Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/12/amazon-apple-google-and-the-zigbee-alliance-to-develop-connectivity-standard/ <comment><USER2> For someone who thinks Zigbee already is an open standard, well, it is NOT really open though. A standard being publicity available does not always make it open-source friendly.

Linux considers it a proprietary protocol [1] so Zigbee driver cannot be part of Linux kernel. Although Zigbee spec allows non-commercial individuals to freely use it, a commercial organization must be a member of the Zigbee Alliance in order to use Zigbee, which violates the GPL standard. [2]

At least the article speaks out "an open-source approach", let's see if things will get better.

[1]: [https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/ieee802154...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/ieee802154.html)

[2]: [https://archive.freaklabs.org/index.php/blog/zigbee/zigbee-l...](https://archive.freaklabs.org/index.php/blog/zigbee/zigbee- linux-and-the-gpl.html)

<comment><USER3> There's also the bit where Zigbee devices have to share a secret key to talk to each other, mostly to prevent competition from low cost devices manufactured in China.

<comment><USER4> Yeah! They want you to use the high cost devices manufactured in China.

<comment><USER5> Or mostly the same cheap devices manufactured in China but sold through your friendly middlemen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 10 years in the trenches here.

Apple's smart home protocol famously does not support multiple users. Amazon is choosy on what features you can implement (turn on alarms but not turning them off, locking doors but not unlocking them). Google loves using radio hardware no one else supports. Zigbee has delightful legacy security vulnerabilities and consortium drama.

I look forward to these groups putting aside their differences, coming together, and creating a new standard that combines the best of all these anti-patterns.

<comment><USER7> > Amazon is choosy on what features you can implement

Allowing someone to holler into an open (or recently broken) window to open my front door sounds terrifying.

<comment><USER8> I, on the other hand, am on the 17th floor. Anyone who can holler at a smart device in my apartment has already compromised something important, and could probably get in anyway.

Also, just require a passphrase? To go full star trek, "[Alexa/Google/Siri], unlock the front door, authorisation singingboyo Alpha Pi Pi Zulu" sounds workable.

<comment><USER9> IIRC Amazon does allow for this. I use Smartthing + Homebridge for operating my lock (Prompts me on my phone to unlock the door when I get near the house and locks the door when I close it) but I do have Alexa as well and I at least looked into using it to lock/unlock. For the unlock I have to read off a pin, it will lock without needing a pin.

<comment><USER10> We truly live in the future.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if you are joking/mocking but for me at least it's super convenient to tap a notification on my watch as I pull into my driveway and way directly into my house (detached garage I don't park in so I enter through the front door). It's also nice to know anytime I close the door it will lock behind me. I quite enjoy living in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development > for manufacturers...

> The industry working group will take an open-source approach for the > development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol and > increase compatibility for consumers.

Curious if I as a hobbyist will benefit from this? Or if this will become a: it works perfectly, but only if all your devices connect to our certification servers kind of thing, like Chromecast is becoming.

<comment><USER12> I really hope they recognize the need that people want to keep their data on their lan. Actually that would be required by the GDPR if they won't let me sign anything. My derived data is my own people, it does not belong to who ever collects it.

I.e. I just want a thermostat the is a big rotating button and speaks mqtt. It does not exist. If you want it to look good you end up with a Nest thermostat. Home Assistant needs to talk to the Nest online API, not to the device itself. Really annoying and unnecessary. I wish I could just pay 50$ more and get a Nest that does let me talk to it locally. Or whatever are they going to earn with my data? I'd probably pay it straight up.

<comment><USER11> If your device supports opentherm (which is not as open as you might think, btw) you might want to look into OTGW [0]. It probably works with Nest to if the Nest allows to run without internet at all.

[0] [http://otgw.tclcode.com/](http://otgw.tclcode.com/)

<comment><USER12> My central heater is a simple on/off model. Nest will work offline with it but afaik you can't write target temperatures to it then.

<comment><USER11> To bad, my old heater had opentherm, with the OTGW I could intercept the packets between the heater and thermostat, change values (eg: date/time), issue commands (set room temperature) and add missing functionality (outside temperature for heating curve), it was ideal in every way. But I moved and my current heater has a proprietary protocol over rs485 so its a no-go for the OTGW.

<comment><USER12> In the EU there are no systems without opentherm by law luckily.

That does mean some systems are not available at all, so "luckily".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 > The project is built around a shared belief that smart home devices should > be secure, reliable, and seamless to use. By building upon Internet Protocol > (IP), the project aims to enable communication across smart home devices, > mobile apps, and cloud services and to define a specific set of IP-based > networking technologies for device certification.

Yet I don't see any mention of making those being able to work completely offline/standalone.

We rely too much on cloud services that ultimately get turned off after an undetermined about of time.

There is no way I am buying home automation equipment I cannot control myself, especially in a situation where the giants like Google could simply decide to terminate my account because I said or did something they didn't like and take down related systems with it.

<comment><USER9> I am personally really against my IoT devices being able to "speak" TCP/IP, I want them to use dumb radios (Z-wave or if I must, Zigbee) that cannot talk to the internet. I get the draw of Wifi/IP devices but I avoid them at all costs. I don't want 10's or 100's of devices on my network that all are talking to servers in China.

I bought a few cheap POE Chinese cameras that I use with Zoneminder but they are all blocked from any internet access except talking to Zoneminder (local).

<comment><USER13> > _I don 't want 10's or 100's of devices on my network that all are talking > to servers in China._

I definitely agree, although I'd expand that to "talking to any servers at all anywhere for anything I don't explicitly grant permission for". However for that very reason I prefer WiFi/IP devices, because it makes it very easy and straight forward to apply all the powerful network management tools we have for everything else. All devices can go on their own VLANs for example, with careful management and logging of how they communicate. The real shame is that there aren't better, more consumer friendly tools for managing that more visually/automatically.

Custom radios aren't any inherent defense there, already there have been demonstrations of getting right into Z-wave/Zigbee networks using customized SDRs. They have a purpose from an ultra low energy and meshing point of view, but you should be suspicious of what security practices for such things will actually be. WiFi/IP at least has the benefit of tons of open attention and development for security critical situations already.

<comment><USER9> You've made some very good points and better explained what I really want. I also will admit that using existing tools to create VLANs to "quarantine" the devices is an option. That said (and you touched on this) the average consumer is not prepared to deal with any of that, maybe that will change but as of today it's not easy or even possible with most consumer-grade hardware.

As for Z-wave/Zigbee, I could be missing a potential security hole but personally I am less concerned with my Z*-devices being hacked and more concerned with IP-devices being hacked and being able to talk to other IP- based devices on my network.

For example, it would suck to have someone be able to hack my door or lights but it wouldn't be the end of the world AND it requires physical access/proximity. This is quite different from someone on the other side of the globe being able to hack a device, hack other devices on my network (non- IoT), and then do something malicious (ransomware, identity theft, etc).

