General Discussions

Made my first move today by buying a smart boiler timer which is basically a switch connected to your router and an ios/android app which allows you to turn it on/off from anywhere and set a timer with full week schedule and such.
Link(sorry for the heb)
I understood that in the near future a lot of other aspects at home will be based on this simple and cheap long existent technology,
including lights, doors, windows, alarms etc..

[Edited by kingkob, 12/8/2014 5:18:55 PM]

Looks pretty slick Kob. Pardon my ignorance, when you say boiler you mean water heater, maybe solar?

Yup water heater but electric, I forgot they call it boiler only over here..

I remember they were ripping apart the security for many of these smart-home products at DEF CON this year.

From my understanding it was because a great deal of the products offer little to no protections.

Granted accessing some random person's thermostat would not give you full access to their home; but it would make it possible to generate an enormous heating bill for them. You could ramp up temps while they were gone on vacation/holiday or even just during the time they are gone for work.

I'm not sure I'm quite ready for this part of home improvement.

Kob's video was for heating water but if there was adequate security, home temp would be nice to control. Like you're gone most all day but have the thermo preset or turned on remotely like an hour before you get home to run the A/C or heater to make it comfy to walk in to. I could see doing that.

@KKob I thought solar was pretty popular over there but you said electric. Solar still cost prohibitive?

Its solar integrated with electric because we do have winters you know..

About the a/c it will be awesome and I think it will be included with future packages.

@admiral- I fully understand your concern and to tell the truth I think it's not secured as it should be, the company claims its safe with highest security available today and they give full warranty if someone breaches the system and causes any damage but they dont elaborate about it.
I think it's a little fishy and all the security you get is the wep pass from your router..

[Edited by kingkob, 12/10/2014 9:56:40 AM]

I guess I was referring to the wider range of products in this area. Still, and you can correct me if I am wrong here Kob, isn't a boiler used to produce radiant heat throughout a home?

As a whole, I agree it would be nice, but I'm still holding off. My kid brother has one of the connected thermostats for his heating and cooling. When he heads home for a weekend of camping in the summer he can start kicking up the AC so it is cooler when they get home. That's awesome I admit, but I'm still leery for some reason.

[Edited by AdmiralP, 12/10/2014 2:04:39 PM]

They're actually introducing these to the general public where I work! It's really clever, you can do things like switching the heating on fifteen minutes before getting home so it's nice and warm and generally adds more control. This plus smart meters that monitor usage and remotely send readings for you are making energy usage so much more easy to control and avoid over-spending.

I'll be happy when I can shout "Lights off" when I forget to switch them off before getting into bed For now I'm contenting myself with controlling my TV with my smartphone.