These Guys Want to Hack Your Home And You Should Let Them

Whoever does the PR for IFTTT needs a raise. That is supposed to be an article on home automation, and reads like a press release. Barely mentions the hardware vendors, the arduino hackers, the competing standards and the ways to get started. Just repeats the name of one web service!?<p>Wow. Pay the firm whatever they ask.

I love the top comment<p>&quot;CKP obr4610 • 8 hours ago − User goes to flick on bathroom light switch...<p>&quot;Sorry Dave, But I cannot complete this command. The Government has activated the Energy Conservation Program during these hours.&quot;<p>&quot;Dammit&quot; goes to flush toilet...<p>&quot;Sorry Dave, But I cannot complete this command. The Government has activated the Water Conservation Program during these hours.&quot;<p>&quot;fine then&quot; goes to leave to go out to eat since refrigerated food spoiled...<p>&quot;Sorry Dave, But I cannot complete this command. The Government has activated the Curfew Program during these hours.&quot;&quot;

Does anyone have recommendations for good vendor(s) for home automation devices&#x2F;systems&#x2F;software&#x2F;etc...? I&#x27;d love my house to be more &quot;smart&quot; but not really sure how to approach it. I need stuff that is either hidden or good looking, works well with iOS and OS X. Ideally would love a combination of home automation, HVAC control, alarms (smoke, CO, etc...), and security.<p>There&#x27;s also some logic that I haven&#x27;t seen offered, for instance: if someone drives up my driveway, I&#x27;d like to hear a chime (and&#x2F;or get a text with a photo of the car). If they drive up at 2 AM I want to be woken up! Unless it&#x27;s me or my wife (RFID chips in our bumpers for ID?). Etc...

For folks that are interested, I&#x27;m working on an open source platform called Nitrogen that helps you get devices online easily and communicating with applications using a consistent JavaScript development model. Still a little early but I&#x27;d love to find folks interested in hacking on it either as a user or contributor to the project.<p>You can read more at: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;nitrogenjs&#x2F;service" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;nitrogenjs&#x2F;service</a><p>&lt;&#x2F;shamelessPlug&gt;

This is kind of my pet project for the summer. I&#x27;ve already got the lights in my children&#x27;s rooms done. I&#x27;ve got dawn&#x2F;dusk sensing to turn off my outdoor audio system. I&#x27;ve got a temperature controlled attic-exhaust fan (my attic gets over 150F &#x2F; 65C without it). I played with IFTTT a bit last year, but kind of forgot about it since I don&#x27;t need it. But thinking about it again, I really do need it or something like it because the other residents of my house aren&#x27;t programmers, but they might like to automate some action. I mostly use PachubeCosmXively for remote control of actions, but I don&#x27;t think IFTTT has any integration with them. PachubeCosmXively can send emails based on trigger thresholds so it shouldn&#x27;t be too hard to get something working. A great complement to IFTTT would be direct integration to an rPi or other open-ish platform cum home automation server.

I live in a house with automated lights, and I ABSOLUTELY HATE THEM.<p>They turn on when I want them off...<p>And turn off when I want them on...<p>It is really, really, really annoying.

If you&#x27;re doing something like that, you should make damn sure it&#x27;s NOT connected to the internet. Did you learn nothing the last few days?

Has anyone watched Battlestar Galactica?