<comment><USER13> > _That said (and you touched on this) the average consumer is not prepared to > deal with any of that, maybe that will change but as of today it 's not easy > or even possible with most consumer-grade hardware._

Right, at one point it looked like something like UniFi could show the way there, but Ubiquiti unfortunately has turned into a development dumpster fire and really lost its way, and I don't know of anyone else attempting something similar. The principle remains though that it's another path forward, there are already powerful tools for network control and management, and there are accessible open standards there. Putting a better UX on that is worth considering alongside other solutions is all.

> _As for Z-wave /Zigbee, I could be missing a potential security hole but > personally I am less concerned with my Z-devices being hacked and more > concerned with IP-devices being hacked and being able to talk to other IP- > based devices on my network. For example, it would suck to have someone be > able to hack my door or lights but it wouldn't be the end of the world AND > it requires physical access/proximity._

A lot depends on where you live. A few years ago for example there were a bunch of articles and demonstrations coming from research into and discovery of vulnerabilities in the ZigBee protocol itself. Because the whole point of it is meshing, if you're in an urban or even suburban environment with sufficient density, then a neighbor being hacked could then hack their neighbors etc in a chain reaction. And of course people had fun immediately putting SDRs on drones and doing a fresh new take on good 'ol war dialing, flying around owning anything they came across. Random example article:

[https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13507126/iot-drone- hack](https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13507126/iot-drone-hack)

Picked verge vs NYT since I don't think they're paywalled? Lots more though a quick DDG away covering the same thing at the time.

With meshing though, you do have to be somewhat careful about the concept of "proximity" and so on if there are protocol layer problems, which is less of a concern on WiFi for better and for worse. Your home might be locked down, but are you sure your neighbor or neighbor's neighbor and so on and so forth down the chain all have no entry point? I 100% grant it's more of a long term scalability consideration right now for many people, but hey, we're talking about a future protocol here!

Gonna be another exciting decade I guess :)

<comment><USER9> I haven't followed the AmpliFi line closely to know if it has easy VLAN support but yeah... I really like the UniFi offerings but a fulling working UniFi system (excluding the UDM) costs ~$800 from my last estimate. I'm saving for it but that's cause I'm a weirdo who enjoys those kinds of things.

If you don't mind me asking what networking stack are you using?

Also thank you for the very well thought out and reasoned reply! I wasn't fully aware of some of those attack vectors.

Lastly I think I've been so anti-wifi IoT because of the inherent security issues with literally everything currently on the market. I see the wifi IoT as a bubble about to pop unless routers gain security features for IoT or some other major changes are made to how they work today.

<comment><USER13> Sorry for the slow reply, and I see you've got (and made) one other response. As far as what stack I'm using, on my test lab it's a big mix of course, but my main personal stack right now is UniFi dating back from quite a few years ago. However, I really want to reemphasize my "dumpster fire" aside: I strong _DON 'T_ recommend getting into UniFi right now if you're starting fresh, or at least, if you do be really careful about it. It hasn't been that obvious from the outside if you didn't know what to look for, but from an community and heavy use perspective it's clear Ubiquiti has been having major internal developer issues for a few years now at least. The CEO is apparently pretty toxic, but whatever the reasons are the result has been a major stagnation of the line, both for hardware and software, rapidly increasing technical debt, and a lot of extremely confused moves that seem to amount to easy bikeshedding because real engineers weren't available. I started to get into some of the gory details but am just deleting that paragraph, it's not really relevant here. But to take a specific example, that security gateway you were looking at, which is necessary if you want to use UniFi for L3 features, basics like DNS (which incidentally is also half-assed) etc, is a good 5 years old now. They introduced the "UniFi Security Gateways" and then refreshed them... never. The software for those is stagnant, and core software (like Strongswan for VPN) are often horribly out of date. It chokes doing much of anything interesting, would be obliterated in perf by a current RPi. The switches aren't in quite so dire straights, but for the money they too now have the smell of obsolescence. Ubiquiti has no decent L3 story for 2019/2020, no move to competitive faster networking, and a lot of cruft built up because they like to introduce new things but not just update and replace old ones.

Having said all that, their PtP/PtMP links are still nice. Their APs are solid overall, and do have nice industrial design (though no word on WiFi 6, which for a new install I'd consider fairly important). The interface has degraded significantly over the last few versions, but it's still better and more unified than any other I know of. I mean, I'm still running it myself after all. But if you go that route know what you're getting into and look hard for open box and used stuff that'll be cheap. And I'd honestly suggest not bothering with the cloud key and just running the controller yourself, on an RPi or similar if you want something dedicated but cheap or else spin up a VM or container, or even just run native I guess if you've got a server you run otherwise. The CK is also ancient.

In summary: I adored UniFi, and the potential was(is?) fantastic, and their old vision was fantastic, and at one point they were a really solid venture all around. And I know of nothing else with the same vision either. Yet even so I'm expecting to have to dump it overall in the next few years, which sucks. But long bitter experience has taught me that glorious turnarounds are much more the exception than the rule :(.

<comment><USER9> Holy shit this an amazing reply and I couldn't be happier you took the time. I had read some about of the issues you you talked about but you highlighted even more.

I might go down the secondhand/used route if I do decide to do it. Right now I've got a single all-in-one router running LEDE and I like it but I'm not able to reach more than 60% of my fiber internet so I've been looking to upgrade. I decided that if I was going to throw a couple hundred at it I figured I might as well go all in.

It's always sad to see a company throw away such a promising future. I saw their new AmpliFi "Alien" router and I'm half tempted to buy that and wait a few more years for a better option to present itself. Or even the UDM but it seems like a very odd offering to me... I guess I'll keep looking, thank you again for the advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FYI: This is the project's official homepage: [https://www.connectedhomeip.com](https://www.connectedhomeip.com)

<comment><USER15> Trivia: I had never seen this Apple logo used before, looks like the name of the company using a San Francisco font.

I wonder if it's official or just a workaround due to the fact that all the other logos have names and not just an icon like the standard Apple logo.

<comment><USER16> Apple doesn't tend to hand out their logo for industry groups and open source projects. That's fine, it's their support that matters. And it's not like their name lacks brand recognition!

Here's another example; same idea, different font:

[https://aomedia.org/membership/members/](https://aomedia.org/membership/members/)

<comment><USER17> They have been a principal organizer and sponsor of the LLVM Developers Meeting for years and even then they did not use their own logo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Per the official homepage:

> The goal of the first specification release will be Wi-Fi, up to and > including 802.11ax (aka Wi-Fi 6), that is 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax; Thread over > 802.15.4-2006 at 2.4 GHz; and IP implementations for Bluetooth Low Energy, > versions 4.1, 4.2, and 5.0 for the network and physical wireless protocols.

