| General > General Technical Chat |
| Amazon accuses customer of racism & shuts down their smart home! |
| << < (9/56) > >> |
| tom66:
--- Quote from: langwadt on June 13, 2023, 03:49:51 pm ---something like someone dying because they were locked out of their AC or heating, might change things --- End quote --- I have a smart heating system too and it does have a wi-fi connection (the radiator valves are Zigbee but the internet connection is for remote control). The designers have clearly thought about the risk of a fault occurring. There is a button marked "heating" on the unit which if pressed will set all rooms to 21C and heat for 4 hours. Good enough to figure out what's going on in the meantime. I note this isn't something all systems have, though. |
| mendip_discovery:
--- Quote from: langwadt on June 13, 2023, 08:51:23 am --- --- Quote from: MK14 on June 12, 2023, 11:24:38 pm ---There was a potentially fairly serious incident --- End quote --- really? someone says they thought they heard a racist remark --- End quote --- Try to think what the headline and story would be if they hadn't reacted. Staff member left traumatised after customer sayint racist abuse, company didnt care and left the staff member having to quit their job as nobody in corporate would listen to them or take action against the customer. It could he quite serious if a company is seen a complicent in a racist situation. Bad PR and potential for a lawsuit. |
| wraper:
I have Homematic IP wireless system for underfloor heating. Although ecosystem has many more different smart home devices some which I may start using later and is compatible with some other manufacturers. It can be set up in 4 different ways. One is pairing room thermostats directly to underfloor valve controller or radiator thermostat but it's the least versatile and with no smart garbage whatsoever. Second way which I'm currently using is connecting all of the devices to a $50 ethernet or wifi access point which allows setting things through the app. App works through the cloud, however otherwise system is autonomous and without internet connection you still can set temperature on thermostats, light switches will still work, etc. App does not require any registration at all, you just scan a QR code on access point or enter code printed on it manually. Third way is using CCU3 central control unit instead of access point which works locally and you depend on nobody. Everything happens through web UI instead of the app but it costs around $190 which is almost 4x more expensive than access point. Alexa and other voice control can be added too if you want to deal with that garbage. Or 4th sort of unofficial way (interface HW is official, software isn't) is using Raspberry Pi or other device with a hat or dongle and running RaspberryMatic https://raspberrymatic.de/ The downside is that Homematic is almost entirely Germany oriented so good luck finding any decent info about it on anything but German. |
| PlainName:
--- Quote --- There is a button marked "heating" on the unit which if pressed will set all rooms to 21C and heat for 4 hours. --- End quote --- Useful feature. But... it's software. There's no reason that should work perfectly, especially with a borked system, whilst other parts of the same product 'might' have issues. Once upon a time I was monitoring some piece of comms kit and treating the signal LED as 100% honest, as if it were hard wired into the cable coming out the back. Took a significant effort to consciously realise the LED could fib - not only did I know it was connected only to a CPU IO pin, but I'd programmed the thing myself. Strikes me that the 'heating' button is similar - it fools you into thinking it cannot be wrong and will always do exactly what it's supposed to regardless of everything else going on. |
| Kim Christensen:
--- Quote from: mendip_discovery on June 13, 2023, 05:37:00 pm ---Try to think what the headline and story would be if they hadn't reacted. Staff member left traumatised after customer sayint racist abuse, company didnt care and left the staff member having to quit their job as nobody in corporate would listen to them or take action against the customer. It could he quite serious if a company is seen a complicent in a racist situation. Bad PR and potential for a lawsuit. --- End quote --- I don't think that's the issue here. The problem is a case of the customer being treated as if he's guilty by default. A proper investigation should have been done before any action was taken against the customer. Doesn't matter whether you agree if the punishment fits the "crime" or not. I think this is the argument against using Amazon home automation systems and cloud based items like it: You're at the mercy of a large corporation "doing the right thing" which is never a wise consumer choice. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |