The Internet of Things hype hasn't hit HN hard yet, but it seems to be ramping up. Is anybody else skeptical?
The strongest push for IoT seems to be from the wireless hardware manufacturers (Cisco, Qualcomm, etc.) and of course, they have the most to benefit from putting a wireless chip in everything. It's a wonderful solution to their problem of "How do we sell more chips?"
Now Google and Apple are hopping on board. They also have something to gain; Apple sells more hardware, Google collects more information.
But from a consumer's perspective, it seems like a solution in search of problem, and I haven't yet seen a single truly compelling use case that will impact a large segment of the population (turning heating/AC or lights on and off automatically is cool, but not that cool for most people when initial cost is factored in). Can somebody illuminate this for me?
I have a few "home automation" items in my house -- lights, thermostats, outlets, switches, etc.
By far the most useful is the Z-Wave deadbolt on my front door. It means I never carry keys, I can give codes to friends or the contractor and get texted when they enter, I can set temporary codes for deliveries, etc. I never have to worry if I locked the door.
I was surprised at the hype around Lockitron, since these have existed for a while. The main different seems to be that people prefer WiFi (since they already have it) even though it's a poor protocol for low-power and low-bandwidth.
I believe that the main reason it is hard to see the benefits is that we dont yet have the interesting infrastructure inside that house that an IoT will allow.
ie, I think it is actually too early in the IoT life cycle to really visualise the impact it will have.
Let me explain - currently our lighting and applicances are designed entirely around the idea that they will be manually operated and standalone pieces of equipment.
Once that assumption is taken away, and houses are built with a different assumption, suddenly magic begins to happen - imagine that instead of a few lights in the lounge, there was a ceiling and walls covered in thousands of LED lights that could be independently controlled via the internet.
The average home could literally have lighting shows.
An entire wall could be utilised as alternately a television or a photo viewer, even a wall in every room.
etc, etc. Use your imagination here. The point is that the impact of an IoT on the average middle class house as they are built today is currently pretty small because neither the house nor the contents of the house were designed with an IoT in mind.
Once we actually have an IoT houses will be build from the ground up with different assumptions .
I still don't see a compelling argument here. Who cares about having a "light show" in their house? What does that even have to do with the internet? We already have huge televisions that aren't very expensive. If we want the whole wall to be a TV, we can get a projector. A wall covered in individually-addressable LEDs is probably not going to be cheaper than a wall covered in televisions or just a big projector.
The question the parent was asking was "Why hasn't anyone shown me a concept that makes me think, 'Now I want an internet of things in MY house!'?" Not, "Why haven't I seen quick adoption of these IoT concepts out there?"
"Who cares about having a "light show" in their house?"
People do - "mood lighting" is already a thing, that is why we have dimmers on some light switches now. Going further than that we can change lighting color, create patterns etc.
Many people, including myself and my kids, would LOVE to have that in their houses.
But only if it was easy, it needs to come essentially for nothing, ie, to be builtin from the start.
"What does that even have to do with the internet?"
Internet Of Things I have always understood to mean "Things that we can talk to and control using our devices, possibly over the internet" but in terms of the internet as it is widely understood, not much really. I am not sure I understand the question?
"We already have huge televisions that aren't very expensive. If we want the whole wall to be a TV, we can get a projector. A wall covered in individually-addressable LEDs is probably not going to be cheaper than a wall covered in televisions or just a big projector."
Right, and who knows whether that specific leap of imagination is realistic, I certainly do not - but I was not trying to make you want a TV in your wall, or even arguing that it specifically was a good idea, it was merely one possible example to make a point.
"The question the parent was asking was "Why hasn't anyone shown me a concept that makes me think, 'Now I want an internet of things in MY house!'?"
Yes. and I was attempting to suggest that one possible reason is that our imagination is balking because we keep looking at what we have in our houses now - all of which is extremely functional and works fine according to our expectations and desires, which have been moulded by what is available and by what has always been available.
ie, we are looking at our existing house infrastructure, the idea of an IoT and saying "but the Internet Of Things is not going to give me a faster horse, so why would I want it?".
I think I am doing a bad job of explaining myself, so I will bow out :)
> ie, we are looking at our existing house infrastructure, the idea of an IoT and saying "but the Internet Of Things is not going to give me a faster horse, so why would I want it?".
