iroh is a peer to peer networking technology so the project example of controlling a fan isn't so much about the fan but rather that it's controllable from anywhere through an esp32 microcontroller that can maintain a resilient connection endpoint even through power cycles and so on. I think iroh was posted about on HN a few weeks ago and I had a similar reaction of like...what in the world is this blog post even saying haha. But I found their docs page and found it pretty fascinating learning!
https://docs.iroh.computer/what-is-iroh
The example in the OP doesn’t even appear to check to prove the fan is running so it’s not exactly fault tolerant, it doesn’t know if the enable/disable commands worked or not.
If you are turning a motor on and off you almost always want to know if it is actually on or off, the OP example appears to lack that but maybe they can grab the status from the relay.
Pff, assuming that everyone have arms and hands much?
Also I don't see the point of a fan, I live right next to the ocean, if you want moving air, why don't you just open a window?! Talk about useless invention
90% of smart devices are for novelty, or for you to spend more time setting up and maintaining their automations than they save you in being automated.
But that 10% is magic. A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room, but in a workshop setting - especially a shared workshop setting? Awesome. Just awesome.
A well defined use case, in the right setting, and smart stuff can be genuinely very useful. Usually that’s not how they’re used - i know, because of the 15-20 smart things i have only one or two are genuinely useful.
> A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room,
Why wouldn't that be useful? People be surprised how poor their air quality generally are inside, unless they already measure it, making it better sounds useful in oh so many ways.
> i know, because of the 15-20 smart things i have only one or two are genuinely useful.
What are those things? I have about 70-80 "smart things" by now, but every single one is genuinely useful, otherwise I wouldn't install them in the first place. Lots of open/closed sensors, soil moisture, temperature+pm2.5 sensors, water taps and so on.
> Why wouldn't that be useful? People be surprised how poor their air quality generally are inside
First because it’s the wrong solution to the problem. As I understand it bad air quality in a home is created by specific activities like cooking, vacuuming, or lighting candles/incense/smoking. So you solve the problem by turning on the fan when you cook, opening the windows when you vacuum, and by not using incense or smoking.
Second because you can have a dumb sensor and switch the fan on with your hand when it goes turns orange or red.
> I have about 70-80 "smart things" by now, but every single one is genuinely useful
We have different definitions of genuinely useful. I’m glad you find you setups useful tho
I have lots of smart gadgets that also have physical switches. It's convenient to be able to control them in more than one way, from more than one location.
Anyway, why are you commenting here if you're not into this sort of thing? Feels like you're just trying to stir up an argument.
There's only a limited number of features that you can pack into a few buttons and a 7-segment display. If you want to sell outside the US and need to support the long-tail of non-English languages, preferably without per-country product variants, you can't even label the buttons any more, you have to rely on simple pictograms and icons.
If there's a $1 microcontroller in your device (and there often is), you're very tempted to implement lots of features which cost you almost nothing, but that kind of UI just doesn't really let you do so. Sure, you could add a proper touch screen with a localizable UI stack, with reflowable text and support for displaying Kanji and RTL languages, but that's often more expensive (and less practical) than slapping on a BLE or WiFi chip.
Having the option to say “hey siri turn on the fan” while you’re in bed is pretty nice. This kind of thing works pretty reliably these days with the right setup. The fan still has a physical switch.
I have an automation that automatically regulates the level down when I do something where I want to minimize noise (like watching a movie or when I go to sleep)
Sure you can do everything manually, but I like networked things, especially those using open standards (matter over openthread) so I can connect them all together easily.
For example, every time I watch a movie the roller blinds automatically come down, the lights turn off and the fan turns down, I think thats just cool.
I think it's great someone is working on a fun little project such as a smart fan but let's not kid ourselves, it's not supposed to be practical! I don't think anyone would claim that.
It's a demo of how easy it is to make even an ESP32 device available globally with iroh.
Works on Android too when developing Dart applications and making use of flutter_rust_bridge though it's a bit of an involved setup to be honest.
I really hope more people will play around with iroh and build stuff especially because in the last year some things have been renamed in the API to be more clear and other stuff has been simplified e.g. see this blog post https://www.iroh.computer/blog/iroh-0-94-0-the-endpoint-take...
The simple way to do this is a dumb thermostat wired through a relay coil that enables a fan. It doesn’t give you remote access to change the setpoint but that’s all this setup does. Something like this has a setpoint you change once and then leave it.
Yes, iroh here. We are looking into projects who want to use iroh with matter or thread. If you have a project you want to collaborate with our engineers on, please get in touch! Send an email to support@iroh.conputer
While this is neat, it strikes me as the software developer's idea of a "smart fan". The engineer in me says that an actual "smart fan" would be one whose blades are designed to produce maximum airflow with minimum noise (variable pitch? avoiding turbulence?)
