121–130 of 192 posts
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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.
I'm sure that's true, but I just don't see the point. No one ever died saying, "man, if only I'd lived life more efficiently".
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> It's actually easier now then ever before. Agreed, but Alexa fails hard if you have no internet, and my understanding is that Google Home also becomes mostly inoperable. I've tried Home Assistant but could never get it to work reliably. HomeKit is great and works offline if you have a home hub (an Apple TV, a HomePod, or an iPad).
> Agreed, but Alexa fails hard if you have no internet It also fails hard with Internet. I’m sick of being on my living room asking Alexa to turn on the light just to get the bedroom light turned on (each room has its own Alexa/Light pair, so there should be no confusion).
Walls reflect sound, and things like curtains muffle it, and you might be surprised which device picks up your voice best in different positions.
I had to adjust placement etc. to prevent the Alexa in my son's room from regularly picking up my commands from my room better than the Alexa in my room when the doors are open.
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Alexa and Google Home are literally microphones with connections into the cloud
I'm always amazed that everyone seems okay with this, and will even say so when pressed on it. But those same people will get a look in their eyes as if they're going to shit their pants, if someone else picks up their unlocked iPhone and starts scrolling.
I did about 20% of the article's setup which took about a weekend of time, then randomly after Home Assistant update certain things start not functioning, i.e. I bought some $2 Xiaomi BLE temperature sensors and the key I setup just somehow stopped working, then its another half day wasted on trouble shooting them.
I regret my time wasted on them, especially given Home Assistant's data retention is not as great as I was expecting, i.e. default storage is only 14 days for temperature sensor and that sqlite DB is huge with this limited data.
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…
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…
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.
Word to the wise: you have to have a HomePod or Apple TV to do anything other than control devices when you are home, with no automations. I couldn't even install smart light bulbs without a hub. Also, you can't share with your spouse/family (so they can control lights) without a hub.
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.
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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.
He just wanted to save $28. I have these in my house. No app required.
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…
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. 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…
Software is killing people since decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25