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Comment by AnIdiotOnTheNet | Hacker News Reader

This is why I still use a 720p LCD TV from the early 2000s.

Am I ever tempted to get a bigger, higher-def, TV? Sure, but then I remember that they're all "smart" and realize I don't actually have a problem with how I'm watching TV now.

I don't want smart anything in my house. My lights are hardwired to a switch on the wall. My washer and drier need me to turn dials and push buttons and go ding when they're done. My fridge has no microprocessor in it.

I honestly don't understand people who want all this internet connected garbage. These things weren't broke, they don't need fixing!

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> I honestly don't understand people who want all this internet connected garbage.

Because it’s convenient. As I leave work, my home’s AC turns on. When I arrive and open the door, my lights fade on and my blinds gradually roll up. My music seamlessly transitions to my home theatre with a tap. If someone’s at my door, it appears on my TV. When it’s time to go to bed I can turn everything off with a murmur. Adjust my temperature to be absolutely perfect without getting out of bed. When it’s time to wake up, the lights gradually increase in intensity, and my blinds automatically open again. I can ask for my schedule and whether I need a jacket while getting ready for work. Have my car turn on the AC as I leave my apartment, and have my lights, blinds, and AC automatically turn off when I leave home.

The little things add up. Life in a connected home is easier. I can spend the time saved on things that actually matter. All that is well worth the marginal privacy impact of HomeKit for most people.

i think people who repair and make stuff hate these sorts of things because they introduce a layer of complexity that ruins longevity and predictability. what you call convenience, i call added costs down the line, and unreliability. also, the "time saved" is a bit like saying modal editors are good because you can enter text more efficiently. its all technically true, but seems irrelevant to me (and i use vim exclusively). but i have to concede that this idea of IOT home convenience stuff may be legitimately useful for some people, like yourself. it just seems to be the case that thats only true for some people.

> introduce a layer of complexity that ruins longevity and predictability.

These are more growing pains than anything else. Adding a HomeKit appliance is absurdly simply these days (you just scan it with your phone) and then it just works.

> the "time saved" is a bit like saying modal editors are good because you can enter text more efficiently

It’s not an insignificant amount. If you live in a highly connected smart home, you will definitely notice the saved time and you will definitely notice how you simply have to do less things. There’s a sort of lightened cognitive load that’s difficult to describe. Things just feel more chill when you can adjust conditions to perfection without lifting a finger.

There is a level of internal complexity implied within "it just works," and an added layer of frustration when someday down the line, it just doesn't work. Eventually an electronic component wears out, or the manufacturer shuts down their server, or your phone is no longer supported.

I have always loved the idea of a connected house, but I haven't yet seen a feature that would make it worth the trouble of installation, added cost, and yet another app to control my life.

Curious if, in ten years, the HomeKit appliances of today will still work. Or will you have to find a decades-old phone to control them?

It's always interesting to see vestiges of a home intercom in really old homes, the phone jacks in bedrooms, ladder-style wire for TV aerials mounted in the walls, bits of some kind of home-alarm system....

I don't know specifically about HomeKit, no experience with it, but many of the underlying standards are "old". E.g. Zigbee is 20+ years old and was standardized in 2003.

Most of these systems today also let you put in place one hub per standard you care about, and then just update devices, and you can mix and match. Some, like Zigbee, are standards supported by multiple manufacturers. The radiator thermostat interface I rely on is standard for UK radiators at least, and is physical and pre-dates electronic thermostats by decades - the smart thermostats physically press down on a switch on the radiators; to replace them with another standard - or a manual one - you just twist the old one off and twist a new one one, done in ~2 minutes.

They similarly communicate with a hub, and an optional central boiler thermostat. The boiler thermostat is the only part that took any time to figure out (but there are plenty of installer services available), and the thermostat interface for boilers in the UK at least is built so that anyone can build replacements; you just need something that can switch a current.

Keep in mind that the only thing that is new here is the network enabled smart control - many of the interfaces are already really old and established.

I have ~20 Zigbee lightbulbs. I also have some LightwaveRF switches. As I refurbish and/or as the Zigbee bulbs die, I'll slowly replace the Zigbee lightbulbs with Lightwave switches as they are more convenient. But the difference is small enough that I've not bothered going over the house to replace them all. If either one of them become hard or expensive to come by, I'll just at that point add a hub that can bridge between a new standard and whatever device I use to interact with them. Setting up the Lightwave hub took me less than half an hour. If I have to invest half an hour to add a new type of hub every 10-20 years, I'm fine with that.