> The Project intends to leverage development work and protocols from existing > systems such as: Amazon's Alexa Smart Home, Apple's HomeKit, Google's Weave, > Zigbee Alliance's Dotdot data models

Dotdot is basically ZCL over IP (in a way), but comes with a lot of legacy from ZCL.

Thread was my hope for a unified smart home network layer, but it didn't really get the adoption I'd hoped, and from a manufacturer's perspective, it did not include any application-layer messaging.

It looks like the goal is to standardize the application layer messaging (of which Dotdot was an attempt). Maybe call it Dotdot v2, but with better backing.

</comment><comment><USER19> I bought a home and the previous owner used Z-Wave for everything. The whole thing worked irregardless of internet working or not. Whatever they invent if it is useless without internet access its a step back from something that has already worked.

All my home automation / smart home integrations will have to be Z Wave compatible or I will not use it. If my internet goes out will all my things be useless without it?

<comment><USER20> Zigbee works fine without internet. And Z-wave is proprietary - only one company makes the controllers.

<comment><USER19> I didn't realize Z-Wave was proprietary. It is useful though, I can control things around my house with a USB adapter and a Rasbperry Pi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> LOL ... there has been a standard for years for smart home devices, it is called KNX ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNX_(standard)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNX_\(standard\))) ... what is wrong with KNX? Hundreds of companies already support it, so why not join them instead of re-inventing the wheel?

I think I know what im talking about, because my (smart) home automation is based on KNX, I use Alexa voice commands or a KNX app on my mobile devices to controll all my KNX compatible devices, a server gets the commands and allows me to control the lights (on/off/dimming), to inquire an set the temperature in each room, to control the inner blinds as well as the outer shutters (open/close), to get data of water consumption, electricity consumption from many devices like the cooking plate, the owen, the lights, the AC, ... to get values from my weather station like wind speed, wind direction, sun intensity and much more ... I also have fire detection sensors, movement sensors, air pollution and water leak sensors which can trigger alarms... I can inquire on my phone if I forgot to turn off the owen in the kitchen, if the main door is being or has been left opened. Through Alexa I have also connected my Roomba as well as my TV and all the media devices connected to it (using the Logitech Harmony hub) but those two things are not KNX, everything else is.

Being able to control all this through Alexa is super fun. When I go to bed I just need say "Alexa good night" and Alexa tells my KNX shutters to move down to 100%, all my lights in any room to 0%. When I leave the house I say "Alexa, good bye" and Alexa checks if my appliences are turned off, turns the lights off and lowers the heating in all the rooms a bit. Also as im super lazy, if I finish cooking and throw myself on the couch but forgot to turn of the kitchen lights I just need to say "Alexa turn of the kitchen lights and turn on netflix".

What is also nice is that I can program (control and combine) everything myself. I currently use NodeRed ([https://nodered.org/](https://nodered.org/)). So I can program routines, like "if the time is > this and the front door gets opened send me an email or SMS", if the wind speed is above a certain threshold open the shutters to avoid damage, ...

<comment><USER22> I enjoyed the description of your home automation setup! I learned about the wide range of sensors and devices that can be incorporated, and that technically it's possible for the owner to programmatically control everything. I can see you're riding the edge of the coming wave.

Looking at the differences between the KNX standard and the "Connected Home over IP" project.. From the latter's home page [0]:

> By building upon Internet Protocol (IP), the project aims to enable > communication across smart home devices, mobile apps, and cloud services and > to define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device > certification.

This seems like a higher level of abstraction than KNX (unless "smart home devices" in the above description includes the kind of individual sensors you mentioned) - and exclusively focused on using the Internet Protocol.

Reading the Wikipedia article on KNX, it does sound like it has all the elements needed for home automation, including what this new standard aims to achieve.

[0] [https://www.connectedhomeip.com/](https://www.connectedhomeip.com/)

\---

EDIT: Now reading about the ZigBee specs, I find there's a big overlap in protocols/functionality. As a complete newcomer, it's hard to disentangle the pros/cons of these standards.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee)

<comment><USER21> Yes I'm riding the automation wave, but only because after working for 20 years as a developer I was finally able to afford buying an apartment and wanted to try to push automation to it's limits. I haven't done it all and could go even further, which is why I like KNX, it's not closed or bound to a single company so I can buy add even more stuff from a lot of providers (see some example of companies in my other comment).

The alexa bridge is not perfect, sometimes it has hald a second of delay. Twice a year the servers are down and it doesn't respond for few hours, but besides that I'm very happy with it. B.t.w. I used this server from PRO KNX to connect my Alexa(s) to the KNX server: [https://proknx.com/en/news/2017/realknx-2-0-voice-control- al...](https://proknx.com/en/news/2017/realknx-2-0-voice-control-alexa- dashboard/) (it is also compatible with Google Home as well as Apple Homekit).

Thx for the clarifications about the differences. I don't know much about the KNX standard. I fiddle around a lot with NodeRed (nodejs / javascript) and use some Alexa routines but I never tried to implement the standard myself. As far as I understand it, KNX is also using IP Networks, because all my devices have IP addresses and my servers are open on different ports.

I hope the Google, Apple, ... alliance decided to do create a new standard for good reasons, but I have doubts as I can't find someone that explains me what is so bad about the existing standard. Why Apple, Google and the others don't just join the KNX foundation and why this already open and royalty free KNX standard can be built upon!?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Zigbee is already an open standard, but some Zigbee devices don't work with others. Yet, with Z-Wave they all tend to work and there isn't that much of a price difference (between Zigbee and Z-Wave devices). The biggest problem with Zigbee is that is uses 2.4 GHZ which doesn't travel long distances or through walls very well. Z-Wave uses a lower frequency that does. (edited for clarity)

<comment><USER24> In a real situation this usually doesn't cause issues. Most of the zigbee devices that you're gonna have (such as light bulbs) are also acting like a zigbee router and it creates a mesh network.

You can even visualise the network if you're using zigbee2mqtt with zigbee2mqtt/bridge/networkmap

<comment><USER23> That is true provided that you have devices that correctly act as routers. Sometimes it requires extra repeaters to make the network function correctly as well. Then there is the interference issue from WIFI and Bluetooth devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hmmm. Now what am I going to do with my laboriously (and lovingly) put together zigbee2mqtt/HomeKit setup? :)

Seriously now, I see this as a good thing, if only because we're likely to get an interoperability stamp of approval of some kind.

Right now, and were it not for my using an Open Source solution for my Zigbee gateway, it would be impossible for me to hook up Hue, Xiaomi, IKEA and other devices to Homekit without a bunch of different gateways (because some Zigbee endpoints simply refuse to talk to anything other than their own peers).

