[HN Gopher] The smart home is flailing as a concept
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The smart home is flailing as a concept
Author : RickJWagner
Score : 136 points
Date : 2021-08-06 11:55 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fastcompany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fastcompany.com)
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| If it is cloud based and requires a connection to the outside
| world then it is not going in most peoples homes.
|
| These places have to start offering a DIY level of service where
| they just sell the physical device and software and then are no
| longer in contact with the customer.
| anm89 wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. There is no magic feature that is going to
| make me want a smart home. The whole concept sounds like a
| nightmare on so many levels.
|
| - higher maintenance
|
| - loss of privacy
|
| - loss of ownership of things in my home
|
| - reliance on subscriptions
| vwelling wrote:
| A lot of off-the-shelf consumer smart home products do suffer
| from the drawbacks you've listed, but they do not generally
| apply to the smart home concept. My home is automated using
| components that use the KNX standard, and although the initial
| investment is higher than a conventional electrical
| installation, I'd argue maintenance is actually simpler and
| cheaper - as pretty much all of it is in the software.
|
| Additionally, there's quite a few benefits: - It's all wired,
| so it's been rock solid; - It's vendor agnostic; - It's
| entirely local, so there's no subscriptions or even an internet
| connection dependency; - There's a ton of gateways available
| that allow me to interface with non-KNX products;
|
| Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. It is just a matter of
| convenience however, it's hardly a must-have.
| fy20 wrote:
| I'm building a house at the moment and will go the KNX route.
| It really does seem great, it's just pretty much unknown
| outside of Germany for residential use.
|
| The way communication works is each device has a number of
| inputs and outputs that have defined data types (there are
| one hundred or so in total). When programming devices you
| just tell them which channel (group address) the inputs and
| outputs (group objects) should be linked to. Inputs can be
| linked to any number of channels, but outputs can only be
| linked to 1. Some devices have basic logic units if you want
| to do more complicated things. The group address is 16 bits,
| so there's lots of room for flexibility.
|
| For example, if you have a switch and the on/off output is
| linked to channel A, when you switch it on, it would send a
| 'switch on' message on that channel. If you have a light
| actuator (in simple terms, a programmable relay) that listens
| on channel A, when it receives that message it would turn the
| light on. If you want to add another switch at the other end
| of the hallway, you only need to program that switch to send
| the on/off output to channel A - the other devices don't need
| to be reprogrammed.
|
| Devices are certified (which is one reason why they are quite
| expensive compared to consumer smart home devices), but that
| means they are guaranteed to work together regardless of the
| manufacturer. The protocol itself hasn't really changed over
| time (there are a few minor new features which are not
| backwards compatible) so if you have a installation from the
| early 00s, you can buy new hardware today and know it'll work
| without issues.
| nousermane wrote:
| It's funny how first item on your list of drawbacks (higher
| maintenance) was already there with first-wave of home
| automation, back in last century [0]. Current iteration not
| only fails to solve that problem, it also brings 3 additional
| problems.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.10
| anm89 wrote:
| Yeah the 'better' it gets the more layers of code,
| abstractions, and networked system are required to work in
| perfect harmony for my home to not start creating problems in
| my life.
|
| Every extra feature is a regression.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Yeah, I consider "smart home" to be one of those complexity
| feith driven developments. Switches are simple, understandable,
| minimally-abstracted interfaces that almost never fail. Why
| would I want to add a several computers and some software to
| that? That just brings a whole bunch of new failure modes to
| the table for a miniscule gain in convenience.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| if it's full offline with no subscriptions or internet
| connectivity - I'm up for some.
|
| If it needs any kind of connectivity or it comes as a service -
| no way in hell I'm exposing my family to the risk of not being
| able to flush a toiled one day because of a tweet or god know
| what.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| The problem is twofold:
|
| 1) People don't understand and don't want to have to
| understand how WiFi, servers, clients, protocols, GUIDs, etc
| work so they can up a standalone system. Manufacturers create
| systems requiring internet connectivity so they can abstract
| away some of the complexity from the end users.
| Unfortunately, that means when stuff fails, it's totally
| opaque, as described in TFA. I mean, shit, most people
| couldn't wire a lamp correctly or change a tire [citation
| needed, but you get my point].
|
| 2) Rent seeking and data mining. Why let the customer pay for
| the lightbulb once and use it forever when you can make them
| pay for a monthly subscription and sell the usage data? And
| then you can force an upgrade when you deprecate the service
| before the light bulb burns out. Win/win!
|
| Remember: when somebody says "internet of things" what you
| should hear is "billions on unpatched, unmaintained Linux
| devices sold by companies whose core competencies aren't
| securing computers racing each other to the bottom".
| durbleflorp wrote:
| Okay, but neither of those problems are actually an issue
| with smart homes as a concept, they're mostly issues with
| the way profit motive drives behavior in a capitalist
| system.
|
| The first point is confusing because the majority of tools
| people use today they can't repair themselves. That's what
| happens as technology advances, you need specialists to
| understand each system.
|
| If you look at things like earthships that are built to
| manage a lot more factors than a typical home, it becomes
| pretty clear how useful automating some of those systems
| and allowing them to share data could be.
|
| If you had good open standards for the tech and were
| actually trying to make things that improved people's lives
| or saved energy rather than mine data or recurring revenue,
| you could make some cool shit.
|
| Really the complaint should be about the way these products
| are developed and marketed, which is hardly unique to this
| sector.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| to be entirely honest I see the IOT part as a blessing and
| a curse.
|
| I can see what potential benefits IOT devices could bring
| but the risks of all these outdated devices in my home
| scare the hell out of me. I know it sounds like paranoid
| talk but my whole life is digital these days.
| jmkni wrote:
| > If it needs any kind of connectivity or it comes as a
| service - no way in hell I'm exposing my family to the risk
| of not being able to flush a toilet one day because of a
| tweet or god know what.
|
| That sounds like the plot to a Black Mirror episode
| [deleted]
| blacktriangle wrote:
| What's really sad is that there's no need for any smart home
| concept to result in a loss of privacy. However people are
| cheap, and its difficult to impossible for somebody selling a
| self-hosting smart home appliance that you just plug in to your
| wall to outcompete somebody who is practically giving away the
| hardware to make the money on your data or on subscriptions
| over time.
| bishoprook2 wrote:
| >There is no magic feature that is going to make me want a
| smart home.
|
| Imagine the fun when it all goes obsolete in five years, a
| controller board dies with no replacement available, all for
| very little advantage.
|
| Maybe this is Peak Technology. Sticking a computer and
| communications network on things that gain little from the
| addition. The one exception I might make is low-cost
| surveillance cameras, but of course it took the industry about
| ten seconds to add subscriptions and spying-on-you to the
| business model.
| foobarian wrote:
| It's bad enough that LED lights exploded in variety and
| change early and often. I had one of ten, 20-year lifespan
| ceiling flood lamps go dark, and of course the replacements
| don't exist because these particular lamps were only made
| during a 1-2 year window. To add insult to injury the fault
| is not in the actual light emitting element but (of course)
| in the driver.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > the fault is not in the actual light emitting element but
| (of course) in the driver....
|
| Being over-driven.
|
| Big Clive loves to tear down LED bulbs to examine the
| driver boards. Often shows you ways to drop the current to
| sustainable levels and get back your 20-year lifespan LED
| bulbs (caveat, at lower power levels).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom
|
| More specifically, example: https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4
| gr1zzlybe4r wrote:
| I don't own, but when I do I will go out of my way to try and buy
| unconnected devices. There is no physical device in my home that
| I want "as a service" in any way.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| the entire architecture is awful. The smart home has all these
| smart devices calling out to cloud APIs for even the most basic
| functionalities that could be performed locally.
|
| The "Cloud" is used to turn on a light in the house. I'm not sure
| if they want to collect information but smart devices that
| operate locally have far less failure cases.
| ljm wrote:
| You mean, I shouldn't be distributing my 'light switched on'
| and 'light switched' off events over a highly available kafka
| cluster hosted on another continent? What if I want to replay
| the entire history of my switch flicking?
| elliekelly wrote:
| Are there any companies or projects working on a completely
| local "smart home" hub? I suppose most companies are care more
| about sucking up our data and providing a "service" with a
| monthly bill than about providing useful hardware. It feels
| like there's a huge gap between the best possible smart home
| product and what's actually available.
| andylynch wrote:
| This is what Nabu Casa is doing with home assistant. At the
| other extreme by size Apple's HomeKit is local-first too and
| they play well together.
| buerkle wrote:
| https://hubitat.com/ is local. It's worked well for my house
| mason55 wrote:
| Home Assistant is the leader here. One of the largest
| projects on GitHub with a "local-first" philosophy. They have
| a cloud service for exposing your instance but you don't have
| to use it.
|
| I've been using it for years and it's matured quite a bit
| recently. Combine with Zwave of ZigBee devices and the only
| thing you need internet for is voice assistant if you want it
| (Totally not required)
| CA0DA wrote:
| search for "tasmota"
| patrickk wrote:
| One of the best options is locally hosted Home Assistant.
| Local, private, and connects to an enormous number of devices
| and services.
| [deleted]
| sheepybloke wrote:
| My issue with smart devices is that they aren't smart. They are
| just internet controlled devices that can you can control via an
| app. To me, smart devices are objects that have added value by
| doing a task more intelligently. Think like a thermostat that can
| learn your lifestyle and adjusts the temperature accordingly. Or
| like a microwave that sets cooking time based on what was put in
| it. These are smart devices, and honestly, I don't think there
| are actually many out there now.
| Steltek wrote:
| For general consumers, I would agree. For geeks, I love my smart
| home with Home Assistant (thanks devs!). I was reluctant at first
| and thought I'd just dip my toe in to see what it could do. Now
| I'm regretting not diving right in.
|
| I love using a browser to manage Schlage keycodes instead of
| tediously punching numbers on each keypad. I love that my kitchen
| lights all come on at once instead of having to flip 5 switches
| all over the room. I love that I can turn on the outside lights
| when we're returning home late and even unlock the door as we're
| pulling into the driveway, so the little one can make it to the
| bathroom on time. I love that my outdoor lights react to both
| time and outdoor light conditions.
|
| I recently bought and installed an IotaWatt, an open h/w and s/w
| home power monitoring system. I haven't integrated it into HA yet
| but I guess I only care about having a dashboard widget.
|
| Everything is local and self-hosted. I don't have to worry about
| cloud rot, suspended accounts, or Internet outages.
|
| PS, if anyone knows how to control a Mitsuibishi hyperheat
| heatpump through HA, I'd love to know more. It's the big missing
| link in the system right now.
| splitrocket wrote:
| If your Mitsubishi uses IR for it's remote, this probably would
| work: https://github.com/geoffdavis/esphome-mitsubishiheatpump
|
| Or, you can use a Broadlink IR blaster to clone the remote.
|
| If your heat pump talks to MEL cloud (Mitsubishi's cloud
| thingy) then this should work: https://www.home-
| assistant.io/integrations/melcloud/
|
| I have yet to buy a "smart" device that I haven't been able to
| control through HA. The Broadlink RF/IR bridges even makes
| anything with a remote automatable.
|
| Seriously, If it wasn't for Home Assistant, the "smartness" of
| smart devices would be next to useless.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Check out https://github.com/SwiCago/HeatPump (and derived
| projects) for your heat pump. I was just looking at this
| yesterday - unfortunately my units don't have the CN105/CN92
| connector so I'm out of luck but if your unit is newer you
| should be fine!
| kingofspain wrote:
| I have a semi-smart home in that I've got a few smart plugs
| connected with Alexa and it's useful to turn on/off a bunch of
| lights at once - or have them come on in the evening while away.
| Other than that I'm not really sure what more I'd want. Maybe
| some kind of instant-disco lighting so I can rock out to Dire
| Straits?
| IshKebab wrote:
| A smart thermostat is useful. I would also like smart curtains
| (I made a prototype that I hooked up to Google Home ok - "Hey
| Google open the curtains" works, but the actual physical bit is
| tricky).
|
| A smart lock would be very useful too, e.g. for granting
| temporary timed access to cleaners etc. But there's no way I
| trust any of the smart locks on the market with my home
| security.
|
| I have some smart scales too. They are pretty great.
|
| It isn't the concept that is the problem. It's the lack of
| standards and long term support. Non-smart curtains, scales,
| lights, locks, etc. essentially work forever, whereas I'd give
| smart versions 10 years tops. And I don't really want to lock
| my house into 5 different vendors' proprietary systems.
| kingofspain wrote:
| Yeah I feel the plugs are a good enough thing for now. If
| they are duff in ten years? So what - it was a PS7 plug and
| I'll get some more with a hopefully open standard by then.
| I'd never go all-in the way things currently are.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > But there's no way I trust any of the smart locks on the
| market with my home security.
|
| The security provided by most door locks is completely
| illusory. You can break into most homes very easily. Most
| people have unsecured windows on the ground floor.
|
| Most locks are there as a way to signal that this door
| shouldn't be opened. It's mostly a psychological detterent.
| As long as your insurance is fine with your smart lock, it's
| probably not much worth than a dumb lock.
|
| The exception is of course the upper floors of apartment
| complex in large city in which case the five points locking
| system on your door is there to signal that it will me more
| time effective to break into your neighbor place.
|
| > It's the lack of standards and long term support
|
| Completely agree with that. All companies want to build a
| locked plateform. That's hindering the market growth a lot.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I have a bunch of philips hue lights, a nest thermostat and some
| blink cameras hooked up to both alexa and google hub and it all
| just works and has for years. I used to have problems when I was
| buying a bunch of cheap china mix and match products.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Also smart home devices can and have been employed by domestic
| abusers against their victims.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54554408
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200511-how-smart-home-d...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-dev...
