Fewer home automation postings? What's behind it?

According to Gartner, the "smart home" technology is at the pick of "inflated expectations" in the hype cycle, maybe that's why?

Well, if this is the "Peak of Inflated Expectations," I hate to see what the "Trough of Disillusionment" will be like.

The X10 and Tuicemen's Forums are both fairly quite these days.
I have seen some increase in the Insteon and Smarthome Forums. In respect to their specific products. Not all good posts.
The Universal Devices Forums have a definite increase in posts these days.

I am only on a few automation forums.
 
I have not seen much of a decline of use or interaction on the Homeseer forums. 
 
Been involved in an up-tick of specific Homeseer X10 / mochad interest lately. 
 
I see similar with open source / free automation forums.  Well just 3 of them.
 
Noticing a bit more spam here and on other forums lately. I think that the spam does discourage posts some times.
 
Relating to DIY open source automation; well and security (hard security / CCTV) there is no magic relating and there has never been any magic and it is not free (whether time, knowledge base or money is involved).

I'm not hearing a lot of agreement, so I guess my perception is off.

Yes it is. 
 
Most folks (not IT or engineering centric) assume that automation is magical and just appears as a widget on the cellular phone these days; easy button style.
 
When automation newbies find out different they lose interest.  Home electricity is still wired 120VAC and not wireless yet.
 
Here today there still is no justification for an automated switch that costs $50-$150 each to the tune of ~$15,000.00 for the entire house.  Many folks want to automate every light switch in their home then show their peers at work how they can turn on a hallway closet light from their phone. 
 
Thinking it is a master of the house thing? 
 
A young couple or even old couple will not allocate $10-20 K or more to automate light switches, purchase automation software, et al.   
 
The electric companies (broke as they are) will not give me automated switches these days.
 
The average homeowner today likes the bells and whistles of automation.  They can if they want pay by the month for it offered by yours and my favorite ISP if they want. 

BLH said:

The X10 and Tuicemen's Forums are both fairly quite these days.
I have seen some increase in the Insteon and Smarthome Forums. In respect to their specific products. Not all good posts.
The Universal Devices Forums have a definite increase in posts these days.

Click to expand...

After x10 has burned me, I'm reluctant to do anything. Automation is essentially dead here. I've waited patiently for 4 years for x10's vapor ware project. No automation will happen until I'm sure my x10 is completely junk. I'm a sentimental old fool who doesn't want to scrap 30 years of projects.

Welcome to the Cocoontech forum Knightrider!!!
 
Here started with X10 in 1978.  Worked fine.  Kept X10 and started to use Insteon (what a great idea), then started to use UPB, then Z-Wave and Zigbee.  In the 1980's purchased an alarm panel that talked (speech) from a company called Excalibur and maker of said panel integrated X10 to it.  It was difficult to program with only a bunch of little buttons next to LEDs on a large 36-48 zone panel.  You had to put words together via pieces of the words.  Took some 15 minutes to make up a sentence.  I liked using it because it wasn't using a computer and everything was in the firmware and the panel had two batteries and never lost it's mind.  Used the Commodore C-64 and Amiga at one time for automation and Windows 3.0/3.1 way long time ago. (well and used Linux to control and watch TV in the 1990's)
 
Today base automation is still X10 (every Christmas) and UPB for my light switches running at 100% on clean powerline.  Insteon PLM / switches are off.  ZWave  and Zigbee exists in the house.
 
On the linux side of X10 today tinkering with Hey You and Mochad.  I have here always utilized the CM11A, TW-526, MR26a (W800) and currently going towards utilizing the RFXCom transceiver plus utilize Jeff Volp's stuff (x10 on steroids).   (serial and usb to serial).  Never much played with a CM15 USB combo device and that is where I am helping play with mochad.  (Please help Neil).

It has been down for some months, but that's not unusual from my experience. Home automation activity on the web is sometimes strangely 'seasonal'. I guess it tends to be mostly an indoor activity, so it tends to pick up more when the weather is such that folks are less inclined to go outside. Since a lot of it is concentrated in the US, that would mean that it lightens up significantly during our summer, and it usually seems to.
 
