I just don’t get the reason to use them. Eventually the smart whatever will not be supported 10yrs from now with your phone or whatever, then you’ll be required to buy a new one. Regular locks, smoke detectors, etc, can last the life of the house.
Why the smart home bubble popped
81–90 of 107 posts
Re: Why the smart home bubble popped
#82I was going to say I feel like my smart home technology is working great. Then I remembered that I have to make shortcuts to bridge two products, it fails half the time, my ikea bridge has to be restarted every 30 minutes, and my smart garage door opener takes 30 seconds to respond now. So on second thought, yeah, this all sucks.
Maybe you should put a smart power socket in front of the Ikea bridge to power cycle it every 30 minutes? (I'll see myself out then.)
I actually purpose-bought a bluetooth smart switch, to which I have added a label called "The Internet" and a power strip to which the cable modem, router, home assistant hub, and whatnot are all plugged into.
That way if "The Internet" starts acting up, I can bluetooth-connect from the phone and power-cycle all the downstream devices, thus avoiding the "how to I get the wifi to commit suicide, but still be able to reconnect it?" situation.
Probably there's some other clever way, but that's what's working decently alright for me. :-D
Re: Why the smart home bubble popped
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not my Sonos setup doesn't, have had it for close to a decade now. Would replace it with brand new Sonos gear if I could. Also, wouldn't be hard to put in a solution to block that type of traffic over the mic.
Sonos updated its policies a.coupme years back to allow selling customer data. https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/1desj5c/sonos_update...
And what company doesn't?
Re: Why the smart home bubble popped
#84i have to be honest, each time a friend or co worker has demod or explained their “smart home” setup, i have always been pretty underwhelmed. a lot of complex doodads, money, and seeming never ending troubleshooting, to solve what seem to me at least, as a bunch of narrow frivolous problems that don’t really inconvenience me very much.
Re: Why the smart home bubble popped
#85The reason really is the extreme arrogance of every single manufacturer that wants you to install their app and use their ecosystem. That might have worked if one of them became super dominant and pushed everyone else out. But because that didn't happen, now I have to install 20 apps for 20 different manufacturers with no guarantees of interoperability. Instead of that I'm choosing to vote with my wallet and mostly s…
> every single manufacturer that wants you to install their app and use their ecosystem That's good. I don't want a single company to control everything in my house. Having multiple vendors with different implementations is healthy for the industry. The real problem is there's nothing "smart" about those "smart home devices" to begin with. They are just remotely controlled devices. Technically, someone or something s…
the business does not make money unless they sell your data. open software/hardware need to be treated as public goods like utilities. thats the only way to keep monopolies out and provide the fertile ground for competion.
Re: Why the smart home bubble popped
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also wants all three of wifi, Bluetooth, and location on, otherwise it provides a reminder that you have them switched off - even though it works just with wifi on.
Location permission is the weird one. Well yes the WLAN network ties to location. But still why can't it be absolutely clearly separate from satellite positioning systems...
you can add _nomap to a wifi ssid and apple/google should ignore the ap for location.
Re: Why the smart home bubble popped
#87Like a lot of tech trends, home automation tends to be a solution looking for a problem. Video doorbells are a useful exception, but light switches, kitchen appliances and thermostats just aren’t something I need to be connected to the internet.
Re: Why the smart home bubble popped
#88Like a lot of tech trends, home automation tends to be a solution looking for a problem. Video doorbells are a useful exception, but light switches, kitchen appliances and thermostats just aren’t something I need to be connected to the internet.
> but light switches
The internet? Probably not. Having smart switches is great though. Both for very basic automations and laying in bed going "oh shit I forgot to turn off the basement lights" style moments.
It's important though that all those things work together locally in a reliable manner. All mine fallback to "wired" mode if all else fails. The connectivity is just a bonus. One lightswitch near the bed to go into "bedtime mode" for all common areas of the house is pretty handy for me.
Smart locks are a great idea in theory, but the horribleness of the residential door lock standards make them kinda suck in practice in terms of mechanical reliability. I went with a full blown commercial access system and don't regret it. Being able to remotely add folks while I'm traveling or allowing temporary guest access without physical keys is great.
Honestly I find video doorbells a downgrade and an obnoxious addition to our anti-social societal trends. Although that's rather hypocritical since I also have one!
The big issue for me in the Home Automation space is every stupid manufacturer wanted their own silly standard and/or app to "own" the user experience. Fuck that.
Re: Why the smart home bubble popped
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use Home Assistant ( https://www.home-assistant.io/ ). It has an integration for lots of manufacturers. Single app, single entry point, cross manufacturer automations.
Home Assistant is well beyond the skills of the vast majority of people to install, set up, and maintain. And they don't want to have to maintain something like that. They want an appliance that they plug in and just works.
I have the skills to run HA, and I despise the fact I must use it for any reasonable multi-vendor ecosystem.
I'd much rather have an open version of Apple Home or whatnot, even if I paid for it. I really don't want to spend a bunch of time dicking around with home automation - I want it to simply do what I want it to do.
Re: Why the smart home bubble popped
#90The reason really is the extreme arrogance of every single manufacturer that wants you to install their app and use their ecosystem. That might have worked if one of them became super dominant and pushed everyone else out. But because that didn't happen, now I have to install 20 apps for 20 different manufacturers with no guarantees of interoperability. Instead of that I'm choosing to vote with my wallet and mostly s…
Matter is a solution to that. It's a standard pathway for things to talk to (say) a light bulb. The control interface is local, not cloud-based. And configuring a Matter device from $random_company doesn't require $random_company's bizarro-world app; instead, it involves a QR code or a short alphanumeric sequence. That Matter light bulb still needs something to control it, but the light bulb is not tied to one contro…
> The control interface is local, not cloud-based
Unfortunately you see quite a few manufacturers implement Matter in a way where they require a proprietary hub, and the proprietary hub requires a constant internet connection to work...