91–100 of 205 posts
When your power goes out for a few minutes, what state does everything go into when it resumes?
However, with HA you could easily create an automation to set everything how you want it when the power comes back on. It could even be conditional based on the time of day or whatever else you want to consider.
I simply flick a switch to turn on lights. Opening shades is no problem for me, a physically fit human.
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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…
"toggle every existing switch from your phone" Home automation is not intuitive. It turns out that toggling every existing switch from your phone is not an ideal goal. Pulling out your phone to use your home automation gets annoying fast. The best home automation is a system that works without intervention. A good analogy is a digital thermostat vs a traditional analog one. A digital thermostat has the ability to cha…
I want SO BADLY to convert my switches to smart switches, but it feels impossible to find what i need. Good luck searching on Amazon, too. Search for Zigbee, and it will return page after page of zwave, proprietary, and other listings. It's impossible to wade through. I've tried and given up multiple times. This is what i need that is evidently so difficult to find: 1. Zigbee 2. 3-way 3. Dimmable 4. Beige (almond?) C…
Not 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).
So in the end I have lights that turn on in any room we're in and turn themselves off some time after we've left. My porch light adjusts itself according to time of day, and my laundry tells me when it's done, which is huge for us since it's in the basement.
I keep it simple (one JS file controls the whole house), but it's still a life improvement.
My toddler recently knocked over my poorly placed server which damaged the zwave dongle. Replacing it took a couple hours, but the week spent without the automations was noticable.
There's something about every room lighting up as I walk through the house that makes it feel more welcoming. A bit warmer.
Also, my son loves to turn off the dining room light and then try to run through the dining room as fast as he can without setting off the motion sensor. It turns on every time, but it's a joy to watch.
Not 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).
For me, a lot of that came down to making sure every automation I add is usable with the least amount of mental effort. For the longest time I didn't automate much at all and often questioned whether I needed all this or not, then we had a baby. Now we have a button in his nursery that will dim the lights, start playing white noise on a Google Home speaker, mark the start of a new nap on our Babybuddy instance, then…
I simply flick a switch to turn on lights. Opening shades is no problem for me, a physically fit human.
How do you flick that switch when you're on vacation and want your home to appear occupied?
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>I witnessed "smart" houses when my parents' blinders died in "down" position and had no manual override... or when the electricity was down and they couldn't start their wood stove because it needs electricity to work... Are you saying you have a stove that doesn't have an electronic starter? Are you on a digital or analog thermostat? Does your home heater work without electricity? New technology will always have an…
Are you saying you have a stove that doesn't have an electronic starter? Are you on a digital or analog thermostat? Does your home heater work without electricity? Historically and mostly today, a wood stove is a cast iron container you fill with wood mostly to heat a house. There have been innovations in shape, airflow etc to make them more efficient but they generally haven't used an electric lighter. Electric-ligh…
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Sufficiently advanced home automation is indistinguishable from a haunting. Lighting controlled by home-assistant is endlessly frustrating. Especially if zwave. The networks are slow, the devices are awkward to configure, and when things go wrong debugging is difficult. Sometimes it takes my lights a good 60 seconds to respond during which time I'll try a few different button dances which all then get lifo queued...…
I don't know what your Z-wave setup looks like, but all I've got are GE smart switches and GE smart outlets, controlled with Home Assistant using an Aeotec Z-stick. It works flawlessly with zero noticeable delay, 100% of the time. It sounds like you've either got some bad interference or bad devices.
Also, IIRC there is a bug in the zwave-js github issue tracker about the 700 series Z-sticks dropping commands. Sometimes I need to reboot for outgoing packets to reach devices from the Z-stick.
Home 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…
Other open source software (E.g. LibreOffice) has several shops that help businesses with support and integration/bug fixes