Survey: Smart Home Service

[smarthome-tub]

Dear EEVbloggers,

I am currently writing my diploma thesis at TU Berlin. With all the new IoT stuff copping up the question is which standard will stick and what makes it stick.
To help answer this question I am conducting a survey about acceptance and risk perception of smart home services. I know its only borderline electronics related, please forgive me. I appreciate any help!

http://uniask.eu/index.php/611133?lang=en

[Delta]

I'm not sure if there's a few translation bugs there, but there's some pretty weird questions in that!

[AndyC_772]

Interesting that there's no attempt to break down what 'risk' a potential buyer of such a system might be exposed to.

Personally I'd be concerned about the risks of obsolescence and faults. My (old, simple) heating system is extremely reliable, hasn't had to be modified for the last 15 years, and that's not something I'm willing to compromise.

There are other criteria which a system would have to fulfil before I'd even consider it. The main one would be that it wouldn't have a connection to the internet at all, thereby eliminating risks relating to privacy, hacking, and the reliability of any 3rd party equipment or my connection to it.

To achieve the objectives described in your introduction, it would need a number of sensors and actuators, and a controller with some software and a simple UI. It might make sense to put that UI on a phone app, but only if you can guarantee that this method will last the lifetime of the heating system and not be obsolete in a few years' time. Given the relatively high cost of installing the infrastructure, making the controller fully self contained (ie. its own display and buttons) would appear to be the most future proof way to go. Again, no connections to any external devices are needed.

Hooking all that stuff up to the internet is where it turns from a good idea into a very, very bad one indeed.

[sokoloff]

Yes, my "financial risk" was related to the number of sensors (and associated communications wiring) and valves/pumps that would be required to give such fine control of zoning. The engineer in me wants that fine-grained control, but the Yankee in me realizes that the temperature outside bedroom1 and bedroom2 is the same, meaning a simple system (few zones) with outdoor reset does a pretty good job with much less capex and installation expense.

[Delta]

I am not a fan of technology for technology's sake.