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I built an offline smart home

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Re: I built an offline smart home

#21

Post by XorNot »

smeej wrote: post #6

I keep trying to talk myself out of wanting to do this. I live in a very small studio-style home with a total of four lightbulbs in it. It takes fewer than 20 steps to get from any one corner of the house to any other. But every time I read an article like this, I can't help but think how cool I would feel if my house could tell I was coming and turned my lights on and my heat up, or dimmed and then turned everything…

Motorised blinds has been the game changer for me. I never want to adjust blinds, but natural light is nice.

Now my blinds automatically go up at 8.30, and close at sundown and I don't have to think about it - but my rooms are pleasantly exactly how o want them at all times.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#22

Post by efitz »

blagie wrote: post #2

Tuya devices are available in Zigbee for about $5, and the Zigbee versions have no way to phone home. The nice thing is you can: 1) Buy eight random Tuya Zigbee outlets ($40) 2) Three PIR presence sensors ($10) 3) Fancy Sonoff Zigbee USB device ($20) 4) Three RGB-CCCW lightbulbs ($15) 5) Three or four temperature/humidity monitors ($15) And you're at the $100 mark with a basic smart home without breaking the bank, wi…

I am less than impressed with Tuya. They want to be an ecosystem, just like HomeKit or SmartThings, so you either have to go all in on them or use some bridging solution. And they charge (a lot) for their cloud development platform (used to have a free tier), and they change apps from time to time requiring new accounts and reconfiguration, etc. Not a fan.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#23

Post by aldanor »

Loxone is a pretty nice all-in-one solution, or as a base that can be then connected to HA, from lighting controllers to heating etc, and fully offline, especially in Europe where Lutron and the like aren't being used en masse (or are simply not compatible). The only downside is that it's pretty hard to configure by hand since the system is pretty complex.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#24

Post by faeriechangling »

Aloha wrote: post #20

I went with the Apple HomeKit compatible camp, because it does indeed all work locally across your local LAN without a network connection - its not foolproof, but it mostly just works, and works well at that - and more importantly works when the internet is out. The biggest thing with Apple is they get that houses have more than one person living in them, and provided everyone has an Apple device, it all just works.

I do not have any faith in Alexa OR Google home, despite Amazon on paper being a juggernaut of market share and Google being a juggernaut of AI. How they are fundamentally architected is bad. Cloud-based services that run over a single WAN connection? That basically guarantees Google Home and Alexa are bound to be only ever used for frivolous things you don't really need because the smart assistants are fundamentally unreliable.

Initially I didn't think this was THAT big of a deal, but the more experience I got with smart homes the more I'm thinking the ecosystem's are doomed to plateau while Homekit keeps trucking past them since its reliability problems are not as severe. Amazon and Google are building castles on sand.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#25

Post by XorNot »

efitz wrote: post #22
blagie wrote: post #2

Tuya devices are available in Zigbee for about $5, and the Zigbee versions have no way to phone home. The nice thing is you can: 1) Buy eight random Tuya Zigbee outlets ($40) 2) Three PIR presence sensors ($10) 3) Fancy Sonoff Zigbee USB device ($20) 4) Three RGB-CCCW lightbulbs ($15) 5) Three or four temperature/humidity monitors ($15) And you're at the $100 mark with a basic smart home without breaking the bank, wi…

I am less than impressed with Tuya. They want to be an ecosystem, just like HomeKit or SmartThings, so you either have to go all in on them or use some bridging solution. And they charge (a lot) for their cloud development platform (used to have a free tier), and they change apps from time to time requiring new accounts and reconfiguration, etc. Not a fan.

I really wish Tuya would just sell products and provide a way to flash them, because under the hood the platform is quite sensible: serial controllers for core functions with a wifi daughter board.

So if you can chip swap them, and ESP can drop right in with ESPHome. If they'd just let us flash custom firmware without needing an exploit then you'd be able to run ESPhome without any fuss on the raw chips (the Bekan firmware is included in ESPhome now - it's great).