In this case, if Lightwave "dies" entirely and becomes impossible to support, I'll lose the smart functionality of those switches, but nothing else is hard-wired (the Zigbee setup is all mesh between the bulbs themselves, and a hub built into one of my Alexas, and they too require no extra wiring that a normal switch doesn't, and fall back to working like a slightly fancy normal switch if the network is unavailable, and someone unaware of Lightwave wouldn't know anything was broken. And that's what I'd face while transitioning to something new.

well, what your saying is not insane. but i would think id need to see these products in use for another 5-10 years before id feel like they were worth the trouble. i.e. the end of life cycle is kind of uncharted territory. is apple just going to brick everything like they did with their old phones? are they going to crap out because of power surges? etc...

I don’t know how to measure but my intuition is choice support bias is at play here and from many proponents of “highly connected” homes. HomeKit seems to be nearly as fiddly as roll your own solutions and the cognitive load for additional debugging and layers of complexity seems to outweigh the gains. But these are just two points of view.

My brother is a gadget freak. He loves the stuff. But after a couple years his home automation was broken.

After 2 hours of debugging he told me all he could think of is what is wrong with just a plain light switch.

This stuff is great when it works but when it fails it’s just a huge frustrating time suck.

Life in a connected home is easier. I can spend the time saved on things that actually matter.

Philosophical point: If everything you do is under the whims of large corporations, does anything "actually matter" anymore? Is it really your life, or are you just "living" an empty existence controlled by global faceless entities who seek to maximise only their profits?

"We fight because we live. We live because we fight."

> If everything you do is under the whims of large corporations, does anything "actually matter" anymore?

First, you already live life at the whims of many other entities. Whether you use HomeKit or not, will most certainly not be the breaking point for your freedom.

Second, what relation does being under some level of control have to the value of life? For example, would an otherwise fulfilling life under a monarch be empty and meaningless?

Who said anything about big corporations? Maybe all of his stuff uses zigbee or z-wave and is controlled by FOSS controllers?

I believe we were talking about all the major "smart" television manufacturers.

Wether they use a Zigbee under the hood is orthogonal.

The post we are responding to had only one smart TV element involved, and that was the door camera. The rest was about thermostats, light control, and window shades.

I think its fair to point out that those things don't have to be proprietary. Even the door camera doesn't really have to use a smart tv, though it probably does in that case.

You are living the Tony Stark life lol.

Ah, that’s the dream. At least for me!

Most of that stuff aside from the surveillance feed you could set up, probably in a lot less time, with analog outlet timers. My grandparents had a setup similar to this smart home setup 30 years ago.

I’d love to see an estimate of how much time per year saved. My suspicion is, not much. And my bet would be that one or two outages (likely to happen at some point with these devices) would tip the scale the other way.

Nothing wrong with liking cool stuff, but this type of argument doesn’t resonate with me.

Phillips hue works like a normal light if there is no internet or if you cycle the power from the switch.

Mine works completely if there is no internet. I like the Hue system as it only relies on the internet connection for software updates of you want them. The Zigbee network it uses has been super reliable for me, and always responds to the app which only needs to work on my LAN. It only gets spotty sometimes for me when used via Amazon Echo devices, which have to phone home to interpret the voice command before triggering the Hue devices.

Yes good point. I always have internet so I never noticed but of course it's all on the local network.

Your approach sounds similar to mine. While it is true the switches work without internet, out even without the local controller - I just learned the hard way that they don't work at all when the capacitor inside dies. Keep a dumb switch on hand so you can swap it in when you have a light you can no longer turn on!

I had 2 die recently. The is a thread out there on repairing them, but I don't think my soldering skills are that good. I'm also thinking "repair my light switch?" What has the world come to?

I was considering buying a bunch of hue bulbs but this feature is making me hesitant: The hue bulbs can “remember” their last setting, but if you power cycle them twice in a row (without waiting ~15 seconds in between) then they reset to the default brightness & color.

I don’t care about any of this automatic timing or app control. What I want is for every lightbulb in my house set to the same color temperature, and for that temperature to change over the course of the day - circadian lighting like f.lux for my entire house. It seemed to me that this should be possible with hue bulbs, but it turns out they can’t work that way unless I want to also replace all of the switches in my house with “smart” switches.

