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How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

arstechnica.com

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Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

#91

Post by rootusrootus »

srmarm wrote: post #47

Ikea Tradfri buttons/switches have been a gamechanger for me. They're zigbee, very well built, well supported and cheap. Have a nice solid feel with proper mounts that are magnetic, Have mounted them in place of regular switches around the house and they just work, no user training required (although I use with homeassistnat which is still very hobbish on the setup side) but my wife can use it all without needing to…

I forgot about Tradfri. I should check that out again, at least for switches. I'm not a fan of their light bulbs, though. I had a few for testing, and found that they'd often turn on for a few seconds and then back off after an automatic firmware update. My wife wasn't terribly amused since that tended to be in the middle of the night.

Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

#92

Post by tencentshill »

bsza wrote: post #76
alkonaut wrote: post #29

The best controller for lighting by far is the light switch. "Smart lightbulbs" behind dumb switches might seem like an easy solution, but it makes everything dumber (If you have a light switch you must not switch off because then you can't turn the "smart" light on, then you have a dumber house not a smarter one). Smart switches which fall back to regular switches if they malfunction is fantastic. Add some scenarios…

> Smart switches which fall back to regular switches if they malfunction is fantastic. Not if they do so when you’re asleep. Fallback behavior should be always off, so it won’t wake you up in the middle of the night following a short blackout. (Sadly my yeelight bulbs don’t even allow such a setting, which forces me to use them as dumb light bulbs.)

Philips hue bulbs allow you to set their behavior if switched off (power loss), including “last state”.

Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

#93

Post by rootusrootus »

deanc wrote: post #71
srmarm wrote: post #47

Ikea Tradfri buttons/switches have been a gamechanger for me. They're zigbee, very well built, well supported and cheap. Have a nice solid feel with proper mounts that are magnetic, Have mounted them in place of regular switches around the house and they just work, no user training required (although I use with homeassistnat which is still very hobbish on the setup side) but my wife can use it all without needing to…

I have the opposite experience. I also run home assistant, and have added the Tradfri hub to my "Home" on iOS. I can count on one hand the amount of times I adjust the one Tradfri bulb I own in the Home app - and it has actually done anything. The only way I have consistently managed to change the bulb's brightness or on/off state is through the official Ikea app - which makes it entirely useless - as I can't automat…

Another option I've had good luck with is Sengled bulbs. They're not super cheap, but they're zigbee and I've found them to be reliable.

Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

#95

Post by Spivak »

rootusrootus wrote: post #85
jon-wood wrote: post #60

It appears we're doing "smart home" again, so its time for my regular plea to stop calling shitty light switches automation. Automation is when you don't have to think about what state devices are in, and while it takes some tinkering can be achieved using something like Home Assistant to bridge various different devices together. Each room in my house has Hue bulbs in all the light sockets, and sensors which can det…

Are you getting anything out of the Hue dependency other than the color?

Being able to turn off everything in the house while lying in bed is pretty great honestly and once you have bulbs that go from white to yellow depending on the time you can’t go back.

Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

#96

Post by rootusrootus »

vasco wrote: post #61

I really wonder what people that are interested in home automation are trying to solve. DIY I understand, as it's cool electronics tinkering, and home automation can be a fun project. But for people that just buy it and customize it, I have no clue what the end goal is. Is the big issue to stop pushing the normal light switch button? Is that a huge chore? If I think home automation what I have wishes about is somethi…

> Is the big issue to stop pushing the normal light switch button? Is that a huge chore?

It does kinda suck, to be honest. Especially when the lights in question are downstairs, and I'm not. After the kids are done turning on every last light in the house, walking from place to place and turning off 40 different lights is tedious. Hitting the scene button at the top of the stairs to turn off the entire downstairs, on the other hand, I can do without slowing down.

The extra automation possibilities are nice, too. Even just little things like having the front lights turn on automatically when you arrive home at night.

The robotic vacuums are nice, too, now that you mention it. Kind of expensive but definitely a quality of life improvement.

But if I could have only one bit of home automation, it would be the door locks and garage doors. Those were the first things I made remote controllable and I wouldn't willingly give them up.

Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

#98

Post by Spivak »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #87

I get the privacy concerns and I'm glad to see these alternatives, but why does this article act like voice is a bad way to control a smart home? It's incredibly intuitive and extremely powerful to be able to adjust anything from anywhere with your hands full. In fact, it's one of the only applications where voice control is obviously an improvement.

Being able to just call a bunch of named timers while cooking is pretty great.

As well as being able to say add milk to the grocery list without taking out your phone.

I haven’t much else where voice is actually better.

Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

#99

Post by ilyt »

sh4rks wrote: post #18
ilyt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Connecting a screen to a raspberry pi could be an idea

Power usage. It is fine for stationary stuff but no chance you gonna have that had any sensible battery life. And even if you get to like a day, having to remember to put yet another device on charger every day is PITA.

I actually was building kind of monitoring screen; idea was to just leave it connected to ethernet and boot off network so it doesn't have any problems with SD durability or need any installation in case I wanted to have more than one.

Re: How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

#100

Post by silversmith »

ClikeX wrote: post #48
alkonaut wrote: post #29

The best controller for lighting by far is the light switch. "Smart lightbulbs" behind dumb switches might seem like an easy solution, but it makes everything dumber (If you have a light switch you must not switch off because then you can't turn the "smart" light on, then you have a dumber house not a smarter one). Smart switches which fall back to regular switches if they malfunction is fantastic. Add some scenarios…

I personally like the Shelly switches. They're just WiFi relays, so you can control them remotely, but also use a normal wall switch to control them.

The best part is you get to choose from wide variety of normal looking switches, not some designers coffee break sketch of "advanced and futuristic".

Shelly seems to be more US-centric, over on EU side I've had good experiences with Sonoff ZBMINI relays - same idea, only on Zigbee connection instead of WiFi.

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