I think again you're missing the point with this. An LED light show is a trifle, it's not something that will really affect you in any way and it's already possible with current technology. A cell-phone controlled LED light show is the faster horse. What the parent (and now, by extension, I) was saying was that I'm looking at the way an inter-connected house would look and I'm not seeing anything fundamentally new, just marginal and possibly dubious improvements on our existing technologies.
With Nest it's obvious that the appeal is that you'd have the ability to remotely change your thermostat settings, which is neat, but how often does that really come up? If I were to program my thermostat with my work schedule generally, how often would I really need the internet-connectivity? Once a month maybe? Is that really worth it? It's an improvement, but it doesn't seem like it's a whole new platform like you and other people are suggesting. Not yet, anyway.
>Internet Of Things I have always understood to mean "Things that we can talk to and control using our devices, possibly over the internet" but in terms of the internet as it is widely understood, not much really. I am not sure I understand the question?
I was mostly referring to the LEDs-wall, thing, which isn't inherently a networking problem any more than addressing each pixel in a television is a networking problem. If you're building a wall of LEDs for "light shows", chances are you'll just connect them all to a single controller anyway which can individually address each LED "pixel", and then that controller will be either plugged into your "internet of things" or it will be controlled by some physical panel.
The two big advantages of device connectivity are going to be that you don't have to be in the same room as your device to mess with it (not having to get up basically doesn't count, because we already have remote controls for almost everything), and that your interface with a device can be much, much more robust (you can essentially use your tablet or phone to give a full touch-screen UX to a small, cheap device like a coffee maker or a lightbulb). The first advantage seems to be getting a lot of hype because people can mess with things at home from when they are out, but that's a benefit that I find marginal at best (how often do I really need to interact with physical things in my home when I'm not even there). The second benefit is much more valuable, but again it is likely to be marginal, because chances are your major devices are ones where you don't actually need to change the settings (or replace parts, etc) very often, so it's a convenience maybe 2 or 3 times a year, not a revolution in the way we interact with our homes and devices.
In your last point you touch on something important - do we need a rich digital UI for everything? Is the dryer that has essentially an Android tablet embedded in it superior to the two knobs and a button my current one has? (And of that, I use 10% of my options.) Do I need yet finer control? I only have so much attention to give; no interface is more appealing to me. An appliance can be "smart" without having the trappings of computers, I hope.
And likewise, do we need an Internet connection in order for the object to be smart? If context awareness is the name of the game, there's quite a bit you can glean by being a physical object with a memory of how it's used, and beyond that, a local network.
The Drift lightbulb is interesting because it adds some smarts to a dumb object but doesn't add more I/O - it still uses a light switch and an LED bulb, and it isn't trying to get on the network. There are computers that are taking on the form factor of a light bulb, and there are light bulbs that are taking on the force multiplier of a computing device. The latter philosophy needs to be explored more.
> But from a consumer's perspective, it seems like a solution in search of problem
I think the company to look at is Philips. They really understand how to create appealing connected things. For example this article[1] that talks about their controllable color lights, cooking assistant and coffee maker, all controlled through an app to great benefit.
And once something is connected, bluetooth becomes a limitation - say you want to choose coffee type at the living room with your guests ? or you want to watch the cooking assistant while being at the kids room ? Considering that the cost of full connection should be similar to bluetooth in the best case scenario , why settle ?
Disclaimer: I've been part of a Dutch consortium with companies that developed their own mesh standards and did not understand that you need to "board the smartphone train". This is why I'm skeptical w.r.t. anything that does not just interface with smartphone technology.
The strongest push for IoT seems to be from the wireless hardware manufacturers
Another area seems to be from those offering yet another (non-standardized) protocol or format such that they can then sell you tools and consulting tailored to their software.
[I]t seems like a solution in search of problem ...
Indeed. Most of the demos I've seen (e.g. turn on a light using Twitter) are easily doable in a number of ways, so the requirement for some IoT "solution" is dubious.
But suppose we grant that such demos are mainly done because they are easy to comprehend, easy to show in a bite-size video clip. Still, there still needs to be something that extrapolates to a more significant use case. I'm not so sure these currently exist for most homes.
Part of me thinks people are tagging "IoT" onto anything they can because it sounds sexy. Controlling my living room lights from my phone is not an example of the Internet of Things.
