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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

#101

Post by wil421 »

noodlesUK wrote: post #70
wil421 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homebridge plus Apple Home in my opinion is much better than home assistant. If you’re android based or have really complicated automations I could see why home assistant would be better. Home assistant’s lack of compatibility with quite a few brands made me run Homebridge and home assistant together which defeats the purpose of HA.

I'm curious which devices you have that are supported by home bridge but not home assistant. I've had nothing but success using home assistant.

This was over a year ago. Wyze and HA were having spats over API access. Unifi did not have a plug-in and I ended up having to install Homebridge.

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

#102

Post by hattmall »

wkat4242 wrote: post #5

The 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.…

>n from bloated batteries within the year.

Is this from the battery being on the charger constantly? I remember having a similar problem years ago. I thought most devices now would manage charging by letting it drain a bit automatically. At the time though they didn't so I for my continually connected devices I just used simple plug timers that cut it off for a few hours a couple times a day.

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

#103

Post by silversmith »

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…

This sounds good in theory, and props to you for making it work.

But I tried, and gave up. I still have some basic light automations, like turning everything off when everyone is away, but most of the lights are back to manual control.

For example, I find myself not wanting the lights on quite often. I have passable low light vision, and often there's enough light through the windows to see whatever I wanted to grab, and even on the dimmest setting the bulbs could blind me. Other times tho, I'm there to do something / look for a misplaced item, and want the light.

Reading books is also a good problem for presence detection based light controls - at least my paperbacks don't come with open/closed sensors. The new generation of presence sensors supposedly handles that, but I'm yet to use one that does it well.

For me, "smart home" is more about controls being convinient, with a dash of very basic automations, rather than teaching a computer what you want to happen, getting increasing annoyed, then giving up and conforming to what the computer can handle.

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

#104

Post by js2 »

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…

When I leave my home's geofence and my iPhone is in CarPlay mode, my garage door automatically closes. When I enter my home's geofence and my iPhone is in CarPlay mode, my garage door automatically opens. I have the geofence setup very tight so the door opens/closes about when I'd do it manually.

I setup this automation using HomeKit, Homebridge, and iOS shortcuts/automations. The iOS shortcut is what informs a Homebridge dummy switch named "iPhone CarPlay Status" whether my phone is in CarPlay mode or not. From there it was simply to setup a HomeKit automation based on geofencing and the status of the dummy switch.

Because a garage door is considered a secure accessory and would normally require me to unlock my iPhone, the work-around is to have Homebridge first trigger a dummy switch called "Garage Door" and then have that dummy switch trigger the garage door to open/close.

Yes, I could just press the button on my rear-view mirror to open/close my garage door. But having the door automatically open just as I drive up is really cool. I usually close the door manually, but knowing it will close automatically if I forgot is also nice.

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

#105

Post by kragen »

count wrote: post #90
kragen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% local control rules out any android or especially apple devices

One of the requirements for HomeKit branding is that you work without internet connectivity.

that's a good start, but if you have 100% local control over a device that is refusing to work (because it doesn't have internet connectivity or for any other reason), you can fix the bug (or apply someone else's fix you downloaded from gitlab)

that doesn't work if you've ceded that control to apple, because they are not local

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

#106

Post by silversmith »

ilyt wrote: post #99
sh4rks wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

I currently have an old windows tablet on the wall, with fullscreen browser running and connected to a charger 24/7 - the power drain amounts to less than 10EUR a year. I'm looking into turning off the screen based on motion sensors, but... the payout just isn't as much as it seems at first.

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

#107

Post by autoexec »

ontarionick wrote: post #58
autoexec wrote: post #52

The smartest house doesn't hand out the details of your life to 3rd parties or let contractors hear you having sex. We need more options for privacy respecting self-hosted systems that people don't have to design/create themselves. Some home automation tech is pretty nice, but its not worth paying for it forever with the data/privacy being given up, and in the inevitable consequences of having that data used against…

Setup Home Assistant, and only get devices that are 100% local control! There are fairly reasonable options for this. I have a couple devices/services where I haven't been able to find good local only or where I find utility in the cloud connectedness, but that's very much the exception than the rule.

That looks really interesting, for me at least, but that leans pretty far into the design/create yourself category. I have family who are realistically never going to pick up a pi and flash the OS to get that set up. I see there are a few devices you can buy though, and while I don't think they'd make it past something like this: https://yellow.home-assistant.io/nvme-selection-power-supply... (if they even got that far) something more like this: https://ameridroid.com/collections/kits/products/odroid-n2-h... might work alright...

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

#108

Post by Topgamer7 »

I upgraded to a pixel 7 pro, and ever since Google assistant just hasn't worked. Clicking the app doesn't do anything. Clicking the mic button doesn't work. Ok Google doesn't work.

I can get it to work for like 30 min if I clear data, force close a bunch of Google apps and restart. But it's driving me nuts!

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

#109

Post by epistemer »

autoexec wrote: post #52

The smartest house doesn't hand out the details of your life to 3rd parties or let contractors hear you having sex. We need more options for privacy respecting self-hosted systems that people don't have to design/create themselves. Some home automation tech is pretty nice, but its not worth paying for it forever with the data/privacy being given up, and in the inevitable consequences of having that data used against…

All this to me is pure technological kitsch and bullshit.

My coffee maker has had automation built in for years, it makes a ton of sense for it to automatically make coffee in the morning yet even for free I have never used it even once.

The light switch? Give me a break.

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

#110

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

terinjokes wrote: post #77
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all dumb LED lights support dimmable switches though.

If you want a dimmable light in a room, you're going to have to buy a light that supports dimming. That's true for a smart bulb or a dumb bulb.

Yeah, and if you already have dumb LED lights in your apartment that are not dimmable? Now you have to swap out the switches and the lights.

With this hassle, you might as well just skip swapping the switches and just jump to smart lights directly.

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