I didn’t replace the switches. They’re additional. The smart switch and the dumb switch both work. One great advantage is you can use a greater variety of bulbs and due to this fixture positioning is much more flexible. You can turn on 20 bulbs at once if you like. Make zones in your house. Turn on the whole house at once. Timers, programmed changes etc etc

The other guy is right - if you have a network outage your appliances revert to “normal” behavior.

But even after that, it’s not just about the time saved. It’s an increased amount of convenience in day to day life. I mentioned this in another comment, but you definitely feel a sort of reduction in cognitive load when your desired home state can be triggered with a spoken word.

> if you have a network outage your appliances revert to “normal” behavior.

Would that that were true. Internet of Shit is rife with examples of products that fail completely without connectivity.

https://twitter.com/internetofshit

Light switches cause cognitive load? If anything, people have too little cognitive load keeping their brains off most of the time.

It's not about time savings. To me at least. It's the feeling of convenience and comfort.

Yeah, idk why all of these comments are focused on time savings. That’s not the point.

The point is that when you wake up and it’s cold in your house, and you don’t want to get out of bed, you can flip on your heat and warm up the house while you’re still waking up.

Or if you left the house and forgot if you turned off the lights. Or left the AC on for the pets. Your 25 year old switches aren’t going to help you there.

Or another one I always use - if it’s raining out and I have full hands, I will unlock my front door before I get out of my car, so I can just walk right in.

>I can spend the time saved on things that actually matter.

Because that literally was the sole point of benefits in the GP post!

It literally wasn't. You left out:

> The little things add up. Life in a connected home is easier

I think the fact that you interpreted that, followed by a point about saving time, as only implying saved time is part of the huge disconnect in these discussions.

Some of the functionality saves me time. When I don't have to go downstairs to turn off a light I forgot downstairs when I've already gotten into bed, saves time, sure. But the saved time, to me at least, is entirely incidental.

I have no idea whether it adds up to enough to offset the time I've taken to set things up (I also, however, think that people massively overestimate the effort involved; I set up a couple of hubs, replaced the lightbulbs in my house in a couple of hours total several years ago; replaced radiator valves in a couple of hours), but it's entirely irrelevant to me.

I would do this all over again even if I knew it'd take me ten times as long to set up as all the time I'll "save" over my lifetime

Because I value the comfort of e.g. adjusting the heating before I get up (yes, I can get timers; my thermostat already uses a timer, but sometimes I deviate from my normal schedule), or turn off the light without having to get back out of bed far more than the time saved.

We all have things we invest time in preparing for so that the event itself doesn't get interrupted by small annoyances, even if it doesn't "pay off" in saved time. A "smart home" is that first and foremost.

HomeKit is so bad and clunky I had to delete it and just use the proprietary apps shipped with the iot products we use. I really wish they tried to do less and opened up their OS to better developers to build their own solutions instead.

But won't having to sit through a few additional ads wipe out all of those time savings? Not to mention the time spent on setting them up in a way to make the appliances not spy on you.

I’m talking more about general smart appliances than smart TVs. I don’t connect my smart TV to the internet, that’s the job of the Apple TV or Nvidia Shield.

How much time or effort is this actually saving you? Maybe its just me, but id say i spend maybe a few minutes doing these tasks every year. A lot of this is achievable without smart technology anyways

Originally I thought the same as you, but when I tried it, I noticed that it actually saves way more time than I expected.

I think we simply don’t notice the amount of time spent on the little, meaningless things. For me, once things were connected it kind of felt like I had aliased a commonly-used command.

You could also argue that the saved time was already spent in researching which smart home appliances to get (bad ones can be a flaky nightmare), which is a fair argument. For me, though, the increased convenience in actual day to day use was well worth it.

Maybe you overestimate the amount of time you save? Ive definitely noticed that when i get a something thats a time saver, i tend to overestimate how much time it saved, maybe its more that mental load of not having to worry about it.

I wanted to install a system to automatically switch lights on and off when I enter/leave the room, but a quick calculation showed that the system will pay off in maybe 10 years, with today's efficient LED lights. And it will sure not work 100% exactly as expected, causing frustration.

I flick lights on and off as I enter a room, which I agree, might use 1/8th of a second each time, say 2 seconds a day. And the light switches are well over two decades old. I have given them 0 thought over those years, and don't expect I will for a few more decades.