They're sitting on a pile of easy "family and friends" recommendations if they'd just drop the ecosystem aspiration.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#26

Post by rawgabbit »

Aloha wrote: post #20

I went with the Apple HomeKit compatible camp, because it does indeed all work locally across your local LAN without a network connection - its not foolproof, but it mostly just works, and works well at that - and more importantly works when the internet is out. The biggest thing with Apple is they get that houses have more than one person living in them, and provided everyone has an Apple device, it all just works.

Can you please elaborate? It works when the internet is down?

Re: I built an offline smart home

#27

Post by minimalist »

ihattendorf wrote: post #19
minimalist wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only thing I'd add is to try to get devices that can be flashed with esphome[0] for future-proofing. There is an onramp[1] for devices that can be flashed with Tasmota. Also be very wary about devices that are not (verifiably) UL listed / CE rated, especially if the device is to be plugged into mains and tucked behind some furniture (or worse yet, installed into the wall). [According to internet folk lore] some of th…

> Some of these can be grounds for being denied insurance coverage Is there a reason you think insurance wouldn’t pay out because you used a non-listed device? This is something I frequently see people asserting without any basis in reality, and I’m curious where it comes from. People do stupid things that insurance covers all the time. I do agree that you should only use listed devices whenever possible.

Best include the whole quote: >Some of these can be grounds for being denied insurance coverage in the event of a fire or other damage.

Honestly, I don't know and I haven't personally heard of anyone getting denied claims because of stupid things related to DIY repairs/modifications. I think this repeated wisdom comes from things that we read in HOA and rental agreements about DIY modifications.

I'll edit my comment with a [citation needed]. Thank you for the question :)

It does make me wonder: what if a fire caused by a DIY installation of a ebay gadget resulted in loss of life? If the aggrieved parties went to court, who would be held liable?

Here is another discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/7vwe23/doe...

Re: I built an offline smart home

#28

Post by corethree »

Gyrantula2 wrote: post #18

>Building my offline smart home took the better part of a weekend Yeah, right. Nobody in their right mind should be making their home "smart" for the convenience or efficiency. It's a hobby. A frustrating, inconvenient, burdensome, potentially expensive, challenging, neverending hobby. It taught me to love light switches.

It's actually easier now then ever before. Buy smart bulbs for cheap off of temu. They all integrate with alexa or google home automagically.

I now never touch a light switch.

"Computer dim lights to 40%." I never bother touching a light switch. This guys set up is too complicated. The easy way to do it nowadays is to buy smart devices that integrate with the google or alexa echo system and you just talk to alexa or google to get it to do what you want.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#29

Post by efitz »

Smart Home has kind of been my hobby for the last 7-8 years. I have well over 100 devices controlled by my smart home setup.

Before I installed the first smart device in my home, however, I had a single requirement: EVERYTHING MUST FAIL NORMAL. By this I mean that if the internet went out or a vendor went out of business or I rage quit a vendor, then the device in question had to act like it was a normal non-smart device.

I avoided things where you had to configure power-on default behaviors, and where you had to cycle power or disconnect the device to reset it. For this reasons I have no smart light bulbs in my house. I replaced every light switch with a smart light switch, and if anything goes wrong, walking over and using the switch will turn the light on or off.

Most of my automation is "zero touch" flavored - I want the house to do what I want without me triggering anything. For instance, I have luminance sensors in several rooms and during the day if it gets gloomy or overcast, or near dusk, it turns lights on. I also use occupancy sensors to turn lights on and off, and have multiple rules to set lights to the appropriate brightness based on time of day (after bedtime, the lights still come on when someone goes in the bathroom, but very dim, etc.). All this happens locally via HomeKit or HomeAssistant. And, if automation fails, then the switches still work.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#30

Post by zzo38computer »

efitz wrote: post #29

Smart Home has kind of been my hobby for the last 7-8 years. I have well over 100 devices controlled by my smart home setup. Before I installed the first smart device in my home, however, I had a single requirement: EVERYTHING MUST FAIL NORMAL. By this I mean that if the internet went out or a vendor went out of business or I rage quit a vendor, then the device in question had to act like it was a normal non-smart de…

> EVERYTHING MUST FAIL NORMAL. By this I mean that if the internet went out or a vendor went out of business or I rage quit a vendor, then the device in question had to act like it was a normal non-smart device.

I do not need smart home, but if you do, then I think that you are right. This is a good idea and is the most important idea.

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