I also hope that they manage to do this without going the Google way of having everything open up ports on your router (some of the newer Nest-branded stuff already knows how to talk to peers on a LAN, but the security model for Google/Alexa integrations is fundamentally broken for me - WeMo support excluded).

So far HomeKit can run _completely_ on-premises, with all devices interacting on the LAN, which is great (except for remote connections through the Home app to your Apple TV home hub, and Siri voice recognition to trigger scenes), and that is why I decided to stick with it.

<comment><USER26> > were it not for my using an Open Source solution [...], it would be > impossible for me to hook up [...] and other devices to Homekit without a > bunch of different gateways (because some Zigbee endpoints simply refuse to > talk to anything other than their own peers).

And worse, in my "casual" case, because some sort of Philips/Apple agreement outright prevents it :/

E.g. add a "Hue compatible", but non-Philips bulb to your Hue hub. It will work in the Hue app and via Amazon Echo, but Homekit will refuse to see it.

A way to "trick" homekit to be able to use the bulb with it, is to create a Hue scene, and sync it to homekit, but that is terrible for per-bulb control. This stuff is apparently all Zigbee, but the usability situation is an absolute mess.

(Widely reported, for many years, not a bug).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> HomeKit must _really_ be struggling for Apple to publicly join this consortium. I don't say this just as a snarky dig at Apple's preference for walled gardens, but because this announcement more or less Osbornes all the HomeKit devices in the market right now.

Despite its walled-garden nature, I'm sad to see HomeKit go. It was the only home automation standard I'd trust in my home, though hopefully Apple's participation in this new initiative means it will share HomeKit's emphasis on security, cloud independence, and privacy.

</comment><comment><USER28> I hope security is at the top of their list.

I want a super secure hub that everything connects to. The hub is the only thing that speaks to my router. The hub is super secure & doesn't let devices send data back to their manufacturer. If I buy cheap devices off a flea market like Amazon, I want to sleep safe & know that the hub is preventing that device from messing with any other devices or accessing the internet. The hub can send me notifications and I can send it requests. It would be cool if I could choose to have the main hub database & software based in the cloud or on my local network.

Not sure if this is already possible. If it is, I would love to hear more.

<comment><USER29> Apple, Amazon, and Google are fundamentally opposed to a model that sells devices that don't phone home - their whole purpose is to capture value by creating lock-in for surveillable hosted services

<comment><USER18> This is not exactly the case for HomeKit. Apple didn't even add the ability to control devices when you are off your home network until recently.

<comment><USER30> Yep. And it's Apple that's pushing for a HomeKit router [1].

Reading between the lines of how Apple's been handling the "smart home" business, they've been focusing on privacy and security relative to competitors, but it's been holding them back.

I think the market has kind of shown that privacy (e.g. devices that aren't streaming to / dependent on the cloud) and security have not been primary concerns of the people who buy smart home devices, but solving those problems better may be key to enlarging the "smart home" market to include normal people.

[1] [https://www.computerworld.com/article/3446197/why-we-need- ap...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/3446197/why-we-need-apples- homekit-enabled-routers.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If they actually pull it off, it'd be huge. The single greatest thing holding back home automation is a lack of compatible standards (coupled with the fact that when an automation company dies, its proprietary standards die with it).

I used Z-wave for my home, but I'm not doing it "on the up and up;" my hub is homebrewed and using an unlicensed radio. It's a pain in the ass to maintain, but since I can't trust any hub company to survive past five years, it seemed the right call.

<comment><USER9> I've used SmartThings more or less since their original Kickstarter in 2013. I gave my v1 hub to a friend who can still use it (I have a v2 and they have a v3 out now).

I try to only buy Z-wave devices and fallback to zigbee if I have to. It's been a very pleasant experience for me overall. I have 5 z-wave light switches, a handful of zigbee bulbs, zigbee door/temp sensors, and 2 z-wave locks. I plan on replacing all my light switches eventually (I've got like 5 left but all in low-traffic areas of my house).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> In other news, "Wolves, Lions, Tigers and Leopards develop Open Standard for Sheep Housing."

<comment><USER31> It is a group incentivized to make sure the sheep are happy, healthy, and within easy reach. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If I suspect that there is any chance my family's private information is going to get leaked, then I will not touch it. Appliances should never have internet access. Software updates, if required, should be delivered one-way through open trusted auditable software (something like ofw).

Big tech have already tricked me into supporting them with their "open platform" bait-and-switch before (android), that trick wont work on me twice.

</comment><comment><USER34> They talk about this being secure by default, but the standard will only ensure the communications is secure. This won't fix the bigger issues with IoT devices which is that many are built on crappy/ insecure software stacks. If your wifi video camera gets hacked, it doesn't matter if it's using https to communicate securely with your phone or cloud storage provider.

</comment><comment><USER35> As someone who is perfectly happy with Home Assistant and Z-Wave, I worry that a bunch of mega corps getting together to create a standard will crowd out the market, and prevent non-local, privacy-honoring options from continuing to be manufactured.

If average consumers are told to simply "look for the CHIP logo", and the CHIP standard includes facilities for must-phone-home messages akin to streaming DRM, I'm afraid we'll just get pulled further into the corporate surveillance dystopia.

<comment><USER36> I think people who expect Home Assistant to be useful to the general consumer are delusional. Home Assistant is an amateur piece of software with severe UX shortcomings and broken auto-update functionality (it phones home continuously and often bricks itself after auto-updates).

I appreciate the enthusiasm in the home automation community, and I agree there's a need for an offline solution, but Home Assistant is not it, and we'd be better off scrapping that codebase and starting something better.

<comment><USER35> You're focusing too much on the home assistant part, and not enough on the local control part. There are solutions with hubs such as some parts of the Wink hub that do work locally without internet. I'm sure there are professional-grade installers who install various pieces of software that use Z-Wave and/or Zigbee to setup a locally controlled home automation solution.

Needing connected to the internet (and all the latency associated with it) is an anti-feature that most consumers aren't even aware of or think of, hence why I hope solutions that have the feature aren't crowded out before the market for home automation truly takes off

<comment><USER36> Sorry if I wasn't clear. I agree with you that local-only solutions are needed. Home Assistant is sucking up too much of the air in the room. I don't think it will ever be accessible or usable to the general population. If not for Home Assistant, I think the community would have developed better local- only solutions by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> this is a good step. i worked in automation/controls (commercial, residential and industrial) for almost a decade (2000-2009) and personally dealt with the nightmare of interop. the number of times i had to glue disparate control systems together with relay closures and switch inputs was insane. and yeah, we had these issues with wireless. it was compounded by the company i worked for supporting enocean, zwave and zigbee.

</comment><comment><USER38> I am curious if they will include cameras (security / door), because the characteristics of the payload are quite orthogonal to the characteristics of the payload of other smart home devices.

