Haha, yes, I tend to at least start it every week. It used to be excellent, but has very very slowly turned into what it is today. It used to be a great show analyzing the tech news of the week, but now they don't really say much of any substance, they ramble, and sometimes they don't even really talk about tech. This episode was particularly bad.

*edit*
And to add to that, I have a lot of problems with how Leo runs his shows and many of his newer viewpoints, which seem to conflict with older ones he used to have.

Hmm, didn't hear about that one. The NYT quote was a bit out of context - the correct context was an answer to a question about "couldn't they just take an HTC phone and modify it a bit", and I was noting that there's very little simple about "modifying a phone a bit". Everything in a phone is dependent on everything else to a very large extent - before you know it you'll be designing a whole new phone.

It's been interesting reading the discussion here; I do think it's *not* actually been tried before - not in this way - and whilst I accept that many large vendors will not try it at first (NIH, we've spent lots on our own solution, we only want things to work with our own products, etc etc), I believe that smaller vendors don't suffer from the same issues and will adopt it because, well, it's actually useful in some contexts and is a cheap way to differentiate products.

Longer term, I believe customers will start demanding the integration from the larger vendors, because it "just works" and is a user-centric service vs a vendor-centric service. Vendor-centric services often tend to deliver no user benefits at all, then the vendor is surprised when they don't catch on.

I need to listen to that one more. Started in back when John talked about the Jobs biography. More and more 5by5 shows are creeping into my list, displacing some TWiT ones.

This Week in Tech I think suffers from how many shows are on the network now. The really interesting discussions are very spread out, compared to when it was the only podcast Leo did.

Most of the shows on the TWiT network seem to have no state. In that they will discuss an issue, misunderstand or mischaracterise it and then never correct themselves in a following show. Or they will understand an issue one week, only to get mixed up on it next week.

The 5by5 shows on the other hand tend to correct themselves from listener feedback when they get it wrong. Which leads to a lot less of me shouting at the Squeezebox that they are wrong...

And I still can't work out if Steve Gibson is a crackpot, genius or both

I've noticed some of this too. Every show pretty much discusses the same issues, and then might make observations based on the theme of the show, but most of the time they just say the same thing everyone else is saying.

In other cases, I've found I simply can't stand the hosts anymore. I've listened to Tech News Today since the first episode, and it does help me stay informed, but I can't stand Sarah Lane and Iyaz Akhtar. If Sarah is hosting one day, I delete the show immediately. Tom Merrit, on the other hand, is great.


Ugh, I definitely hear you there. Leo has always claimed that he's all about the social aspect of podcasting, and he's so proud of his chat room. But TNT is the show that actually reads their email and gets corrections, and he's not on that one.


Haha! I think both. He's pretty dang smart, though.

So.. that cat flap thing. It looks like a one-way portal (diode).
Does one need to install two of them for a cat to be able to come and go as cats are wont to do ?

Hmmm - some info here: http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/steve_gibson/

It'll let any cat (or no cats) out. It'll let any cat, no cats or your cats in. All depending on the position of a (manual) latch. That will need to be motorised really, for my project.

Rob

How about Raccoons and small dogs?

If they have rfid chips, yes.

I assumed "any cat" meant one without any kind of tag.

We had a ginger tom cat a good few years ago. We had a cat flap not unlike this one, but it was pre tog so it was activated by a little magnet on his collar.

We could set it so he go out, but not back in. It didn't take him long to figure out the door only opened outwards, and when outside he could hook a claw on the lip, pull the door out, get is head under and back in the house!

It was pretty impressive the first time I caught him doing it.

So all cats out, could also meant all smart cats in

Cheers

Cris

I just learned about Electric Imp by hearing TWiT stumble across it in their podcast... because I'm constantly three months behind in listening. I'm really glad to hear that Hugo and Peter are creating new and interesting hardware. Your venture seems well timed, poised to deliver before the rest of the industry figures it out and gets their "corporation centric" products widespread. Good luck guys!