A simple $25 programmable thermostat keeps the temperatures moderated. It may use a bit more energy if I'm running a different schedule than usual, but again - decades old, works fine. Car AC, again - works fine, turns on when I turn on the car. My blinds go up and down when I want them to, which has nothing to do with my schedule.

Nothing you've listed (or anyone else who talks about smart homes) is even a positive to me, let alone a time saver.

For me, the real killer was being able to turn off all the lights in the house from my bed.

I could live without it (and currently am, due to an apartment move), but it was certainly handy.

Phones are too dirty to be allowed in bed. This was my thinking pre Covid 69 too. In my opinion it's like wearing shoes in bed.

Why, because you take it outside?

Maybe it's a loving bed, not a doomscrolling bed. Mad respect

If they're worried about "dirt" on the phone, I doubt it's anything than a "lie down and worry needlessly about cleanniness and heath" bed...

That's just hypochondria speaking...

Of course, smart homes are not for everyone - just telling the OP why some people prefer them.

I didn’t go into detail, but smart home appliances have more variability than I described. Let’s take lights. If you want to play a movie on the TV you can turn your lights off (all of them) from the couch. If you’re listening to music, you can set the lights to a warm relaxing glow. So on and so forth. Definitely more than 2 seconds saved, and in the end, it wasn’t just the time saved but the added convenience and personalization that was worth it for me.

Sure, you can do most of these things with “dumb” appliances, but that’s just it. You won’t get the same level of control, personalization, adaptability, or “smarts” - if any of that matters to you.

Speaking as a remodeller of homes, which includes installing the occasional "smart home" systems. They are so not worth it. The rest is marketing.

You can't reason with iHome people, trust me, I've tried.

Wait until you meet an OpenHAB person!

What I like most about my smart home (and it works without internet) is that my garage door gets closed when I forget to. And the ability to turn on floodlights in the yard from outside.

Not used as much, but turning on the A/C before arriving home from a long trip sure is nice. That obviously requires the internet, but I refuse to use a third party.

Downsides - 2 dead smart switches in 2 weeks. They aren't cheap and should last a lot longer.

Dumb garage door closers with programmable timers exist.

The same goes for hvac. Configuration might be more complicated but I'd rather walk into a sweltering home than have a massive power bill when some script kid pwns my system and sets the temp to 50f for two weeks.

50f is pretty cold for indoor temps. My house is in the 65 to 73 range all the time.

You know a dumb HVAC thermostat that can somehow know when I'll return home from a trip when I don't know when I'll return? I'll take 2!

Humor aside, I'm still interested in what you are referring to. I'm not aware of a way to do that, but maybe didn't know what to look for.

I was interested in a thermostat with an API that worked locally, no internet needed and no 3rd party required and that is what I went with. Paired with the alarm system (old school, hard wired, it doesn't know what the internet is) it can alert me when the A/C is on, but a window is open.

Most of the dumb thermostats are 7 day at best. I couldn't find one in a 5 minutes of searching so I gave up. I'd be surprised if they don't exist though.

A 7 day may not be sufficient for an 8 day trip unless you can have a friend or family member drop by to adjust the settings, but I'm definitely going to keep this in the back of my head for when I inevitably need to upgrade my HVAC.

My experience with all of this stuff is the setup and configuration time is far longer than I think I would ever save from the convenience.

The only investment I've found that's actually worth it is a home entertainment network like plex. Having all my family videos available in every room and every device connected to my Wi-Fi with a few clicks or a link and a shared user account has been worth the dozens of hours I've spent building my library, rebuilding my home server, upgrading components, managing updates, and debugging edge cases. Would I like lights to turn on and off when I enter and exit rooms? Yeah, but smart switches don't cover all of my use cases naturally and without manual overrides and the convenience isn't worth the thousands of dollars to retrofit my house for an immature technology.

> Would I like lights to turn on and off when I enter and exit rooms?

Good news, we've had motion detecting light switches for decades.

As a side effect, the motion-sensing lights in my office turn off if I don’t get up and move every so often, which reminds me to exercise.

"Our smart light switches are equipped with PersonalCoach™. PersonalCoach™ is an interactive exercise experience using the latest technologies to alter the user's environment in order to make exercise fun and seamlessly integrated into daily life."

I have wasted so much time configuring smart home junk...honestly the parent post reads like its mocking my experience with this stuff.

