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

I built an offline smart home

androidauthority.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 192 posts

Re: I built an offline smart home

#111

Post by mdekkers »

cameldrv wrote: post #77
moandcompany wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EVERYTHING MUST FAIL NORMAL This is a solid principle. Another rule I include with this is that the "Smart Home" should still be able to operate and be controlled like a non "Smart Home" by a regular person. (e.g. light switches, thermostat, door locks)

Yep, I remember staying over at a friends's apartment that had just installed hue lightbulbs everywhere, and then put tape over their normal light switches. As he's putting the sheets on the pull-out couch, he says "if you get up in the middle of the night, you'll need this app to turn on the light..."

Thats not Hue’s fault though, your friend should be better at planning and implementing their Hue implementation. Hue bulbs default to “normal on” when power is restored, and also work with sensors, dimmers, and switches.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#112

Post by culebron21 »

I've tried some advanced lighting at home, when I refurbished apartments in 2011-2018, before smart home became commodity, and quickly understood that I don't need any kind of these "advancements", because it adds little value but it fails a lot more often and needs an order of magnitude more maintenance.

Regarding lights, I understood any spot lights are nearly impossible to plan ahead correctly, and are used rarely. what is really needed is multiway switch for the ceiling light, and 2 levels (1 dim bulb for dim light, more bulbs for bright). The rest -- local spotlights, dimmers, adjustable hue -- add very little value, but need maintenance and are hard to repair (try finding a rotating knob for a dimmer). Use table-top lamp or one with a clamp to save space, with yellowish light for local lighting, same for bed light. That's it.

Using smartphone may have seemed ok when they were new in 2010. Now I see they're pain to use, apps live their own life, you have many distractions, and it often takes equal amount of time to walk to the switch to check/turn off, as to browse to it in the phone. Same if you have kids -- you get distracted out of the phone, but phone won't save you time, it's much harder to use smartphone with kids nearby.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#113

Post by godelski »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #98
godelski wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EVERYTHING MUST FAIL NORMAL. I'm often surprised how little discussion I see of failure analysis and especially failure design is in software engineering. It is one of the most important concepts in engineering, but I guess we still operate like software can't kill you. For those unfamiliar with this type of analysis I'll give you 3 examples. 1) Imagine you are building skyscrapers in city with a bunch of other sky…

> I'm often surprised how little discussion I see of failure analysis and especially failure design is in software engineering. It is one of the most important concepts in engineering, but I guess we still operate like software can't kill you. This is a major reason why many "traditional" engineers do not consider programmers to be true engineers.

Yeah the jokes tend to be about how little concern there is for quality control or things breaking. I'm a fan of "move fast and break things" for getting things started and new projects but I'm not sure why that mentality continues into mature products. I think a lot of software dev teams would benefit from referencing the TRL system[0]. I did work as an engineer in a aerospace startup and you definitely move fast and hack a lot at low TRL but you treat mid TRL very differently. Helps to keep scope and pull away from these 26 "2 week sprint" nonesense. Doesn't make sense for mature products, you're just going to break things that already work. Now I will add though that it isn't uncommon for "traditional" engineers to also move too slowly. I think there's a balance in there. Don't be Boeing but don't be a startup either if you're Google.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level

Re: I built an offline smart home

#114

Post by jjav »

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

Yes, this, you get it.

I can't believe how many people I talk to are happy to install permanent things in their home that have a strong dependency on (a) the internet being up, (b) the company still existing, (c) the app still being supported.

Things installed in a house have a lifetime measured in decades. IoT companies and apps have lifetimes measured in months. This is not compatible.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#115

Post by cameldrv »

mdekkers wrote: post #111
cameldrv wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I remember staying over at a friends's apartment that had just installed hue lightbulbs everywhere, and then put tape over their normal light switches. As he's putting the sheets on the pull-out couch, he says "if you get up in the middle of the night, you'll need this app to turn on the light..."

Thats not Hue’s fault though, your friend should be better at planning and implementing their Hue implementation. Hue bulbs default to “normal on” when power is restored, and also work with sensors, dimmers, and switches.

No, it's fundamentally impossible. He wants to be able to control his lights from his phone, and that's impossible if the lights have no power. The only way for his lights to have power at all times is for the light switch to be on, but I don't want that when I'm sleeping. Therefore, the switch must be on but the light off, so to turn the light on, I need an app.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#117

Post by mdekkers »

cameldrv wrote: post #115
mdekkers wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not Hue’s fault though, your friend should be better at planning and implementing their Hue implementation. Hue bulbs default to “normal on” when power is restored, and also work with sensors, dimmers, and switches.

No, it's fundamentally impossible. He wants to be able to control his lights from his phone, and that's impossible if the lights have no power. The only way for his lights to have power at all times is for the light switch to be on, but I don't want that when I'm sleeping. Therefore, the switch must be on but the light off, so to turn the light on, I need an app.

Sorry, you are incorrect. I have a house full of Hue devices, for many years now. I also have many houseguests. Not once did I ask any of them (or my wife, for that matter) to use an app to do anything in my home. To turn the light on or off, everyone here either uses Hue switches, or just walk into the space, if it is a common space, where the motion sensors takes care of things.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#118

Post by sdflhasjd »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #86
rkagerer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your favored smart switch brand? I went Leviton as they looked the most like low-key, plain-old On/Off lightswitches. But the reliability has been terrible - constantly dropping off the network or requiring a reset (at least the early models I have). It's disappointing considering I thought it was a well-established brand; after dealing with some of their tech support / engineers I'm of the solid opinion they…

The feature I want doesn't seem to exist. I'd like what looks like a conventional switch, but with a solenoid that flips it up and down to reflect the status of the light. It'd be even cooler in two-ways, where using the switch on the one side of the room causes the other switch to match. Not sure why this isn't available either.

A British company called Den had a product that was exactly this.

Sadly it was very expensive and also locked down to their private cloud. The company went bust and took everyone's 'smart' homes with them.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#119

Post by wolvesechoes »

j45 wrote: post #72
tharne wrote: post #41

The Smart Home is the ultimate triumph of capitalism. A product that nobody needs who's biggest value is mining user's data in order to sell that user more shit they don't need.

You'd be surprised how much time you can actually save yourself and get back for living towards other things by automating the right few things for yourself. Get a stopwatch and try it out.

And how do you use your precious time that you have saved through careful improvements in efficiency?

More scrolling on HN? Yeah, big win.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#120

Post by vidarh »

hasoleju wrote: post #99
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…

Can you explain the steps you have to take if you want to move through your house without the lights? Is the switch always "on" and the sensor then turns on the light and you just have to turn the switch "off"? And then if the switch is turned "off" will you need to first turn it "on" again in order to make the automation work properly again?

Smart switches are always on to the switch, which then switches the light on/off either via buttons or the network.

So it doesn't matter if you manually turn them on/off - they remain network accessible.

This is why they're strictly nicer to use than smart bulbs. Even if you want smart bulbs, you'll probably want smart switches too, but if you have smart switches you only really get a benefit from smart bulbs if you want to control the colour of the light.

Post reply on HN