Controlling fertilization for a farm based on smart sensors out in the fields? That I can see.
Actual use-cases in the average home are less obvious, as is why people will want it.
Personally, I'm stoked. The first connected home device I got was an Internet-connected thermostat when I got my home HVAC replaced two months ago. I had no idea I was getting that in the package, and I love it. Looking forward to the day when I no longer have to curse myself for forgetting to start the dishwasher when I'm away from home.
Keep in mind that in terms of factoring in costs, yeah, that will be true at first. But it wasn't that long ago that you had to buy an aftermarket modem as part of the barrier to entry to getting online on your personal computer. In a few years, connectivity will be the new normal, and prices will adjust.
Perhaps an Internet-connected thermostat is something I need to try to fully appreciate.
No doubt the costs will come down, and capabilities will increase. And as costs and capabilities increase, potential for innovation will increase.
But it would feel much more compelling if they had a strong application out of the gate (perhaps its networked thermostats). It would benefit from some initial momentum. Industry seems to be taking a "if we build it, they will come" approach, but this often doesn't work out in reality.
A big part of it is just geeking out over how cool it is that my thermostat is online. However, I'm the kind of guy who never remembers to change the thermostat's schedule before I leave home for a trip, and this thing has already made it possible for me to correct that mistake without having to go back to the house or ask a friend to go over and do it for me. Over the lifetime of the thermostat, that will more than cover its cost in savings off my electric bill.
Ha, aren't they often the same thing? In this case, I'll be happy to continue forgetting, because I'll be able to correct the mistake without going home.
Kind of chilling, actually: The notion that this technology might make us more complacent with our weaknesses rather than empower us to be better.
On the one hand, it'd be great if I could remotely double check that I turned off the stove and locked my front door.
On the other, if you can remotely control these devices then I have to wonder about the security implications. Track records for most wireless device companies have not been good, and I don't want someone burning down my house.
Maybe the plan here is to get everyone on a single standard that shoves good security practices down their throats? But you still have to rely on them implementing it correctly.
At least in the case of my thermostat, all remote functions are mediated by a server on the thermostat company's side that dials into the thermostat over the Web. In order to compromise the thermostat, you'd have to know how to identify my thermostat and how to spoof the server it communicates with. It's not like you can just stand outside my window with a fob that has an antenna and a big red button and turn my heat up.
From another perspective, front doors with deadbolts and residential don't have a good security track record, either, since most of them can be kicked open easily. But they're good enough.
Energy efficiency. IoT can bring more awareness to things for finer grain control which can take systems developed over 60 years ago and make them more aware and targeted.
Shameless plug: http://www.flair.zone
We are aiming at lowering HVAC energy consumption by between 20 and 30%. Financial incentives are rather attractive ones.
I will agree that there are going to be IoT whizbangs that are solutions in search of a problem, but there are bound to be a handful of actual problems that get addressed.
The Internet of Things won't be that useful until it starts tying in several external services. I imagine then there will be enough value added that it will go over the tipping point for consumer recognition.
I'm personally waiting for my refrigerator to detect my food inventory, and auto-order grocery delivery once a week to restock itself. But seeing how Safeway, Shopping Express, Amazon Fresh, etc. don't even have an API yet, it's going to be a long wait.
> I'm personally waiting for my refrigerator to detect my food inventory, and auto-order grocery delivery once a week
I imagined this as well, and it would be pretty cool (although I actually enjoy grocery shopping).
As you say, it's still a long way off. In addition to Internet connectivity and an API, fruit/vegetables/meat and all other refrigerated items would need some kind of tracking label (RFID perhaps) so that the refrigerator could automatically track levels. Scheduling delivery of refrigerated food might also be an issue (I'm not sure how existing online grocery delivery services handle this), as I don't want my dairy items sitting on my hot doorstep all day waiting for me to get home from work.
This could be extended to pantry food items as well.
I've thought about that too - you can create biodegradable passive-RFID tags to put on to packaging, and then have the trash bins read them as they are thrown out.
Problem is the biodegradable RFID tags don't exist. A dutch company was researching them a few years ago but that ship sailed when the iPhone 5 came out without NFC.
Google's project tango could be used with a standard library of objects, but that's still too early to tell if it's possible. Not to mention you'd be tied to Google's services and their whims.