I think you're describing a "great" fan. A "smart" fan is one that thinks. e.g. smart TVs are worse (and therefore cheaper) than dumb TVs, but they do a lot more thinking.
They're describing an efficient fan. A great fan would be one that offers the best attributes such as efficiency, quality and features. Though, I agree the term "smart" should denote some kind of CPU enabled automation and features.
Iroh is probably one of the best shots we have at making IoT finally secure with the built-in endpoint-to-endpoint encryption. The only thing that is missing is an embedded QUIC stack, the setup described in this article sees a little bit too hacky (4 MiB of PSRAM, really?).
But a fan is nice in not-heatwave but still warm temperatures. I have a usb desk fan from a PC cooler manufacturer (Arctic I believe) and it's one of the best accessories.
Anything helps, when you don't have AC. Moving slightly colder air to where you sit, or moving away generated from your body, does make a ever so slight difference. Helps to get rid of some sweat too, if you're sitting and sweating, which also helps a tiny bit.
Fans increase the efficiency at which your body's own cooling system (sweating) works by increasing the amount of air that flows by your skin, be it hot or cold.
46 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 32.2 ms ] threadThere’s a lot that comes for free by adding all these libraries and crates and steps. But from what I can tell it comes down to:
let _ = if fan_on { fan.set_high() } else { fan.set_low() };
If you are turning a motor on and off you almost always want to know if it is actually on or off, the OP example appears to lack that but maybe they can grab the status from the relay.
Pff, assuming that everyone have arms and hands much?
Also I don't see the point of a fan, I live right next to the ocean, if you want moving air, why don't you just open a window?! Talk about useless invention
But that 10% is magic. A fan that switches on when air quality falls below a threshold? Not that useful in a living room, but in a workshop setting - especially a shared workshop setting? Awesome. Just awesome.
A well defined use case, in the right setting, and smart stuff can be genuinely very useful. Usually that’s not how they’re used - i know, because of the 15-20 smart things i have only one or two are genuinely useful.
Why wouldn't that be useful? People be surprised how poor their air quality generally are inside, unless they already measure it, making it better sounds useful in oh so many ways.
> i know, because of the 15-20 smart things i have only one or two are genuinely useful.
What are those things? I have about 70-80 "smart things" by now, but every single one is genuinely useful, otherwise I wouldn't install them in the first place. Lots of open/closed sensors, soil moisture, temperature+pm2.5 sensors, water taps and so on.
First because it’s the wrong solution to the problem. As I understand it bad air quality in a home is created by specific activities like cooking, vacuuming, or lighting candles/incense/smoking. So you solve the problem by turning on the fan when you cook, opening the windows when you vacuum, and by not using incense or smoking.
Second because you can have a dumb sensor and switch the fan on with your hand when it goes turns orange or red.
> I have about 70-80 "smart things" by now, but every single one is genuinely useful
We have different definitions of genuinely useful. I’m glad you find you setups useful tho
Anyway, why are you commenting here if you're not into this sort of thing? Feels like you're just trying to stir up an argument.
There's only a limited number of features that you can pack into a few buttons and a 7-segment display. If you want to sell outside the US and need to support the long-tail of non-English languages, preferably without per-country product variants, you can't even label the buttons any more, you have to rely on simple pictograms and icons.
If there's a $1 microcontroller in your device (and there often is), you're very tempted to implement lots of features which cost you almost nothing, but that kind of UI just doesn't really let you do so. Sure, you could add a proper touch screen with a localizable UI stack, with reflowable text and support for displaying Kanji and RTL languages, but that's often more expensive (and less practical) than slapping on a BLE or WiFi chip.
Sure you can do everything manually, but I like networked things, especially those using open standards (matter over openthread) so I can connect them all together easily.
For example, every time I watch a movie the roller blinds automatically come down, the lights turn off and the fan turns down, I think thats just cool.
It's a demo of how easy it is to make even an ESP32 device available globally with iroh.
I really hope more people will play around with iroh and build stuff especially because in the last year some things have been renamed in the API to be more clear and other stuff has been simplified e.g. see this blog post https://www.iroh.computer/blog/iroh-0-94-0-the-endpoint-take...
Sure, you could probably make this much smaller if you invented a specialized p2p fan control protocol, but that's a lot of work.
https://docs.iroh.computer/languages/javascript
Somebody wanted to do something, and they did it; it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that :-)
> Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.
Sincerely, HN Guidelines Police :-)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It links to my Google Home installation and responds to voice commands.
https://us.store.tapo.com/products/tapo-h110-smart-ir-iot-hu...
Someone with too much time on their hands might benefit from the iroh solution....
Now I am not sure it is feasible but it would be interesting to have it available in esphome. I feel this is really where real adoption happens.
I believe it's around 35 Celsius.
if you are outside you can attach water nozzles to the fan, the evaporation will cool down the air stream. doing it indoors has humidity implications.