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Is the smart home really failing?
|
| Reading the article I realised I actually have plenty of "smart"
| home products. The catch is that they are not really smart but I
| like what they do.
|
| Small lamps which I can switch on and off directly from my phone
| without having to go through the room are nice. Being able to
| make the light warmer when I want is nice too.
|
| I have a smart thermostat which I motly use to warm my place the
| day before I get there when I am out for a long time. That's
| pretty enjoyable too.
|
| My scale graphs my weight automatically when I remember to use
| its "smart" feature. When I was paying attention to it, it was
| handy.
|
| I also like the fact that it's all piloted from my phone which I
| mostly always have and apart from the thermostat none of them
| require being online.
|
| At this point, the smartness is mostly just remote control and
| sometimes a feedback loop with a sensor. That's not very smart
| but I don't really need more.
| FooHentai wrote:
| Sounds like discretionary adoption along the lines of a typical
| hype curve based on what you describe;- Initial optimism about
| a hyper integrated, seamless home full of intelligent devices
| that sync up and act as a cohesive whole. This gives way to
| eventually settling on reality where a few disparate clever
| devices deliver high value while being relatively low
| complexity and working mostly independently.
|
| I've struggled to find even that much value in smart products -
| we flirted with a Hue system but at literally 10x the cost of
| ordinary led lights we didn't get beyond a few bulbs before
| realizing it was a money pit with at best marginal benefits. We
| have a few nice nanoleaf feature pieces that run themselves on
| a simple schedule. I can't see much else making it's way into
| the place and creating additional headaches.
|
| I felt like a cynical old git shaking my head about new the
| work coffee machine having a touch screen and needing wifi to
| work, but seeing how often the same machine was 'down' waiting
| for a tech and the absurdity of colleagues who didn't quite
| know how to work around such an outage... This kind of stuff
| may be creating value for investors somewhere but in the long
| run there's little chance it's improving the lives of those
| it's being marketed to.
| jansan wrote:
| In 1959 Westinghouse presented an amazing visionary concept for
| future living with their "Westinghouse Total Electric Home":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyrTgtPTz3M
|
| Many of the presented ideas are eubiquitous today, and in a
| luxury modern house, almost all of the presented features exist.
|
| I wonder if any vision for future living exists today that will
| turn out to be as prophetic as the Westinghouse Total Electric
| Home.
| jasode wrote:
| Relevant past thread: _" The 10 Reasons I Ripped Out a PS6k
| Lighting System"_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25099615
|
| tldr: unreliable hardware + bugs ... results in endless hassles
|
| On the other hand, you have the ultra-high-end of smarthome tech
| with systems like Crestron. It seems ok but it's very expensive
| (million dollar mansions/estates budgets) and the custom
| programming is proprietary so the homeowners can't modify it
| themselves.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Yes, "why bother?" works for most. Those of us who do, or don't,
| want "smart home" don't need to justify it.
|
| For those who do . . .
|
| Should be simple installation matching existing patterns. Switch
| & outlet covers shouldn't need to change, as there's just enough
| failure to fit to make updates unworkable (haven't seen any smart
| switches fit a 2-3 switch cover plate). Blend traditional
| operation with smart (smart wireless switch next to normal wired
| switch annoyingly interfere). Don't compel grouping of lights
| (wife's light must not be coupled with mine in automatons).
| Ensure sensible symbiosis ("on at sunset, off at 9pm" shouldn't
| leave light on when sunset is 9:02pm). Stay on the right network
| (I have two).
|
| The problems are petty and easily fixed - yet nobody wants to
| solve them.
| analog31 wrote:
| Businesses can adopt "smart" technologies because the decision
| makers are spending someone else's money, either on the initial
| outlay or on future maintenance / obsolescence. At work, the army
| of maintainers are your colleagues. At home, the maintainer is
| you.
| robochat wrote:
| I guess that I have a smart home albeit a cheap version. I have
| used sonoff smart switches to give me remote control of my flat's
| electric radiators. This has given me extra control over their
| schedules than available using their in-built interfaces. Plus I
| can turn them on remotely if I am unexpectedly coming home so the
| flat is warm when I get back.
|
| I live in France and the radiators have a control pin that
| accepts various 230V AC waveforms (!) to set different functions
| but luckily simply on/off can be used to toggle between the
| radiators' high and low temperatures (that I set via each
| radiator's internal interface). It's crude but effective. I use
| an app to control the remote switches; I'm not totally happy
| about relying on a cloud based app but I can always bypass the
| remote control locally if there's an issue and in summer the
| radiators' are simply switched off so the risks are minimal.
| indymike wrote:
| My house is a big, fancy container for people. Where it is nice,
| is where I can easily reconfigure it. Think moving furniture
| around, wall coverings and so on. Easy. Where it hardest to get
| right is where you can't easily re-configure and re-decorate.
| Bathrooms that are fixed by plumbing. Kitchens fixed by immobile
| cabinetry built around plumbing. Inflexible wiring. Smart isn't
| the problem. Flexible is.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I always struggled with the UX around smart home.
|
| User story: It is 5AM and you are fumbling into the kitchen in
| the morning to make coffee and you cant see anything. You reach
| out to the wall and flip the light switch into the "on" position.
| Memories of smartphones and voice assistants are still vague
| concepts on your mental horizon.
|
| I feel like zero engineers in the smart home space have read the
| Don Norman book.
| hansvm wrote:
| User story: It's 3AM. Your home confirmed with you yesterday
| that you want to wake up early for a flight whose confirmation
| it found in your email. The lights are gradually brightened and
| blue-shifted through till 4AM. While that's happening, at
| 3:50AM your coffee maker is preheated. An audio alarm gets you
| up at 4AM, and motion-activated baseboard lights guide you to
| the kitchen as you stumble around in your groggy state. A glow
| emanates from the cupboard door hiding your favorite mug. After
| your coffee is done, as you're rushing out the door you realize
| you can't find your keys -- panicking for a moment you ask your
| home where it last saw you carrying them, and it tells you
| they're on your bedside table. You head out the door and catch
| your flight.
|
| Everything mentioned above is pretty straightforward to rig
| together with off-the-shelf hardware and software, even if a
| little time consuming.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Does complexity not enter into the equation? How long would
| it take to set something like that up and have it reliably go
| to plan every time?
|
| What if you feel like oversleeping and now your coffee is
| cold?
| hansvm wrote:
| > Does complexity not enter into the equation?
|
| Sure it does. There's a setup cost, and it's fully possible
| that it's not worth messing with something like that unless
| you enjoy tinkering (and the way I see the market moving it
| seems likely that smart homes will stay that way for
| awhile). The user story definitely exists though.
|
| > What if you feel like oversleeping and now your coffee is
| cold?
|
| In the outlined scenario, your snooze function would want
| to also turn off the lights, the motion-activated baseboard
| lights going to your coffee maker would work fine, and your
| coffee maker would still be preheated and have wasted a bit
| of power if you didn't have some kind of a timed cutoff or
| similar.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Everything mentioned above is pretty straightforward to rig
| together with off-the-shelf hardware and software, even if a
| little time consuming.
|
| Sorry, but it's not. There's a reason why you won't find any
| useful smart coffee machine on the market. And your house
| knowing where your keys are is either so specific a scenario
| that it's useless or contents of fantasy science fiction.
|
| The one thing on your list that could be made today is the
| lighting going on at the right time, and migrating from
| yellow to blue. You will probably need to assemble your own
| lamps, because even high-end stuff don't have enough quality
| for that use-case, and proprietary software will get on your
| way on every step. But it's possible.
| hansvm wrote:
| > There's a reason why you won't find any useful smart
| coffee machine on the market.
|
| Sure! It's expensive to shove a bunch of smart technology
| into every single device, especially given that everyone
| wants something a little different so your interface would
| need to be feature-rich to support those use cases. Note
| that we don't really care about having a smart coffee
| machine in the outlined scenario; we need a coffee machine
| that can be preheated, which doesn't have to be any more
| complicated than a switch on the power supply on the right
| dumb machine.
|
| > And your house knowing where your keys are is either so
| specific a scenario that it's useless or contents of
| fantasy science fiction.
|
| With off-the-shelf software it's a mix between the two. The
| hard bit wouldn't be the location of simple objects like
| keys (throw a few sensors around the house, customize the
| final layer on a pre-trained model, and pick your favorite
| approximate inverse-3d mapper to get a rough location in
| space of the object); it would be the location of
| complicated objects (house, where's my Lang's Algebra?),
| cases where you don't have enough information but would
| hope that the house might figure it out (e.g., boxes of
| things), and the humanistic output (rather than saying
| they're on the bedside table, you might have to resort to a
| screen that can show locations of things on a heatmap).
|
| > You will probably need to assemble your own lamps
|
| That was a communication error on my part. "Off-the-shelf"
| included things like off-the-shelf microcontrollers,
| wiring, ....
|
| > and proprietary software will get on your way on every
| step
|
| And is best avoided. I'd be tempted to hook into Google
| Calendar or something for upcoming trips since they've
| already implemented models to find that kind of thing, at
| least starting out, but otherwise I see no reason you'd
| want to use proprietary software in a project like that.
| andylynch wrote:
| The first smart switch I installed was to preheat my coffee
| maker in the morning. Motion activated lights heading to the
| kitchen before dawn came soon after.
| uberman wrote:
| I think that the smart home is failing/will fail because people
| have a limit on how much they are willing to be tracked. Smart
| devices from TVs, to cameras to speakers to vacuums are reporting
| details of our lives that most people just don't want to give up.
|
| It used to be the case that people feared that the government
| could watch them through their TV or listen in via their phone.
| Now, those things seem like they are product features.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| I doubt it. Most people literally don't care if Amazon is
| recording all their conversations. Even more people don't care
| as long as nobody at Amazon is actually listening.
|
| Smart homes aren't super popular because of integration issues
| imo.
| laddershoe wrote:
| Anecdotally: I don't have any smart home stuff, but literally
| every other member of my family does (parents, siblings,
| inlaws, etc). I've had numerous conversations in which they ask
| me why we accept an Echo or a Nest or something as a Christmas
| present, but my privacy concerns are always greeted with a
| blank stare. They just don't see it as an issue.
|
| To them, the (perceived?) issue is how hard everything seems to
| setup and maintain. I haven't tried connecting any smart stuff
| lately, so maybe it's really easy for all I know, but all that
| stuff seems really advanced to them and they seem kind of
| afraid of it.
| johnboiles wrote:
| HOME ASSIS TANT
|
| It's really the only thing that's good in the smart home world
| rn. It makes all sorts of otherwise crappy IOT hardware work
| decently together.
| johnboiles wrote:
| Imagine this but with emoji claps in the spaces of the first
| line. I guess HN doesn't do emoji -\\_(tsu)_/-
| yalogin wrote:
| The biggest hindrance is showing value in upgrading to the
| "smart" devices. A light switch connected to wifi and a phone is
| just not needed in 99% of the cases. Operating it with a phone is
| just not incentive enough to replace it with something that is
| 10x more expensive than the original. Same thing with other
| "smart" items too, at least in my case. Something like a garage
| door opener is different because its relatively expensive to
| replace than fitting an adaptor to automate, and there could be
| more people needing to operate the garage door remotely. I don't
| see an explosive market there. The only easy market is the
| "scare" market which is what Ring exploited and pretty much rules
| the camera doorbell.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I've had a "smart home" for about 20 years now, and it's been
| great! Definitely not a failing concept.
|
| But I wouldn't buy any of the modern "smart home/IoT" devices
| mostly because they're security nightmares, although tons of them
| have other serious issues as well.