The online services I use let you schedule a window for delivery, and also require someone to be there to sign for the order, and will also let you change an order to some extent. So I imagine that you'd get an email when your fridge has decided to order more food, and you'd be able to see if the normal window works, or if you need to move it a few hours, days, etc.
A lot of people here are sceptical but I keep looking for products on Amazon I just assume would already exist but don't.
Three examples:
I was recently looking for a door chime ("door bell") and since I have WiFi already all over the house I wanted something that could piggy-back off of that to increase range but also maybe send the notification to my phone or similar. Doesn't exist. Only ye-olde style RF doorbells no different than what they sold 50 years ago.
I wanted a motion sensor that wasn't part of a security system, just a single stand alone motion detector which could send a text message ONLY during set hours (e.g. 11 pm to 6 am) when motion was detected. But nope, also doesn't exist (in fact there is a serious lack of variety in motion detectors, the closest I found was a Honeywell one which set off a doorbell when motion was detected, but cannot be shut off based on time of day).
I want to know when the clothing dryer is done. I often don't hear it. I have WiFi, but yet I cannot receive an update digitally yet. Why?
I cannot speak to everyone but for me personally I WANT this stuff. I'd happily buy this stuff. It doesn't exist. Where is it? Make it and I'll buy it.
Don't get me wrong I totally get it. When you plug your device into a message bus like you would a power cord into the wall, things begin to make sense.
Here is how I see it coming together:
- STANDARDS: The "message bus" needs to have essentially an HTTP protocol standard, that both producers and receivers on both ends can understand.
- Hardware, appliances and objects generate their own implementation of an end-node adhering to the protocol.
- Wifi Routers allow the firmware to run "master" nodes, that would have a mobile app and a web front end to configure and customize.
But because having to VPN into your house to manage anything, or even have to have a VPN at all would be silly. So now we host it in the cloud and the devices simply pull.
To design the APIs, platform, SDK, and hosting solution would look a lot like what Apple and Google are doing with their all-encompassing themed keynotes this year. I'm actually worried about interoperability more than anything.
>STANDARDS: The "message bus" needs to have essentially an HTTP protocol standard, that both producers and receivers on both ends can understand.
I think a better analogy to what we need should be an HTTPS protocol standard. HTTP was designed in an era of slow computers when security and privacy were not particularly high on the list of developer priorities, and now we're seeing an agonizingly slow move towards universal HTTPS adoption. It'd be nice to actually start out with security-aware protocols for once.
It's hard to meet every need when connectivity is still to expensive to try throwing in everything, but that's why we made a general connected object - your examples can be mostly met by http://supermechanical.com/twine, some with the breakout board to wire into existing circuits.
There's a critical difference. Although the cloud and the IoT both began with buzzwords and vaporware, the cloud had clear and compelling potential benefits for customers from the start.
For every "cloud," there are many overhyped technologies that went nowhere, despite industry's best efforts to thrust them upon us.
Bureaucracies and committees are good at developing protocol specifications. Instead of throwing spaghetti at the wall maybe those of us interested in pervasive network computing should get an ANSI committee (or IETF-like task force) together to develop the de-facto standard language.
I don't want to have to build out an API in front of my cluster that speaks every possible permutation of language from every device and sensor. As a hardware vendor I wouldn't want to lock myself out of an ecosystem because my device only speaks a particular language that only a portion of the cloud speaks (or may become obsolete in a few years).
It's nice that this stuff is happening... but a Cambrian explosion of protocols isn't going to make the IoT very robust, IMHO.
Same here. Feels like a mix of OSC (Open Sound Control) and HTTP. As with OSC it runs over UDP, which is handy for low-pwoer devices and/or constrained bandwidth.
However, also as with OSC, you can use TCP for CoAP if need be.
I am super-glad this is finally happening; I was getting close to starting it myself, given the rubbish options which are currently available for building a proper end-to-end home automation system.
However, I'm concerned about the openness of it. I'm like 99% certain that the only realistic way to get a system like this to work is a 100% open, unlicensed, freely-implementable protocol with absolutely no restrictions. It doesn't currently sound like that will be the case, which is going to be a problem.
It looks like a transport, which has been around for a long time. 6LowPan has certainly been.
From what I read, it doesn't give you things like send command X to dim lights. Zigbee HA already defines those but everyone violates them in some way.