<comment><USER39> >because the characteristics of the payload are quite orthogonal to the characteristics of the payload of other smart home devices.

how so?

<comment><USER40> A camera requires orders of magnitude more bandwidth and power than other devices that might be connected over a low-power, low-cost radio network. It needs to transmit that payload 24/7.

Currently, home automation typically uses a variety of custom protocols built on IEEE 802.15.4 (not 802.11*). It's a simple protocol that can be implemented by a cheap 8-bit microcontroller from 2 decades ago. Devices from one manufacturer may or may not communicate with those from another, and the network architecture is typically a hub with spokes - there's limited or no support for multi-router, multi-access point, or mesh networked setups.

This style of network honestly works pretty well for motion sensors, lights, outlets, temperature sensors, thermostats, etc. The master node might query a device every few seconds for a couple bytes of status, or might only send a short command when a user interacts with the device. Most smart home devices send a few bytes of data four times a day when you push "light on" and "light off" on the hub. This is great for operating for months or years on just a couple AA batteries. A camera sends a few bytes per pixel times (simplifying) 720 pixels down times 1280 pixels across times 30 frames per second times 86400 seconds per day, and can only run for an hour or two on a larger battery. That's almost 8 terabytes vs. 8 bytes.

But to use 802.15.4 networks, you need a hub, which is a barrier to entry - instead of one $20 light, you need a $15 light and a $50 hub. You likely already have an 802.11 router that could be the hub if the devices were smart enough to talk to it. And (tinfoil hat on) I think these companies would rather have their servers be the hub, rather than a device in your home they can't monitor and profit off of.

<comment><USER41> This is a very Hacker News answer, in that you wrote three dense paragraphs that are all technically correct, yet also completely divorced from our practical reality that has smart home cameras in it.

What is the obvious implementation out there? They just have _both_. They have the cheap 8-bit microcontroller from 2 decades ago transmitting on the low- bandwidth home automation network, and when it is decided that the camera should stream, it wakes up the beefy Ambarella or Socionext SoC to send its video feed over classic WiFi to the vendor cloud, and whoever wants to receive it just gets a stream URL back.

<comment><USER42> Yeah, there's no reason to saturate the control channel with high bandwidth data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Seems like the sorta thing which has tons of buy in from teams that don't matter and the teams that actually need to be using this won't and it'll get abandoned in a few years.

<comment><USER31> Google (specifically, Nest) and Apple are both looking to displace other solutions in the market.

"Teams that don't matter" today. This market is absolutely rife with opportunity for someone to steal the whole thing with better UX and an interop promise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why not openthread? It's already there, it's open source, and from my somewhat limited experience, works well.

<comment><USER45> Openthread uses the zigbee radio. Hence zigbee being involved.

On the surface this "appears" very similar.

EDIT: Yes I'm aware the software layer is different, I was inferring the radios are the same.

<comment><USER18> This is incorrect. Openthread uses nothing from Zigbee, but does use 802.15.4 radios, the same as Zigbee does.

<comment><USER45> OK, let me be more specific since that is what I was inferring.

Yes the software layer is different.

<comment><USER18> right, but Zigbee just uses a generic 2.4GHz radio. There is nothing about the radio that "involves Zigbee". Some silicon vendors sell 2.4GHz radios that can run a BLE, Zigbee, or Thread networking stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Can anyone recommend a method* without Wifi? Isn't there a method for "smart outlets", main scheduler, etc over electrical lines rather than bluetooth, wifi, etc? Method* == standard, or product line. [yes i used pointer and equality symbols oddly]

Edit: basically looking for a way to avoid more wireless transmitters in the house. Or are all outlets "receive only"?

<comment><USER47> The previous generation of smart home devices was called X10, and it used signals over power lines.

I gather it was:

\- slow

\- might have required you to make a connection in your circuit breaker

\- and was designed in the 1970s, when home electrical systems weren't very noisy (apparently all the switching power adapters we have today make a ton of noise and make it hard for the signal).

I don't see why something newer like this couldn't be done -- we have powerline modems, right? Probably not as fast as wifi, but it does go where it is needed and requires physical access to hack.

Some devices are using Zigbee (a different wireless system), but I understand it was developed without security and isn't hard for third-parties to hack into.

<comment><USER48> > \- slow

Yep, that's inherent.

> \- might have required you to make a connection in your circuit breaker

That's one way to do it. Another way just requires a bypass and filter at your circuit breaker what is much simpler and doesn't have to connect anywhere else.

> \- and was designed in the 1970s, when home electrical systems weren't very > noisy

This is where things got worse, and then they got better. Yes, electrical lines are very noisy, but the 200Hz - 100kHz band is only getting cleaner. Electric motors will interfere with it, so you may need a filter on your blender (but even it is much better now), but this is the prime band for electrical wiring.

Also, on chasd00 comment that it requires capacitors bypasses on transformers, that's only true on the higher bands, and only on devices you want connected to the network. So only the smart devices need to adapt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> How will this relate to 6lowpan, the already existing IP standard for IoT? Or will CHoIP sit on higher level (like eg mqtt)?

<comment><USER18> 6lowpan only addresses running IPv6 over 802.15.4 PHYs. It defines how to compress IPv6 headers to fit into 802.15.4 MTUs.

CHoIP will define application-layer messaging that runs over IP, regardless of PHY.

So, you can run CHoIP over 6lowpan (this is essentially what CHoIP on Thread would be).

<comment><USER49> 6lowpan is also used for ipv6 over bluetooth le

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7668](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7668)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> As long as those companies are the ones designing the spec I'm totally disengaging from smart home devices.

</comment><comment><USER17> Strategically this works out best for Apple whose HomeKit seems to have the fewest compatible products. Everything seems to integrate with Alexa, even a microwave that can order popcorn. I wonder what Amazon and Google gain from this, though.

</comment><comment><USER51> It would be nice if such standard supported Publisher-Subscriber style of messaging. For example alarm could subscribe to events from motion sensors and security cams (a camera in addition to providing a stream could push events like motion detection) or heating controller could subscribe to temperature change events. To make security of that realistic this would need some form of ACL, probably centrally[0] controlled.

[0] central as in "home router" not as "somewhere in the cloud"

<comment><USER47> I expect that MQTT is that standard. ( [http://mqtt.org/](http://mqtt.org/) )

I have just been playing around with IoT devices and was just trying to set it up.

<comment><USER51> Thanks, it looks really interesting and seems to do what I just described. The thing it lacks though is - in my opinion - RPC-style messages. For example an alarm controller could subscribe to motion events, but when such an event occur it should be able to turn on sound-device immediately or shut some locks. The one-to-one communication as described here: [https://github.com/mqtt/mqtt.github.io/wiki/one_to_one](https://github.com/mqtt/mqtt.github.io/wiki/one_to_one) seems more like a hack than a proper solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The reason I can say my smarthome is relatively secure is explicitly because it doesn't use IP. It's good they're trying to standardize, but you're gonna have a problem when you try to use a firewall to inspect what these devices are up to and find that they're all making encrypted tunnels back to their home bases and won't work without them.

