341–350 of 378 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They had quite advanced smart homes back in the 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHIknNa6Eg (and to Nest shame, they still service it! http://unitysystemshomemanager.com/ )
Holy shit, the UX on that video is better than what typical apps today deliver. Nice find!
Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…
Everyone has different use cases. Some people just want to show a cool thing off to their friends, or even to prove they can do something at that scale. Silly? Perhaps, but who am I to judge their hobbies? Personally, I do find things like HVAC automation nice. If I forget to turn the thermostat down when I leave for a trip, I can do so remotely and that is real savings. Everyone has their use cases though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will never be worked out. Desktop computing is how many decades old? And it’s still crap. Basic Windows desktop functions still have intermittent problems (that missing file issue in Windows 10). Computer controlled consumer stuff will never reach the reliability and predictability of dumb consumer electronics.
And how many times have you had a flat tire?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have a smart home device and I won't buy it in a few years. And the simple reason is that there is no regulation for bad behavior. These companies keep getting away with massive privacy violations. We can dig into the big companies but at this time, that point has been beaten to death. When there is better regulation and the software engineers are being jailed for violations of privacy, I will trust the syste…
I guess you also don't have a credit report after what happened to Equifax in 2017... In the meantime, for me my Vera works just great. Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty.
Not having IoT devices is an option. Not having a credit report isn't. (I don't just mean it in the sense that it's not practical; I mean it in the sense that, as far as I know, you can't stop this data from being compiled.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Without a camera, there's ~0% chance of anyone being caught. If you're only interested in recording what happened (as evidence) an IP camera can run on PoE to a laptop or mini-pc on a UPS, and record for as long as you want, even in the case of a power outage if you include a UPS (an old laptop works well in this case - you can potentially just run the PoE switch/injector on the UPS and let the laptop run on its ba…
But then they can also steal the laptop or mini-pc that is recording. It's also a PITA to setup and manage yourself. I'd rather pay the $50/yr that I do and just have someone else do it. I'm done with the bradlys-as-a-service thing. It'd be another thing adding heat to my living environment as well. It's been useful for other things like checking in on. Where/when packages are delivered, when the landlord showed up,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Certainly I could (or at least someone with the engineering skills could), but the actual IoT companies don't. That is incorrect. There are several IoT products with manual fallback options on the market. I don't even know why you're disagreeing to be honest. You don't like IoT devices, I got that part.
> There are several IoT products with manual fallback options on the market. Name three. Also, "manual fallback" is a cop-out. When I want manual operations, I don't go looking for home automation. The "smart" features should be available without Internet. There's nothing technically difficult about this, but it isn't being done because of abusive business practices.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would hate to make that trip downstairs, annoyed and grumpy. My grandma always said "What you don't have in your head you must have in your legs". My calculation is simple: Where do I expect to waste more time in my life? Periodically configuring/updating smart home devices, getting to the bottom of issues if something doesn't work as expected, or once in a while walk the stairs an extra time because I left the T…
I was pretty skeptical before trying it. I found that you don't spend much time configuring things and it's actually quite nice to just go to bed saying "Alexa, turn off living room". Not life changing, but definitely worth the investment. If something fails, you're no worse off than you were before. Also, smart sockets and switches are great items for a Christmas/birthday/wedding/etc registry/gift-list.
Well, you are already horizontal. In fact it's worse, because unless every single light source is hooked up, you now spend twice the mental effort.
Past: 1. Turn off everything 2. Go to bed.
Present: 1. Turn off everything that is dumb. Only dumb thing. 2. Ensure smart things are ON (physically have power) otherwise you won't be able to voice control them. 3. Go to bed. 4. HEY GOOGLE! GOOD NIGHT! to turn off everything and hope for the best.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
LIFX bulbs work without the need to connect to the internet. They have a LAN protocol that's pretty easy to use.
In my experience, when I researched some of the official forums some time ago, there was no public documentation of the protocols. I still have to use the Android app to onboard a bulb (which will fail if you forget to deactivate mobile data on your phone). Then, I was pretty satisfied using lifxlan in Python ( https://github.com/mclarkk/lifxlan )
Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…
This is the exact kind of comment that would make it to the top because it just empowered everyone that DOESN'T have one such system. It's filled with finger pointing. Most of the replies basically point out yeah, I hate IoT lights, but this use case is good... It's not genuine to dismiss the entire enchilada because YOU don't have it. In 5 years when all the crap is worked out and you eventually buy a system with ex…
Smart people don't buy smart home devices. My relatively poor grandparents and my slightly less poor parents had a hard working life, but none of them had to sleep in a dark cold room because the switch to turn the lights on or the heating stopped working. Ever. This problem has been solved by other people many many years ago. Last month I watched a documentary where a billionaire was showing of his multi million man…
I, for one, am enjoying my 'smart home' setup, where I can say "Alexa, turn off the TV", "Alexa, turn on Chromecast" and "Alexa, set the bedroom temperature to 72", regardless of which floor of the house I'm on. I'd rather fiddle with updates and setup once in a while (I have never had to reconfigure the devices in 2 years), than look for that goddamn remote between couch cushions, press the power button and possibly…
