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How do you move out of a smarthome?

shkspr.mobi

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Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#101

Post by xkcd-sucks »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #32
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?)

I actually had this problem with Nest thermostats: One of them was "locked", as in the whole UI was behind a password, by the previous owner, who moved out and took his wifi AP. I then moved in with a new wifi AP with a new SSID and new password, and the thermostat obviously couldn't get network access. Without network access it could not be unlocked remotely, and without being unlocked its network could not be reconfigured. There is no way to factory reset the device nor flash firmware to reset it. Eventually I called the previous owner and got a few candidate PINs (he had forgotten...)

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#102

Post by lucaspiller »

vincentkriek wrote: post #40
ashark wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

In Italy it’s common for people to take their entire kitchen (including cabinets and fitted appliances) when they move.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#103

Post by enobrev »

commandar wrote: post #73
Silhouette wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The not adding value to the house bit is important. Nobody really knows about or cares enough about home automation to justify an added expense on the cost of the home. I'd actually go further. I do care about home automation, because it is almost certainly a negative and possibly a deal-breaker for me to put any offer in to buy a place. If it has anything installed that has any form of off-site access or any depende…

The interesting legacy corollary here is that it's completely bog standard for home security systems to be left in place when a house is sold. I say this because the systems that ADT, etc sell these days are largely made up of white labeled COTS Z-Wave sensors with the security panel just being a hub and interface to the Z-Wave network. The house I moved into this past year is covered by sensors for an old ADT system…

Just as well, if you plan to sign up with ADT, they insist upon new equipment. I just went through this. We bought our house in February. ADT was sending crap almost daily so I called to see what they were offering. They absolutely would not use the 3-year old equipment in the house. Installation would come with new equipment. I didn't care either way, but thought that was notable.

No matter; I wasn't interested, and I was happy to get rid of all the their signs and stickers.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#104

Post by tzs »

mrmekon wrote: post #61
edent wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't being rhetorical. If I have a separate account for my home - say 742EvergreenTerrace@example.com - then it would be easier to hand that account and password over the the new owner.

It's almost certainly against the Terms of Service agreement. Presumably, you click-through agreed to a ToS for each one, and you have no right to transfer that agreement to someone else. The agreement is obviously tied to the human who "read" it, not whoever happens to control the account credentials. Not that the ToS for your light bulb dimmer matters much in practice, but technically it's probably forbidden.

One might be able to work around that by creating a corporation, 742 Evergreen Terrace Management Company, in some state where it is cheap to incorporate, and having the corporation own all the accounts related to the house.

When you sell the house, transfer ownership of 742 Evergreen Terrace Management Company to the new homeowner.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#105

Post by dawnerd »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #101
pavel_lishin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?)

I actually had this problem with Nest thermostats: One of them was "locked", as in the whole UI was behind a password, by the previous owner, who moved out and took his wifi AP. I then moved in with a new wifi AP with a new SSID and new password, and the thermostat obviously couldn't get network access. Without network access it could not be unlocked remotely, and without being unlocked its network could not be recon…

If I remember correctly there’s a micro usb on the back of the nest specifically to factory reset.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#107

Post by briandear »

mcguire wrote: post #82
subway wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should probably start by changing the litterbox... More seriously though, this is a major pet peeve of mine. Many of these devices will also become completely unusable when the manufacturer decides to terminate the service. This is a big reason why I hesitate to pay for products that don't adhere to open standards, and allow for local/offline use as a primary mode.

I was just reading a review of a sous vide stick the other day that mentioned that issue. Fortunately, it supported Bluetooth...

Yeah fortunately. I was just thinking the other day how terrible life was before Bluetooth enabled sous vide.

This has got to win HN today for the most HNist of comments. ;)

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#108

Post by lucaspiller »

friism wrote: post #30

I have IKEA Trådfri (which is ZigBee-based). While the hub does connect to the internet for software updates (using ethernet - no WiFi, and no WiFi password to update), there's no "cloud" component. You can't create an "IKEA account", even if you wanted. If IKEA went out of business tomorrow, my switches and bulbs would keep working. I like that approach a lot. It would be perfectly feasible to leave the IKEA hardwar…

IKEA are one of the outliers in this space unfortunately.

Last year I bought some Osram Lightify bulbs, as here in Europe they are compatible with the Hue hub (which like Tradfri also works offline). I also got their own hub to update the bulbs, and it is absolutely useless. It says it is connected locally, but still it takes seconds for the bulbs to change state, and usually in a group only some of them change. The same bulbs paired with the Hue hub work perfectly.

It is WiFi only, and I‘ve had it randomly lose the connection and need to be reset. I haven’t tried it offline, but I imagine it’s not going to work.

I only got smart bulbs as I wanted to be able to change the colour temperature and brightness, they are just connected to dumb switches. Tradfri seems superior for this now, as their controllers don’t even need a hub to control lights.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#110

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

This is one thing that worries me as well. Fortunately, none of my smart home stuff is cloud connected.

Most smart home problems that tend to be solved by using a cloud service could be solved just as well by using a VPN. I do this with my Hue and my Wifi cameras, both with great success.

The challenge with a VPN is setting it up. Router manufacturers generally either offer OpenVPN, which requires a 3rd party app, or PPTP, which is horribly insecure. A router that could generate a secure IPSec configuration and push out a profile for the smartphones would make it a lot more usable.

Even then, it's still probably going to be more work than using a cloud service.

Maybe IPv6 will solve the problem as all of these things can have publically routable addresses. What could possibly go wrong?

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