91–100 of 107 posts
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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.
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.
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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...
In what way?
I don't see any of them that require these things.
If you do see them yourself, then please use the space provided by clicking the "Reply" button to name-and-shame. Please be specific; I need this information in my life.
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Plus, their apps insist on advertising their other crap to you at every opportunity. Stop pestering me because you think I haven't given you enough money yet. Go away.
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.
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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.
Sure. Most people don't have much beneath-the-skin technical inclination at all. We see this right now in 3D printing: Bambu Labs printers are popular because they're simple to use: A person can unbox it, plug it in, load some filament, and start printing widgets from their pocket supercomputer basically immediately. But it is available as a plug-in appliance, and they're getting better and better at the Just Works a…
The 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…
The worst part of this is half of these are the same white labelled tuya devices that can simply bind to each other's apps or the original tuya app.. And half of them completely disable local network access... Like why?!
Matter is all fine but try making a matter device as a hobbyist, you quickly realize how it was designed for large companies and people simply choosing simpler solutions that they can copy and paste practically.
Two things I would say. One, reliability is real bad. Sometimes getting devices connected is a ridiculous pain in the ass. Sometimes automations just don't work. Sometimes devices just go dark and can't be brought back. Etc. etc. etc. So, you don't really want to engage, and you don't really want to make it a critical part of your home. Or said another way: it prevents you from tinkering in a fun way. When kids were learning BASIC on their home computers, things were pretty reliable. Not always, I mean hardware failure or whatever happens. But it was good and the feedback cycles were short. You're not gonna get people curious and thus experts with the existing smart home devex.
The second is we expect practically nothing from people in our culture. You don't need to be an expert in radio communications to know like, more walls between a device and your AP is bad, or that channels can get crowded. You don't need to be a tech wizard to know how to reset a device (you look in the manual or search online). We should be embarrassed that some of the most educated and wealthy people in history can't perform even basic logic or troubleshooting.
The 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…
The 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…
Imagine that every vendor would have different implementation of TCP/IP stack.
Matter is hopefully changing it. It's a local first standard, based on IPv6 with security and provisioning in mind. BLE is used to give devices wifi or Thread credentials. Thread is a new protocol to replace ZigBee. Lower power using the same radio hardware. Ikeas new line is all Matter. My one issue, while building a custom HA controller is... There's no standard for discovering the HA controller and have it join Wi…
It may have it's place in the consumer market, but with product financing from major adtech firms it is clear the ultimate incentives are different than that of the licensed Z-Wave revenue model.