no thanks. I like switches and using my body. This kind of tech as progress is a fallacy.
Good for you. I personally wish I could control everything with my mind.
My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story
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Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story
#32no thanks. I like switches and using my body. This kind of tech as progress is a fallacy.
I'm not sure. I love my house, but the lights are insane with a switch under every overhead light, and using smart switches to control them has been so very useful. Generally I control all the lights in a room with 1 smart switch so I don't have to walk across the room to turn on all the lights in the room
My bedroom came with 3 switches in 2 panels across the room from each other, the kids room 2 in 2 locations, bathroom 4 in 1, kitchen 4 in 3, living room 6 in 2, dinning room 2 in 2.
Detailed example: It takes 4 light switches in 3 locations to turn on my kitchen lights:
• 1 panel - 3 sides of the kitchen ceiling lights switch, kitchen recessed lights switch
• separate panel 4 feet away on the other side of a counter - breakfast bar (4th side) ceiling light switch.
• final panel 10 feet to the right, down the breakfast bar counter to turn on the recessed breakfast bar lights.
Is it too much to ask that you circumnavigate the kitchen every morning to turn on the lights to make coffee? No, the previous owners did it every day for 20 some odd years. But do I want to do it? No.
And I certainly think it's progress that I can choose not to.
Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story
#33Home Assistant is great, but it will face huge hurdles as the founder tries to cash in on the popularity. It's already underway.
1) Nabu Casa was founded with a claim that "it will all be transparent and reported" as to income, etc, etc.
2) Then the "private" components happened only for Nabu Casa - like the cloud connection stuff.
3) A few years later when pointed out nothing was transparent yet the response was "We will not share this information."
3) Nabu Casa then started to hire up the more active community developers and set off on their own closed vision.
4) NC has bought up many of the associated pieces - the companion apps, the ESP32 stuff, etc, etc.
5) NC has hired many of the community developers and now quite some secrecy around the roadmaps and decisions.
6) You dare not question decisions or you get thrown off the forums and Discord channels for life. Many cases of this happening. They have a community manager who is particularly sensitive over any perceived negative comment and prone to going off to which the founder needs to step in and smooth the emotions. Not sure why they've not fired him after strike 4 or 5.
The end result is that Home Assistant is far less open than it was. It is going the same path pFsense did under the ownership of Netgate.
The challenge is many people invested into it and when it implodes it won't be pretty. I am hopeful someone forks it with a better community engagement model.
(I've been a user since the start, and a contributor in the early days. Left the community due to my work being monetized by NC without my consent.)
Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story
#34Not sure if I'm just getting older, but the less things/complications in my home, the more peace of mind I have. Been watching the youtube LTT channel on his smart home and I feel all the things going on would drive me crazy. This doesn't apply only to tech, but even for my next house (Looking into passive homes, least possible HVAC footprint, floorplan for minimal plumbing/electrical).
I feel that the vast majority home automation tech got the whole thing backwards.
They start with "we can do this" and then "let's see what we can bolt it on".
Instead, they should've started with small things like being able to toggle every existing switch from your phone. Let lazy people be lazy efficiently. Now that has a mass appeal and would've led to a better adoption. Once this is in place, then you can build on it - dimmers, hues, scheduled and presence lighting/heating, etc. Once this is done, accepted and integrated in everyday life, move to more advanced gadgetry.
Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story
#35When you sell a house like this... what do you leave behind and what do you take? This has increasingly been on my mind. I've no desire to sell soon, but there's a Nest doorbell that is wired in, so it stays. A Nest thermostat, which I could remove but when I got the boiler I chose to not have the control panel extra with timer as I knew I had Nest. Then the lighting, the motion sensors... should I take the few thous…
This does prevent doing some cool stuff, but I have a rule that everything still has to work without HA. Obviously automation won't, but at the end of the day, the light switches are still light switches. The sensors will simply just not send their stuff anywhere.
Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story
#36Not sure if I'm just getting older, but the less things/complications in my home, the more peace of mind I have. Been watching the youtube LTT channel on his smart home and I feel all the things going on would drive me crazy. This doesn't apply only to tech, but even for my next house (Looking into passive homes, least possible HVAC footprint, floorplan for minimal plumbing/electrical).
Misquoted from the Internet: Tech enthusiasts have voice-controlled smart home hubs; sysadmins have a printer and a gun next to it to shoot the printer if it starts acting up.
Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story
#37Home Assistant is great, but it will face huge hurdles as the founder tries to cash in on the popularity. It's already underway. 1) Nabu Casa was founded with a claim that "it will all be transparent and reported" as to income, etc, etc. 2) Then the "private" components happened only for Nabu Casa - like the cloud connection stuff. 3) A few years later when pointed out nothing was transparent yet the response was "We…
Hello, I’m the original creator of the Home Assistant iOS Companion App. Just wanted to clear up that Nabu Casa took over the iOS and Android apps purely because of requirements by Apple and Google around a corporation being the only entity that can have a development team. At no time did Nabu Casa pay any money to me or anyone else to acquire the apps. They were transferred to Nabu Casa purely for convenience, since Home Assistant Inc doesn’t exist.
Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story
#38When you sell a house like this... what do you leave behind and what do you take? This has increasingly been on my mind. I've no desire to sell soon, but there's a Nest doorbell that is wired in, so it stays. A Nest thermostat, which I could remove but when I got the boiler I chose to not have the control panel extra with timer as I knew I had Nest. Then the lighting, the motion sensors... should I take the few thous…
you wouldn't be required to perform KT. in Texas anything attached stays so even lightbulbs but you can also exclude anything explicitly.
I believe one of the hosts on the Coder Radio podcast moved into a home with some home automation stuff (light, heating and locks), but wasn't informed about the configuration or how to operate it. He described it as moving into a haunted house.
Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story
#39When you sell a house like this... what do you leave behind and what do you take? This has increasingly been on my mind. I've no desire to sell soon, but there's a Nest doorbell that is wired in, so it stays. A Nest thermostat, which I could remove but when I got the boiler I chose to not have the control panel extra with timer as I knew I had Nest. Then the lighting, the motion sensors... should I take the few thous…
This is why I opted for Shelly on my house build. The dimmers keep dimming and everything works regularly without a hub/HA/Wifi. Leaving the modules inside the light switches. No need for special bulbs and having switches with springs allows any light to be dimmed as long as the fixture/bulb supports it.
Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story
#40When you sell a house like this... what do you leave behind and what do you take? This has increasingly been on my mind. I've no desire to sell soon, but there's a Nest doorbell that is wired in, so it stays. A Nest thermostat, which I could remove but when I got the boiler I chose to not have the control panel extra with timer as I knew I had Nest. Then the lighting, the motion sensors... should I take the few thous…
I just did this, and it's... fun. Particularly account transfers--most devices that are tied to internet accounts (like Nest) don't allow you to transfer them to other accounts.
So hard-resetting them is often the only option, which is often a time consuming process in itself (I'm looking at you Insteon) and throws away the configuration.
I didn't even attempt to leave the HomeAssistant-based stuff in place.