And thanks for the 5by5 podcast network recommendation. I'm going to check out a few of their shows, especially In Beta with Gina Trapani and Kevin Purdy. Though the TWiT show may be a waste, Gina's appearance on This Week in Google makes it a good listen. Also a plug for TWiT's Triangulation interview show and Security Now, which you already knew about.

Hugo:

So is SmartThings a competitor? What do you think of their offering?

I thought the same thing. But to me it looks like they're not as ambitious as Electric Imp. If anything, it seems to me like they're trying to create yet another automation standard. An open standard, that includes interoperability (supposedly) with things like Z-Wave or Insteon, but still another standard.

SmartThings also doesn't seem to have the goal of being in large electronics like washer/dryers or fridges. In fact, they don't seem to have much of a specific gameplan at all. They don't mention how they're going about any of these things they're trying.

Last night I ordered one of these, which will become the new hub of my Z-Wave network. I'll be able to do a lot more with this thing. It can control Insteon and X10 as well, so I still don't get the point of this SmartThings project.


I maintain that the only thing that will ever change the home automation market is lower prices. The cost of these systems is still much to high for the average consumer to jump on it. Then we can start to address how awful it usually is to control all these things...

Link doesn't work Matt.

The Smarthings looks like a retail solution, whereas Hugo's company seems positioned as an OEM solution.

I don't think lower prices will make a difference to adoption. The fact remains that most people out there simply can't wrap their heads around the concept and wouldn't be able to implement the solution(s). Once you throw custom installers into the mix that can take some consumers there, but it's still a hard sell on the benefits to get them to pick up the phone to get an installer over in the first place.

To see these things take off you'll have to see adoption by home builders or utility-like monopolies. If it doesn't come standard with the home or isn't installed as part of an already familiar technology, I don't think the general public is going to get on board.

Fixed the link.

Yeah, I agree with that. I suppose I mean there's a decent-sized portion of DIY geeks who are thrown off by the cost. I don't suppose that lowering the cost will immediately spark a home automation revolution, but at the moment the prices are just too high either way. $50 for a single light switch or single lamp module is at least twice what some people are going to spend. I'm already dreading having to repurchase my light switches (when I move - the current ones are staying where they are).

Try $130+ for a light switch to work with URC gear. OUCH.

Forgot this bit earlier about custom installers...

If the product is retail, with few exceptions, it's not going to gain tremendous support from the CI industry, most of whom are operating in the dark ages and will only support/install/carry brands that offer them protection and support through exclusivity and super-fat margins. Nothing pisses of a custom installer like a consumer's ability to buy from someone else what he installs.

Pretty much on the same page as you are. They're buying in white-label zigbee/zwave stuff and then doing work to try and integrate these various devices at the operation level, vs at any lower level. This does nothing to help enable new classes of device, it just helps devices out there already may possibly get easier to use (though that remains to be seen).

It's been done many times before, though not at the same price point. eg Micasaverde does this for Zwave/Insteon/etc.

Indeed. I just picked up a Vera Lite, and I've been completely reworking my Z-Wave network. It's a great little box, and relatively inexpensive for the functionality it adds to my system. The software needs a lot of work, though, and my remotes are seriously neutered, for some reason. They have less than half their original functionality, and I can't figure out why.

On the positive side, today I was out and about and remembered I forgot to turn off the lights in my office at home. I was able to use my phone to turn them off from wherever I was That was pretty neat.

Thanks, I'd not actually seen that one! Nobody on forums.electricimp.com mentioned it

I've had an imp for a couple of weeks now and I'm still struggling to see the point of it (Sorry Hugo) I've been trying hard to figure out what purpose it actually serves.

The price point serves as a killer, I know as much as the next guy how much technology costs but given that essentially this is a one-imp per "device" system (+ subscription) it's going to get expensive fairly quickly.

My second problem is what use it actually is? Sure, I could have an "imp ready" TV or HiFi that lets me control it from my iPhone - but it's less hassle and less clicks just to use the remote control that came with the tv/hifi (over unlock phone, find app, open wait, wait for app to open). Sure, I could control these devices from outside my home, but again, changing the channel on the TV from 1000 miles away isn't exactly useful.