My apartment is a patchwork quilt of perpetually out of date devices each with their own utterly garbage app (or underwhelming homekit integration, or arcane homeassistant yaml incantation if I’m feeling really optimistic).

Various devices and integrations work poorly together if at all, the hubs are updated and old devices are left behind, a failed lightbulb update seemingly bricks it, but an hour of fiddling returns it from the dead, but now it still shows up in various apps under the wrong name and can’t be purged. Siri doesn’t know how to set color temperatures and bulbs look slightly weird depending on who set them with what integration.

My $700 air conditioner forgets about the wifi after being on standby for 24 hours and can’t be activated remotely when coming home from a weekend away. I have multiple wireless hifi dongles because they only work properly with certain devices. Some devices are MIA for minutes at a time despite strong wifi throughout my very modestly sized apartment.

I own smart home products from several brands and have spent hours configuring and/or debugging these things. I am over it. Very few things I have bought have lived up to their promise.

I’m so glad I avoided getting a smart TV the last time I was on the market. My parents smart Samsung is just a few years old, but, as I learned on my last visit, is no longer supported for many of the current streaming apps, so they need a new streaming device to plug into it!

> My parents smart Samsung is just a few years old, but, as I learned on my last visit, is no longer supported for many of the current streaming apps, so they need a new streaming device to plug into it!

I think a dumb TV with an external device is always better and hit this same path with relatives. The normal TV companies have no incentive to keep people happy for years with a dumb TV, so I use a laptop for TV and would only upgrade to a video projector.

I think a dumb TV with an external device is always better and hit this same path with relatives.

We have "smart" TV that has never been and never will be connected to the Internet with an AppleTV connected over HDMI. Works well and when it's time to upgrade - which we are in no hurry to do - just the little box needs replacing. Unfortunately at some point the TV will fail, because things do, and then I doubt we will be able to buy one without its own dedicated 5G connection just for "telemetry" back to the manufacturer.

I don't use a smart home system from a company, just my own scripts for different systems and to glue them together. Was it worth my time? No, not at all, but it was a good excuse to play with languages I wasn't familiar with and learn some new things.

Time spent just configuring a pre-built system, that, in my opinion, is time wasted because it isn't likely that I can apply it to anything else.

Some of the listed uses are not about saving time or energy - though admittedly most were, and seem excessive to me as well.

The automated lights and blinds in the morning, for example, can for some improve sleep quality compared to a standard alarm. Then again this would probably be better as dumb blinds and lights on timers.

It is mostly convenience (for me). I think most people talking savings are just trying to justify the toys.

I have a few smart switches that I can't say are anything more than convenience, but one smart plug paid for itself in 7 months and now saves me a whooping $4 per month on propane. A dumb timer would almost work, but the smart plug makes it so I can handle the exceptions to the rule.

Let's follow up in 50 years to see if you still think it's convenient.

My house has still has some knob and tube wiring. Sure, let's see what 50 years brings.

Pft. If you can't envision how "phoning home" and turning the heat or AC, or whatever else you may have, on (or off) is handy then you aren't even trying.

Handy enough to warrant the risk? Probably not, but that doesn't negate the usefulness of the tech in general. But as is, you're just bitter like a fox unable to reach grapes... (totally something foxes eat.)

Anyways, just don't say silly things like "automation, lame!" just because you're (justly) paranoid about cloud companies giving your data to the government and every social engineer. It's still a good goal, the point is just that we should control our own data.

There's no need to call someone "bitter" or "paranoid" simply because they don't value the rather minor conveniences smart devices promise.

For many people (including me), manually adjusting AC and lights or getting up to check the door simply isn't enough of a pain point to create interest in smart devices.

> If you can't envision how "phoning home" and turning the heat or AC, or whatever else you may have, on (or off) is handy then you aren't even trying.

I don't have AC. If I turn off the heat, my pipes will burst. I can't see a reason to turn lights or fridges on/off when I'm not there.

> just don't say silly things like "automation, lame!"

I didn't. I said I honestly can't see the utility in any of it.

Totally agree, the whole smart IoT stuff is just what Feynman described in his book when his engineering team switched to computers and punchcards instead of doing manual calculations: While the problems could be solved faster, the team started "playing" with that technology becoming fascinated, and in the end the net result was less throughput and problem solving than before.