I wonder what the catch is. Requiring membership to use a zero-cost technology is a way of enforcing constraints on implementers.
If I were to bet, I'd say it's a way of guaranteeing they retain external access to in-home data. Just market it as ensuring interoperability and the apologists will be coming out of the woodwork.
> Requiring membership to use a zero-cost technology is a way of enforcing constraints on implementers.
I assume it's so you don't have thousands of non-compliant devices being sold with the same name on them. Avoids the "Oh no, that's spec+- not spec-+, they're not compatible unless you've got a bridge with a chipset with part ID starting with 71204, 71205xxx are not compatible".
I think you're likely right: the two worst answers (lock out implementors we don't like, and let's harvest your data while we're at it) are the most likely candidates.
As I've said elsewhere on this thread, I hope this dies, and it's yet another nail in the coffin for Google's once-deserved reputation for supporting open ecosystems.
I'm sure the reason they have membership, unlike the rest of this thread, is that they need someone capable of signing a patent cross-license to keep it royalty free.
Right. But the fact that one has to become a member of the group means that it's not an open protocol. You have to join the group, there's no indication that membership will be free, and membership rules may change at any time.
I agree that there may be good reasons for this, but the existence of those reasons doesn't make the protocol any more open.
Google is doing this so they can give you another reason to buy Nest -- it now acts as a bridge!
Yale is doing this because they have locks that already have Zigbee.
ARM is doing this to sell chips. They have their fingers in a million different protocols. I don't blame them.
Funny enough, there are very few things in home automation that actually need battery. Everything from light switches to light bulbs to smoke alarms and security systems are wired.
The better way would be to use BLE which has the same benefits of 802.15.4 stack. BLE 4.1 allows you to do mesh routing, like Zigbee. The biggest boon is that you can talk to the nodes directly with your phone.
Light switches don't need to be wired either, we've just been doing them that way because it's the obvious thing when you're just turning a 120v circuit on and off.
When your lightbulbs become smart devices, they no longer want to be on an on/off circuit. In fact, it doesn't even matter if a group of them is on the same circuit or not. You just need a switch to talk to them wirelessly over Thread, ZigBee, Enocean, or similar. At that point, you don't have to run the circuits to your light switches either.
Enocean's switches are all powered by kinetic energy, but if you don't mind replacing all of your batteries every few years, that can work too.
Indeed, and sometimes can't be. There are a couple of locations in my home where there's insufficient depth to mount a wired switch and I instead have MK astral (z-wave) low-profile battery powered switches.
You are right they don't need to be, but from a building code perspective you can't bury the controller behind a wall. You have to make them accessible behind some kind of a wall plate so for aesthetics reasons people will likely end up putting switches there anyways.
I think the better option is, as you said, have all switches be wireless, and somewhere like a basement and have a bunch of 'controllers' to tell it to switch on or off.
That's true if your switches are talking to a 20A relay and flipping the circuit on and off. If all you have is a switch sending a radio signal to a lightbulb, then you no longer have a controller that needs to be accessible. Just the switches and various "internet of things" devices that are always plugged into always-on line power. That's what Thread is for.
The one thing I wonder about is replacing lightbulbs when they fail. It's a good safety practice to kill the circuit when you're doing it, and without a hardwired switch you'll have to do that at the breaker now. On the other hand, if you're buying fancy wireless LED bulbs, they'd damn well better last longer than an incandescent A19.
From a safety perspective, it's probably better that they are wired, though I'd prefer them to be wired to Ethernet and powered by PoE, rather than with 120/240V.
Why? If you're going to be doing any work on the electrical, you should be shutting off the entire circuit at the breaker, regardless of whether the bulb is controlled by a switch or some fancy home automation system, just in case you or someone else in the house or an automated system absentmindedly turns on the bulb.
From a safety perspective, how the bulb is controlled is irrelevant.
What am I missing that it is safer to be wired? There's no guarantee that the bulbs going to be good when you hit the switch so I'd guess the battery concern would be the same. Unless you mean for hacking/tech security in which case I can see the difference.
I simply meant safer in the same way that wired smoke alarms are safer: you can't forget to change the battery because you don't use it very often. Think of a cupboard's light switch, for example.
They didn't launch any protocol. They launched a site to get (paying) members to come up with a protocol. Big difference.
