(smart?) things that should be in every room

[puntloos]

Just a bit of an errant thought, but which things feature in pretty much every room, and how do you make clever use of this 'repeating fact'? I realise this might be a bit of a 'smart home' question but there could be other things too. For example:

 

- Networking cable, and perhaps a few "boxes in the wall" that can fit a router and allow me to open up an ethernet port here and there 'on demand'?

- Ceiling speakers? (not a fan myself but you know.. resale..)

- Water line? (with a small baby, can't express how useful a tap is in the baby room)

- HDMI cable from one wall to another? (so one could hang a TV on one wall and 'drive it' from another device?

- Switchable room power line (so you can turn an entire room off, and perhaps measure power usage -  "no dad, I'm not watching TV.... - oh really?....")

- Heating control? Is this even a thing with ASHP? 

- Window/shutter control?

- Box of Sensors embedded at a strategic place? I'm thinking primarily temp and humidity, perhaps movement, not camera. I noticed that putting a temp sensor on the floor is next to useless, so this box probably needs to be at 1m50 somewhere? 

 

[ProDave]

I put multiple CAT5 cables to every room,  Currently only ONE is in use, to give a hard wired ethernet to the desktop pc.  The rest are there for "the future"?

 

I am not convinced ceiling speakers will please my ears, I opted for traditional proper hifi speakers in the main rooms.

 

I have burried hdmi cables to the main tv's to put most of the "tv boxes" in the under stair cupboard.  My only concern going forwards is what will be the next must have cable after hdmi?  That's when I find out if my planned route to pull a new cable through works or not. Put in MORE than you think you need.

 

Don't forget surround sound speaker cables for the main room(s)

 

I am not a fan of a spy in the room that you talk to to do things (and listens to you all the time). I am too much of a dinosaur. 

 

We have hard wired wall thermostats in the three downstairs rooms and a simple heating programmer on the wall in the utility room.

 

I wired a dual rate electricity meter specifically to meter electricity separately for heating and DHW use by the ASHP so I know the exact running cost of each.

[puntloos]

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I put multiple CAT5 cables to every room,  Currently only ONE is in use, to give a hard wired ethernet to the desktop pc.  The rest are there for "the future"?

 

Yeah, I don't know what physical limits I have to contend with - how many cables can you put in a wall? At *some* point there's no more space, surely?

 

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I am not convinced ceiling speakers will please my ears, I opted for traditional proper hifi speakers in the main rooms.

 

Yeah, exactly my idea.. - although it depends on how fancy ones you buy. In the main rooms 'height' speakers are actually a thing for convincing surround so I'm building those, but perhaps cables to prep for philistines in all others?

 

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I have burried hdmi cables to the main tv's to put most of the "tv boxes" in the under stair cupboard.  My only concern going forwards is what will be the next must have cable after hdmi?  That's when I find out if my planned route to pull a new cable through works or not. Put in MORE than you think you need.

 

Don't forget surround sound speaker cables for the main room(s)

 

Oh don't you worry, that part I have fully specced out for 7.3.4

 

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I am not a fan of a spy in the room that you talk to to do things (and listens to you all the time). I am too much of a dinosaur. 

 

Eh, funny, I actually forgot about those. Just to set the 'record' (ha) straight, they don't listen all the time, the whole reason for the 'Alexa' and 'google' words is that they have tailored hardware that exclusively listens for that word alone. If the word occurs, then and only then will the rest of the device power on, send it to the cloud for parsing etc.. 

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

We have hard wired wall thermostats in the three downstairs rooms and a simple heating programmer on the wall in the utility room.

 

I wired a dual rate electricity meter specifically to meter electricity separately for heating and DHW use by the ASHP so I know the exact running cost of each.

Cool! Or hot.

[ProDave]

2 minutes ago, puntloos said:

Eh, funny, I actually forgot about those. Just to set the 'record' (ha) straight, they don't listen all the time, the whole reason for the 'Alexa' and 'google' words is that they have tailored hardware that exclusively listens for that word alone. If the word occurs, then and only then will the rest of the device power on, send it to the cloud for parsing etc.. 

 

And you believe that?

[Dreadnaught]

38 minutes ago, puntloos said:

Window/shutter control?

 

Smart curtains/blinds?

 

I'm eyeing up some automatic curtain-openers on AliExpress. I would an early adopter, at least here in Britain but am very tempted. They require power to the top of windows but probably not ethernet, relying as they do on WiFi instead of wires for smart control. They also require a special curtain rail but all-in-all they are not terribly expensive.

