> hackable, local connection devices (cloud optional) with published APIs and sell them at a higher price
This business model doesn’t work.
Many have had this idea. They all run into the same problem: The target audience for hackable home automation devices doesn’t like paying a premium for anything they think they could DIY.
If you have a $70 nicely designed, documented IoT sensor but the DIY home automation people think they can put ESPHome on a $10 Amazon device and accomplish nearly the same thing, which one do are they going to buy?
If you go through the forums you can already find some semi-premium devices that are a little better constructed and might have better feature sets. They’re always followed by comments from people recommending a cheaper option.
> If you have a $70 nicely designed, documented IoT sensor but the DIY home automation people think they can put ESPHome on a $10 Amazon device and accomplish nearly the same thing, which one do are they going to buy?
I agree with you that targeting devs/people with an under-developed sense of buy/build doesn't work!
I'm hoping that the devs with money/slightly more accomplished who don't have time to mess with stuff would pick it up.
A bit of a jump but I think this was one of the big strategic mistakes of products like FirefoxOS -- aiming for the dev with money who can afford a $600 I-support-foss-and-mozilla signaling device that also happens to be a phone they can hack on may have worked better than targeting $60 feature phones.
> If you go through the forums you can already find some semi-premium devices that are a little better constructed and might have better feature sets. They’re always followed by comments from people recommending a cheaper option.
I think that's OK! It's similar to HN dropbox effect. IMO you actually want those people to find the cheaper option, those are bad customers for a premium brand.
The product has to actually be noticably better/more consistent/etc than the cheaper option though. And IMO there is a large subset of nerds that don't actually want to write 5 files and flash an OS to do smart home stuff -- they want to play at the application layer.
A good counter example might be the NAS industry.
This is all theoretical of course, so... We're just armchairing at this point.
This business model doesn’t work.
Many have had this idea. They all run into the same problem: The target audience for hackable home automation devices doesn’t like paying a premium for anything they think they could DIY.
If you have a $70 nicely designed, documented IoT sensor but the DIY home automation people think they can put ESPHome on a $10 Amazon device and accomplish nearly the same thing, which one do are they going to buy?
If you go through the forums you can already find some semi-premium devices that are a little better constructed and might have better feature sets. They’re always followed by comments from people recommending a cheaper option.