|
| The way that most modern "smart home" equipment manufacturers
| design their devices is the failing concept, not smart homes in
| general.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Insteon is pretty good (Wall switches, lamp dimmers and appliance
| modules). No central hub required. They form relationships with
| one another without a middle man. There's also a USB module if
| you like programming your own stuff.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| To this day I am baffled by the smart _lighbulbs_. So you take a
| LED light, strap a bulky AC /DC convertor to it, then also glue
| in a WiFi module, _and_ also some microcontroller for managing
| all that stuff. Then you cram all that into E27 fitting and have
| problems with heat dissipation if your LED is actually about as
| bright as an old 100W lamp was: the capacitors give out after a
| couple of months of work so you have to buy a new lightbulb (and
| those things ain 't cheap because of all of that additional stuff
| it has inside it).
|
| Obviously, a sane way to do things would be to have a single
| microcontroller/WiFi module mounted near/inside any of
| traditional manual light switches, have a single AC/DC convertor
| near your circuit breaker box, and have it power the whole
| lighting wiring (from which the microcontroller would draw too)
| with 9V DC, and now the LEDs inside the lightbulbs will have
| enough space to cool properly even with size-reduced fittings.
|
| But where is money in doing things the sensible way, right?
| aloisklink wrote:
| Commercial spaces and some houses in the UK already have 12V DC
| lighting and sockets for spotlights using the GU5.3 socket. It
| lets you have smaller and cheaper light-bulbs.
|
| They're not great to have as a renter, though; many of the
| AC/DC converters were designed for Halogen light-bulbs, and
| have a minimum wattage requirement, so the more power-efficient
| LED light-bulbs don't work. Plus, since the fittings are less
| common than E27, the choice of light-bulbs is much lower.
|
| If solar power and home electric storage batteries become more
| common, we might start having DC run directly into houses, to
| avoid the DC/AC conversion from the battery, then AC/DC back to
| computers/light-bulbs/TVs. But that seems years away!
|
| P.S. smart light-bulbs need to have individual micro-
| controllers if you want to have colour control. I rarely use
| the funky colours like green/blue, but I do love being able to
| go from white light in the morning, to a warmer/orangish light
| at night.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 12V DC is the way to go. There is a marine/RV ecosystem that
| uses 12V DC already in the market.
|
| I'm picturing my future home though, festooned with
| "cigarette lighter" outlets throughout the house.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| For lighting? Maybe.
|
| But you won't replace all the 15A/30A lines on your home
| with 12V lines. it's not viable.
| asddubs wrote:
| if you're using 9vdc to power all your light bulbs from a
| central location, you're going to need a lot thicker cables
| since the amperage you're using is going to increase tenfold
| (or ~x20 for anywhere using 230v). and switching DC is going to
| be similarly more problematic since you won't have a 0-crossing
| 100/120 times a second to break any arcs, wearing out your
| switches
| gruez wrote:
| >But where is money in doing things the sensible way, right?
|
| the non-cynical explanation is that the lightbulb socket is the
| form factor that is most easily used by the consumer. Some sort
| of setup involving changing the lightswitch or the bulb socket
| might be better, but would also require a bunch of work and
| risk (live wires!) to install.
| andylynch wrote:
| Having a controller in the bulb also makes it easier to
| handle things like colour temperature and hue, more difficult
| to manage from a wall switch. Agree wifi is clumsy, things
| like Zigbee work much better for these applications.
| vanviegen wrote:
| That, and I want to be able to control lights that aren't on
| a wall switch and to independently control lights that are in
| the same group.
|
| We've been using about 50 Hue bulbs for years, without a
| single one going bust. But I'm sure you're able to buy cheap
| crap that is... well, crap.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Yes, cheap crap is crap. But the problem with even non-
| cheap 1500 lumen bulbs (which I have 3 in my ceiling
| chandelier, and it's barely enough to make my room
| comfortably bright) is that they don't last too long
| because of overheating: each drains about 20W and
| apparently it's very hard to dissipate that much heat
| through the plastic fitting.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Recent Hue bulbs go up to 1600 lumen. I haven't tested
| them personally, but based on my experiences with Hue
| bulbs, I'd bet they're reliable.
| lqet wrote:
| When I first saw smart lightbulbs, my first thought was that
| even shooting at a lightbulb to turn if off has less technical
| overhead.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Have you tried shoving a smart light switch into a switch
| electrical box before? Not to mention getting neutral wires
| spliced in.
| headPoet wrote:
| In the UK at least, the lighting circuit contains a neutral
| wire, so this shouldn't be an issue.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It does here also in newer homes. But just getting it into
| the switch and then shoving everything back in the box is a
| challenge. Smart switches are much fatter than normal
| switches, and by boxes at least were wired with hard copper
| that was difficult to shape. I had to take out the switch
| for my cabinets to make everything work.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Even a controller for a ceiling fan is a challenge.
| Sometimes, if you are lucky/persistent you can replace the
| box itself with a deeper one to make wiring easier.
| scld wrote:
| 1) Bulbs let renters have adjustable lights without having to
| rewire a house they don't own. That's 1/3rd of the market.
|
| 2) Replacing one bulb every few years is much less time/money
| than a wiring project IMO.
| headPoet wrote:
| My local hardware store has a fairly large range of smart light
| switches. I had no idea they existed until now.
|
| But the cost and difficulty of installation must drastically
| reduce their appeal. Sure they're not hard to install, but it's
| probably best not to encourage DIY electrical work.
|
| https://www.screwfix.com/p/tcp-1-gang-1-way-smart-light-swit...
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I would actually like someone knowledgable to chime in if
| possible: what is the actual risk here on a standard 110
| switch? I've changed a bunch of switches (and even zapped
| myself a bit) without ever having the slightest of issues.
| handrous wrote:
| I'd class swapping outlets, switches, and light fixtures,
| as among the kinds of home-repair stuff you _have_ to know
| & do unless you're rich enough to _never_ personally do
| work on your house. Like replacing a faucet, a leaky branch
| water shut-off valve, or the tank-innards of a toilet.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I can only add that I've been doing my own electrical work
| for over a decade now and have been successful.
|
| Haven't been zapped either (I'm extremely careful about
| that, not so much when I was young).
|
| To be sure though I have stopped at the point where a new
| circuit/breaker would need to be added to the panel, new
| wiring run. Although I do understand in theory how it is
| done, how to select the right gauge wire for the circuit,
| staying within the current limits of the panel....
| [deleted]
| mabbo wrote:
| No company has successfully marketed an actual smart home system.
| Google Home and Amazon Alexa are, in reality, personal data
| collection systems that utilize convenience to get consumers to
| use them. The goal is not to help consumers, but to collect data.
|
| And from an economical perspective, this makes sense. There's
| great money in gathering massive amounts of person data about
| people. Who would have imagined 15 years ago that we'd let Amazon
| and Google know about what time we get up and go to bed, what
| time we use our microwave, what sports games we watch, when we
| call our mothers.
|
| I want something simpler, local-network-only. Not a 'smart' home
| but an obedient home. Ideally something like an Event Bus with a
| basic protocol for events and some safety controls to prevent
| chaos. But there's no economic incentive to build or sell such a
| thing.
| gdulli wrote:
| I bought a house last year and the first thing I did was remove
| the Ring video doorbell. But if it hadn't been a company with
| an Amazon or Google type reputation I'd have at least tried
| using it for a while.
| amalcon wrote:
| I checked a while back, and there are at least a couple of
| smart video doorbells that can be made to work with a local
| IPTV system. I didn't end up doing it[0], but it does seem
| possible.
|
| [0]- I wanted to monitor for deliveries, but COVID kind of
| trivialized that for a year.
| taeric wrote:
| I would think the odds are much higher of a smaller company
| either a) selling your data to everyone that they can get
| money from, or b) just not having the tech skills to keep
| secure.
|
| Note that I am not criticizing you not wanting to use it at
| all. Just curious that if it was another name, you would have
| been ok with it.
| gdulli wrote:
| Maybe you're right that the odds that another company could
| be trusted are low enough not to be a distinction compared
| to companies I know I don't trust.
|
| That said, I mind signing up for throwaway services less
| because it's easy to use a fake name/email, which is
| becoming less an option for the major services, who try to
| enforce real identities and revoke accounts without
| consequences.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't know about that. Amazon and Google have a decent
| track record of being bad about data privacy, and the size
| of a company by itself says nothing about that company's
| expertise.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I think the point was that with Google or Amazon, you
| _know_ what their real motive is. With another product,
| they might actually just be selling a security camera.
| [deleted]
| CSSer wrote:
| > No company has successfully marketed an actual smart home
| system.
|
| No company has successfully marketed an _affordable_ or middle-
| class smart home system. These systems do exist and have for
| years, and they largely work exactly as you described. The big
| three companies for such solutions are Crestron[0], Savant[1],
| and Control4[2]. It's been awhile since I've checked, but if I
| recall correctly they run on average anywhere from $5-$25k (or
| more depending on the size of your home and scope of
| automation). Much of the cost comes from all of the bespoke
| devices they build to automate existing products e.g. a
| proximity sensor that goes in your car to trigger presence
| automations, as well as the cost of the (very granular) white
| glove setup you get from the installer to prevent the
| possibility of the chaos you described.
|
| [0]https://www.crestron.com/Products/Market-
| Solutions/Crestron-... [1]https://www.savant.com/
| [2]https://www.control4.com/solutions/whole-home/
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Indeed, the post's title and source are very misleading,
| pretty close to pure clickbait. The fully integrated smart
| home has been completely realized and functioning ever since
| Bill Gates built his 'Xanadu' home back in the late
| 90's/early 2000's.
|
| The fact that at least 95% of that setup has filtered down to
| be affordable to the average multi millionaire showcases the
| incredible progress made in the last 2 decades. And this
| dynamic was evident at least a decade ago for anyone who
| bothered looking (e.g. me circa 2011 on a slow evening).
| bradstewart wrote:
| It's kind of a PITA to setup and maintain, but for technically
| inclined folks, I've found HomeAssistant to be a great tool for
| gluing together a lot of local-only devices into a semi-
| coherent interface.
| dolmen wrote:
| KNX just works. Wires.
|
| Just a small issue: huge installation cost (because wires, but
| also software license)
| kazen44 wrote:
| also knx devices are high quality and rated for not home
| applications with far more people who use them. (factories,
| office buildings etc).
| NotSwift wrote:
| I am a bit disappointed that no one has mentioned a big problem
| with all these machines: security. Most of these items were
| developed by companies with only limited experience in security.
| They offer a tempting attack surface for attackers. Once they are
| compromised they can be used to attack other devices in your
| network. Most of them run proprietary software, so it is not
| possible to verify its code. They require that the network is
| correctly configured which is not at all easy. There have already
| been a lot of incidents where surveillance cameras were exposed
| on the internet.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Even if they do have security experience (i.e Google), I would
| expect that for many vendors security is WAY, WAY down the
| list. And security doesn't end when they ship the device, it
| also must be present throughout all updates, even when the
| device is no longer supported by the vendor.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| This tweet pretty much sums up how it works in my social circle:
| https://twitter.com/TooMany_Monkeys/status/11205616344125849...
|
| > Non-magic users: collect crystals, call their pet a familiar,
| draw pentagrams
|
| > Magic users:the most magical things I keep in my house are
| rocks, and I keep a hammer next to them in case they act up
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| I had a Nest thermostat before they were acquired. I liked it
| because the key feature I bought it for, the ability to
| automatically adjust the temperature, worked pretty well.
|
| I think that's the key for me personally: will this actually make
| things easier for me? I don't want a ton of notifications I have
| to respond to.
|
| Our older Logitech Harmony hub was useful for the same reason: it
| reduced multiple remotes to a single app that worked anywhere in
| the house via wifi.
| [deleted]
| cratermoon wrote:
| All the comments here seem to be from and about people who own
| their homes. What about renters?
|
| https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/tenants-worry-smart-hom...
| kbos87 wrote:
| I don't think many people make a decision to "smartify" their
| home at any one point in time. The reality is that it creeps in
| over time. If you are shopping for a mid to high end anything
| today - lighting to a dishwasher - some smart features are likely
| going to be standard on many models. People get these things
| home, probably try and like some of the smart features. But
| inevitably over time you discover how poorly integrated they all
| are with one another, you become frustrated when the smart
| features start chronically disconnecting, and suddenly it's all
| more trouble than it's worth. The only way out of this that I can
| see is the passage of time and steady iteration by device
| manufacturers, and real investment by a few platforms (eg Apple
| with HomeKit) to give us a decent front end and quasi home iPaaS.
| I worry they don't have the incentive to keep investing.
| stuaxo wrote:
| I read this as "smart phone", but maybe that was hoping too much
| ?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| We don't have any smart gadgets except old iPads.
|
| I set up one by our kitchen that is mounted near the
| refrigerator. The kids use it to see whats on the calendar, what
| chores they have in the reminder app, and what is for dinner
| (using a summary sheet in numbers that pulls from our meal plan).
