Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

androidauthority.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 356 posts

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#331

Post by rch »

saltcured wrote: post #289
rch wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify: the issue is that the screen stays illuminated when charging on the stand. Pressing the physical button used to work, even with the current oddball settings. It only stopped being effective a few weeks ago, when using a wireless charging stand. It still works when I switch back to USB charging. Presumably because it would be too easy to simply place the phone face down, effectively revealing user preferen…

I wonder if you're looking for the Settings -> Display -> Screen Saver function. Have you tried disabling it? When enabled, it seems to have two options to either enable "when charging" or "when docked and charging". I wonder if your wireless charger is considered a dock and hence activates this different mode than you get for regular USB charging.

Screen saver is disabled.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#332

Post by MuppetMaster42 »

delecti wrote: post #221
JoBrad wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I don’t have to remember to pair my phone with the Bluetooth speaker, then queue up whatever. I just tell my Echo to play my daily briefing, and it does the work. I picked a set that is generally done in 15-20 minutes, so it doubles as a good time for my morning routine.

In the described use-case, you don't have to re-pair your phone, you just turn the speaker on and it reconnects automatically. Both phone OSs work that way, reconnecting automatically to known devices. Also, the daily briefing is a different use-case than was described above, where the GP commenter just wanted to play music.

That works in a single person household. But once an extra person wants to use it then each person has to do the dance of re-pairing every morning - which can be painful if the other person's device was the last one that connected and is nearby.

Being able to have anyone just walk in the shower and say "device play music on Spotify" and have it just work is much simpler and requires much less thinking and effort - which is really nice first thing in the morning.

Also a speaker you can't connect after getting in the shower, but a smart speaker you can.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#333

Post by 9991 »

thayne wrote: post #231
9991 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it's too radical, but if this is the main concern, you could still build appliances with Linux that just aren't networked. Take a page out of Battlestar Galactica's playbook.

Or at least, only connect to the local network.

That’s an option for a consumer who knows what a VLAN is, but mass-market appliances need to have some barrier to network access.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#334

Post by maxerickson »

rch wrote: post #200
vxNsr wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preface: I’m an iPhone user, but I’m kinda confused what you’re trying to achieve that can’t be had with just pressing the physical button the phone to turn off the screen. Does the screen need to be on for the alarm to work?

To clarify: the issue is that the screen stays illuminated when charging on the stand. Pressing the physical button used to work, even with the current oddball settings. It only stopped being effective a few weeks ago, when using a wireless charging stand. It still works when I switch back to USB charging. Presumably because it would be too easy to simply place the phone face down, effectively revealing user preferen…

My screen is off when wireless charging, at least when the bedtime mode is active.

Pixel 6, US, I keep it up to date.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#335

Post by JohnFen »

elif wrote: post #77

One day I fully expect to wake up to find my phone issuing me the warning "Google Fi has been discontinued. Please find an alternative carrier by the end of the month" Or "Google Photos has been replaced by our new service, Google Pixa. Please back up your photos as they cannot be transferred to our new service" It's almost like their project/team structure depends on cannibalisation. I already lost my wedding playli…

A good reminder that any of your data that exists solely in the cloud is at risk. If you're into using the cloud to store stuff, be sure to keep a copy of that stuff locally as well.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#336

Post by Trias11 »

Corrado wrote: post #2

I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at. I have some similar examples to the ones in the article. I recommended that my brother-in-law get a Google wifi AP some years ago. Recently, I got an email from Google saying that they are no longer supporting it and after a certain date you will no longer be able to make changes to it. WTF?!? My Apple Airport Extreme is older than the Goog…

I used Nest and my experience was that no matter settings I configure, Google always override something with what "they think" is better for me.

We eventually sold the house, otherwise frustration would continue

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#337

Post by cogman10 »

acdha wrote: post #315
osigurdson wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is interesting, I thought GCP might be a good alternative - at least for managed Kubernetes.

GKE at least used to be a bit better, but that’s only worth so much compared to the rest of the services where you’ll frequently find feature gaps where you end up adding a +1 to an issue which has been open for years, and building your own service (yay, more toil). There’s some room for debate on security depending on exactly what features you use and what your needs are but if you use GCP, I’ll just note that Googl…

> you’ll frequently find feature gaps where you end up adding a +1 to an issue which has been open for years, and building your own service (yay, more toil)

Yup, exactly my experience and what I meant by amateurish. We aren't even talking about "crazy" features.

For example, their identity management service supports MFA only though a cell text. Adding support for Google auth was a years old issue that we were told "yeah, lots of other people want this and if you plus 1 it maybe PM will prioritize it".

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#338

Post by adobin »

boring_twenties wrote: post #328
SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully respect when anyone decides they don't want smart devices, but all of your bullet points are quite easy to accomplish with off the shelf devices these days ("unnecessarily complicated" will always be debatable though). All of my lights, outlets, and dozens of other niche things, never connect to the internet, and everything is fully functional when there's no internet connection. Home Assistant with Zigbee de…

I am completely unable to understand why any of these devices need any kind of wireless radio at all. They're all plugged into wall power all the time, and powerline Ethernet works fine. What am I missing?

You can look at several types in that list that don't have wall power easily or always available. Door and window sensors, which could be solved similar to older alarm systems, but have a significantly lower barrier to entry being wireless. There are convenience and accessibility benefits to allowing wireless battery-powered switches to control your devices. Wi-Fi can be an answer for a lot of these but there are battery life and coverage benefits to the mesh behavior of these networks without needing to spend a lot to expand your Wi-Fi coverage.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#339

Post by rch »

maxerickson wrote: post #334
rch wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify: the issue is that the screen stays illuminated when charging on the stand. Pressing the physical button used to work, even with the current oddball settings. It only stopped being effective a few weeks ago, when using a wireless charging stand. It still works when I switch back to USB charging. Presumably because it would be too easy to simply place the phone face down, effectively revealing user preferen…

My screen is off when wireless charging, at least when the bedtime mode is active. Pixel 6, US, I keep it up to date.

This could be it. I'm on a Pixel 5, which I suppose is ancient in phone years.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#340

Post by cultureswitch »

JohnFen wrote: post #323
jrockway wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel this way, but don't anymore. Smart devices don't all go out to the cloud; you can easily build a completely-local smart home that nobody on the Internet can control or monitor. This is the default in Apple's ecosystem (though they integrate with cloud services if you want), and you don't even have to use a major tech company's ecosystem. You can install Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi and build your o…

Exactly. The worst thing that came from "the internet of things" is that people now assume that having great home automation equates to having to use cloud-connected devices that aren't really under your control. It just isn't so.

For people who aren't tech-savvy that is pretty much correct though.
Post reply on HN