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I built an offline smart home

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Re: I built an offline smart home

#141

Post by avryhof »

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…

Do you have a list of devices you use? It would be very helpful, since HomeAssistant has hundreds of integrations, and it's a lot of work to track down devices that -

- FAIL NORMAL - WORK OFFLINE - YOU CAN STILL BUY

I really want my smart home devices to meet these criteria, but at the same time I have a bunch of other stuff I do.... so it would be awesome to have a starting point from people who have done it already.

Mozilla used to have such a database, but seems to have forgotten it.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#142

Post by Larrikin »

FriedPickles wrote: post #109
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…

I so badly want an old school flippy light switch that physically flips when toggled by the smart home. IMO that would be the first smart home product strictly superior to its analog counterpart.

A pressable button that toggles the light state achieves the same thing without the need for a motor.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#143

Post by dns_snek »

avryhof wrote: post #141
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…

Do you have a list of devices you use? It would be very helpful, since HomeAssistant has hundreds of integrations, and it's a lot of work to track down devices that - - FAIL NORMAL - WORK OFFLINE - YOU CAN STILL BUY I really want my smart home devices to meet these criteria, but at the same time I have a bunch of other stuff I do.... so it would be awesome to have a starting point from people who have done it already…

"Work offline" and "You can still buy" are satisfied by looking for Zigbee, Zwave, or Thread/Matter based devices. These don't connect to the internet by design and require an inexpensive dongle to form a mesh network. In very few cases WiFi devices with local HTTP API or MQTT are perfectly fine as well, a good criteria to look at is whether Tasmota or ESPhome (alt firmware) list support for them.

"Fail normal" would be trickier, I don't think there's one size fits all. For lights, prefer switch relays over smart bulbs. Look out for customizable "default" state when power comes back on.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#144

Post by blagie »

XorNot wrote: post #25
efitz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fi…

That's a really broad-reaching statement, much more so than might seem to a casual reader.

In an ideal case, each of these devices would:

1) Be open-source

2) Be programmable in a stack of kid-friendly languages, with a stack including Blockly, CircuitPython/JavaScript, and full-fledged kernel hacking

3) Clean, clear documentation and web interfaces for doing this

4) Integration with a secure non-wifi protocol like Zigbee

5) Have a standard, maintained back-end, so things like security fixes can hit all devices, no matter the sensors

Kids can (and some would) learn to do things much as they do with Scratch or Hour-of-Code projects, and it'd just be a different dynamic. There is a mint to be made there if a platform like Tuya could pivot here.

It's a decent chunk of work, but far from astronomical.

Step 2 would be to do something similar for HomeAssistant, or for a similar platform, and there ought to be devices which ship with that. The Zigbee coordinator should be programmable, configurable, and kid-friendly to do so. It should also automatically install security updates (ideally, via Ubuntu, rather than the vendor; Ubuntu is looking to make money; a $5-per-device plan for long-term remote maintenance would do it a lot better than giving me warnings about my machine being insecure, and if I won't pretty-please opt into having them track me with their premium platform)

Re: I built an offline smart home

#145

Post by aaronax »

yftsui wrote: post #124

Building an offline smart home using Home Assistant is signing yourself to an unpaid SRE and nobody at home appreciate your work, it maybe a fun activity but don't expect too much out of it. 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 j…

I thought the limited history was weird too and had bumped up my retention to 1000 days or something. Fortunately I only got a couple hundred days into that before they released just recently an update that includes trends in the history graphs. Apparently that data was there all along, just not being shown. It is not full data but enough to fill in the graph.

Just thought I would mention it.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#146

Post by Larrikin »

wkjagt wrote: post #137
enoch2090 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This line of reasoning could be applied to the switch from candles to electric switches. Putting out the candles at night puts you into sleep mode, why would you want bright lights after the sun is down. At the time the fire risk was similar. Not everyone wanted to electrify their homes.

I still use switches in some places in my apartment, but haven't had a need to touch my bathroom and kitchen light switches in a year. Once you start getting used to your automations, it really does feel like a level up to your home.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#147

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #133
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Grew up when they were always switches... not sure I can change. I can't feel around in the dark for two buttons, and know what the hell they are.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#148

Post by cassianoleal »

indrora wrote: post #132
glial wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, generally escalators are pretty bad stairs. Steps are too high and narrow for their height, which can be dangerous on the way down and quite tiring on the way up! In most places that have both, stairs tend to have about twice as many steps as the equivalent escalator.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#149

Post by Aloha »

CharlesW wrote: post #35
rawgabbit wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, if you have a home hub (an Apple TV or a HomePod¹). https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT207057 Homebridge is a great addition to a HomeKit setup, too. https://homebridge.io/ ¹ EDIT: Removed iPad mention, since as @js2 notes, "iPad as a home hub" support is being deprecated.

You do not need a Hub if you want to use it from inside the house with no internet, it will work by itself.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#150

Post by cassianoleal »

Larrikin wrote: post #142
FriedPickles wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I so badly want an old school flippy light switch that physically flips when toggled by the smart home. IMO that would be the first smart home product strictly superior to its analog counterpart.

A pressable button that toggles the light state achieves the same thing without the need for a motor.

Yeah this. Shelly relays can work that way.
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