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How do you move out of a smarthome?

shkspr.mobi

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Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#131

Post by djrogers »

mcculley wrote: post #7

I am dealing with this right now. I am fixing up my house to sell. I moved out of it into a new home a month ago. I disconnected the Internet connection at the house I am trying to sell. I have a Wink Relay there and I deleted my account from it before disconnecting the Internet. Now I can't use the physical switches to control the lights they are connected to. The designers of these devices are not thinking at all a…

I've installed some smart switches from both Lutron and Leviton, and both work just fine without an Internet connection.

My hue switches also control their hue lights just fine without any internet - although they do need the hue hub to be powered up.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#132

Post by myrandomcomment »

The issue here is the fragmentation in the authors system. While not as feature rich as the flavor of the day automation toy, I did my full house with Insteon. If I move, I would just change the email on the account to the new user and hand them the password and leave the $100 controller hub with them. Simple.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#133

Post by ashark »

lucaspiller wrote: post #100
ashark wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, it'll be less than 1% of the total time I spend doing touch-ups and such. Maybe three minutes to save, yeah, $50-75. A tiny extra amount of effort on the actual packing and move, but time saved buying new bulbs when the ones in the next house start burning out makes up for that. Besides, I've got most of 'em in in-socket splitters (makes one bulb socked into two) in crappy basement fixtures which I'm pretty sure…

Three minutes to change all the bulbs?

A half-dozen lightbulbs, and that long for taking the new ones out of the box and moving the ladder around.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#134

Post by WorldMaker »

sowbug wrote: post #120

Another modern-technology problem: how do you pass on your cryptocurrency wealth when you die? Wills, trusts, estate law, and legal force are meaningless if you've forgotten to provide your private keys to next of kin.

You can print out private keys (and passwords, etc) and put them in Trust. If you are feeling paranoid that you can't trust your Trustees, you can use something like Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm [1] to give individual Trustees only a portion of the private keys (or passwords, etc).

I explored at one point if there was a market for an app to automate that last part, but so far such noodling keeps winding up at a less generally useful Keybase.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#135

Post by titzer »

I just. don't. get. it.

All of this home automation and internet of things hype is going to end in tears. Computers are just. not. secure. They're not even necessary in these applications. I don't want tech that includes massive amounts of software doing the job of simple things. It just is not necessary. I'll walk over to the lightswitch and turn the lights on. I'll set the thermostat and use its old-school timers to save energy. I don't need it internet-enabled (and hackable). I don't need WiFi-enabled smoke alarms--especially if they have a damn microphone inside! (and yes, Nest smoke alarms have a microphone built-in for self-testing!?) I don't want to talk to Google or Amazon and ask them questions. I just don't need their services, and I sure as hell don't want them listening all the time. We seem to be in some kind of insane tech bubble where we need to put gluttonous software literally everywhere, often for nebulous gains. And if you aren't scared by pervasive surveillance, fine. Just imagine Russian script kiddies chuckling over your miserable sex lives. Or imagine how well your stupid internet-enabled doors and teddy bears will work in a cyberwar with Russia.

I leave my smartphone at home these days. Partly because I know what it is doing, and partly because I don't know what it is doing. Partly because I just want my old life back. I take walks and see cool things without needing to tweet about it or even take pictures. I am trying to get away from this madness.

(But here I am on hackernews, being a Luddite, oi.)

[edit: maybe my fears of downvoting were overblown.]

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#136

Post by kaffeemitsahne »

titzer wrote: post #135

I just. don't. get. it. All of this home automation and internet of things hype is going to end in tears. Computers are just. not. secure. They're not even necessary in these applications. I don't want tech that includes massive amounts of software doing the job of simple things. It just is not necessary. I'll walk over to the lightswitch and turn the lights on. I'll set the thermostat and use its old-school timers t…

I don't see why having a smartphone should prevent you from taking a walk and seeing cool things.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#137

Post by SN76477 »

titzer wrote: post #135

I just. don't. get. it. All of this home automation and internet of things hype is going to end in tears. Computers are just. not. secure. They're not even necessary in these applications. I don't want tech that includes massive amounts of software doing the job of simple things. It just is not necessary. I'll walk over to the lightswitch and turn the lights on. I'll set the thermostat and use its old-school timers t…

Im with you. I feel that we never stopped to ask ourselves how will this make the world better.

Sure automatically tweeting my pics is cute, but does it improve my life or anyones lives?

We are simply chasing novelty.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#138

Post by algaexe »

kaffeemitsahne wrote: post #136
titzer wrote: post #135

I just. don't. get. it. All of this home automation and internet of things hype is going to end in tears. Computers are just. not. secure. They're not even necessary in these applications. I don't want tech that includes massive amounts of software doing the job of simple things. It just is not necessary. I'll walk over to the lightswitch and turn the lights on. I'll set the thermostat and use its old-school timers t…

I don't see why having a smartphone should prevent you from taking a walk and seeing cool things.

Prevention is not the issue. It is the development of reactive thought patterns that result in being distracted too frequently. It's hard to think when you're used to not thinking at all.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#139

Post by ghaff »

dawnerd wrote: post #105
xkcd-sucks wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had this problem with Nest thermostats: One of them was "locked", as in the whole UI was behind a password, by the previous owner, who moved out and took his wifi AP. I then moved in with a new wifi AP with a new SSID and new password, and the thermostat obviously couldn't get network access. Without network access it could not be unlocked remotely, and without being unlocked its network could not be recon…

If I remember correctly there’s a micro usb on the back of the nest specifically to factory reset.

I bought a smoker a few months back. The top of the line model had Bluetooth. A smoker does not need Bluetooth.

Re: How do you move out of a smarthome?

#140

Post by Casseres »

titzer wrote: post #135

I just. don't. get. it. All of this home automation and internet of things hype is going to end in tears. Computers are just. not. secure. They're not even necessary in these applications. I don't want tech that includes massive amounts of software doing the job of simple things. It just is not necessary. I'll walk over to the lightswitch and turn the lights on. I'll set the thermostat and use its old-school timers t…

You're comments and views are completely acceptable here. The only reason you might get downvoted is your comments about being downvoted - a self-fulfilling prophecy. I would remove them as they don't add anything to the discussion.
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