|
| The reminder app is synced across all our devices, so we
| (parents) can add things when we are out and about. Also, the
| shortcuts app can automate adding repeated events.
|
| I can imagine a future where there are little displays near light
| switches that communicate such information in different rooms. We
| will likely do this with old iOS devices under the same appleID.
| robochat wrote:
| I've often thought that it would be good to have a app that could
| tell me that my doors and windows were shut and locked for when I
| suddenly can't remember if I actually did it. However the
| security implications of having such a system would worry me,
| particularly if it became popular. If hacked, it could tell
| thieves which houses had been accidentally left unlocked in an
| area, which could be worse than accidentally leaving a door
| unlocked all day. Also it might even make the company running the
| system liable for any thefts caused by hacks to their system and
| so it might be hard for a company to run such a system.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Highly recommend the movie 'Brazil' as a dystopian reminder of
| the humor that misuse of 'smart' home technology can bring to
| life.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I think this is a combination of various weaknesses acting in
| discord (rather than in concert) to create pure chaos.
|
| 1) Making the devices Internet-Must devices. Not only does this
| mean some dumb failure modes when your connection goes down --
| and it will -- but temperature adjustments might be made based on
| far-away weather stations, processed through layers of averages
| and aggregators, instead of drawing from local sensors.
|
| 2) Not thinking about security (conflicts massively with #1).
| Security isn't as daunting if you are not hooked up to the
| Internet. It can still be an issue, but opening up your attack
| surface to "the world" only makes things worse.
|
| 3) Proprietary, and therefore incompatible standards. If I want
| X, but I already have Y, I hope to hell that YCorp has an X-like
| offering in their works.
|
| 4) Being more about data collection (see also Samsung's SmartTVs
| exfiltrating data, or Amazon Walk ... or maybe now Apple is
| dipping their toes into that with their CSAM "won't _somebody_
| think of the children? " business)
|
| 5) The general disposablity of today's electronics. This also
| plays into standards because it'll just burn out so why be
| backwards-compatible? Just make a new standard. And you're back
| to #3.
| splitrocket wrote:
| Do yourself a favor and read the writeup about the perfect home
| automation system by founder of Home Assistant (https://www.home-
| assistant.io)
|
| https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016/01/19/perfect-home-a...
|
| An app per device class/vendor is beyond useless. A centralized,
| single controller that mostly has no interface at all is the
| solution.
| qalmakka wrote:
| The smart home is a crappy idea because appliances, switches and
| fixed lights are supposed to last for decades before needing to
| be replaced. Companies have clearly shown close to no interest in
| maintaining and upgrading even reasonably recent devices - adding
| smart features to previously dumb devices is nice at first, but
| what about in five years when the software will start to rot and
| stop working, and probably become a serious privacy and security
| liability?
|
| Until this gets solved somehow smart features will always remain
| a marketing gimmick. There's no way around it.
|
| People accept replacing ageing phones and computers because their
| connectivity features are a large part of the reason they exist.
| This isn't true for a light switch, for instance, which is mostly
| seen as a way to turn lights off.
| blippage wrote:
| My mum kept trying to foist a wireless telephone on me, because
| then I could use the telephone in bed, or whatever. So this
| goes on for awhile, but the rechargeable batteries never seem
| to recharge properly, so the phone goes dead a short while into
| the conversation. I finally decided "screw all this", and got a
| cheap corded phone for a few quid. It Just Works (TM). We get
| the odd power cut, which means that my parents have to fish an
| old phone out of the drawer so that they can still use the
| telephone.
|
| Our internet is intermittent, too.
|
| People keep banging on about the environment, privacy concerns
| about big companies like Facebook are in the public eye, and
| there's plenty of stories of these smart devices stopping
| working. Yet people keep buying these overcomplicated,
| expensive devices with multiple failure points. I can't believe
| people can be that stupid not to see the obvious drawbacks.
|
| L'il update: when I was a schoolboy doing my 'O' levels, one
| subject I studied was Technical Drawing. One day, the teacher
| showed us a pulley. It was used in industrial machinery. It was
| housed in a little cage which swivelled open. There was a
| "nipple" at the top to allow for lubrication. I marvelled about
| how much attention to detail someone had put into a humble
| pulley. Later on, I came to a strange realisation: there are
| actually two forms of engineering: industrial, and consumer.
| Industrial engineering is for stuff that actually has to work,
| and work properly. Consumer engineering: deliberately designed
| crap. It's the kind of thinking which leads one to welding
| batteries onto the phone itself. In some respects, I feel it's
| the opposite of engineering. Then I think back to how there was
| some guy, decades ago, that sat down and designed a pulley that
| was robust and could actually be maintained.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > appliances . . . are supposed to last for decades
|
| I'm not sure this holds up any more. It seems to me most mid-
| range or lower modern appliances fail within a decade.
|
| That said, I only have one "smart" appliance (a Miele
| dishwasher), and its "smart" features were useless last time I
| checked.
| ddingus wrote:
| This right here. I completely agree, and I think there will
| need to be standards that can endure long before we see
| smarthomes take off in any real sense.
|
| And I hate rolling devices. I bought a high-end smartphone, and
| a high-end laptop quite a while ago. I haven't really had to
| upgrade those, and that's really nice. Just a taste of what
| people want in their home appliances.
| maigret wrote:
| This is why I prefer standalone smart furniture and gadgets.
| All stuff that doesn't need to be built in the house, but can
| be updated and swapped at need. Also, every time I ask myself
| really hard if I need this thing or just want it.
|
| What a house should have in any case, is a good network and
| Ethernet plugs in every room. This makes the addition of new
| gadgets much easier I found. I must admit I've not gone the
| WiFi mesh route, but it looks interesting as well. Guess I'm
| just old school on that.
| lkois wrote:
| I'm surprised Ethernet over Power doesn't seem to get more
| attention. It's basically Ethernet cabling without running
| any new wires. It was the only thing that fixed wifi
| availability throughout our townhouse.
|
| I'd be interested to know how a wifi mesh performs in
| comparison, but I can't see how it could be nearly as good,
| without being much more conspicuous.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Even the value proposition is unclear. A simple mechanical
| light switch Just Works (TM). It's cheap, reliable, and nearly
| universally understood. Adding network connectivity,
| scheduling, voice recognition, etc. to these things sounds
| cool, but that novelty wears off very quickly, and you're stuck
| with features that probably won't matter to you day-to-day.
|
| It reminds me of those 3D user interfaces in the movie Minority
| Report. Very cool-looking and futuristic. Who wouldn't want
| that? The answer is anyone whose arms would be tired after a
| couple minutes of flailing around like that. Stop making things
| overly complicated for the sake of marketing copy.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I think there is value proposition in a smart home, but I
| believe every manufacturer has missed the mark on it.
|
| My smart home is entirely app controlled (HomeAssistant),
| generally scheduled, and at no point does anything notify me
| unless an actual exceptional event happens. Every smart home
| device is controllable via a physical switch. My command and
| control centers are old android tablets acting as digital
| picture frames until you swipe on them.
|
| And it's really convenient and it works well. No voice
| anything, no needing five different apps, and the UI is
| stupidly simple.
|
| Most smart home devices that are advertised are a pain in the
| ass, the apps are intrusive and terrible, they are far too
| voice heavy and they usually don't play well with normal
| switches/remotes/etc.
| amelius wrote:
| What kind of devices/sensors does your smart home
| control/monitor?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Thermostats, lights, entertainment center, cameras (kind
| of, working to update to a better system), presence via
| network awareness. Currently using a weather api as well.
|
| Lights and entertainment center get the most usage of
| course, though thermostat control is nice. I do have
| humidity data from the thermostats but I'm not using it
| currently.
|
| I built and did an alpha test of garden monitoring but
| haven't messed with it since.
| simcop2387 wrote:
| I've got a similar setup that I started originally so I
| could turn off lamps in my apartment with mock lightswtches
| on the wall. This enabled me to have an otherwise normal
| experience since redoing the electrical wiring in an
| apartment is generally a good way to get in a lot of
| trouble. Being able to schedule or turn iff all the lights
| in a simgle action at night was just a huge plus
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Just works (TM) attitude applies to a lot more things in life
| than smart homes.
|
| For example, Software Engineering :-)
| paulddraper wrote:
| > The answer is anyone whose arms would be tired after a
| couple minutes of flailing around like that.
|
| YEEEESSSS
|
| Minority Report is my go-to example for sexy, total
| impractical.
| dkarl wrote:
| I think richer control of lighting, including color and
| brightness, is useful, even if 99% of the time you interact
| with it via the wall switch. I had Philips Hue lights at my
| last house and enjoyed the level of control the app gave me.
| I used the simple scheduling capability it had and would have
| used more power if they offered it. (I did wish I had more
| control at the wall; I only had on/off switches and would
| have liked to have a dimmer and a button to toggle different
| programs.)
|
| I can't say I found the ability to control my lights and
| thermostat from beyond the local network to be compelling. I
| changed the Nest thermostat for my mother once while she was
| staying there since she couldn't figure out how to do it, and
| I think that was the only time I found it useful. I never set
| up remote access for the lights and never missed it.
|
| Remote security will be a useful application, though. Being
| able to buzz people in for repairs and deliveries and other
| services, and know that they know they can't steal anything
| without being seen, is an attractive possibility.
|
| Fine-grained control of sound is another feature I would use.
| I often wish I could play audio in the whole house, just one
| room, or certain rooms, depending on the circumstances.
|
| Also, something I find myself wishing for (less often since
| Covid, but still occasionally): cameras inside my
| refrigerator and pantry, so if I have a dinner idea while I'm
| out, I know what I need to pick up on the way home.
| pcwalton wrote:
| > Even the value proposition is unclear. A simple mechanical
| light switch Just Works (TM). It's cheap, reliable, and
| nearly universally understood. Adding network connectivity,
| scheduling, voice recognition, etc. to these things sounds
| cool, but that novelty wears off very quickly, and you're
| stuck with features that probably won't matter to you day-to-
| day.
|
| As I mentioned down below, I'm currently on crutches with a
| broken leg. Voice-controlled lighting is a big convenience in
| my scenario. Mechanical switches don't "Just Work (TM)" for
| disabled people.
| ub99 wrote:
| That's not a strong value proposition though. There are
| many specialized devices for disabled people - doesn't mean
| that they offer great value to the able-bodied. Eg a
| special watch for the blind is a great idea... but not
| something that would attract many non-blind people.
| marlowe221 wrote:
| I would much prefer LCARS and sophisticated voice recognition
| a la Star Trek TNG than anything I saw in Minority Report...
| jaywalk wrote:
| Z-wave switches are the key. They don't have any "smarts"
| within them, they require a controller for that. So the
| switch itself is never outdated, and the controller can be
| continuously updated or even fully replaced without having to
| replace the switches themselves.
|
| Being able to say "Hey Siri, good evening" to switch to my
| evening scene, or "Alexa, turn on the lights" to turn on the
| lights in whatever room I'm in becomes a huge convenience,
| not a novelty.
| idatum wrote:
| I use Z-Wave and the key for me is I'm not beholden to some
| external IoT service that is a potential privacy issue, can
| update firmware without my consent, or simply goes away. I
| feel I own my Z-Wave network (aka right to repair).
|
| For light switches I use Z-Wave modules that use the wall
| switch as a low voltage switch to trigger the module to
| switch the A/C circuit. This way the existing switch acts
| just as it did before. My family really doesn't notice, yet
| somehow that porch light is always on around dusk and off
| by dawn.
|
| I don't use Alexa or the like but as a developer I easily
| integrate with DiY equivalent.
|
| That last point is probably a key gap generally though --
| as a developer this home automation stuff comes easier to
| me, potentially.
| jeddy3 wrote:
| Having a couple of Z-Wave devices, in my opinion they are
| not the solution.
|
| Combability wildly varies between manufacturers, you have
| have to know what works with what.
|
| The mesh capabilities are kinda wonky, where you have some
| kind of "heal" network function you use when devices for
| some reason stops talking to each other.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Z-wave also has a backup system where switches can talk
| directly to other devices like dimmers in case the
| controller goes down.
|
| This way you're not stuck with a useless home in case your
| controller lost power, is down for maintenance or whatever.
| dolmen wrote:
| The pairing experience is still a nightmare.
|
| "Press the button for 3 seconds, but not five."
|
| "Do the pairing near the receiver."
|
| And you have to swap batteries.
| whazor wrote:
| I'm sorry but mechanical light switches are certainly not as
| cheap as ZigBee alternatives. You need to have copper wires
| running from the switch to the light. If you want to move the
| button or add another button it takes hours of work. Working
| with electricity is even dangerous.
| infinitezest wrote:
| This has always been my general stance. It sounds cool but
| the juice doesn't seem worth the squeeze. It solves a problem
| that really isn't that big of a problem, IMO. It's almost a
| real life CINCO commercial.