<comment><USER53> I've been gradually retiring my wifi smart devices in favor of Z-wave because I find them far more reliable and much easier to maintain and manage.

It's also a little annoying having a pile of wifi devices whose only purpose is to manage an on-off state consume IP addresses on my network.

<comment><USER54> I share your need to name all my devices in the controller view. Hopefully zwave has better security support than typical IoT devices. I'd really prefer to use certificates rather than WPA passwords because password rotation requires a) I give vendors my passwords which they may not really secure in any way, b) often requires I use a vendor tool to rotate said password.

It would be much preferable to have a standard way to store a certificate to the device. Today when the inevitable happens and someone leaves customer WPA passwords on an open S3 bucket, or they're exposed via cyber security break I have to update every device. It would be so much nicer to just go update my compromised device's certificate rather than the password for everything. Frankly I'd prefer certificates to passwords anyway because sooner or later I'm sure WEP2 itself will be broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Given how closed Apple is with HomeKit, and how Google removed the Nest API, I don't have high hopes for whatever this is exactly.

<comment><USER56> HomeKit isn't that closed. You can basically add anything to HomeKit yourself as a hobbyist. The only restriction is on commercial sales of products. There's dozens of HomeBridge plugins that act as a glue for non HomeKit devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I hope whatever standard they come up with does not require a home WiFi network to operate. Mobile internet is already faster than your average home internet line and there is an increasing trend where people rely entirely on their mobile phones for network connectivity.

<comment><USER58> > there is an increasing trend where people rely entirely on their mobile > phones for network connectivity

There is? Is it any meaningful percentage of households?

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> "Seattle and Cupertino, Mountain View and Davis, California" is a really weird dateline.

</comment><comment><USER60> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee)

> Physical range 10 to 20 meters

Pretty crappy compared to other low-power protocols...

</comment><comment><USER61> I buy zwave smart switches instead of WiFi ones because I know those devices won't be able to snoop my LAN. Home automation over IP is a step backwards IMO.

</comment><comment><USER62> We are building a new house right now.

All subcontractors know the rules - no "smart" devices or "wifi enabled" appliances or mechanicals. All lightswitches are plain-old hi-voltage only switches. Thermostats are dumb, unprogrammable, with no memory or scheduling or timing. The locks on the doors use physical keys.

The smartest thing we have are the sonos speakers and we pug those in with ethernet.

Everyone will be pleasantly surprised when they interact with our house. This is what luxury will come to look like as time goes on ...

<comment><USER63> Not having programmed schedules on thermostats seems ludicrous to me.

I don't have "smart" thermostats, they can only be programmed with the buttons on the front of them and they cannot talk to one another, but how do you turn down the heat when you leave for the day? or even set different temperatures for daytime and nighttime? manually?

<comment><USER62> We're cheating a bit here because we live in California ... so we don't need AC mechanicals (which is a big win for simplicity) and when we leave the house we simply _turn off the heat_.

If we lived in Duluth we could _probably_ do the same thing for day-long absences, provided the house was very properly insulated, but you are correct - we would need a timer/schedule on the thermostats for any longer absences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Interesting that Mozilla is not on the list. They are one of the few companies I'd genuinely trust with smart home data.

<comment><USER65> Especially since Mozilla has been working on WebThings which is home automation protocol over HTTP.

There is a place for both WebThings and this new protocol. WebThings is too heavy for low-power devices and mesh networks like Bluetooth and Thread. But would be nice to have standard API for web services and gateways. The ideal world would be this new protocol on the local network and WebThings across the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Smart home is the poster child for "The good thing about standards is there are so many to choose from."

Randall gets it [1].

[1] [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><USER67> i wish the harder i pressed the trackpad the more votes you would get. I remember smart home standards being talked about and published around 1999. Like another poster mentioned, X10 was a big thing around then even though it came out in the 70s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I am planning on wiring my house with ZWave and OpenHAB. Anyone have any experience doing this? Does it work well?

<comment><USER69> I have 40+ ZWave+ devices and they work great with Home Assistant. From lights to fans to all kinds of sensors, the mesh network seems to have good range and latency (as long as your controller isn't really close to interference).

Definitely don't use older ZWave devices, only ZWave Plus certified ones. This ensures the network is fully encrypted and allows for greater range and throughput.

My next fun project is automating the watering of pots and the garden. Going to combine a ZWave-controlled solenoid with drip irrigation and some Home Assistant smart logic (daily rain, sun hours, humidity, temperature) to handle it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> this is funny because we installed a ring in the office for its Google home integration. but now that it's owned by Amazon that no longer works :/

</comment><comment><USER71> I hope they address security requirements beyond layer 2.

</comment><comment><USER72> it's not to late?

</comment><comment><USER73> In case no one noticed : [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

</comment><comment><USER74> Obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><USER75> Considering Apple, Amazon, and Google are already members of the Zigbee alliance, it makes you wonder why it had to be a new working group and not a new group within Zigbee.

Its like saying Cowboys, 49ers, Patriots, and the NFL join together to create a new football league.

<comment><USER76> I'd assume the average person has no clue what Zigbee is. I know I'd never heard of it

<comment><USER77> From what I've read, Zigbee is for the rest of the world what Z-Wave is for the US, in terms of market share. Not sure how accurate that is, but from what I've seen, there are a lot more Zigbee devices here in Germany than Z-Wave, while most US sites talk about Z-Wave.

<comment><USER78> What Zigbee devices can you buy apart from Hue lamps? ZWave has been dominant for many years because there are hardly any Zigbee devices, be it in the US or in the EU. FWIW I'm in the Netherlands and have all ZWave, and when you look at e.g. the symcon.de forums, there are plenty of ZWave users in the EU (and Germany specifically).

<comment><USER79> IKEA Tradfri devices are probably the biggest user of ZigBee.

<comment><USER80> Xiaomi Aqara Amazon Echo Plus etc as a Zigbee hub Tradfri/HomeSmart from Ikea

I'm not sure I see much z-wave stuff (at least here in Australia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Just because the 'standard' is open doesn't mean it will be free software. See: HTML5.

</comment><comment><USER82> First we need an acronym for this alliance. I think GAZA will be appropriate. Secondly, regarding your future standard: Cool, thanks guys. I'll hack that.

</comment><comment><USER83> I will never use these devices. I think those that do are opening themselves up to hackers, law enforcement and criminal abuse. This is clearly something that should be Open Source/ Open Bonnet or closed to my home.

