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I built an offline smart home

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Re: I built an offline smart home

#161

Post by j45 »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #119
j45 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

30 minutes a day saved is 15 hours a month, and about 22 work days (8 hours) a year of waking time. Awake time.

I get that much more time with my kids or towards something else I want.

It's free time for the taking for a fixed investment, I'll take it. It might not make sense for you and how you value your time, but in time it might.

The thing about doubt like yours is nothing new will reach a brain that starts closed off. I generally avoid doubt worshippers who validate their doubts by painting them on others instead of openly entertaining a viewpoint that isn't theirs. I got no problems being straight with you the way you're willing to behind a keyboard. I understand the fun part of being a devils advocate and a skeptic, but not everything has to be for everyone, nor does it have to be validated by you to be acceptable.

To answer your question, HN is limited on a few devices, a few times a day, with the procrast settings, and in grayscale. The hosts file has been blocking it for many years. After a while I pick up and put down the device I have for reading.

What do you do that works for you?

Re: I built an offline smart home

#162

Post by godelski »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #158
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it matters. That’s the “end effect” portion of any proper risk management process. The severity and likelihood of various end effects drives improvement in the design, creation, and usage of the item.

But why are people surprised then that in most software the process is not as thorough as in aerospace or elsewhere with physical things. Most of the time physical devices failing will have much more severe consequences, than a website going down for an hour. In some cases there are APIs which many other critical systems use and frequently those APIs do have much more rigorous process in making sure that they are rel…

> But why are people surprised then that in most software the process is not as thorough as in aerospace or elsewhere with physical things.

Because the traditional engineers do this in a lot of stuff and not just high risk domains. You can probably find somewhere an FEA analysis on your TV's legs and where the high stress points are and where it'll break.

> They have promises of reliability and big financial penalties if they were to fail on that reliability.

Ehhhhh really? Or if everyone does a shit job do we just take it? Most people aren't tech literate. Hell, most apps aren't built by tech literate people. I have a laundry app I have to use and the rooms aren't in any logical order, just randomly placed. Are you tech literate if you don't know a sort function exists? Or if you don't know people like to read things in a sorted order? If you can't google the answer? There's lots of systems that have really shit designs in them and as discussed elsewhere in the thread I don't think companies are having big financial consequences for their lightbulbs not working when the wifi goes down because the people purchasing them aren't aware that such a insane thing would happen. If you're not very tech literate you wouldn't even think that's a possible outcome. So don't just rely on markets because econ 101 isn't enough.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#163

Post by j45 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #96
j45 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty sure I spend more time fucking with my smart home setup than me or anyone in my family will "save". It's a gimmick at best.

Playing around with things to tweak more is hobby time to me.

Setting it up for others to use it is another. The comment about Apple Homekit "just working" has some merit. If it's not automated in the background on a schedule, and on demand, there's some merit to it.

Maybe there's a sweet spot of not having to hack every little thing.

My smarthome setup for example is centered around becoming an appliance of the home that stays with it, and making design considerations for that.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#164

Post by moandcompany »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #135
mdekkers wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whenever I install or (re)configure something involving "Smart Home" I think carefully about what will be returned when family/partner does a `git blame` ...

Re: I built an offline smart home

#165

Post by moandcompany »

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…

The concept of "Safety Critical" is something that I wish more software developers and engineers would have exposure to

Re: I built an offline smart home

#166

Post by saltcured »

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.

I grew up with the small toggle mercury switches from the 70s. I was able to adapt to the kind of z-wave smart switch that has a similar shape, fitting the same face plate in a bank of three switches where I only swapped out one for a smart switch.

It's kind of like a joy stick, so in a neutral center position and you flick it momentarily up or down from center to ask for on or off. You have to learn not to lift and hold for too long, because that is how to get it into a very primitive reconfiguration mode. As I recall, you can reconfigure the LED and maybe its behavior on power restoration.

I configured mine so the LED is on when the light circuit is on, to show me the status of an exterior light on the other side of an opaque door. But, I think the default is the inverse so it acts a bit like a night light to locate the switch in the dark. Of course, it's a hideous blue as is the modern fashion.

I linked it to an existing alarm system to set some rules like turning on and off around dusk and dawn periods and turning on in response to camera-based motion/people.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#167

Post by petemir »

vidarh wrote: post #154
petemir wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I had interference at one moment and moved the devices to the farthest points on each room, so that doesn't happen now, but the problem I mentioned before (turning on the wrong light) still happens. I forgot to say that the problem mostly occurs when I ask Alexa to set the (unspecified, but hopefully the one belonging to the room the corresponding Echo is) light's brightness to X. Sometimes, in that case, it tur…

That's an odd one. Not seen that. Lots of aggravating little quirks, though. Annoyingly so many of them would be trivially addressable by users if we just had a way of adding simple rules. E.g. "this request on this device refers to X", or more generally "when you hear X it probably means Y". As an alternative, I've spent more time than I should passive-aggressively repeating the same instruction and then flagging ev…

hah, I've been doing the same, purposefully calling commands I know will fail so I can flag them, even adding a swear word or two so it also gets flagged on their side and, perhaps, someone can then take action. But in the end, the smarter choice (despite being talking about smart devices), was to change my commands to accommodate Alexa’s quirks.

I’ve installed home assistant recently too for the flexibility, but until I get a zigbee stick I still depend on Alexa as the interface with the lights.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#168

Post by syndicatedjelly »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #158
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it matters. That’s the “end effect” portion of any proper risk management process. The severity and likelihood of various end effects drives improvement in the design, creation, and usage of the item.

But why are people surprised then that in most software the process is not as thorough as in aerospace or elsewhere with physical things. Most of the time physical devices failing will have much more severe consequences, than a website going down for an hour. In some cases there are APIs which many other critical systems use and frequently those APIs do have much more rigorous process in making sure that they are rel…

> But why are people surprised then that in most software the process is not as thorough as in aerospace or elsewhere with physical things.

Outside of engineering, few people have ever even heard the phrase “risk management”, let alone understand the theory behind it. It’s really hard to argue that a developer can consider themself an engineer, when they don’t bother understanding what happens when the thing they “engineered” fails.

Yes this applies to web applications too. If someone can’t access an application that gives them directions, it’s possible that they will be stranded. If a healthcare website fails to load a list of available physicians, it’s possible the user gives up and doesn’t seek medical care.

The current prevailing attitude in web dev of “who cares” is really a testament to how little most web developers and real engineers have in common.

Software engineers working on safety-critical systems deserve that title because they actually have to understand software risks, design appropriate mitigations, and prove their effectiveness.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#169

Post by Terr_ »

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. "

I hate that quote, because it's dangerously false. Even if the power is off, that doesn't mean it's safe to stand on it.

One example would be if the gearing breaks so that the segments move freely:

Congratulations, you and the crowd--given false confidence by a comedian's joke--just piled onto the top of a downhill treadmill... It will now accelerate until you crash into a smothering crunchy heap at the bottom.

Re: I built an offline smart home

#170

Post by archagon »

I recently bought some smart devices and I've been playing around with plugging/unplugging my cable internet connection to see what continues to work and what doesn't. It's nice to have evidence of Matter-over-Wi-Fi (not just Thread) continuing to work even when there's no internet connection, though this may vary depending on the hub in use. TP-Link Tapo devices can also be controlled over Wi-Fi without internet, separately from Matter. Even if you ignore the privacy ramifications, it's pretty magical when tapping a button on your phone toggles a light with nearly zero delay.
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