It's started its usual ramp back up again here in the last few weeks. I think it tends to be the most active maybe around post-Xmas when both no one wants to go outside and folks have gotten new toys to play with.
 
Some of it will just be how much there is to talk about that hasn't been talked about already. That is also cyclical as there are some periods where more companies are doing highly visible things and others where it's more spread out or the activity is more filling in the gaps instead of bring out major new bits.

pete_c said:

On the linux side of X10 today tinkering with Hey You and Mochad.  I have here always utilized the CM11A, TW-526, MR26a (W800) and currently going towards utilizing the RFXCom transceiver plus utilize Jeff Volp's stuff (x10 on steroids).   (serial and usb to serial).  Never much played with a CM15 USB combo device and that is where I am helping play with mochad.  (Please help Neil).

Click to expand...

 
Hey Pete, sorry I didn't see this last line until this morning. Watsup?
 
I still have that thing running, with IPv6 even. Not sure why as I don't have any x10  :wacko:
 
I've got a lot of ZigBee, some Z-Wave and now lots of WiFi (ESP8266, with OTA). Do need to find out about the Krack attack for the ESP).

@Neil
 
I did not know you were not using X10 these days.  
 
Mostly concerns here relating to the use of the CM15A (USB) and issues that have cropped up using Linux with systemd and Homeseer.
 
Will take this off line or maybe start a new post here.
 
I have noticed posts relating to security / ESP before this stuff came about about the Krack WPA stuff.

pete_c said:

@Neil
 
I did not know you were not using X10 these days.  
 
Mostly concerns here relating to the use of the CM15A (USB) and issues that have cropped up using Linux with systemd and Homeseer.
 
Will take this off line or maybe start a new post here.
 
I have noticed posts relating to security / ESP before this stuff came about about the Krack WPA stuff.

Click to expand...

A new topic is probably a good idea, I do have systemd and Homeseer but haven't reinstalled it since my disk crash. Let me find it and reinstall. I've stopped using X10 and Insteon a few years ago. Too much junk on my lines but I stopped using Insteon because their hardware was crap. Still have the X10 hardware but gave away the Insteon.

This Krack attack will have me spending some time learning about alternatives to WPA2. I'll also need to invest in another managed switch so I can segregate my network better.

I guess I should post a little of what I have now. I still have a lot of disparate junk: X10, custom serial, HCS II (yup, still have that), ZigBee, ZWave and WiFi (mostly Pi and ESP based devices). MY wife prefers the wireless stuff. Software is a lot of shell, Perl, Python, Misterhouse (Perl), Homeseer, and Node-Red (Javascript) flows. I really like the Node-Red when mixed with MQTT.  I have Smartthings which has MQTT sitting between it and the rest of my stuff. Mostly Node-Red is now doing most of the work.
 
Many of my nodes are now ESP modules (Sonoff & Adafruit Huzzah boards) with custom firmware (lots of Tasmota's Arduino code). If I need a ZWave or ZigBee module. I run over to Lowes, get the device, add it to Smartthings and MQTT can talk to it. I do have some automation under Smartthings but mostly it's Node-Red flows doing things. My wife likes that she still has physical buttons to press but I think she's spoiled by the automation (and the simple UI I gave her).
 
I'm currently working on an IR node to toss into a timer flow. So she can use the Tivo remote to set a timer to turn off the lights and the TV in a certain order. Otherwise it will wake her up.

Hi Linuxha,
 
I think I'm on a similar trajectory to you.  For powered sensors, I'm leveraging the Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266, but for battery/solar powered sensors, I'm switching everything over to the Nordic nRF52832, which fits a 32-bit ARM MCU, wireless radio, and RTC into a tiny package that doesn't draw much sleep current (about 2ua with RTC running):

On the agenda soon is to get Node Red with MQTT running.  Not sure where to begin with that though.  What do you suggest?