police.

      IoT isn't a criminal opportunity any more than you allow it to be. The devices need security, yes, but they provide a lot more. You can't even get a response from my GPS tracker unless you have a registered and verified phone number. Finding it would be a work of art because it's so small you can bury it anywhere there's a 12v line. Cut the power? It has its own battery backup good for 24 hours.

      Same with the CCTV, the access control, whatever else you decide to wire up. Even that junk that they want to put on your power-meter? Sure, it might be insecure but it LOOKING like you're at home (how's that work in the summer and with automated central heating nowadays?) is different to KNOWING whether you are home and, eventually, they still have to visit your home to actually find out.

      You know what's infinitely more dangerous? The car park booking at Stansted airport. When you book you give your name and address and tell them how long you'll be gone. Bloody dangerous. But, thank god I have IoT junk all over my house and can phone a neighbour if anything untoward occurs while I'm in a foreign country.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: IoT

        What was the haul from the Hatton Garden safe deposit over a holiday weekend recently - £100m? The security company guard couldn't see any external sign of entry so ignored an alarm. The police centre also ignored an alarm for reasons no one has yet explained..

        The heist was done by abseiling down a lift shaft from accessible offices - and drilling large holes in the concrete wall of the vault. They spent four days getting in and looting several deposit boxes.

  13. Refugee from Windows

    1980's tech

    I understand that TCP/IP was just a thought in Tim Berners-Lee's head back in 1985, back then there would be no thought of connectiong this sort of device to a large and somewhat anarchic network.

    Personally I prefer my control devices to be double pole with a nice mechanical actuator.

    1. John Styles

      Re: 1980's tech

      Nah, not relays, we want British Valves. At least I think that's what David Cameron said, maybe it's a misprint.

      1. Sir Runcible Spoon

        Re: 1980's tech

        tcp/ip - don't you mean http?

  14. no-one in particular

    Who named it "IoT" in the first place?

    Surely an "Internet of Things" is a nice new internet that only Things are allowed onto. But isn't what is being sold to us is some Things that can be connected to the existing Internet, along with all our existing, um, non-Things?

    So it should be called "Things on The Internet", or TotI, obviously pronounced "totty" - with instant market appeal! Who wouldn't want some TotI?

  15. chainman

    It's Not the Boxes

    It's the internet of "Big Data". It seems that interaction with many of these gadgets is mediated by some central service. I'm not that clever, but I assume that there are lots of marketing types salivating over the details of millions users interactions with their "personal" environments. Just knowing what people of watching on the TV/Stream is apparently valuable data, or so I've heard.

  16. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    What about the oven?

    "The Wallflower attaches to your stove - either direct to the plug in the case of an electric stove, or on the gas pipe with a gas oven. Very simply, if it detects that you - or, more accurately, your phone - are not near the stove it sends an alert. If you don't respond in a set time, it turns the stove off."

    Don't your stoves have ovens in them? Just saying, I wouldn't want to leave the house with the stove going probably, but leaving with a roast or turkey going in the oven? Sure. Also (per the photo) WHY THE HELL IS IT SO BIG?!? 8-)

    Oh, I actually think the light switch thingy is rather clever -- placing a plate on top of the existing, working light switches, seems a bit of a kludge, but way more appealing than rewiring the house to replace what are after all working light switches. $60 is a bit steep for it though.

  17. tlhonmey

    Thing is, most of this could be done with a Raspberry Pi and off-the-shelf parts. No need for purpose-built apps that clutter up your smartphone (and often spy on you). And for lots of the models mentioned, the price would come out about the same.

    1. bpfh
      Thumb Up

      > most of this could be done with a Raspberry Pi

      Why do you think the boxes are so effing big?

  18. david1024

    Electrical Code and UL

    The electrical code and UL requirements drive the size up for anything using 'mains AC' for power or that switches it. That's why you are seeing a lot of stuff move to low voltage DC... it is safer and cheaper and easier to make a snazzy (and small) case.

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