<comment><USER84> You need to tell Marshall this. ;-)

It seems entirely possible to put voice recognition on local machines with downloaded updates, but of course they're never going to do this.

<comment><USER83> I assure you chime and amazon and google have all been caught sending back the audio

<comment><USER84> I'd never use it myself excepting maybe video only for a burglar alarm, but because Marshall worked on home automation protocols, he loves this stuff. I always had nightmares the damn "smart light bulbs" in the 2nd street office were listening in on our conversations.

<comment><USER83> Oh now i know what marshall you are talking about.Yea, that's just dumb

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> In the past 10 years, I haven't seen even one Zigbee device sold in retail besides IKEA remote.

Zigbee is pretty much a zombie standard now

<comment><USER86> Zigbee is used all the time in smart lights, plugs, doorbells, temperature sensors and the such. It's a very popular standard.

<comment> m-p-3 I personally have seen more Z-Wave devices than Zigbee in the wild.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Ha. Them? Forget it. The "Open Standard" will require phoning home to the manufacturer or it's "not certifiable". Trust these guys like your drug addict former friend.

</comment><comment><USER88> > Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Tesla and Google's parent company, Alphabet are > named in the lawsuit

The comma misuse is legendary.

[https://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance- Punctuat...](https://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance- Punctuation/dp/1592402038)

Fixed: Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Tesla, and Google's parent company, Alphabet, are named in the lawsuit

<comment><USER89> Wrong thread, you're looking for [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21824178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21824178)

<comment><USER88> O_O

I posted it in that thread. What the fuck?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> What we really need is a legislation for those devices, that force all manufacturer to:

\- have a hardware switch for everything

\- have 2 microphones. One is always on, and only listens to the keyword, and is not linked to the rest of the device. If it detects the keyword, it triggers a hardware switch that activate the second microphone.

\- text recognition is done from a local unit, not a remote server. This local unit analyse the voice then send proper commands to the rest of the device, but never share the words, and cannot receive data from the rest of the hardware except during signed updates.

\- all devices share a stanadrd color code for a mandatory indicator light giving the state of it and a standard activation/confirmation sound

\- all devices must be able to be controlled from a provided remote with a button instead of a keyword, which can be deactivated

\- all devices must have a BT kill switch, if a phone send a signal saying "I don't want to be listened to", the device will no activate.

\- any data sent to server must be encrypted from the client with a key the server doesn't have

And once it's done, do something similar for phones, e-health devices, etc.

We can't expect big companies to act decently, and technology is not going to save us.

<comment><USER91> We don't need that.

You're right that technology isn't going to save us though. You can just, you know, not use Alexa. Normal light switches continue to work. Windows still exist for checking the local weather and are probably more reliable than Alexa is.

<comment><USER90> I don't have any kind of smart speakers or camera at home.

The problem is that many other people I visit do.

It's the same issue with Google products in general: I don't have a gmail address. My phone don't even have an email tied to it and I don't use the official store. But because my contacts mostly do those things, google still has a log of all my conversations, my face in pictures, my positions, etc.

But even then it's not just about me: people take bad decisions all the time, companies as well. We don't let people own a radioactive materials, we have laws for that. We don't allow companies to sell radioactive materials to the public, we have laws for that.

<comment><USER92> Yeah but <insert jingoistic hopeful statement about the future that completely ignores how dystopian the technology these companies build is increasingly becoming>!!!!1111eleventyomgz

"Just don't buy it hahahaha checkmate" completely ignores the fact that even though I now choose not to do business with Google, I am still many times a day forced to use their Captcha or visit sites that host their ads (which I block, btw).

Saying "we don't need that you just need not to buy it" is exactly the same situation. All we are asking for is a reasonable way to opt out - and actually opt out. These technologies _are made viral by design_ to collect maximally valuable data from their users, and the very _idea_ that someone might want to opt out is totally ignored.

I personally don't own any of these devices and will never allow one in my home. I feel sorry for my kids that they will grow up with all their friends talking about them and not be able to share in it - and I will explain to them why.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sign-on email verification:  is the email address a disposable email address - <AUTHOR> Ist there a way to avoid maintaining local blacklist with domains from such providers? <comment><USER2> I think that another question might be "How can I get people to put in real email addresses and not disposable ones?"

But, in answer to your question: If you send a few (legitimate - not spam) emails to a recipient, and they all bounce, then that's probably a disposable one that expired.

</comment><comment><USER3> If your question is about detecting services like mailinator.com, 10minutemail, ... this could be the service you are looking for: <http://www.block-disposable-email.com></comment>


Free Textbooks on Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> http://metaoptimize.com/qa/questions/186/good-freely-available-textbooks-on-machine-learning <comment><USER2> "you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin education you coulda got for a dollah fifty in late chahges at the public library"

I really like that quote from Good Will Hunting. Unfortunately, most of us aren't savants and there's a lot more that goes into learning something than finding one free textbook on it.

I think we're starting to see a lot more free textbooks because we're learning that, when it comes to education, resources are not as important as practice, community, and engagement

<comment><USER3> Obviously the price of textbooks isn't the ultimate bottleneck for learning stuff. But, there _are_ important difference between free & cheap. Easier access has all sorts of catalyzing effects.

For example, a free textbook can be referred to. _"For a more detailed discussion of this read chapter 4 of Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning."_

<comment><USER4> When I was a high school student trying to learn subjects outside what my school taught, free access to books was pretty much necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, it looks like "Free Textbooks on [choose subject]" submissions are an easy way to get some link karma on HN.

I've seen this happen quite often lately, and usually these kind of posts go up in the ranks pretty quickly -- they also generate near zero discussion :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I was looking for some implementation for Locality-Sensitive Hashing, then I landed on metaoptimize.com from Stackoverflow, thereby clicking on 'Hottest' gave me this first link, and I know that HN people love this sort of stuff, in fact while submitting this link I had this intuition that it has already been submitted earlier. As far as the title is concerned it is intact from the source, but if you consider this template : Free textbooks on [choose subject] , then the only thing which matters and can attract people is 'subject'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm currently taking Andrew Ng's course on Machine Learning, and I'm loving it so far.

Those books might get handy in the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> [Not Safe For Michigan]

<comment><USER8> You mean Minnesota, if you are referring to the ban on Free online courses.</comment></comment>


Hackers vs. Consultants: How not to find an idea (Part 1 of 3) - <AUTHOR> http://behindthescenes.midtownrow.com/hackers-vs-consultants-how-not-to-find-an-ide

<comment><USER2> The premise is interesting, but there isn't anything conclusive about part 1. Part 1 is also incredibly short. It left me wondering why the story is even divided into parts at all.

I felt as if I started watching a 30 minute TV show and "TO BE CONTINUED" happens 10 minutes in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the feedback. We understand where you're coming from, but we wanted to present the "business side" as it's own independent view. And while you're correct that Part 1 is a bit short, it was much too long to condense into one readable post.