I'm not too hopeful yet. Maybe it's just their ".aspx" website that has a proprietary flavor to it, when we terribly need an open standard here.
We do need an open standard, so each inventor just needs to implement their idea, & not spend 90% of their time building the whole supporting architecture, and trying to train the customers in the differences in the setup. The wearables/IoT ecosystem will continue to flounder until the equivalent of W3C arises.
But the gold rush to claim a chunk of the IoT and wearables product space means a good many people and groups want to invent Yet Another Standard.
With so many out there (some good, some wonky) it wil be hard for any single organization to stand up and declare anything remotely like a de jure standard.
(For myself I'm working on software to at least bridge some of the more sensible ones.)
Err, saying that a site has a proprietary flavor just because it's hosted on Windows, is like saying this open standard is proprietary since the documentation was authored in MS Word.
>is like saying this open standard is proprietary since the documentation was authored in MS Word.
And yes, that gives off the same vibe. It's a vibe that says, "we're not really into open source". I say that in spite of Microsoft's recent -- and welcome -- forays into open source. Their technology is still used primarily among people and organizations who are not very welcoming to open source technology.
Even though I'm a web developer who _loves_ open source on the server side and has pushed for as many open source technologies as possible in my daily work as a web developer, I much prefer the experience of MS's office suite to many of the open source alternatives.
And that doesn't undermine any of the work I do as a programmer. My job is to pick the superior option and weigh pros and cons for a given set of circumstances, whether it's open source or closed source.
I'm happy being a user and advocate of open source technologies without having to be an absolutist who won't use anything else.
Indeed, it's like a recruiter asking me to email them my resume in Word format ... for a role working with an almost entirely Free Software stack. Clueless on so many levels, and a great big warning sign.
They've recently diversified into lighting, with "Big Ass Lights." The companies are organized under "Big Ass Solutions" http://www.bigasssolutions.com/
Time Warner has been creeping into home automation - I've been getting ads for their home automation service for "only" $40/month with my monthly bills for the last few months.
If TWC has their way I imagine this will go about as well as Google Wallet did, which was killed because all the mobile carriers wanted to promote their own version (formerly Isis), and had the power to do so (since they could prevent Google Wallet from working on their devices.
AT&T has also been advertising home automation and security (on national television).
I think they don't care too much about the technology, they want to market the monitoring and connection services, which I guess means they will still choose whatever favors collecting those monthly fees.
In my eyes, the ideal rotocol would be one that fits, but doesn't need any router at all. While not excatly that, lora , a long range(kilometers) low power/cost protocol, seems like the right choice. Just find the right model for personal deployment some open routers(similar to wifi) and let nodes seek those open nodes , and we all win.
But i'm probably missing something here, since i haven't heard of anybody doing this. I wonder what ?
Dimmers need a few bits, probably 8+ for decent control. Waiting a few seconds for a light to dim would be rather annoying. Doing RGB effects would be even slower. Ovens need at least 10 for a decent temperature range. Authenticating a door lock would require at least 128 bits one way, and another 128 the other; 30 seconds would be way too long for that purpose. Plus, you need to take into account addressing, a protocol for the type of message, and other aspects in order to route commands to the proper node. 10 bits per second just isn't going to cut it.
This is basically ontop of zigbee. Perhaps zigbee will finally compete with the likes of stuff like insteon which is cheap and for the most part "just works TM".
interesting development. just think about the impact of automation on the hotel industry. Samsung has created a smart room control solution for BLOC boutique hotels in the UK. i wonder if this protocol embedded into the fabric of their automation solution
as a developer who dealt with zigbee, it sucks.
z-wave is great, but not open enough and not IP-friendly.
6lowpan is a logical choice for IT companies, which is what Thread about here. I hope it becomes more popular over time.
The strongest push for IoT seems to be from the wireless hardware manufacturers (Cisco, Qualcomm, etc.) and of course, they have the most to benefit from putting a wireless chip in everything. It's a wonderful solution to their problem of "How do we sell more chips?"
Now Google and Apple are hopping on board. They also have something to gain; Apple sells more hardware, Google collects more information.
But from a consumer's perspective, it seems like a solution in search of problem, and I haven't yet seen a single truly compelling use case that will impact a large segment of the population (turning heating/AC or lights on and off automatically is cool, but not that cool for most people when initial cost is factored in). Can somebody illuminate this for me?