[SteamyTea]

20 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I put multiple CAT5 cables to every room

Do you really need multiple cables.

Surely 1 cable and a switch/router in each room.

But really, why do you need everything wired up, surely a home should be, to a certain extent, a haven from the outside world.

 

38 minutes ago, puntloos said:

Ceiling speakers? (not a fan myself but you know.. resale..)

All I would see is holes that need filling.

40 minutes ago, puntloos said:

Switchable room power line (so you can turn an entire room off, and perhaps measure power usage -  "no dad, I'm not watching TV.... - oh really?....")

Remote parenting.  Not really how it is meant to work.

41 minutes ago, puntloos said:

Box of Sensors embedded at a strategic place? I'm thinking primarily temp and humidity, perhaps movement, not camera. I noticed that putting a temp sensor on the floor is next to useless, so this box probably needs to be at 1m50 somewhere? 

It it in with the MVHR, and a light sensor may be of use.

 

But be better off just going basic and accepting that every no wand again life is not perfect, in my opinion.

[ProDave]

2 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Do you really need multiple cables.

Surely 1 cable and a switch/router in each room.

But really, why do you need everything wired up, surely a home should be, to a certain extent, a haven from the outside world.

 

 

multiple cat 5's was an attempt at future proofing. More for non network stuff, e.g 2 cat 5's and the right adaptor at each end = an hdmi link. The spare cat 5's just might do when the next thing after hdmi comes along and I want the next tv standard linked back to my AV cupboard.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, ProDave said:

when the next thing after hdmi comes along

That will be 5G, will unshackle us from wires.

I think I can stream on my 4G to my Kindle, but not tried anything larger.

[Jeremy Harris]

28 minutes ago, puntloos said:

 

Eh, funny, I actually forgot about those. Just to set the 'record' (ha) straight, they don't listen all the time, the whole reason for the 'Alexa' and 'google' words is that they have tailored hardware that exclusively listens for that word alone. If the word occurs, then and only then will the rest of the device power on, send it to the cloud for parsing etc.. 

 

 

 

Not actually true, though.  It is true that the only speech recognition feature built in to a smart speaker is the ability to detect the keyword, but the mic is always active and the unit is always recording audio in a loop.  It has to, in order to try and get the false alert frequency down to an acceptable level.

 

If the onboard speech recognition detects what it thinks is the keyword ("Alexa" or whatever) then digitised audio both detected and recorded by the device from just before the keyword detection, to a period of time after it, is transmitted to the company servers.  These have the "heavy lifting" processing capability to do two things. 

 

Firstly, the keyword recognition is checked.  If this hasn't been correctly identified by the fairly limited capability within the device, then no action is taken by the company running the system to act on any audio after the keyword, however they may still keep the audio recording, as they are always trying to train their systems to be more accurate.  This may mean that other people, most probably outwith the UK and our privacy laws, may listen to these false alert recordings, in order to try and determine how best to tweak their algorithms/AI systems.

 

The second thing that happens is that, if the keyword turns out to have been correctly detected by the device, then the rest of the audio will be processed and acted on, both in respect to what the system believes is being requested, and what the system knows about that particular user's preferences, age, gender, buying habits, TV/radio/streaming preferences, purchase history etc. 

 

Just to be absolutely clear, the microphone of all these smart speakers IS on all time, IS recording a short audio loop all the time and can be activated to send audio to the companies servers at any time, not just when a valid keyword is detected.  They all make this fairly clear in their terms and conditions, although it isn't immediately obvious that any audio, at any time, can, and does, get sent back to the main servers.  Putting a packet sniffer on the output of one of these (Wireshark, or similar) reveals that there is usually a significant amount of traffic going back and forth all the time, even when the device is apparently not being keyword activated.

 

There's an interesting legal question that these things raise, too.  There's no reason at all that I can see why someone shouldn't choose to buy and use one of these smart speakers if they wish.  By doing so they will have accepted all the terms and conditions, and so be comfortable with any audio within range of the device being recorded and sent back to the companies servers, at any time that the device is powered on.