| colordrops wrote:
| There is a value proposition, but the tech just isn't there
| yet. It requires too much manual setup, pieces are not very
| standardized, and they also don't work well.
|
| Imagine asking your phone to watch a movie in your family
| room, then automatically, the lights dim or change color, the
| curtains are pulled if it's dark, the tv and receiver are
| flipped on and the movie is loaded and ready to go on pause.
| Many people would find value in this. This is all technically
| possible and some people have actually created this setup.
| But it probably took them several days and fiddling to make
| it work. I can barely get my Yamaha receiver and LG tv to
| work together and they are top of the line new components.
| riskable wrote:
| > It requires too much manual setup
|
| I'd argue that this isn't true. Installing a light switch
| is a HUGE pain in the ass compared to a "smart plug" that
| can turn a lamp on and off via your phone or any "smart"
| switch that can connect to it.
|
| As annoying as setup procedures can be they don't take
| nearly as long or involve nearly as much sweat as cutting
| holes in walls, running wires, potentially installing
| additional circuit breakers, installing wall boxes,
| installing the actual switch, and making sure it's all
| according to code.
|
| Furthermore, changing which outlet the wall switch controls
| is _also_ a pain in the ass compared to just relocating the
| little smart plug or changing the device it controls in the
| switch configuration software.
|
| It's possible to make a smart device that lasts for decades
| without security issues but device manufacturers just
| aren't willing to put in the effort for that sort of thing.
| It's much, much more profitable to make devices that only
| last 5 years before the end user needs to spend money on a
| new one.
| silverlake wrote:
| This exactly. I had this routine set up but then updates
| and bugs made it difficult for others to use. Even now
| turning on the lights in one room mysteriously turns off
| the lights and closes the blinds in another room. There are
| no logs to help debug it.
| torginus wrote:
| There is no value proposition. This tech is designed by
| software engineers for the purpose of harvesting the
| maximum amount of data about a a given person while giving
| him/her the thinnest possible veneer of value proposition.
| That's why mechanical wonders like the million-function
| wonder toilets of Japanese fame are not pushed - they do
| not allow companies to harvest as much data about its
| users, while taking actual engineering skills to design - a
| no-no proposition for these smart device companies.
| taeric wrote:
| I confess slightly more complicated light switches would be
| convenient. We have some that have an LED in them when in the
| "off" position as an easy night light/indicator of where to
| turn lights on. That is quite nice.
|
| Would also be cool if they were more "push toggle" style so
| that if I have two sets of switches on the same lights, I
| don't have to accept that four switches all in different
| "positions" are different states. (That is, Up Down Up Up,
| but all off.)
|
| All of that said, most of that does _not_ need any sort of
| "smart" additions. Basic circuitry has come a long way.
| jaywalk wrote:
| As far as your "push toggle" concept, you could buy a
| Z-wave smart switch plus add-on switches and have this
| today. There's no requirement to actually connect to a
| Z-wave network, although smart switches are much more
| expensive than standard switches.
| taeric wrote:
| Right. Apologies, I meant to offer this as a small
| feature that comes with many of these "smart home"
| additions that actually is kind of nice. Just with the
| major caveat that the "smart home" aspect is... not
| really needed or wanted.
|
| And with a huge confession that this isn't that big of a
| deal.
| beerandt wrote:
| You want the homeseer z-wave plus switches.
|
| Can program double triple or more taps to run scenes or
| events, and can also sync multiple switches (wirelessly and
| on different circuits) to control the same lighting, or use
| cheaper (wired) remote switches that lack status lights,
| but are functionally identical.
|
| I have single press resume previous light level, double up
| goes to 100% double down goes to preset dim level, triple
| up or down turns on/off the entire room/area of house.
|
| Hold and release to manual dim.
| closeparen wrote:
| Electricians are not really pulling cable to put your
| switches in convenient locations anymore. They'll place a
| smart switch wherever requires least effort, and then give
| you a remote panel for it wherever you like. The remote panel
| looks like a normal switch but actually sticks onto intact
| drywall, no cutting required.
|
| Not quite "IOT" but the bridge between that low power network
| and the internet is a natural add on.
| genpfault wrote:
| > It reminds me of those 3D user interfaces in the movie
| Minority Report. Very cool-looking and futuristic. Who
| wouldn't want that? The answer is anyone whose arms would be
| tired after a couple minutes of flailing around like that.
|
| "Gorilla arm"[1]
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen#%22Gorilla_arm%22
| matthewmcg wrote:
| I think the Lutron Caseta system is an example of how to do
| this in a better way, though it doesn't fully solve the
| obsolescence problem you mention. It minimizes the size and
| cost of the potentially obsolete part.
|
| The switches and dimmers themselves degrade gracefully--you'll
| always have a button to turn things up or down or on or off if
| the connection fails. And the connectivity is provided by a
| simple and responsive dedicated radio system, coupled to a
| bridge. You might need to replace the bridge in the future (to
| add support for a new protocol or whatever) but the dimmers
| should last (nearly) as long as the passive switches they
| replaced.
| newsclues wrote:
| I think the technology is ready but it's held back by business
| model incompatibility.
|
| The smart home should be an open source hub that integrates
| appliances, switches and lighting etc.
|
| But the business model requires vendor lock-in closed systems.
| teeray wrote:
| It would be nice for the building code to start dictating
| some interop standards for this stuff to overcome the natural
| tendency of the business to make this a winner-take-all
| market at the expense of the consumer. At first blush, it
| feels like it would be a little out of their wheelhouse, but
| it's not entirely unusual since it responds to consumer
| interests. For example, Energy Storage Systems (batteries)
| are a new-ish thing added to the code around 2014.
| conk wrote:
| Codes abs standards have working groups composed of
| industry, consumers and inspectors. New groups are created
| all the time to address new technology. Unfortunately the
| initial cost to set up is typically too high for most
| individuals leaving progress in building codes/standards up
| to corporations.
| qalmakka wrote:
| Even if we assume that companies are willing to support the
| systems they sold for an undetermined amount of time
| (something that will _never_ happen), this still won't solve
| the fact that the hardware itself enabling the "smart"
| features is bound to turn obsolete way before the appliance
| exhausts its lifetime.
|
| For instance, I've seen chest freezers running for >30y
| without breaking; do you expect today's IT technology to
| remain viable for the next 30 years? What about new protocols
| that might appear that the hardware may not support, or new
| highly desirable features that are simply unfeasible to
| implement on the limited ucontrollers that power most IoT
| appliances?
|
| You risk ending up in a situation like with LPT printers -
| when USB became dominant, lots of old printers ended up in
| landfills due to how unreliable LPT-USB adapters were. The
| printers themselves were often absolutely fine, but they had
| become too annoying and keeping an old machine around to use
| them was much more complicated than just buying a spanking
| new network printer.
|
| Given the current dire environmental situation I wouldn't
| push for technologies that might cause perfectly functioning
| appliances to become obsolete due to a non-necessary
| secondary features. The only way out of this is for "IoT
| modules" to be removable, standardized and upgradeable, but
| thinking anyone would do that is delusional.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > but they had become too annoying and keeping an old
| machine around to use them was much more complicated than
| just buying a spanking new network printer.
|
| To be fair the problem of unreliable USB to LPT adapters
| was caused by this. It was more economical to just replace
| printers so there wasn't enough demand for a quality
| converter.
|
| If replacing legacy smart home devices is costly then it
| would provide a market for _reliable_ adapter devices.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Bingo. One should aim for the smallest amount of complexity
| needed for the job. To turn lights on & off, a simple switch is
| all you need. If it breaks, you can go to Home Depot for
| another. If you're disabled, there are special devices you can
| buy.
|
| Same for thermostats. If you're going away for two weeks in
| winter, turn the heat down to 55. What's so hard about that?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Same for thermostats.
|
| I've lost count of how many times I opened the windows and
| then went out without turning off the heating causing it to
| run at full blast trying to fight the winter outside.
|
| A window sensor + smart thermostat + Home Assistant solved
| that problem and the system has been reliably running for 2
| years now. I can now open & close the windows at will knowing
| that the heating will adapt around that and not waste energy.
| Note that there is no UI, no voice assistants, not even
| screens involved. It just works in the background.
|
| Do I agree with the current gimmicky consumer-grade
| implementation of a "smart home" and controlling everything
| with your phone/voice assistant? No, that's stupid. But it
| doesn't mean the idea of a smart home should be dismissed -
| there are ways to actually make it useful and pleasant if you
| are willing to spend some time and/or money.
| jaywalk wrote:
| When I go away for two weeks in the winter, I'd also like my
| lights to turn on and off to simulate my home being occupied
| for security purposes. A simple switch isn't going to cut it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Right. For that, you need a timer, which you can also get
| at Home Depot for a few dollars. What else you got?
|
| The timer is something you can leave on _all_ the time. If
| you don 't come home before dark some day, you still want
| the lights to go on.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| A simple timer plugged into a wall outlet will. We've had
| those for decades.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > People accept replacing ageing phones and computers because
| their connectivity features are a large part of the reason they
| exist.
|
| Though with phones, this is a relatively new concept. Phones
| used to last for decades. The phones in my parent's house were
| unchanged and still working after 30 years.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I don't have a landline any more, but I still have a beige
| rotary dial desk phone that my parents got no later than 70s.
| It still works, if you can find a place to jack in. It's just
| a quirky decoration in my living room now.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| What I want out of a "smart" switch is that it exposes an API
| over a network connection for what it can do (turn on, off and
| maybe dim the lights) along with a Unique Identifier of some
| kind. CPU and network stack all running on a Harvard
| Architecture system with no possibility of upgrade.
|
| The "smartness" should come from a device (be it a smartphone,
| hub-like device like an echo or my router) that maintains the
| mapping between device addresses, api and friendly names. That
| can be upgraded, replaced, exposed to the outside internet.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > fixed lights are supposed to last for decades before needing
| to be replaced.
|
| Only recently. Light bulbs used to blow rather too often and
| changing them was a routine thing. LED has changed that thank
| goodness.
|
| Smart lights have been installed at my workplace. They change
| their setting over 20 or so seconds 'to reduce stress'. When
| you press a button and nothing happens immediately it
| immediately irritates, and most users press it again
| (cancelling the change).
|
| Who comes up with these crappy systems and the amateur
| psychology behind them?
| voisin wrote:
| The answer will be a SaaS model to encourage ongoing
| development and maintenance. Get ready to pay $1.99/mo for up
| to 6 smart light switches or $6.99/mo for unlimited, for the
| rest of your life.
| jerf wrote:
| In principle, the answer is getting together and
| standardizing on generic protocols.
|
| Unfortunately, there are multiple reasons why this can't
| happen in the current environment.
|
| The business reason is that all the big tech giants are now
| deeply accustomed to lockin-as-a-model, and you can't have
| lockin if you have a standard that everyone can use equally.
| So, literally _everyone_ in the space sees it as their
| incentive to let other players conform to their standards,
| but not to conform to anyone else 's standards. This does not
| result in a standard, _de facto_ or _de jure_.
|
| (I made the same objection to the "metaverse" concept a
| couple of weeks ago. It can't work as some people are
| envisioning; the _business proposition_ at this point is
| complete nonsense. Every participating company will be happy
| for other companies to voluntarily walk into their walled
| garden, but no company is going to walk into somebody else 's
| walled garden.)
|
| The technical reason is that any attempt to standardize at
| this point is more likely to produce a mess like bluetooth
| than any sort of coherent standard. Plus you get an echoing
| of the business model problem where every participant will
| see the standard as a weapon to be fired at their competitor
| rather than something to conform to for mutual advantage.
|
| Not helping any of this is the problem that the problems that
| they are solving just aren't _that_ compelling. This limits
| the amount of value they can extract from me by virtue of the
| fact I 'm not paying for more than I'm getting from the
| 'smart home', which doesn't really leave them with much money
| to play with. It also doesn't help that the camel's nose is
| already under the tent in terms of not simply enabling the
| user but trying to _control_ the user, with things like
| letting this authority twiddle with my air conditioner and
| that authority twiddle with my hot water heater, and in 2021,
| I have less than no confidence that buying into a smart home
| won 't continue this trend.
|
| Personally, my assessment is that the tech industry of the
| 2010s and the 2020s is structurally and temperamentally
| incapable of producing a high-quality smart home. The best
| they can do is create a locked-in walled garden that works
| great if you buy into it from top to bottom (and pay the
| subscription fees!), but gets abandoned in three to five
| years and then becomes totally nonfunctional as they pursue
| the next thing.
| omk wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't the failure of smart
| homes attributed to the SaaS model itself. Nest devices had
| to be killed because Google wouldn't support the subscription
| anymore. What it needs is licensing model and not a
| subscription. Get a smart home installed on your home like
| you'd install Windows on a PC. We are basically wanting to
| install a server in every home to cut off recurring costs on
| vendors and even dependency on a single vendor for that
| matter.
