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The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

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Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#211

Post by croutonwagon »

h2odragon wrote: post #2

In that same time period, my "plant light" timer, a $15 mechanical item of a design unmodified since the 1970s, has worked flawlessly, requiring attention only when the clocks change or my schedule does. It has not informed Google, Amazon, or anyone else about its job or anything else in my home. It has generated no royalties nor invoked any support or ongoing maintenance costs. It has never needed a software upgrade…

The interesting one was the NWS bulletins as well. I keep a weather radio, with battery backup and tuned to my county and with just emergent alerts to audibly alarm set on my nightstand.

It’s worked for…I dunno, a decade maybe. The settings are saved on a small SoC peristent memory chip so even if the battery dies I don’t have to set it back up.

Why mention this. Because a tool like this CANT depend on internet connectivity. Usually when it’s needed most basic power and even internet are either not available or intermittent at best. I live in a hurricane prone area that also by proxy is sometimes succeptible to weak tornadoes. I would NEVER trust that to a “smart device”. It’s just not necessary.

And that’s beyond things like smart bulbs kinda baffle me. I get it, but I would never have one myself. Similar to things like yard services.

I do have some smart things and n my home, like a Honeywell thermostat or even some wifi mouse traps that generally save uneeddd crawl space trips. But other things like bulbs, fridges, even alexas I don’t get. But also understand I’m not a primary market for that either

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#212

Post by biophysboy »

Has anybody else here had “SmartRent” thrust upon their apartment? My management recently installed a smart lock on my door that I hate. It is an order of magnitude slower than the key I used to use, not counting the time it takes for me to pull my phone out, unlock it and open the app. And my door is now arguably less secure (although I guess lockpicking isn’t that hard).

Why do apartments do this? Is it marketing? Tax breaks?

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#213

Post by FireBeyond »

tga wrote: post #84
arcticbull wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to say the same thing. I set up all my non-standard lighting fixtures with Lutron Caseta switches, and replaced all the standard bulbs with Philips Hue bulbs. They've both been working flawlessly, together, with my 3 HomePod Minis for about a year and a half now. It really is a brand thing. Most are bad. [edit] > My favorite aspect is that the pico switches can be programmed to switch whole rooms of light…

Philips Hue lights are sadly not on the same seriousness level as the Lutron hardware. After a time away, I tried to turn on lights with my phone -- only to be greeted by a message like "There is a mandatory update available for your bridge. You can use your system again after 10 minutes". I found not being able to turn on the lights for 10 minutes because they were installing unprompted updates completely unacceptab…

One of the challenges is this - on one hand, we have the "IoT is notoriously insecure and manufacturers have or should have liability" argument, which is valid, and when manufacturers do actually release security updates, that should be lauded.

And then on the other we have the usability pain like this. I'd rather pay a few dollars more for more storage or an A/B firmware system so the upgrade can run async and minimize interruption.

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#214

Post by qq4 »

rwmj wrote: post #11

Has 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.

I agree with you for the most part. I can see the appeal for flipping certain switches, like something I tend to turn on/off at the same time everyday. Otherwise I try to simply have less things to turn on/off!

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#215

Post by fragmede »

mavhc wrote: post #107
moffkalast wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be the tiktok pokerface simple solution meme guy, but that's a solvable issue by just adding a RTC module, no complex internet garbage required.

And a battery, and a UI to set the clock, and a thing to alter the DST/Time zone

And if the country you're in dares change the DST switch-over date (aka the US, during the Clinton era), you're now in an even worse situation, because you have to change it four times a year. Twice because of DST, then two more times because your clock is trying to be helpful and accommodate DST for you. That or you download the firmware, repack it with new tzdata files, and reflash the system, which as we all know, all manufacturers totally support everywhere, and for free, so doing that sounds like an easy technical exercise.

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#216

Post by MisterTea »

curiousllama wrote: post #96
markbnj wrote: post #86

Yeah over the last few weeks Alexa has grown annoyingly chatty. Pretty much every ask, like "Alexa, what's the outside temperature?" is followed by the answer and then "Did you know..." which is itself followed by me saying "Alexa stop" in an irritated voice. "Computer, lay in a course to intercept the Romulan cruiser." "Intercept course calculated. Did you know, I can automatically reorder toilet paper for the bridg…

Agreed that "did you know" sucks. Worst possible way to teach me to use the device. That said, it's a really interesting problem figuring out how to teach people what Alexa can/can't do. How do you tell your users "we built a feature so now you can set subscription orders!" Personally, I don't get why they don't run ads. Like, instead of a smiley face delivery person, just say "here's a new thing your Alexa can do"

> Personally, I don't get why they don't run ads.

They will. Thing is if you asked Alexa to turn the lights on and it replied with an ad, people would lose their minds.

However, if you slowly erode the experience with these "did you know" quips and other time wasters, eventually people will accept the extra annoyance. Now you have the ability to slip in ads. Why? If you replace the 5-10 seconds useless quips with an ad that could save some one money, suddenly you invert the negative aspects of ads and the outcome is positive. No linger are you subject to needless did you knows and instead "useful" ads that tell you nike is on sale.

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#218

Post by BrandoElFollito »

Take the thing in your hands, install Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/) and let Open Source rule your world.

It works flawlessly, there is just a Himalaya steep learning curve and knowing Python helps when doing fancy automations with pyscript (there are integrated automations whihc are a pain in the bottom, and solutions such as Node Red).

In all honesty, Home Assistant opens a huge amount of possibilities but you have to commit to it.

My wife constantly wonders what she will do when I die and the whole thing goes south the day after.

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#219

Post by fernandies »

Three weeks ago, three of my devices stopped working — all for different reasons — and required different steps to fix them. This week, one device suddenly start working again, another connected after some initial struggles, and a third became so intrusive I had to move it to another room. This isn’t a device or brand problem. It’s an industry problem. Smart home products look like hardware but are really software, subject to updates and changes that will break integrations, contain bugs, and add new, unwanted features. But I got help from a software upgrade at https://computools.com/consulting/ and all my devices are working fine now!

Re: The unbearable fussiness of the smart home

#220

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

ninkendo wrote: post #9

I did my whole house in Lutron’s smart switches (close to 50 of them), and I think it’s good? It’s been about 2 years now and I really haven’t had any issues. The switches aren’t Wi-Fi connected, because Wi-Fi would be an awful choice for 50 devices that you only communicate with a few times a day. They use their own wireless frequency and communicate in a really simple/reliable way to the bridge, which is wired to m…

>I have 18 different lights to turn on and I can just hit one switch on my way downstairs and it’s fully illuminated (no voice command necessary) and I don’t have to visit 18 light switches to turn them off again.

In the analog world we'd just wire those 18 lights on a circuit controlled by a single switch...

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