 

However, what about visitors or guests?  They most probably won't have signed up and accepted the same terms and conditions, and may be unaware that anything they say within range of such a device may be recorded and transmitted to a third party.  Ordinarily, consent needs to be explicitly granted for this sort of audio monitoring, so it would seem that anyone that has one of these devices may have a legal obligation to inform any visitor or guest that they are subject to audio monitoring when in their house.  Not sure the law has kept up with technology yet.  Even a chap from Google said that he felt there was probably a legal requirement for disclosure, and that he would not enter the house of anyone who had one of Google's own devices connected.

 

 

 

 

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, Jeremy Harris said:

Even a chap from Google said that he felt there was probably a legal requirement for disclosure, and that he would not enter the house of anyone who had one of Google's own devices connected.

Bit like SportsDirect making it clear that they treat all customers as criminals, even before you enter the shop.

Was it not the BBC that did a bit about Alexa and set thousands of them off.  And they can be tricked into switching on very easily by recording the keywords and upping the frequency so only dogs can hear it.

I thought it was annoying when my neighbour found out that he could change my TV channel with his remote in 1984.  Never did tell him that I could hear his girlfriend with her 'friends' when he was at work.

Edited December 28, 2019 by SteamyTea

[Jeremy Harris]

The whole voice recognition thing poses a fair few privacy and potential legal conundrums.    It does seem clear that speech recognition that is built-in to a device, and which doesn't rely on powerful external processing power, just doesn't really work very well yet, as anyone with this feature built-in to a non-internet connected car can probably verify (my experience with Toyota and BMW systems was that they were pretty hopeless).

 

 

[joe90]

Well, this thread makes me feel a right old dinosaur, apart from power sockets, light switches and switchable 5amp sockets fir table lamps etc I have nothing (apart from a Couple of telephone and  tv sockets). One room stat in the hallway and wifi.

[SteamyTea]

Just read the news online, first story is that all the address of the new years honours have been published online by mistake.

We really cannot trust anyone with our data now.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50929543

 

Are all those people going to have to move now.

[Declan52]

44 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

 

Smart curtains/blinds?

 

I'm eyeing up some automatic curtain-openers on AliExpress. I would an early adopter, at least here in Britain but am very tempted. They require power to the top of windows but probably not ethernet, relying as they do on WiFi instead of wires for smart control. They also require a special curtain rail but all-in-all they are not terribly expensive.

Link???

[Dreadnaught]

8 minutes ago, Declan52 said:

Link???

 

This sort of thing: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000003718589.html. Other (Chinese) brands are available. It works with DT82 curtain tracks.

 

I hasten to add that I am still researching my purchase. Caveat emptor.

 

Edit: to add that I think these systems are similar to the ones sometimes used in modern hotels.

Edited December 28, 2019 by Dreadnaught

[MikeSharp01]

As I think I mentioned earlier on another thread this is all about data and we give it away as if were our exhaled breath IE of no apparent value it has real value and the fight is on to get as much of it as possible. I am not as worried about Alexa type devices as I am about the NHS, well HMG actually, selling the UK health data set, however much anonamised  to the tec giants because they will then joint the dots at the top and know an individuals health condition. If think that sounds unlikely then just imagine if google were tracking your use of searches and trying to spot you looking up some health condition then tie this up with a diary entry about a visit to the GP then your orders to an online pharmacy even if they cannot see tge prescription they will know what is wrong and bingo.... Remember that in this big data Klondike there are no models. 

[Declan52]

44 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

 

This sort of thing: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000003718589.html. Other (Chinese) brands are available. It works with DT82 curtain tracks.

 

I hasten to add that I am still researching my purchase. Caveat emptor.

 

Edit: to add that I think these systems are similar to the ones sometimes used in modern hotels.

I have a Xiaomi phone and a few other bits and they are a quality product.

[Jeremy Harris]

44 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

As I think I mentioned earlier on another thread this is all about data and we give it away as if were our exhaled breath IE of no apparent value it has real value and the fight is on to get as much of it as possible. I am not as worried about Alexa type devices as I am about the NHS, well HMG actually, selling the UK health data set, however much anonamised  to the tec giants because they will then joint the dots at the top and know an individuals health condition. If think that sounds unlikely then just imagine if google were tracking your use of searches and trying to spot you looking up some health condition then tie this up with a diary entry about a visit to the GP then your orders to an online pharmacy even if they cannot see tge prescription they will know what is wrong and bingo.... Remember that in this big data Klondike there are no models. 