|
| The bottleneck here could be the network interface once you
| are away from your home. That is where standards struggle.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Looking at the sibling I currently see right below hits the
| nail on the head as in vendor lock in is bad for both SaaS
| and perpetual licensing models.
|
| I think none of the models currently work well for the
| consumer. If your SaaS provider shuts down its service you
| have to replace all the hardware too because of vendor lock
| in.
|
| If your perpetual license vendor stops making this produ t
| line or changes its proprietary software incompatible say 3
| years down the line (which from a software development
| standpoint is reasonable actually) you can't buy another
| light switch for the new room you added by subdividing the
| basement "play room" that would work with your original
| installation. Software incompatible. New software or other
| vendors' software won't work on your 'ancient' hardware.
|
| Vendor lock in bad.
| Nemi wrote:
| One of the main problems as I see it is that dumb devices have
| a long life and when they fail, they tend to _hard_ fail. It
| either works, or it doesn't.
|
| In contrast, smart devices have many _soft_ failures. They work
| today and they don't tomorrow. They fail for various reasons
| that are not under their direct control, and because of that
| they have a much larger mental overhead for me.
|
| For instance, I can shut the garage door with a traditional
| switch and be pretty certain it will close. Yes, they do stop
| working, but it is a hard, catastrophic event that makes me
| take notice and act.
|
| By contrast when a smart device fails, it can often fail
| silently and temporarily so I find myself constantly second
| guessing the thing I just did. "Did it work? Is the sensor
| showing me the correct state? Did it open on it's own? I better
| go outside and check it."
|
| I find myself thinking about said thing way more during the day
| than I used to. And this is fatiguing. Yes, it has some added
| benefit to automate certain tasks, but any benefit is wasted by
| the overall mental overhead it is adding back on me. Definitely
| not worth it except for trivial things from my experience.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If you cut out the cloud and stick to local-only devices the
| reliability increases significantly.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > adding smart features to previously dumb devices is nice at
| first, but what about in five years when the software will
| start to rot and stop working, and probably become a serious
| privacy and security liability?
|
| There is easy solution - instead of IP-based IoT devices,
| separate appliance network based on industrial or specialized
| bus (e.g. Zigbee) and then gateway connected to IP-based
| network. With this setup all your appliances, switches and
| lights are pretty well isolated and with trivial software, and
| you just need to handle software updates and security in
| gateway.
|
| There is another problem and that is interoperability and long-
| term availability of these products. I do not want to buy
| products from a closed system of one vendor, but prefer some
| industrial standard, so there is hope compatible products would
| be here even after 10 or 20 years.
| hattmall wrote:
| I've been using X10 stuff for nearly two decades. So I'm
| pretty sure that already exists exactly as your describing.
| conk wrote:
| Lutron RA/RA2 has put connectivity into light switches for
| nearly 25 years. It's still a supported product with many
| devices still in operation.
| ahi wrote:
| My washer and dryer are at least 30 years old. Parts are still
| available and any idiot with a screw driver can fix them
| because they are so simple. Family have tried to gift me their
| top-of-the-line slightly used models and I flatly refuse. Less
| is more for the vast majority of appliances.
| typest wrote:
| Agreed. People look at homes and things like light switches and
| blinds that have stayed the same for decades. These things seem
| boring, but the fact that they haven't changed is evidence of
| great design.
|
| Smart homes to me have always felt like tech looking for a
| problem to solve.
| alkonaut wrote:
| My smart home strategy is pretty simple: nothing that requires
| internet connection to work. Only local devices. WiFi where
| possible over anything low power (BT, Zigbee, ZWave), wired over
| wireless wherever possible (e.g 1-wire). Policy for anything I
| include is that it must fail like an escalator not an elevator -
| a dumb switch for example, not a light that can't be switched on.
| This means smart lightswitches, _not_ smart lights.
|
| It's a _lot_ of work to configure and maintain but tools like
| home assistant, proxmox and docker at least makes it somewhat
| manageable. It's still a _pain_ though, and it feels like a
| special kind of masochism to tinker with.
|
| I think it's entirely possible that an average user who isn't a
| programmer or willing to pull a neutral wire here and there could
| have a decent "smart home" set up by themselves some time within
| the next three or four decades...
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| What problem is a smart home the solution for?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| All I want is control of the televisions from my phone. No
| Samsung, I don't want them all on the same Wifi--it's not
| reliable.
|
| And by control I mean including turning them on / waking.
| kadoban wrote:
| Logitech's Harmony can do that, I'm sure others as well. Full
| disclosure I've never used their app, only other pieces of that
| line.
|
| I think the whole line is discontinued now, but looks like you
| can still find them easily.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| My wife and I were constantly warring over whether our
| living/dining/kitchen window blinds should be open or close, and
| there were too many and the faux wood was too heavy to manipulate
| so much. To make things easy, we got Lutron motorized cellulars
| shades so we could just ask Siri to open or close whatever.
| Totally worth it.
|
| Since we had the shades, we also did our lights in that room, so
| now we can quickly put down all the shades and turn on all the
| lights.
|
| That being said, I can't see doing it for any other room in our
| house. The bother factor just isn't there like it was with our
| main open living space. Well, maybe the bedroom, we don't open
| the shades very much even though I'd like to.
| Causality1 wrote:
| After what happened to Revolv customers when Google bought them
| I'm never going to spent more on a smart device than I would on a
| good lunch. Sure, I'll put some five and ten dollar smart
| switches on lamps but this whole home integration crap is for the
| birds.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| Fun story time - One time I woke up in the middle of the night.
| Not knowing what time it is, I shouted into the darkness "Hey
| Google, what time is it?" To my surprise, the machine reply in a
| excessively cheerful tone, "Welcome to what fruit are you" and
| proceed to give me a personality quiz. I wasn't able to get the
| time - but I found out that I'm a watermelon.
|
| So I think it is a mistake to call smart home a failure.
| thehappypm wrote:
| By far my best experience with any sort of smart home device was
| for my apartment in Boston. My overhead light did not have a
| switch, and the previous homeowner used a pull cord. I replaced
| it with a Phillips smart LED that connected wirelessly to a
| physical switch that I pasted onto the wall. No electrician, and
| now my light has a switch. $30 well spent.
|
| I never did get around to connecting it to an app or anything
| like that.
|
| Oh, I also had a WiFi enabled outlet! That was a gift from my
| sister in law. I used it on an air conditioner -- if I
| remembered, I could turn on the AC an hour before I got home.
|
| I also have a WiFi enabled AC in my new home and can set each
| room's temperature individually by app.
|
| These things are useful and convenient but I'm not really going
| out of my way to set them up.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I never wanted a smart home. I don't even want "smart"
| appliances. I want energy-efficient, reliable appliances and
| homes, with behavior I can predict, that don't spy on me, or rely
| on remote APIs, and have high usability factors. I don't mind
| remotes, and voice activation might be nice if I was disabled,
| but for the most part I'm happiest when my home and I don't get
| in each other's way.
| lqet wrote:
| In our apartment, we have the following smart features:
|
| * Multiway light switches [0], which allow switching lights on
| and off from several different locations.
|
| * A boiler, which heats water up automatically should it become
| too cold.
|
| This covers lighting, heating, and supplies water at arbitrary
| temperatures between around 15 and 60 degrees celsius on demand,
| at several locations. The features do not require internet
| connectivity, are vendor-independent and have zero privacy
| issues. In the last 30 years since their installation, they have
| _not once_ failed.
|
| I am at a complete loss why this should not be smart enough. The
| technical overhead some people introduce into their lives just to
| avoid pressing a button to turn of the light is mindblowing to
| me.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiway_switching
| pcwalton wrote:
| > I am at a complete loss why this should not be smart enough.
| The technical overhead some people introduce into their lives
| just to avoid pressing a button to turn of the light is
| mindblowing to me.
|
| My leg is currently broken and I'm on crutches. At this point
| I'm really glad that I installed voice-controlled lighting in
| my house. Good reminder that things that seem trivial are very
| much not to people with disabilities.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Impairments to mobility are a good topic for this discussion.
| The question is though, are the smart tech sufficiently
| better than a simple remote? --Best wishes in the healing
| process.
| FinalBriefing wrote:
| Not to say a dedicated remote isn't useful, but phones are
| really convenient.
|
| You generally have your phone with you, so you don't need
| to keep track of a separate device or devices. Unlike a TV
| remote, which is used near your TV, a house remote needs to
| be used anywhere. Everyone in your household can have their
| own remote (phone), so there's no passing the device
| around.
|
| The types of controls are varied, and a color touch screen
| is generally the best option. Light switches, dimmer
| lights, colored lights, fan controls, AC controls, etc.
| While I can imagine creating a remote that handles all
| these different devices, it's going to be a challenge to
| create hardware that services all these different devices
| intuitively.
| pcwalton wrote:
| I always forget where remote controls are. Granted, I
| forget where my phone is too, but at least that's only
| one thing to search for.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Not to say a dedicated remote isn't useful, but phones
| are really convenient.
|
| True, but phones present a much higher security risk than
| remote controls.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > phones present a much higher security risk
|
| Only because the manufacturers insist on networking the
| devices instead of using Bluetooth.
| 762236 wrote:
| Yeah, when I think about smart homes, I think about the
| possibilities of materials and structure and moisture
| management and clean-air management and noise abatement, not
| gimmicks. American houses are surprisingly poorly designed and
| built given what humanity knows about the discipline.
| twirligigue wrote:
| The motivation is probably due to Star Trek. Who wouldn't want
| swishy Star Trek doors? Ironically they were opened by hand
| from behind the scenes, at least in the first shows.
|
| Also, 'Computer, locate my husband.' 'Your husband is in the
| attic'. etc.
| gruez wrote:
| >Who wouldn't want swishy Star Trek doors?
|
| all the times the crew got trapped because the doors were
| made inoperable by [plot device]?
| twirligigue wrote:
| Yes! I think TNG showed some of the problems with automated
| doors:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKdqBHExH9I
| foxyv wrote:
| I think the most miraculous invention of the Star Trek
| universe is a code of ethics that people actually followed.
| They didn't have the endless power hungry narcissists that
| are endemic to every human society. It's the least probable
| aspect of the series even including warp drives and
| teleporters. Maybe they all died in World War 3?
| twirligigue wrote:
| Yes, although I think the absence of those power hungry
| narcissists (who no doubt lurk back at Star Fleet HQ) would
| be more down to having a relatively isolated and small
| group of people living and working in close proximity. Dark
| triad individuals can be identified early and worked around
| or placed where they cannot harm. An explicit code of
| ethics would be an Achilles heel because any such a code
| can be hacked or subverted.
| philwelch wrote:
| > They didn't have the endless power hungry narcissists
| that are endemic to every human society.
|
| Of course they did. Most of the Admirals were like that.
| api wrote:
| > are vendor-independent and have zero privacy issues.
|
| Well there's the problem.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Our new house came with a Nest thermostat. It has some perks.
| Probably the main one is that we can turn the thermostat down
| to just warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing when we
| will be away from the home for a while, and then remotely turn
| it back up so that the house reaches a comfortable temperature
| just as we're arriving back home.
|
| However, I don't think that that's enough to counteract the
| many, many UX annoyances we've encountered with it. When it
| craps out or Google decides to brick it, I intend to replace it
| with a regular old programmable thermostat.