So, home automation? Sure, this is where you might think there's a possible use, but how is the imp going to work with it? One imp per socket? (Ouch! $$$) Ok, so a gateway, Imp->X10...but why not just forego the imp and go straight to X10 with an IP gateway?

And now I'm left struggling to find any other uses for it integrating it apart from "well, we did it because we could".

I've just been left with the feeling that this is a great toy for electronics hobbyists to add WiFi to a device and not much more.

Please tell me I'm wrong Hugo, maybe I've just skipped past that eureka moment that would lead me onto that killer usage.

I must have really missed something.

Not good for that use -- won't work locally, talks only to "the cloud".

Yeah, probably should have clarified that as *internet* (via cloud via WiFi) rather than direct to home network.

You can get the imp to communicate with the outside world via a HTTP interface, so you could in theory get an imp to communicate to something on the local network via a convoluted method.

Or you would buy an embedded WiFi module and use that instead, probably cheaper and easier for the hobbyist.

Now I think I have zero ideas where these things are useful!

I think that's the problem: You've *just* got the imp. By itself, it doesn't do anything. The point is that other devices will be built *around* the imp, and *those* are what will be cool. The imp fills a technological gap for any inventor who can build a neat physical device, but can't make good web-enabled software.

There are tons of devices that would benefit from being web-enabled, if only the people who made those devices could write decent software. There was always a lot of talk about web-enabled appliances, but it turns out most of the appliance manufacturers are only good at making reliable appliances. An imp could, for example, text me when the dryer cycle was done so that I could run upstairs and pull out my dress shirts before they got wrinkled (I'm usually out of earshot of the buzzer). But the imp doesn't do that by itself, it needs the circuit to integrate it with the dryer. You need both bits before it's useful.

It's like the Arduino. You could buy an Arduino Uno board and stare at it and say "well this is useless". Or you could design a circuit that does something cool with it. Or, you could buy any number of devices that are already made by someone else, which happen to *leverage* the Arduino internally.

I work on embedded projects Tony, I'm aware of what I have in my hands!

I just fail to see why I'd spend $25 (per device) on something that tells me that my dryer is finished or my kettle has boiled or my fridge door is open etc.

They all have the same thing in common, they're all things that happen local to me, but because of the architecture of the imp require that the trigger go out over the network and then bounce back down to my phone, if my internet goes down I'll never know that my kettles boiled or my dryers finished...apart from the the fact that they're probably beeping or it's been 3 minutes since I turned it on.

Same for home automation, sounds like an ideal application, but again it's dependant on the cloud. No internet, no worky.

Show me something cool and convince me otherwise, but I still can't see it's usefulness other than being a curiosity.

Don't get me wrong, I want to like it, I want to see the use in it, I want it to succeed. I'm just struggling.

Sorry. Misunderstood you. I see what you're saying.

Let's see what other applications folks come up with? :-)

Not exactly. At least not according to EI's web site. The manufacturer would still need to develop their own UI and related software, but EI's web-based tools may make this easier for at least the web-based front-end. I believe the larger benefits come on the hardware end and they're covered on the site...

Lots of good information and explanation of what the EI product/solution offers: http://electricimp.com/manufacturers/

It's somewhat compelling from a manufacturing perspective and it's good to see that this page does a good job of explaining a lot of questions I had when the project was first announced.

Lots of talk, yes. But just because there's lots of talk about it, doesn't mean that it's an idea with merit, just that the idea merits discussion. Remote operability/monitoring just isn't useful for the majority of stuff in my house, and the stuff I can think of where I would like a wireless-enabled appliance, it's either not data I want on the cloud (privacy issues!), or the feature isn't so valuable to me that I'd be willing to pay an on-going subscription fee.


Really? A text message? *shrug*

My dryer (that I bought >5 years ago) has a little display with a count-down timer. I can set an alarm on my phone from the display on the dryer, if I don't want to miss the end of the cycle. No imp necessary, no text message necessary, no cloud necessary, no subscription fee necessary. (And if I *do* miss the end of the cycle, then I can just use that "touch-up" feature.)