Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How do you move out of a smarthome?

shkspr.mobi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 203 posts

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#31

Post by TallGuyShort »

wyldfire wrote: post #20

> do we hand over all the cloud passwords as well? Or do we factory reset everything and let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts? Wow, I hope this is rhetorical. No, you never give anyone your password for anything. Yes, you absolutely let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts. > When I move into a house, do I want to spend the first day looking up manuals online to try a…

> Wow, I hope this is rhetorical. No, you never give anyone your password for anything.

Well assuming it's a unique password, not connected to other accounts and you've deleted any sensitive data, why is this so obviously not even an option to you? Sometimes deleting an account is a ginormous pain and it saves some trouble for the buyer.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#32

Post by pavel_lishin »

wyldfire wrote: post #20

> do we hand over all the cloud passwords as well? Or do we factory reset everything and let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts? Wow, I hope this is rhetorical. No, you never give anyone your password for anything. Yes, you absolutely let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts. > When I move into a house, do I want to spend the first day looking up manuals online to try a…

> A bit of a faff - and possibly annoying to the new occupiers to not be able to easily set the heating until they've moved in, configured the WiFi, and registered for an account.

I would argue that that's a failure of the thermostat. It absolutely needs to have a dumber fallback mechanism, not just for new residents, but for the current ones. (What if my internet goes down? What if the cat pees on my router?)

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#33

Post by devmunchies »

wyldfire wrote: post #20

> do we hand over all the cloud passwords as well? Or do we factory reset everything and let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts? Wow, I hope this is rhetorical. No, you never give anyone your password for anything. Yes, you absolutely let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts. > When I move into a house, do I want to spend the first day looking up manuals online to try a…

> not be able to easily set the heating until they've moved in ... the epitome of "first-world problems"

Staying warm is a first-world problem? How out of touch can the author be? That's a basic need.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#35

Post by pavel_lishin »

ashark wrote: post #29
nathantotten wrote: post #2

I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before we listed the house. The reality is that most people will just be confused by this sort of stuff and you aren’t going to get any extra money when you sell your house. It’s a pain, but assuming you don’t move very often it’s worth it. Now I have all the things in my…

We may be listing ours soon, and if we do I'm even swapping the LED bulbs for whatever's cheapest at the store. They're only about a year old and the house will sell for zero more dollars if I leave them up.

How much are the LED bulbs? I don't think I'd bother taking the time to save fifty bucks on a house move.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#36

Post by ashark »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #18
nathantotten wrote: post #2

I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before we listed the house. The reality is that most people will just be confused by this sort of stuff and you aren’t going to get any extra money when you sell your house. It’s a pain, but assuming you don’t move very often it’s worth it. Now I have all the things in my…

I would consider it to devalue the home. I don't ever want that kind of thing in my house but, even if I did, I'm not going to trust anyone to properly transfer whatever cloud access they have to things in my home, so it will all have to be removed anyway.

I think a similar effect has been why power generation and efficiency systems (solar, "geothermal" heating/cooling) have been slow to catch on—for every buyer who sees them as a nice thing there's another who's turned off by them, and another who doesn't care enough to pay much extra. And even the ones who think they're good probably won't pay the pro-rated cost of putting it in, so you're still losing some money. Kinda like having a pool. Also why builders don't usually put that stuff in when it'd be easiest and cheapest, I think. Even at those lower costs they can't make the money back when they sell.

So they're a good idea if you think it's very likely you'll stay in a house 15+ years, but not so much otherwise.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#37

Post by pavel_lishin »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #24
jasonkostempski wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider it to devalue the home. I don't ever want that kind of thing in my house but, even if I did, I'm not going to trust anyone to properly transfer whatever cloud access they have to things in my home, so it will all have to be removed anyway.

If your house uses good standard local communication protocols, like Z-Wave, ZigBee, or Insteon, you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just buy a new hub device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to it. Doesn't matter what the other person has in their account at that juncture. That being said, if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it'd be a "if you want to pay x on…

> you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just buy a new hub device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to it.

That sounds like a pain in the ass.

> if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it'd be a "if you want to pay x on top of the already agreed upon price for the property, I'll leave it

I don't want to buy new crap to deal with the crap you left behind. I'd argue that you ought to pay me for dealing with some arbitrary hardware that I've now inherited. This is the equivalent of leaving some finicky boiler system whose spare parts can only be ordered from a single factory in Germany.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#38

Post by esra »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #31
wyldfire wrote: post #20

> do we hand over all the cloud passwords as well? Or do we factory reset everything and let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts? Wow, I hope this is rhetorical. No, you never give anyone your password for anything. Yes, you absolutely let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts. > When I move into a house, do I want to spend the first day looking up manuals online to try a…

> Wow, I hope this is rhetorical. No, you never give anyone your password for anything. Well assuming it's a unique password, not connected to other accounts and you've deleted any sensitive data, why is this so obviously not even an option to you? Sometimes deleting an account is a ginormous pain and it saves some trouble for the buyer.

Or you could just change the password.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#39

Post by libria »

devmunchies wrote: post #33
wyldfire wrote: post #20

> do we hand over all the cloud passwords as well? Or do we factory reset everything and let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts? Wow, I hope this is rhetorical. No, you never give anyone your password for anything. Yes, you absolutely let them go through the dull process of setting up new accounts. > When I move into a house, do I want to spend the first day looking up manuals online to try a…

> not be able to easily set the heating until they've moved in ... the epitome of "first-world problems" Staying warm is a first-world problem? How out of touch can the author be? That's a basic need.

Meh, the furnace is perfectly operational and you could hold a screwdriver across two terminals to force it on. Not convenient, but not dire need.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#40

Post by vincentkriek »

ashark wrote: post #29
nathantotten wrote: post #2

I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before we listed the house. The reality is that most people will just be confused by this sort of stuff and you aren’t going to get any extra money when you sell your house. It’s a pain, but assuming you don’t move very often it’s worth it. Now I have all the things in my…

We may be listing ours soon, and if we do I'm even swapping the LED bulbs for whatever's cheapest at the store. They're only about a year old and the house will sell for zero more dollars if I leave them up.

Is leaving lights in the house you sell an American thing? Unless it's built in lights like spots, all the bulbs and even fixtures usually move with the person where I'm from (the Netherlands).
Post reply on HN