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| I admit to being mystified by the value proposition of Nest
| thermostats. I have a simple programmable thermostat that I
| can put on a set schedule (and change if I'm going out of
| town and want to set everything for energy savings) and the
| incremental value of having something more dynamic just seems
| miniscule.
| riskable wrote:
| If you only have one thermostat getting a "smart" one
| doesn't really add much unless you live alone and want to
| take advantage of the presence features (it knows when
| you're home) in order to save some money.
|
| However, if you have more than one thermostat (e.g.
| separate downstairs and upstairs air conditioning/heating)
| having a "smart" thermostat is awesome! I can change the
| temperature on both from my phone without having to go
| upstairs.
|
| We also installed the additional sensors in various rooms
| in the house so I can control which zone gets used in
| determining the whole-house temperature (there's often
| several degrees variation between rooms in my house on hot
| summer days). The thermostats in my home were installed in
| _terrible_ locations that don 't reflect the temperature in
| places where people actually _are_ so the remote sensors
| are fantastic.
| sn41 wrote:
| For some reason, last year I tried to rederive the circuit
| diagram for 3 way switches. I failed. It's actually a very
| clever idea, and higher numbers are fun to think about
| independently.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| They annoy me simply because I prefer the "up" position to
| mean "on" and "down" to indicate "off".
|
| Completely arbitrary on a two way (wait, they're called three
| way?) switches.
| D13Fd wrote:
| There are electronic three-way switches that have either a
| single button or an up/down rocker that always reacts the
| same way (up for on, down for off).
|
| These are available in "smart"/connected form or regular
| electronics-only form. Example here:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Lutron-Incandescent-Single-Pole-
| Multi...
|
| I agree with you and much prefer them to the traditional
| switches.
| mopsi wrote:
| Get momentary toggle switches that stay in "off" position
| and toggle the light when pushed to "on" position.
| toast0 wrote:
| The switch way numbering is based on the number of
| terminals.
|
| A 2-way switch has two terminals and gives a closed (on) or
| open circuit.
|
| A 3-way switch has three terminals and gives you one
| terminal tied to either, but not both of the other two.
|
| A 4-way switch has four termimals and gives you two
| terminals which are each tied to the other two terminals
| and you can pick; these also give you a big headache when
| one switch of many fails and one circuit path is open, but
| many paths still work.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Or in other words if you're used to seeing switches from
| the electronics side of the world:
|
| 2 way: SPST
|
| 3 way: SPDT
|
| 4 way: DPDT
|
| I once lived in a house with a 5(!) gang box with three
| of the switches wired to the upstairs hall light
| incorrectly and another switch upstairs. It was as big a
| mess as you'd imagine.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's two way, three way, and four way, and four way can
| support arbitrary numbers of "ways" - because a path is
| always found on one flip of the switch and not on the other.
| OJFord wrote:
| No, GP is responding to the 'multiway switching' link in
| the top-level comment.
|
| This is about where, in the UK and I'm sure most developed
| jurisdictions, stairs for example must have a both on and
| off control at both ends - regardless of the state of the
| other switch.
|
| If they were simply in parallel as you describe, you could
| find yourself in the situation of going upstairs to turn it
| 'off up there', (because it'd need to be 'off everywhere'
| to be off) then realising it was already 'off downstairs'
| and falling back down.
|
| If they were simply in series, you could find yourself
| unable to turn the light on without first going downstairs
| at speed in the dark, because it's 'off there' no matter
| what you do upstairs.
| twic wrote:
| The key thing is that it's a double-pole, double-throw
| switch. You can put any number of them in series, and the
| circuit essentially counts the parity of the switches, so
| flipping any of them toggles the state of the lights.
| OJFord wrote:
| If it's only two switches, you only need SPDTs ('hot' &
| 'light' on each, throws connected, then toggling either
| switch takes either to the other).
| sn41 wrote:
| yes... A way to look at 2 way switches is to look at the
| connections of usual circuit setups to Boolean logic.
| Taking two on-off switches,
|
| - parallel is or
|
| - series is and
|
| We can see that a 2 way switch is xor (or xnor depending
| on the setup).
|
| So now, for 3 way it feels like you have to beyond 2
| state (on-off) switches... i don't have a proof of
| impossibility that 2 state switches cannot do 3 way
| switching, but in practice they indeed involve more
| states (multi-throw etc.)
| OJFord wrote:
| The closest you can get with '2 state' (by which you mean
| SPST - single pole single throw; SPDT is the standard way
| to achieve this but is usually still '2 state', it's just
| that 'off' (if you like) has a terminal too) switches is
| to add a 'don't care' state, and accept that first
| deliberate ('do care') switch wins.
|
| To do this you have a live rail and a switched live rail,
| and two SPST each end: one switch SL hot or not; the
| other to break its connection to the light. Open the
| latter for 'off', close both for 'on', close break & open
| SL for 'don't care'. (Then in the 'don't care' state, SL
| is hot iff switched on the other end, and if so is also
| closed through to the light.)
|
| Not legal, not (that I can imagine) desirable!
|
| Proving it is actually simple if you continue your
| Boolean line of thought: you can't build XOR without an
| inverter; an SPST switch is only a sort of 'half
| inverter', a mux between '0' and its input. Since it can
| never give you '1' from '0' input, you need a schematic
| for your XOR where each constituent truth table in
| isolation has '0' out for its '0;0' in line. Which can't
| be done, because clearly then you could never get
| '0;0=>1' overall.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's what a 3-way or 4-way (should be called X-way)
| switch setup is - three or four or more switches that no
| matter what the state of the light is, flipping ANY
| switch will change the state.
|
| https://www.electrical101.com/4way-switch-wiring-using-
| nm-ca...
| OJFord wrote:
| Sorry then, I misunderstood what you meant by:
|
| > a path is always found on one flip of the switch
|
| I thought you were taking the comment you replied to to
| be seeking a simple parallel arrangement of SPST
| switches, so that turning any one on would turn the light
| on.
|
| So I was explaining that No, point is you want 'off' on
| any switch (regardless of the state of the others) too.
| Seems you understood that though. :)
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Isn't it just a few XOR gates? I'm probably missing
| something, but they aren't that hard to make out of AND and
| OR gates, or even out of transistors.
| jcranmer wrote:
| These circuits don't run on digital logic, but are instead
| based on physically connecting and disconnecting an
| electrical connection between the live and neutral wires.
| This means you have to work out how to use the two switches
| to produce a connected circuit when only one but not both
| switch is in the up position.
|
| Digital logic works on lower voltage than mains voltage,
| and you'd need to maintain far more wires to hook up the
| connection (since the actual gates themselves need both
| power supply and ground drain wires which are separate for
| the inputs). Possibly also a relay to actually drive the
| higher voltage/amperage for the light bulb.
| ebiester wrote:
| I don't have too much "smart home", but I am really tempted by
| lighting. Being able to dim _and_ change the color temperature
| of the light depending on the time of day is compelling.
| Dimming is easy conceptually, but it would mean rewiring large
| portions of my home. I don 't know how I'd manage that with
| color temperature.
| mantas wrote:
| The easy way:
|
| - connect wires behind light switch so bulb is always-on
|
| - screw in smart bulb
|
| - stick smart button on top of the hole of the old switch
| lrem wrote:
| I have some IKEA Floalt and whatever the other pieces were
| called. Everything you want. No phone app. No internet
| connectivity.
|
| I think you can do the same with Hue.
| FinalBriefing wrote:
| I'm a big fan of the Hue lights. I've done the IKEA ones,
| and they are great, but the phone-connected options offer
| scheduling and automation, if you're into that kind of
| thing.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I like 2700K. Wife likes 5000K. Having bulbs that can go back
| and forth has saved me thousands of dollars by preventing a
| divorce.
|
| Seriously, though: Controlling multiple bulbs at once is very
| convenient. Sometimes I sleep downstairs, sometimes upstairs.
| The lights I want on/off differ in both cases. So a simple
| routine "Sleep downstairs" and "sleep upstairs" that controls
| which lights should be on/off is more convenient than getting
| up and doing them individually. It was mere fun when I
| programmed it, but once I had it, it was awesome.
|
| Also, having some lights come on at sunset was a real
| improvement. Gone are the days when I come home during winter
| to a totally dark house. Granted - you don't need Internet to
| achieve this.
|
| AC compressors should not operate below 60F outside.
| Sometimes it's still warm when I sleep but will dip below 60
| near dawn. Because of this I can't turn on my window AC all
| night. I have a smart switch that can handle the wattage of
| my AC. My next project: Turn it on when I go to sleep, and
| have it turn off when the outside temperature is below 60F -
| and turn it back on when it goes above 60F a few hours later.
| bradstewart wrote:
| Philips makes a range of "Warm Glow" LED dumb bulbs that
| change from ~2700k to 2200k as they dim.
|
| Not nearly the color range (or control ability) you can
| achieve with something like Hue bulbs, but I've been happy
| with them for bed side lamps and the like.
|
| You can also put Hue bulbs in and use something like
| HomeAssistant with the F.lux plugin to control the brightness
| + color temperature automatically throughout the day. No wall
| switch-based dimming, but dimmable with a phone.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I have some led strips installed with a simple remote that
| allows temp and dim control...I love it and don't think auto
| changing these with the day would be that big of an
| improvement than pushing the button a few times until its at
| where I like it.
| twic wrote:
| Just buy a few pairs of sunglasses.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Lutron diva dimmer handles up to 8A of fixtures, you don't
| need to rewire anything
| pm215 wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to your overall point, but I'm impressed that
| you've had zero boiler failures in 30 years. I'm pretty sure
| that's better than the average. (Mine is about 10 years old and
| has needed one fairly minor part replacement to fix a failure
| in that time. The figure that seems to be commonly quoted for
| boiler expected lifespan in the UK is 15 years.)
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Well first of all I think there's a large portion of home
| automation users that are tech people and just enjoy the
| process more than the results.
|
| There are some generally good use cases though.
|
| My most useful automation feature currently is that I can turn
| the air conditioner on and off in my attic office without
| having to walk up two flights of stairs or even be home. Sure I
| could leave the ac on a preset temp, but that would be a huge
| power waste.
|
| Then there's home security features, which are really all just
| a subset of home automation. The only low tech solution to this
| problem is basically to move, but that isn't exactly practical.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > The technical overhead some people introduce into their lives
| just to avoid pressing a button to turn of the light is
| mindblowing to me.
|
| I use a "smart" socket to switch off most electronic devices in
| my home for the night (and I tend to hide cables so it's not
| easy to do manually). And because it's automatic I don't have
| to remember switching it off and then on in the morning.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| My house makes your house look like a simpleton.
|
| I have a light that automatically comes on in the bathroom when
| someone enters, shuts off a few minutes after they leave.
|
| With kids, it has turned out to be an energy saver.
|
| No hub required.
| mynameisash wrote:
| > With kids, it has turned out to be an energy saver.
|
| I wonder, though. Most folks now have LED bulbs, so being
| diligent about turning off lights isn't as much of a savings
| as when I grew up and everything was incandescent. Also, if
| you train kids that the lights go on and off on their own,
| are they more likely to just never turn anything off?
|
| My teenage kids have friends over frequently, and while my
| kids have been reasonably well-trained to shut things off,
| close doors after they go through, etc., their friends are
| generally pretty bad stewards of my electricity. (And it's
| not malice; they just don't think about it.)
|
| I like the idea of automating efficiency into the system, but
| there's always a human element. And that seems to require
| repetition.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > I wonder, though. Most folks now have LED bulbs, so being
| diligent about turning off lights isn't as much of a
| savings as when I grew up and everything was incandescent.
|
| It's very convenient to have the light come on
| automatically in stairwells and lavatories. But you are
| right about it taking much longer to pay back. My
| calculation is that compared to having the LED bulb on
| continuously it pays back in about two years.
|
| I have several infra red motion detector bulbs in stair
| wells and in the pantry as well as 'radar' bulbs in several
| other places (these detect movement by the disturbance in a
| low level high frequency radio signal).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >It's very convenient to have the light come on
| automatically in stairwells and lavatories.
|
| Until you're drunk AF and trying to take a piss (or
| whatever it is you're doing) at 1am and then the "smart"
| light blinds you.
|
| Here's my solution: https://www.ebay.com/itm/265164805260
| mynameisash wrote:
| > (these detect movement by the disturbance in a low
| level high frequency radio signal).
|
| I'd never heard of this before. One of my former managers
| is _really_ into Home Assistant and has done a lot with
| his setup, but I think all of his motion detection was
| IR. How 's your 'radar' setup? Do you get a lot of false
| positives/negatives? How's the distance on its detection?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| He's talking about the motion detector things that are a
| drop in replacement for switches. You see them often in
| rooms in commercial buildings.
|
| Something like this https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/nvAAAO
| SwEK5fmkrH/s-l1600.jpg
| twic wrote:
| A 4 watt LED lightbulb left on constantly for a year would
| consume 52 kWh of energy, costing ~PS7.50 at UK prices,
| releasing ~9.5 kg of CO2, the equivalent of driving 23.5
| miles in the average US passenger vehicle.
|
| There are good reasons for turning off lights in the house
| (getting a good night's sleep is one!) but saving energy is
| no longer one of them.
| pedantsamaritan wrote:
| There are a lot of light bulbs, though. The LED switch has
| had meaningful impact on US residential energy usage [0].
| IEA reports 38B in LED sales in 2015-2020 [1]. Averaging
| $10 (high) per bulb, that's 3.8 billion bulbs (including
| non-residential).
|
| Leaving a light on doesn't matter much. Leaving billions on
| can clearly have an impact.
|
| [0]: https://archive.is/RldJl
|
| [1]: https://www.iea.org/reports/lighting
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| The billions of bulbs have the same proportional impact
| on the national energy budget as the few in your home
| have on yours, that is practically nothing.
|
| See David MacKay's Sustainable Energy Without The Hot
| Air, chapter 19.
| https://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_114.shtml
| dharmab wrote:
| I've really liked my RainMachine sprinkler controller. It only
| requires internet connectivity to download weather reports; all
| other functions are available via LAN. Being able to turn the
| sprinklers on via the phone is incredibly useful for verifying
| repairs, finding leaks/clogs and aiming spray patterns. And it
| reduces water usage by deferring watering if enough rainfall
| has occurred.