 

 

I tested the supposedly "anonymised" NHS data set a few years ago, when I wrote to the local NHS data protection chap to make it clear that I did not want my medical records included in any data set that was to be passed outside the NHS.  The response I had was interesting, as it enabled me to show them just how totally useless their system was at anonymising records.  I was granted access to my, supposedly anonymised, medical record, on request.  Sure enough, there was no name, DOB, address or NHS number associated with the record.  There was, however, date information included with specific record entries, together with the location of some treatments. 

 

The blithering idiots in the NHS simply hadn't realised how this rendered all their attempts at anonymising the data useless.  There was a record for a hospital stay and orthopaedic surgery following a road accident, that included dates for admission, key treatments and discharge.  As there was also location data (the specific unit to which I'd been admitted) it took minutes to do a web search for road accidents in that area on that date, narrow down the reported injuries to those on my medical record, and then get my name and age.  Armed with that information it was then easy to fill in all the blanks on the supposedly anonymised data set, with the sole exception of my NHS reference number. 

 

Took me maybe a couple of hours to turn a supposedly anonymous medical record into one that was, to all intents and purposes, complete, using nothing more complex than internet access and the ability to do a few searches.

[puntloos]

4 hours ago, ProDave said:

And you believe that?

 

And you think there's a massive conspiracy where these companies risk losing your trust (and patronage) forever, just so they can overhear you discussing the neighbors cat?

[DamonHD]

I believe that there have already been rumblings from misuse of such data.  All large orgs with lots of personal data are problems waiting to happen.  Those may be outweighed by the good, but things happen.

 

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/29/apple_says_sorry_for_siri_slurping_voice_commands_of_unsuspecteding_users/

Edited December 28, 2019 by DamonHD

[puntloos]

4 hours ago, Dreadnaught said:

 

This sort of thing: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000003718589.html. Other (Chinese) brands are available. It works with DT82 curtain tracks.

 

I hasten to add that I am still researching my purchase. Caveat emptor.

 

Edit: to add that I think these systems are similar to the ones sometimes used in modern hotels.

Ah I found those too, xiaomi aquara. I always wonder about Chinese stuff if it's "by default" poorly made. To be clear I have no reason to assume it is here... but all these smallish chinese vendors (xiaomi is quite big/popular btw, so this might be an exception..)

 

[puntloos]

Not really the subject of discussion I wanted to get into but just to comment that like I tried to say above I tend to figure out the business motives for companies, assuming a psychotic disdain for ethics when judging the situation. Meaning - I'm sure that some companies might be able to 'squeeze some money' out of permanently spying on you and overhearing you suggest an interest in xyz and then somethingsomething buynow! .. but the downside of people finding this out and shunning your brand forever would dramatically outweigh this little benefit. Even if they really care absolutely nothing about your privacy they have a financial interest in not screwing with you (let alone that indeed it might well be illegal)

 

Sure, some data, erroneous or not, might be sent to the cloud but to assume that anyone is interested or going to "store this snippet for strategic later (ab)use" is just assuming you're way too special. Perhaps if you're a moviestar or whatever there's a slight increased chance that some shady person manages to bypass all the companies' internal safeties and then get to your data.. but my personal take is that I'm not going to worry about this one until I have solid info.

 

Back to the subject at hand though - would it make sense to indeed design some standardized 'box', the same for each room, that indeed contains the network port, a router, few sensors, and optionally one the smarthome puck of your choice?

Edited December 28, 2019 by puntloos

[Temp]

Perhaps not what you mean but..

 

Standard lighting wiring doesn't provide a neutral at light switches (the blue wire is used as switched live). You might consider running three core + earth down to switches so a neutral can be provided. This might allow a wider variety of smart devices to be fitted in the switch box.

[MJNewton]

3 minutes ago, Temp said:

Standard lighting wiring doesn't provide a neutral at light switches (the blue wire is used as switched live).

 

That does of course depend on which 'standard' is being followed (convention would be more accurate). All our lighting circuits are looped in at the switches and so have a neutral available. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't becoming more commonplace as it gives a greater choice of light fixtures (as there's no need for them to accommodate multiple cables) and does of course help with 'smartifying' the switches. 

[MikeSharp01]

10 hours ago, MJNewton said:

'smartifying' the switches. 

I am almost sure we will use CAT6 to all our switches and power anything there with PoE if you used a deep back box you could get enough processing power behind an ordinary switch to do most anything! I am experimenting with mesh networks, based on THESE, and THESE self powered switches to see what I might make them do around the house.