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I built an offline smart home

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Re: I built an offline smart home

#131

Post by XorNot »

throwawaydhshs wrote: post #39
XorNot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you mind me asking how you set that up, or what you bought? Have they been reliable?

I mean in my case I wouldn't broadly recommend my approach: I bought these https://www.zemismart.com/products/zm25tq-2-25 and then chip-swapped them with ESP8266s. That's definitely not a casual thing but...

What I'm most happy about is how I got them hardwired - I notched my cornice and slid an archetrave (narrow) light switch up into the cornice on a mounting block, caulked around it, and then ran a thin bit of surface conduit down to another slim junction box next to the blind. You can "see" that the power is there, but it blends nicely and means the blinds are powered off my lighting circuit - no batteries to worry about, and a shutoff in the room if I ever change out the motors.

Motor-wise I'm happy so far - the limits work, and it's been set and forget with Home Assistant driving them through ESPHome. Unfortunately the motor is a Realtak-based chip, not Beken, so no Tuya-cloudcutter exploit exists to get ESPHome on their wirelessly. If I was doing it again from scratch I'd try and find something easier to de-cloud. As it is since I know the motors fit and know how to open them up, we've got a bunch more we're planning to do since we have some really big windows we'd need multiple blinds to cover, and we just never considered it practical till we did this.

EDIT: Basically it's a home automation upgrade I've been incredibly happy with the outcome for, but man if Tuya would let go of the lock-in aspirations then it would become dead-easy to recommend to people.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#132

Post by indrora »

glial wrote: post #101
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 This is the Mitch Hedberg Rule. "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience. "

Aside: The reason that escalators cannot be stairs in much of the US, despite looking like stairs, is actually a human ergonomics and code violation problem: inconsistent rise/run and pitch in stairs causes people to trip, then cascade down. Bad times.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#133

Post by ThatPlayer »

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.

The next best thing I've seen are the smart switches that are just two buttons, up and down for on and off. I just want to be able to hit up for on, the actual switch state is less of a concern. That's been my annoyance with two-ways.

I've ordered some Inovelli switches which do this and have an RGB LED if I need a state status indicator.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#134

Post by mewpmewp2 »

godelski wrote: post #113
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 an…

Does it not matter what the consequences of failure are to determine how much effort should be put into handling failure?

Re: I built an offline smart home

#135

Post by mewpmewp2 »

mdekkers wrote: post #117
cameldrv wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I ask my guests to open a PR or github discussion if they want the smart door to toilet open. The config is right now hardcoded and it has worked very well to keep guests away from my home to give me focus time.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#136

Post by wkjagt »

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…

I don’t see the added value of much of the smart home things. I’m used to turning the lights on with a light switch and never thought “this is too much effort, I wish there was a way to not have to press this switch”. The only smart thing I have in my house is one of those light switches with a built in timer, for the lights outside the house, because I want to make sure I don’t forget to turn them off at night, which could disturb my neighbours. I have quite a few switches for all the other lights in the house, and I feel that turning the lights off before bed is like a ritual that puts me (and the family) in sleep mode.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#137

Post by wkjagt »

enoch2090 wrote: post #17
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…

Sometimes it's not the time saved, but a change to your mindset, that you don't need to even think of walking across the room to reach the switch before sleep. Such change accumulates and at a point I felt the difference, hopefully that works for you as well.

I actually like the act and the ritual of turning all the lights off before sleep. It marks the end of the day and the start of sleepy time.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#138

Post by smeej »

j45 wrote: post #66
XorNot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's very worth motorized blinds especially if you have a lot of windows. Every setting you do manually throughout a day or season can be automated. Tie it in with movie mode to close everything, etc. Luvolite and their rebranded partners is a decent bang for the buck: https://www.louvolite.com/ I hear Ikea is worth looking at too.

One of the things I'm actually worried about is that there are several things in my house that I don't think could be automated, at least not within the parameters available to me as a renter.

I do have two accordion blinds I raise and lower daily, but only two. One wall of my house is a giant sliding glass door with floor-length curtains, though, which are as manual as it gets. They don't even have a stick to guide them. I just grab an edge and pull. I don't think my landlord would appreciate it if I mount a whole different track, but I guess it might be different if he doesn't find out.

My heater is my biggest concern, though. It's a propane-fed floor unit (house is very small, as I mentioned). It's controlled by walking over and pushing buttons on the top of it. It has no remote. The thermostat is part of the unit itself. Turning power to the unit itself off and on would kill the pilot light, never mind that in the winter I can't have it go off. I just want it to go from 65 while I'm home down to 55 while I'm not. It only takes a couple minutes to warm the house (again, house is quite small), but the pipes would freeze if I let it get any colder.

And that's where I come back to, "How inconvenient is it, really, to open my curtains in the morning and turn the temp down when I walk out the door?" The heater is even adjacent to the door.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#139

Post by blagie »

j45 wrote: post #61
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…

This is really helpful to know - Zigbee for a while was a premium compared to other protocols and it's nice to discover that has drastically changed.

It's still often double the price.

* Wifi spy-on-you-compromise-your-network version: $2

* Zigbee version: $4.

I can spare the extra two bucks, though.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#140

Post by fl7305 »

godelski wrote: post #59
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. 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…

> Failing closed is typical of safes

Unless it's a very large safe where people can walk inside, like a bank vault. The fire department gets very grumpy with you if they fail closed and can trap people inside.

So if you want to force open a bank vault, stage a purported terrorist attack, and the FBI will cut power to the building as standard operating procedure. Voila, vault opens.

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