I have a mechanical timer rebooting my cable modem and wireless router every morning.
The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
141–150 of 375 posts
Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
#142I cannot be the only jaded nerd to have looked at all the highly integrated "smart home" crap on the market and scoffed. I have absolutely NO desire to sysadmin my goddamn house. I've been in this game a long time, and I know none of that stuff is going to be made well, or coded well, or be able to interoperate well, and that means HEADACHES. And people buy them! Like, they buy internet-connected LOCKS for their door…
> Like, they buy internet-connected LOCKS for their doors! Seriously, why would you do this?
I have no interest in internet connected locks, but I really enjoy the convenience of my ZWave locks (which are technically "internet" connected via my Home Assistant instance, but that's only accessible either via my LAN or via Wireguard).
Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's a really interesting problem figuring out how to teach people what Alexa can/can't do A monthly email seems more than adequate.
I bet the open rate on that email would be far from "adequate" (depending on the perspective we're looking at it from).
Yeah, which is my point. The uptake for new voice commands is even lower.
Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
#144I try to follow a Battlestar Galactica approach to critical infrastructure in my house. There are microcontrollers but they are not networked.
I do have some Philips Hue stuff, but it is not on the cloud. Some lights use the remote control dimmer thingies, but they are attached to walls in convenient places so that the rest of my family can't lose them. Also, in places where I'm using a RC dimmer on a wall to replace a traditional switch, the old switch is easy to access should the communication fail or the dimmer runs out of power.
Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
#145Has to be said I don't understand "smart devices" one bit. I simply don't understand how pulling out a phone and launching an app is preferable to an ordinary light switch. In fact I would say it's in every respect worse. And I don't want something that sits in the room listening to everything I say and uploading some unknown part of that to an unknown cloud service.
It's not the ability to manually control devices from your phone that is the interesting part. It's the part where you can automate things and create scenes that is.
For example, I have my home office in my basement. I have an automation in Home Assistant that when I turn on the Z-Wave light switch at the top of the stairs, it turns on my desk lamp and recessed lighting, and if it is a weekday during work hours, it will send a wake on lan packet to my work computer.
Another example, I have a tilt sensor on my garage door, and a contact sensor on the door into the garage, so that when either of those are opened, the main garage lighting turns on.
Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whats needed is a much stronger guarantee. For example, "If this device ever , even once, shows an error message or misbehaves, then we'll give you a full refund, plus $100". If there was some logo and brand associated with that guarantee, consumers would prefer it, just like today some only buy organic or freetrade. Then manufacturers would want the extra sales generated by that logo/brand, and have a massive financ…
To take this further... To mean anything, this guarantee needs to apply unconditionally and forever. Even in 50 years... Even when the manufacturer is bankrupt. To do that, There could be a "Will Work Guarantee" organisation. The organisation will administer refunds to all customers with claims, (and combat fraud). Companies who want to be members of the scheme must pay into the scheme to cover payouts for their own…
That’s why I like buying things from Costco when I can. they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee on most items. And I’m willing to bet on the longevity of Costco more than any manufacturers of goods.
Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
#147I've come to find that "smart" as in, I can schedule them, is quite useless in the long run.
In the last 3 months:
1) Lennox "Smart" icomfort thermostat... tasked with running the entire dual-mode heating and cooling system in the house (ie: all the heating and cooling). Hard reset itself and lost it's cloud connection. Was still showing in the app (ie: no option to add a new one), but the app wouldn't relay any information and the thermostat itself was showing "cannot communicate" error when trying to make any changes to the temperature settings. Buried deep in the installer settings menu was an option to re-pair it, where after several obscure errors, it finally re-joined the "account" and resumed proper working. The worst part is that this thermostat is basically doing the exact same thing as a normal thermostat, with no added intelligence (sensing temperature and turning relays on/off).
2) Wemo's randomly disconnecting from the app, despite google being able to control them... this is particularly concerning as they're clearly connected to something.
3) Wyze camera (v3, latest firmware...) that will run fine for months on spotty wifi (I've added an SD card for local loop recording) but the if you try to connect to it from within the app for live viewing, and it fails to negotiate a connection (due to the aforementioned spotty wifi connectivity), it will permanently disconnect itself.
4) Wyze smart irrigation sprinkler controller that is weather forecast aware, opting to skip watering if mother nature is planning on doing it anyway... will skip a watering due to forecasted rain but not check if it actually rained when calculating ground humidity levels, therefore skipping the next one as well. There is also no way to connect two sprinkler controllers (if you have more than 8 zones) in a group so that they don't run simultaneously and exhaust water pressure. They are considered 2 separate houses.
5) Meross smart garage door controller will occasionally forget whether it is open or closed, and displaying "overtime" warnings accordingly and will wait for 1 minute after a close/open command before recognizing its true state by process of elimination, "I've been closing for a minute, so now I'm closed". Bafflingly - it has an integrated magnetic sensor on the door to detect when it is actually open and closed - it knows when the door is opened by a 3rd party, and alerts accordingly.
6) Blink cam will trigger its own motion detection when it's turning on or off it's blue "recording" light, causing an infinite loop of "motion detected".
My dumbest smart house items (LED lights mostly, some bluetooth with wifi hub, some built-in wifi) are the chinese ones you see all over Amazon, and they tend to "just work" in their dumbness. They all use one of 2 apps (Smart Life or Magic Home - amusingly, most work on either since they likely all use the same wifi and control ESP). They rarely disappear, work without firmware updates, and I've yet to catch them sending anything back to the mothership (ALL smart devices are on their own wlan & subnet without packet forwarding - I would recommend everyone do this). You can pair them with Google Home, Alexa or Siri, and then get rid of the app itself if you are concerned. Many of them can be connected to simply by setting them into pairing mode, connecting to their wlan, and hitting an http api or sshing in.
I have high praise for the lutron "caseta" family of smart lights and plugs - which use a proprietary radio and a single control hub which never disconnects and doesn't pollute the wifi radio space. The only downside is that they cost more than the wifi-integrated plugs, which is a bit crazy given it's a low power zigbee-like radio and control plane.
Hopefully things get better before more critical things become "smart".
Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
#148Oh god I installed Nest fire alarm products throughout my home. Such a PAIN. Last 8 months at most before new batteries. Wireless updates kick it off the network all the effin time. Wish I could get my money back - now I am committed to this garbage product for at least 5 more years (if they last). Worst - incredibly little value generated from nest.
I would be terrified to have a needy, unreliable network of "smart" smoke / fire detectors. How is that even remotely acceptable?
They still work when they aren't connected to wifi but they send me monthly reports from Nest that they aren't connected and my app sends me notification.
Now that I think about it - probably nicer not to have it connected to wifi at all.
Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Connect a switch to a £1 esp32, now it's smart
Making that arrangement safe probably costs more than £1.
The fact we're sending 240V AC around inside the walls for no reason is a whole other question.
But an optocoupler relay is also about £1, so there's that.
Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
#150IOT stuff can be great if you follow a couple rules:
1. Everything must have physical controls. If it has power, it must work. For example, if you want to control your lights, don't buy light bulbs, buy light switches.
2. Do not buy Bluetooth or WiFi devices. Use Z-Wave, Zigbee, Lutron Caseta, etc. If you must use WiFi, then it needs to be open firmware, such as Tasmota or ESPHome.