The big device manufacturers DON'T WANT INTEROPERABILITY. They want you nailed down to their ecosystem and hit you with planned obsolescence. Like most anything else in the economy, they want premium pricing. If you adopt open standards, then you're competing with everyone else but now on price. The majority of device makers don't want to do that. THAT is the problem with the smart home.

As someone who does live in a "fully smart" home, used quite some time to plan it and had to fend of "smarthome" manufacturers like flies aroud a shitcake:

90% of all products on the market are a scam and shouldn't be called smart at all - they are fancy "remotes" either via voice or mobile phone. Nothing about that is smart. That's dumb. It is not more convenient compared to a proper lightswitch if I need to know a long specific voice prompt or take my mobile out of its pocket to switch on a certain light.

What the autor of the article requests is already on the market for decades - KNX/EIB any a few other standards (Modbus, Onewire, etc.) are available for ages, are not depending on one brand and one central component. There is no fucking need to stay within a walled garden but the point is: These systems exist for such a long time that they do not show up as "big introduction" at IFA or CES. They evolve gradually and to stay within German exhibitions are found at the Light and Building rather than the IFA. Because the first one is a builders/electronics exhibitions, the later a multimedia/TV trade fair. The Verge is simply at the wrong place.

To give you an idea of my (actually very common, nothing about it is very special) setup/usecases and what I mean with "smart": KNX does everything that requires switching, all sensors, basically all background work excluding the doorbell (works via LAN) and Fingerprint (works via LAN).

Lights:

The system does recognise people automatically when they enter a room and their positioning in a room. Paired with enviromental data (natural light level in the room, outside light, time of the day, our schedule according to our calenders*) it determines the appropriate level of light based on the human centric lightning concept. Light will be brighter and more blue in the morning (unless I am coming home from nightshifts), darker and more orange in the evening (unless we have a party), very dark if you go to the loo at night. It furthermore recognises your positioning in the room (e.g. when you are in a certain part of the kitchen certain lights go on) or that certain power sockets draw power according to a certain charateristic (e.g. the TV goes on)

Temperature:

The system knows current inside and outside temperature and the expected forecast*. It will heat the rooms accordingly, e.g. will turn down the kids rooms during schooldays but have them back at temperature when school ends. If the system recognises that someone is still in the room for long after school should have started it determines that someone is sick/schools off unexpectedly and temps are adjusted accordingly. In the summer the system shuts the blinds according to the light level to keep the heat out - based on the current position of the sun(e.g. the eastern blinds are lowered in the morning but not the western ones) and outside light levels. It will let enough light in for everyone to work but at the same time keep the heat out.

Air quality:

The system measures the air quality of the rooms and outside air quality&temperature and does ventilate accordingly - or ask us to manually open a window if that doesn't provide sufficient clean air. (But won't do so if the Air quality outside is bad)

Windows/Doors:

All of them have sensors showing their opening status, some if they are properly locked.

Doorbell/Fingerprint:

The Doorbell/Fingerprint system is the only system not on the bus as Video is beyond the scope of what the system can transfer.

Devices/Appliances:

Most things are "dumb" integrated first- we see when the washing machine is done because of the power charateristic, we see if the refrigerator is broken the same way. While we use Home Assistant for additional comfort, it is not really necessary.

Visualisation:

We use both KNX only as well as Home Assistant. But I could change over to openHAB, ioBroker or whatever we want tomorrow.

*: This data has input from external sources.

My point is: This is done without much user input. And by using around 30 different brands. With dumb actors and sensors (blind e.g. are just a "on off" motor, windows are binary contacts, same goes for leakage, etc.) so the components can be exchanged easily. And you don't pay the hefty premium everyone tries to sell you for their "remote controlled blinds" (twice the price for a shitty remote,another useless gateway and Alexa...) and it's far easier to use different brands. And if the blind actuator brand goes bust (way more unlikely compared to a smarthome startup) it will work without a cloud and can be exchanged seamlessly with any other brand.

We are there. But it is not fancy enough for the media.

I have yet to see a “smart home” feature that’s worth the potential problems, let alone the cost.

Yeah, a well-integrated smart home can do some pretty cool stuff, but it also means putting my trust in corporations even more than I already have to. Plus, I’ll have to worry about each major appliance I own possibly being bricked due to a buggy software update or a malicious hacker.

Keep my home nice and dumb. Thanks.

The proprietary/cloud based threat bit me already. Installed smart vents in my home several years ago. They weren't perfect, but they did really help even out my 3-bedroom, 2-story, 1-zone home. Now the app fails to login, the site doesn't even attempt password recovery and I'm back to dumb vents... Customer support is a black hole and basically every product is and has been out of stock for years, so I've no hope of any happy resolution.

They apparently used to be supported by SmartThings when it allowed custom stuff, but that's dead now too because Samsung didn't want to allow it. I even tried to use their proprietary hub which said it could connect to them, but that shit didn't work either.

I know someone living in a really high-end "smart" home. We're talking about a ton of hardware and proprietary software controlling practically everything in the house. From one app in a phone or iPad, you can control everything from the security cameras to the heater to the pool.

It's basically the pinnacle of what all this technology intends to achieve, and tbh, it's all a bit of a pain.

Diagnosing anything in the house has an extra layer of work. Is it the pool heater not working? Oh, no, it's the app not working. Security alert from the house? A fly walked across the camera lens. Everything acting weird all the sudden? Guess the shitty monopoly broadband cable provider in the city is having issues again.

The system only stays afloat because of a 24/7 service contract with a company that specializes in these houses. Give a few months without that support, and things will start falling apart.

I get that this is a different class from the products from Google and Amazon, or even the various open source products, but tbh, I'll take fragmented over monolithic and overarching.

If you don't use zwave/zigbee for your smart home you're missing out.

Ah the internet of infected things. Everything a mash up of open and closed source, old and new, then abandoned by the manufacturer after a few years for the next shiny.

Probably Linux based, wait to be taken over by a few botnets...

What is needed is an open, standardized hardware platform. You should be about to flash on the IoT OS of your choice that will be kept up to date.

The best smart home platform before are this was home assistant. And by gosh it still is the best by a mile. The difference in functionality home assistant has to anyone else is an ocean wide win for home assistant. It’s the only thing that even comes close to the utopia idea of a smart home so many have given up on. I love my home assistant 💜

Is there some reason just using z-wave and avoiding everything cloud is not just fine?

Seems like matter is more trying to resolve zigbee issues. Or am I missing something?

Will Apple sell more devices if they fully support the standard? Will Google?

If not, there's your answer.

The GitHub, if you're wondering how exactly this thing works. A blog explaining it, and an example.

Is there any particular reason HTTP couldn't have done all this?

Is supporting this open a standard a law? It sounds like it could be an EU law, and it being one is the only reason companies would do it.