| KallDrexx wrote:
| Why do you need internet connectivity for any of that?
|
| My sprinkler system has a sponge hooked up to the roof. If
| the sensor detects the sponge has too much moisture it
| doesn't turn the sprinklers on, because that means the soil
| is still saturated from recent rain.
| dharmab wrote:
| How long is watering suppressed by the sponge? Does the
| controller "remember" that the sponge triggered a few days
| ago when the watering day comes around?
| KallDrexx wrote:
| It has a permanent sensor on there, so the sensor doesn't
| remove the signal to not turn the automatic sprinklers on
| until you press the manual bypass button, or until the
| sensor no longer detects moisture above the set
| threshold.
|
| When the controller hits the scheduled time it checks
| with the sensor unit, if the sensor says there's too much
| moisture it doesn't turn them on.
| dharmab wrote:
| Nice, so it holds water just like the earth. Makes sense.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| I wonder if that actually works that well. Especially
| with black roofing tiles which get quite hot. Compared to
| the hopefully shaded by the plants themselves soil. If
| your plants are sometimes shaded by trees depending on
| time of day the sponge will also probably fail you
| because your roof is more likely not to be shaded at all
| in many places for fear of overhanging tree limbs or
| roots being a danger to the house over the long term.
| Though it would be good for saving on cooling
| costs/energy use but then the sponge stays too wet vs.
| the soil.
|
| I'd go for a soil moisture probe. That checks whether the
| plants really need the water, not whether a sponge with a
| "different reality" than the plants is dry.
|
| Weather report data is cool though. Though you can't
| trust the weather report only, you can nicely combine the
| data from a soil probe (a "multi zone" system with a
| probe per zone would be great, probably easy to program
| with a Pi) with expected rain but an override via the
| soil probe if it actually didn't rain.
|
| Since the OP said sprinkler I'm sort of thinking lawn
| though which I think should just never be watered at all
| ever. Waste of water just to look nice. And yes our town
| actually prohibits watering of lawns in summer. And for
| plants drip irrigation is better than sprinklers but hey,
| if you have a sprinkler system already go for it.
| dharmab wrote:
| > I think should just never be watered at all ever
|
| Depends on the situation. My town wants us to water less
| frequently, but keep our grass from drying out to prevent
| a fire hazard and soil erosion.
|
| I do wish my front lawn was smaller to be sure. I'd be
| happier with more garden beds or garage/shed/workshop
| space.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Caveat: I don't live in a fire hazard zone so take this
| with a grain of salt.
|
| Wouldn't it be better not to plant any grass if it's that
| bad where you are? For soil erosion planting something
| else sounds more adequate.
|
| I do see a problem with septic fields. Can't plant
| anything else that I know of on those but grass. If you
| do know of something let me know and I'll plant it on
| mine instantly lol.
| moistly wrote:
| Why would you not plant a garden? I could maybe see not
| wanting to plant root vegetables, but peas, strawberries,
| cabbage, etc surely present no issues whatsoever. (And
| TBH, root vegetables should be just as fine if the septic
| tank is doing it's job.)
| tharkun__ wrote:
| From what I read about it, for three reasons:
| It's not entirely clear (some people/studies say it's
| fine, others say it's not) whether certain pathogens can
| end up in your vegetables this way and/or which
| vegetables would be fine and which wouldn't. I mean, some
| people do compost their own #2 and put it on their
| veggies and while it's been OK so far for many, I
| personally stay on the safer side of these things until
| desperate times call for such measures.
| Anything that has a root system that is able to reach the
| septic field's drain lines is potentially able to clog
| the holes. E.g. I tried raspberries in a planter on top
| of it for a while but even though I tried, I couldn't
| contain the roots and/or raspberries fall down and the
| seedlings grow in the grass. I ended up removing the
| whole thing just in case as septic drain field repairs
| are either expensive or a lot of work.
| Evaporation apparently plays some part in the
| effectiveness of the drain field (it doesn't just all
| drain out into the ground). Though I wonder, why plants
| taking up the water and evaporating it via their leaves
| wouldn't do the same thing, potentially even better
| through a larger surface area, so I guess it's mainly the
| first two points.
| KallDrexx wrote:
| > I wonder if that actually works that well. Especially
| with black roofing tiles which get quite hot.
|
| FWIW the sponge isn't literally on the roof. It's on a
| handle that's connected to the edge of the roof and holds
| it probably 4 or so inches horizontally away from the
| roof.
| twic wrote:
| Is there a reason why the sensor is in a sponge on the roof
| rather than in the soil?
| dharmab wrote:
| If it were in the soil, the sprinkler system would
| suppress itself in a feedback loop unless you had an
| intentional brown spot for the sensor.
| mhalle wrote:
| A forecast driven watering algorithm can look for rain in
| the immediate future, rather than the current state of the
| ground. It can also change the duration of watering based
| on temperature and relative humidity. RainMachine does that
| while only consuming weather data. You also have the option
| of turning that off and just using wireless control of the
| sprinklers, which as the GP says is extremely handy.
| tk75x wrote:
| Sprinkler systems have for years included a rain gauge that
| trips a signal if there is water in the tube and turns off
| the lawn watering. The smartphone controls would be
| convenient but only for very specific situations and not 99%
| of the time you're using the sprinkler system.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I was too cheap to buy a flash system and made one with a tp-
| link smart plug and a solenoid. It can be activated by the
| mostly-ok tp-link app, but is also automated in Home
| Assistant. It turns on for 10 minutes in summer.
|
| By wiring the solenoid correctly, it fails to an off state.
| It's basic as all hell and works really well.
| 0xC0ncord wrote:
| I feel like the biggest problem I've had with smart home
| technology is that there is no out of the box standard for
| controlling or having access to all of your devices. Almost every
| device seems to require interacting with it with the vendor's own
| app or other utility, and so I've needed to install a multitude
| of at least 3 apps just to control the lights. So not only are
| vendors trying to compete with their smart devices, but
| additionally with the apps they've created to even use them,
| probably to see how much more money they can squeeze out of
| selling your personal information.
|
| Thankfully, there's Home Assistant[1], which is an amazing
| project that aims to bridge connectivity and control between all
| of these devices into a single centralized environment. Pair that
| up with Tasmota[2]-compatible devices and you can have a smart
| home that can be completely disconnected from the cloud and in
| your control.
|
| [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/
|
| [2] https://tasmota.github.io/docs/
| DoubleGlazing wrote:
| The author is right the, most current home automation products
| suck.
|
| The stuff from big brand names is poorly supported, pricey and
| designed to suck your money away from you.
|
| The cheaper Chinese stuff requires the use of a cloud server
| located somewhere I don't know and it comes with god knows how
| many security holes. Plus, the build quality is ropey at best, I
| clearly remember that time a desk lamp controller in my
| children's room literally melted.
|
| There are a few devices on the market that don't rely on cloud
| servers. I have a few plug controllers that you can control via
| WebSockets or a REST API. I've been dabbling with them for a
| while and they seem pretty decent. It's just a pity there isn't
| any off the shelf home automation software that I could use to
| control them.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > off the shelf home automation software that I could use to
| control them.
|
| Home Assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Home assistant is great, but I wouldn't really expect someone
| who isn't very good with technology to be able to use it
| well.
| D13Fd wrote:
| I've had great success with smart switches/dimmers/outlets/locks,
| mostly because they allow you to set more complex schedules and
| timers.
|
| I rarely use the remote on/off capability, but just having a
| device that works on a schedule is really nice.
|
| Examples:
|
| - Our late-1980's house has a lot of accent lights scattered
| about. We never used them before because we had to flip a switch
| on each one. Now they come on automatically at dusk and turn off
| after we go to bed. It's nice.
|
| - Our TV speakers don't have a sleep mode. We use a smart outlet
| to power them down automatically at the times when we usually
| don't use them.
|
| - Our 2-year-old used to turn his very bright closet light on and
| stay up late in his room. We set a smart switch so that turns off
| after a couple of minutes. Now he sleeps much better.
|
| - Our kitchen lights were way too bright and people kept leaving
| them on, plus the two sides of the room were on different
| switches and one was brighter than the other. Now they come on at
| an even 20%/40% brightness unless double-clicked, and
| automatically shut off after a few hours if people leave them on.
|
| - Our garage door shuts itself if we forget to shut it.
|
| - It was too inconvenient to keep the busiest exterior door
| locked. Now the deadbolt locks automatically after a few minutes,
| and we can give out visitor codes the babysitter and for people
| who come in to work on the house etc.
|
| We put all this stuff on a separate WiFi network (to alleviate
| some of the possible security issues) to the extent it needs
| wifi. We have a mishmash of different things from different
| manufacturers, and no central hub. But things have been working
| really well for a couple of years now.
| cprayingmantis wrote:
| I'm seriously considering getting rid of most of my smart home
| devices not because they suck but because the software to control
| it sucks. The Samsung Smart Things app used to be so responsive,
| I could turn devices on and off without much delay. Now when I
| open up the app I have to restart it wait for it to connect, then
| wait for it to find every device, then 20 seconds later I can
| push a button that does something. That's unacceptable.
| derencius wrote:
| xiaomi/aqara/yeelight gear works great most of the time,
| especially with Alexa integration.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| If you're willing to take the time to set it up, openhab is
| actually pretty great.
|
| I'm using it here to manage a bunch of stuff, with absolute
| reliability. All of our stuff here is fail-stupid, so if any of
| the automation breaks, there failure mode is the least damaging
| one possible, and there always a manual override.
|
| We use it for:
|
| - PV, wind, generator, future hydro monitoring, power
| regulation, routing (water heaters come one when the batteries
| are nearly full, air rads come on when batteries are full and
| water is at 85.
|
| - Water management. Sensors in tanks, and river, tell us
| relevant levels. Pumps run when they need to to keep things
| topped up, but also based on power availability.
|
| - Agriculture. Got moisture and light sensors in each bed,
| valve on irrigation triggered by soil and sun conditions.
| Weather station at the house provides additional parameters.
| Going to add nutrients to the system in the future.
|
| - Lighting. Right now it's just doing dimmers/LRGB for the home
| theatre - still can't quite get it syncing up LRGB for ambient
| lighting based on display but working on it. Also, currently
| rigging up fairy lamps in the trees along the road to trigger
| based on presence.
| madengr wrote:
| Yep, the Smart Things app has turned to shit. I'd also like to
| find some Zwave leak sensors that don't arbitrarily trigger.
| sithadmin wrote:
| Several of my friends that used to be on the SmartThings
| bandwagon have migrated to self-hosted Home Assistant and are
| much happier. I haven't made the jump myself yet, but plan to
| soon.
| belval wrote:
| While I understand not everyone has time to tinker with it,
| to me Home-Assistant is really the only way to do smart homes
| in a way that brings value because of its flexibility with a
| real programmable interface.
|
| For example, I was able to code an action to start my
| espresso machine (which has a 20 minutes preheating time) by
| hooking it at the "first look at phone" event in the day. To
| me this is obviously something I would never agree to share
| with a company selling ads, but since it never leaves the
| premises it's pretty cool.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| While I'm on the HA bandwagon, I've recommended Hubitat to
| some less tech-tinkering-inclined family members with good
| success: https://hubitat.com/
| lostlogin wrote:
| Automating the coffee machine is amazing - it was my first
| foray into Home Automation. It saves time, it works great
| and can also be done before you get home at the weekends.
|
| The just-audible click at 6am followed by the sound of the
| boiler heating is very satisfying, even 5+ years after
| setting it up.
| cdumler wrote:
| When I started my home automation, I wanted as little
| frustration as possible. I knew that you just can't rely on
| companies, so I ensured everything is controlled in-house.
|
| Use ZigBee. ZigBee devices create their own mesh network, so
| Wi-Fi can be down and things still work. ZigBee does use 2.4
| GHz, so you may need to move your router to use a different
| frequency.
|
| Use a Hubitat Elevation or other dedicated server with ZigBee
| and a UPS power backup. Again, this means the automation logic
| is independent of the network. Wi-Fi and/or Internet can go
| down and home automation continues to work. The Hubitat has
| community driven package management. Once set up, it's a breeze
| to perform updates.
|
| If you still want to use Alexa, Google and Siri, use bridge
| software to the services. I use Home Bridge to give access to
| my Hubitat to HomeKit. Home Bridge in docker means upgrading is
| letting Watchtower do its thing. Home Bridge rebuilds it's
| plugins every start, so restarting the docker container brings
| everything up-to-date.
|
| The most unreliable part has been Google. I have Nest
| thermostats, and Google cancels the Home Bridge login token now
| and then. HomeKit integration is excellent, but I wish Siri
| wasn't so daft at times recognizing speech.
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