Comment Re:Rather uninteresting API. (Score 1) 38
But what if my home is out in the middle of the forest, miles from anything resembling internet connectivity... That's a home I want automated more than the home I sleep in the other 5 days a week.
Right. Reporting is from buildings that are mostly unoccupied is really useful. Industrial facilities have used that for decades - unattended pumping stations, power substations, water level gauges, and storage buildings with air conditioning routinely phone home. They usually have very limited bandwidth - pager channels are often used. Usually, they send a message every few minutes with a few numbers and an "I'm fine" message. If there's trouble, they start sending alarm messages. This is the real, existing "Internet of Things", but it's called "M2M" (machine to machine) in the industry. Two-way pager channels, cellular-based pagers, and two way satellite links are used. So your pipeline pumping station can phone home from Outer Nowhere, or you can keep track of what the irrigation pumps on the far side of your farm are doing, or your vacation cabin can check in.