Ultimately, we're still learning and we'll keep your points in mind for next time.

<comment><USER3> Stop wasting our time with this. Post it when it's done, divided into parts or not.

I will read part 1 and only part 1 if that's the only one available at the time it was posted. I will not return to your site to look for that content again.

I _despise_ this trend.

<comment><USER4> I thought: Maybe someone (me) can write a little app that notifies you after the story is completed. But I will not, this behavior should not be stimulated. If you have something to say finish what you want to say and then post it to HN. It's not even possible to have a meaningful discussion right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The OP doesn't seem to be able to take any personal responsibility for his ideas flopping. Can't put one iota of blame on himself.

 _I've spent enough time to know that the culture of a 'corporate' work environment forces you into a particular way of thinking_

 _They can't appreciate the idea because they don't understand the technical details_

 _Perhaps my cofounders had their judgement clouded by creating one too many PowerPoint decks or Excel models_

Do you think maybe it has at least a little to do with a) your idea b) the way you're selling the idea or c) you?

<comment><USER6> Note that the next installment will presumably be business-focused. Two unbalanced views may more-or-less balance out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _I naturally had some very tech-heavy ideas (e.g., new approaches for mobile / social / local, new hardware devices). I found it hard to get my co-founders to react positively, even after spending hours trying to convince them of the opportunity._

 _I can spend hours explaining why an idea was a better technology than what's out there, but for some ideas, it's just tough to fully appreciate if you don't understand the technical details._

Dangerous thinking. People don't use/buy something because it's "better technology"... e.g. the tech-specs-as-the-major-selling-point Android tablets vs. the iPad.

Mind sharing some of your "technical" startup ideas? Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Better" was probably the wrong term, but if you start thinking about enterprise technology, a lot of it is actually just straight up based on how much cost savings or performance improvement something can deliver (e.g., a DB that gives an order of magnitude performance improvement for certain verticals). You're right that consumer stuff is a different story.

And as far as the sales comment below...as mentioned in the post, sometimes it's not worth me shoving it down their throat if they're not going to be pumped about coming in to work everyday.

<comment><USER8> "sometimes it's not worth me shoving it down their throat if they're not going to be pumped about coming in to work everyday."

Good sales pitches don't involve feelings of having things shoved down one's throat. Don't think "sales" in the slick marketing vernacular -- think translation that your team members can understand, in spite of their (in)familiarity with the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The idea of starting a company and THEN trying to find an idea is just so utterly foreign to me that I doubt I'll ever understand it.

<comment><USER10> The entire premise of YC is investing in a team first and idea second.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but a (big?) part of what makes a team fundable is some ability to come up with a viable idea. The market may not always agree with the founders' and PG's idea of viability, so good teams can pivot, but if you don't have any ideas or your ideas don't have technical and business merit, best-case you're left with a couple of really great _employees_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The fear of being an entrepreneur if you don't have a great idea is our biggest handicap. Everyone thinks they need to have everything ironed out before they can leave their "career". If more people just started viewing entrepreneurship as a career path of its own (as it is), a lot more cool products and business models would be invented.

I definitely agree with the notion "Team first, Idea second". Good ideas are easy; execution is the hard part. Put together a good team, and good ideas will come -- the support for this is the existence of many serial entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER13> It is funny that most people in software have no fucking clue about software...all they have is their IDEAAAa...and they think they own > 70% because of their idea.

I had a potential co-founder ask me once...Dont you think 30% is a lot for just making it..I stuck to a diplomatic answer but I wish I had told him something like.."No you retard....70% is a lot for just sitting on your couch and reading fucking techcrunch all the time".

Bottomline is if you cant code you are not invited to the party!</comment>


Ask HN: how can I brief my devs better as non-tech founder?  - <AUTHOR>

I'm a non tech founder working with outside developers (at least until product market fit).
I'm mostly doing fine with briefings, but occasionally the developers misunderstand how certain roles and permissions interact.
I found an article about "Actor-Role Patterns", which seems like interesting stuff but which is also too advanced for me to create briefings based on it.
Ideally, I would provide my developers with a very clear diagram of what the entire application is supposed to do. The problem is: I have no idea where to begin looking.
You would help me tremendously by throwing me some breadcrumbs. Thank you in advance! <comment><USER2> You need to pick up pen and paper and create diagrams and flowcharts, if you can't chart it out, it probably doesn't make any sense. If you get confused, grab your senior developer and explain to him one on one what you are trying to achieve. It doesn't matter that you are a non-tech founder, your working with developers, you need to adapt your processes to how developers think and work.

Bullet-points work great and provide easy references to things like intended file-names, and also provide an easy way to break down a conditional statement.

You need to look into psuedo-code, because in a way, that's what you're looking to provide. Otherwise, you might as well just give the developers and the client a one on one and get out of the way. You have to be providing something that makes the developers life easier then handling all the interaction themselves and that something provided has to be something other than just time.

We need to understand the purpose of the system, how it works into the overall program, how it should look, how it should feel, intended program flow, intended results, we need to know a lot of everything not a little of everything.

You also need to be almost constantly available to answer a quick question. There are just too many issues that may crop up while working on a program, case in point I was working on a project earlier today which featured two different types of an overall master type inside a record of a database. I made a (highly educated) assumption of which type I was using based on context but I could have been wrong. Knowing which sub-type to use was something that wasn't available to me immediately with the information I had on hand and didn't appear to be an issue during our requirements meeting, it only popped up when I was re-checking program flow, specifically error catching. These little things can happen all the time, and the only real way to beat them is communication.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not real familiar with the term briefing? but if you mean like a requirements meeting. uses cases are pretty useful:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case)

There's also interaction diagrams and state diagrams depending on the type of software your using.

<comment><AUTHOR> A "briefing" is a term from advertising & PR agencies. It is a document in which the customer explains what their business context, goals and "value demand" is, at what budget etc etc.

Thanks for the link, I will look into it. I worked with use cases and user stories, but user stories will frequently have some gaps in them - and it's in those gaps that misunderstandings occur. I was hoping that there's a universal language to create bullet proof models.

<comment><USER4> "create bullet proof models"

Assuming that is possible (for anything but the most simplistic of systems) is likely the root of your problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought this might be ambitious, yes. Although at this time the system is (still) really quite simple.

Also, I thought: there must be a better way than saying: "So when user A logs in and merges records X and Y, user B will see the changes but not user C because he's not an admin".

But apparently I am mistaken?

<comment><USER2> I'd wager you just aren't being clear enough. From what you just said, I have zero context as to why user B can see those changes. I can make a guess, because he's an admin, but it's just that, a guess based on the little context you provided about user C not being an admin and being unable to see the changes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>