But ... you might have to tear open a wall. Climb a ladder. Unscrew a plate cover and hope you can see it. Oh crap, now you have to remove it from the wall. Might as well tear out everything.
And this is on the hardware side. Software? Did the former owner have passwords and everything tied to HIS ACCOUNT? Does he hand over some account? What personal info is in that former account. NOPE, big nope.
The problem with smart home is this:
- if the company wants to make money on the software, it will go with lock-in or fake open, which is what it is today. And that is a miserable failure
- if the company wants to make money on the hardware, the software is a cost so it sucks.
The solution is PROBABLY that the hardware vendors can only implement protocols, but CANNOT implement middleware. It can basically only provide information and take commands.
The a software company makes the hub. It cannot have any interest in any particular devices, it cannot "partner" with a hardware firm.
But of course that's only one part of the problem, with security and the central account. The software hub would need to provide some way to "move" an account with transparency on historical data reset.
But the industry is so effing far from this. Maybe SmartThings was close, but they got acquired by Samsung and now push Samsung products and basically discontinued everything pre-Samsung. They highlight that there's no good money in pure middleware.
The device vendors have to come together and do some sort of independent software company that they all can't meddle in. But then there's still soft pressure to only support devices in the "in group", so that still doesn't work.
Really, this is an operating system + driver problem. The central core is the OS, and the devices are "drivers". A consumer OS can be priced at about $50 tops, and it needs about 10 million people a year buying it. THen it gets the critical mass.
The other option is that some group close to the core of Linux take this on as the next big project. This could have important implications for Linux desktop, because it would create a Linux-aligned group that all the device manufacturers have to prioritize, and that provides the outreach to them also supporting device drivers for the Linux OS.
I mean, that is a BIG undertaking. It would take someone like Torvalds with talent, hard work, and some form of charisma (not necessarily Torvalds' brand)
I'd really like some kind of standard for model IDs. Maybe something like a domain name and a model number.
It would also be good if devices came with a QR code printed on them that linked to the manual.