> but they won't provide all those things for 100k
they raised 135k in a day. by the end of the kickstarter they will likely have raised 1-2 million.
i think their plan is to ship with a handful of sensors and apps but have a platform for others to develop and share on easily. seems like a pretty good way to do it if you ask me. the platform will be key though, and i guess we'll find out more about that in the coming months.
Agree with your basic point, but they won't raise more than ~650k because they've set maximums on all of the (normal) tiers. I think this is actually a great thing as there have been a number of kickstarters that have been victims of their own success because they've been oversubscribed beyond what can actually be delivered in a realistic timeframe. IMO most kickstarters that aren't pure digital distribution should have a limit of ~3x their funding level.
Granted, with the right set of sensors and base app they could make it easy to create lots of apps. I suppose all this is available today (RFID tags, motion sensors and so on), but putting them together requires some thinking. If the invention part can be moved into software, lots of apps could follow.
Ninjablocks is a cool idea, but in practice not great for home automation, and not great as a user experience for non-hackers.
For one, from what I understand, Ninjablocks connects sensors to your network via ethernet or wifi. In practice, that's a bad way to do home automation. It looks like SmartThings is using a mesh network (Zigbee or Zwave), which is way more scalable and self-extends its range as you add more devices to the mesh. Using Zigbee/Zwave and Bluetooth 4.0 also means sensors can be super low power... just pop a battery in a sensor and stick it somewhere and have it last for years before needing to replace the battery. Ninjablocks can't do that. Devices that connect via ethernet/wifi/usb are a lot more demanding power-wise.
Also, NinjaBlocks is all about having sensors trigger online actions. That's cool, but what if I want it to trigger my door to unlock? They allude to being able to do that in the future, but from what I gather it will on their site you'll have to cobble together a DIY solution yourself.
Actually, Ninja Blocks' next iteration due toward the end of the year will have onboard RF433Mhz, which allows you to interface with a ton of things you might already have in your house (motion sensors, door bells, door sensors, etc). These devices are super cheap and use crazy small amounts of power.
We've tried to go to great lengths to make it possible for non-hackers to interface with us, for instance you can train the platform what devices are in your house, and then make rules that might trigger anything, such as RF devices like power sockets, Webhooks, SMS, and many more.
Right now we're focussed on getting the rest of our Kickstarter obligations out (we're currently waiting on RF433 dongle's, finally due next week), and are working hard on building a platform that other's can build apps on-top of.
Edit: Don't want to steal SmartThings' thunder here, it looks really cool and we welcome the competition. Just wanted to correct the inaccuracies of the above comment.
they raised 135k in a day. by the end of the kickstarter they will likely have raised 1-2 million.
i think their plan is to ship with a handful of sensors and apps but have a platform for others to develop and share on easily. seems like a pretty good way to do it if you ask me. the platform will be key though, and i guess we'll find out more about that in the coming months.