21–30 of 42 posts
For me, pretty much none of the "smart home" stuff with rare exceptions (e.g. my bedroom was never updated with a light switch) actually does anything that saves me any real effort. There are a ton of things I'd like to just wish away but they require manipulation of the physical world.
A lot of devices are pivoting to being "smart" but they aren't viewed as appliances. They need to just work, not be fancy. I have a lot of appliances that have some sort of wifi connection ability, but i don't need a notification on my phone when my laundry is done it already sings a song, or I've set a timer.
The items in my house that actually are helpful to have on our wifi, and be "smart" are the ones that I fret about being off or closed in the case of our garage door, or outside lights.
I have a lot of smart devices. What's more important is that I have way more automations you'd expect from that number of devices. I even have smart tv switch to and autoplay a youtube playlist with new movie trailers that it makes automatically for me. I just click on the movie that I want to watch as usual, but it shows trailers and then plays the movie. This is magic and it is reliable. The only problem is to set this up of course, but it became so much easier with home assistant, I can't express how much I am amazed by an opensource software.
The ubiquitous private “anonymous” surveillance built into everything is the main dystopia here. People lack the imagination to see how it will inevitably be misused.
More Work For Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave
By Ruth Schwartz Cowan
For me, pretty much none of the "smart home" stuff with rare exceptions (e.g. my bedroom was never updated with a light switch) actually does anything that saves me any real effort. There are a ton of things I'd like to just wish away but they require manipulation of the physical world.
I don’t know if a vacuum robot counts but it saves us tons of effort. We wake up to a freshly vacuumed home every morning.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've found the same. I've been interested in smart homes stuff for 10+ years. My dad had z-wave in his beach home 15 years ago (not exactly an early adopter, but it was pre-HomeKit and pre-influx of cheap wifi devices). Between flaky software/firmware, fear of network security, device incompatibilities, and the slow but steady enshitification of all the things, the industry has been a real let down. I have a Smartthi…
That's been my experience as well... it's a downward trend of reliability. Forty years ago my parents had a bunch of Radio Shack home automation stuff that was actually reliable, though functionally simple. Apart from Philips devices attached to a Philips hub, everything else I've tried in the last decade has been flaky in some way.
Everyone says the Philips bulbs are so reliable, yet they are the 2nd flakiest devices in our house (2nd only to those complete shit Leviton light switches that lose their minds once a month). One more “no response” when I open you in HomeKit, and I swear…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know if a vacuum robot counts but it saves us tons of effort. We wake up to a freshly vacuumed home every morning.
You need to have a very specific house layout. My brother does. I don't. A Dyson stick vac is much more useful for me than a vacuum robot would be.