How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant
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Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant
#2home assistant, dozens of cheap nfc stickers, and ios shortcuts that trigger home assistant actions when you boop the appropriate sticker with your locked phone.
Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant
#3home assistant, dozens of cheap nfc stickers, and ios shortcuts that trigger home assistant actions when you boop the appropriate sticker with your locked phone.
can you elaborate further on this?
Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant
#4home assistant, dozens of cheap nfc stickers, and ios shortcuts that trigger home assistant actions when you boop the appropriate sticker with your locked phone.
IMO this is absurd. If you need a phone in your hands - it is quicker to open the UI and do the thing
Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant
#5The battery issue with tablets is for sure a problem. Phones too. I had a test bank of 10 devices with openSTF (smartphone test farm) and 3 phones cracked open from bloated batteries within the year.
What I do now is open up old tablets, remove the battery and replace it with a DC-DC converter. Because tablets and phones won't turn on without seeing a battery, you can't power them though USB with the battery removed.
But the DC-DC option works ok. Sometimes you need to remove the battery protection circuitry from the battery because the tablet needs to see it. This can be a bit hazardous. But usually providing about 4 volts is enough.
Of course all this is not for those without electronics knowledge.
Ps I also detest Google's removal of the shortcut buttons under the power button menu :(
Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant
#6I've been wanting a "house tablet" for a while - something to interact with my (app only) heating controls and play music on spotify. Has anyone found an acceptable setup? I had an old Android tablet permanently wall mounted for a while, but it was too slow (single core). I'd love an "appliance" style android tablet - but these don't seem to exist.
Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant
#7home assistant, dozens of cheap nfc stickers, and ios shortcuts that trigger home assistant actions when you boop the appropriate sticker with your locked phone.
IMO this is absurd. If you need a phone in your hands - it is quicker to open the UI and do the thing
I would bet it's not.
Based on the same starting point (phone in pocket) how many steps are there actually?
UI Option:
- take out phone
- unlock phone
- leave current app
- find and open control app
- find icon to toggle action
- lock phone
- put phone back in pocket
NFC option:
- take phone out of pocket
- bump phone against NFC sticker
- find NFC sweet spot
- put phone back in pocket
Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant
#8One of the smartest things I did was to place a wireless wall switch next to my bed.
A quick press turns off all the lights in my apartment, for when I want to go to sleep. A double press turns some of the lights on with the lowest brightness, so I can grab a glass of water or have a quick pee in the middle of the night. Holding the wall switch puts all the lights at full brightness for when I want to wake up.
If you work from home, a macropad or Streamdeck is also recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJSREjWH7Y
Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant
#9I've been wanting a "house tablet" for a while - something to interact with my (app only) heating controls and play music on spotify. Has anyone found an acceptable setup? I had an old Android tablet permanently wall mounted for a while, but it was too slow (single core). I'd love an "appliance" style android tablet - but these don't seem to exist.
I'd love something like that but with some low power screen (e-paper? One of those super low power memory LCDs) and running 2 weeks off charge.
Just so it can be constantly on and display status while not requiring tethering.
Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant
#10Somewhere there should be an article "How to spend time in a pleasant conversation with Google Assistant instead of reading dumb asrtehnica articles".
Otherwise, the balance will be disturbed.