Let`s face the truth, "The Internet of Things" (or IoT like the all the cool cats say) isn't more than a fancy buzzword. Interestingly though, it is used by two different groups of people, one wants to "shove big data into the cloud" and the other group builds DIY software & hardware to control their coffee machine using a Tessel backed up by an Raspberry PI.
If we dive deeper into this topic, looking for a common ground both groups build upon, we see the same questions bubbling up: Is my battery powered motion detector really connected to the internet? If all these devices belong to the category "Internet of Things", why do I need a vendor specific access point to control them? Does my cloudy big data lightbulb producer know when I turn on the lights? And very important: Why doesn't this "Internet of Things" work in my browser? Do I really need 20 iPhone apps to turn stuff on and off?
On the meta level, all these questions could be answered with: "open source"! And that´s what we´re going to do, we reverse engineer one of the most used "closed source consumer electronics homeautomation protocols" (say that 5 times in a row) and build a JavaScript based open source module for it. Using that module we´re then able to control the privacy of our data (because now we truly own it), combine these former vendor locked in devices with DIY components (to build the use cases we need, not the ones the industry wants us to), control that devices from our own browser app (our goodbye to the world of "IPhone Apps of Things") and as a byproduct explain why JavaScript should be the language of choice for this "IoT" thingy (and of course, have some fun time hacking on hardware).
a) is that relevant
b) is that something you really want, considering your insight into how bad hardware vendors are at writing software? I don't want my toaster sending spam mails or participating in a DDOS. I'm quite happy with a (single, hardened) bridge to shield those devices from the internet.
c) consider a not-so-secure device with a microphone able to stream whatever you're saying to an attacker. make things worse tenfold with video in play.
what couldn't? what about more sophisticated sensors that analyize your urine for health metrics identifying that your daughter's pregnant?
that likely diminishes the other topics to side-notes
true, but only relevant for control of devices. totally meaningless for their automation. The former is what we can do right now. the latter is what we actually want to achieve.
I'm not arguing against this talk, btw. I just wonder what you want to achieve with it.