I also had a guy once showing off his new Apple Watch, showing how he can now switch his lights on/off on the watch and would no longer have to get up to do this. Literally 2 minutes later he showed me how his "Health app" on the watch would remind him every hour to get up from sitting too much, to "improve his health". You just can't make that stuff up.

I think Feynman's engineering team was right, mid-to-long-term. Playing was a good choice, because as they were finding their footing with new technology, they gained the necessary know-how to do calculations that would be infeasible to be done by hand - ultimately expanding both capabilities and efficiency. I bet you could trace parts of modern CFD all the way back to those engineers "playing with computers".

IoT doesn't offer that kind of growth, though. These are all tightly packaged appliances, their whole raison d'etre is to trick you into a subscription to a cloud service. Unless you're running custom software on DIY IoT connected to Home Assistant, or buying a custom deployment from an old-school home automation company, there's no space to grow here. You aren't going to make your home more ergonomic to use than you could with dumb switches, dumb thermostats, remotes and electric outlet timers. You'll just spend a lot of money and tweak a few trivial settings on an app to get something approximating your needs, and then have half of it stop working whenever your ISP drops your Internet connection for a few minutes; you'll have to replace appliances piece by piece as services backing them thank you for your incredible journey together, and eventually redo your setup/configuration with the next big cycle of upgrades.

So no, I think it's not playing like Feynman's engineers. It's playing like buying very expensive clothes and jewelry - it's paying for status, and has no lasting value beyond what you can make out of your temporary boost in status.

EDIT: FWIW had my phase of smart lights controlled from a watch - in my case it was Hue lights hooked up to my Pebble. It was more streamlined than you could ever do with Apple Watch, by virtue of Pebble having actual buttons, and control going purely through LAN (Pebble -> Tasker on Android -> Hue Bridge -> Lightbulb). After a week of fun, I realized that most of the time, it's still the second least ergonomic option (the absolute worst was controlling from an app). What I settled on is a combination of dumb switches when on the move (usually faster to reach than even my watch), and a CLI script when near my computer[0].

Also this taught me that the most important component in IoT lights is... smart light switches. Which weren't cheap or easy to get those 6 years ago when I bought my Hue lights, so I had none. With dumb switches, whenever I used them - or my guests used them - they'd screw up the light setup and made bulbs inaccessible over network. I ended up putting a bit of Lisp code on Raspberry Pi, that monitored for lightbulbs that just reappeared on the network, and immediately reconfigured them to a desired state. It's a kind of workaround that you don't get to do if you just buy into neatly packaged, cloud-powered IoT appliances.

[0] - https://github.com/TeMPOraL/hju

I don't think I've ever felt inconvenienced that I had to manually flip a light switch. I have, on the other hand, felt inconvenienced plenty of times by machines that try to guess what I want and get it wrong.

This reads like an American Psycho monologue (no offense).

Personally, I enjoyed the ceremony of opening blinds, turn on the lights when I returned from work.

I found this "convenience" is mostly not convenient at all, wastes a lot of time, brings a lot of frustration and sometimes is outright dangerous. For example, an internet connected CO2 detector provides a perfect way for burglars to detect when no one is at home.

Connections are always broke, wifi passwords are forgotten, sites not accessible, phone number does not pass verification process etc. Thankfully, all my devices still have buttons that allow them to operate without internet connection, but I fear that will not be the case in the future ..

Does it all work that seamlessly? If so, that sounds lovely.

As a software engineer with a master's degree in computer science engineering and over a decade of experience working on high reliability embedded systems, I'm about ready to just give up and expel any electronics from my home more elaborate than a dimmable LED lightbulb.

On the other hand, maybe consumer electronics are flaky for me due to the fact that there's 20+ other wifi access points in range besides my own, and half my electric sockets are still on 100 year old knob and tube wiring...

These stories almost reads like a parody or a dystopia. What's the next step of automation ? To be put in an artificial coma in sleeping pods to conserve as much energy and live as long as possible in some kind of VR in which nothing bad ever happens ?

So much time, energy and money spent on something that tells you who's at the door or if you need a damned jacket... So many gadgets that need to be manufactured and shipped to the other side of the world to open your blinds... I can already see a future in which people don't know how to use a "dumb" door knobs

All this shit will end up in a landfill in less than 50 years, and probably be deprecated well before. The amount of waste generated for such a minor improvement of quality of life over good old proven tech which are a fraction of the cost, waste and maintenance (light switches, regular timed central heating/cooling, weather reports and peepholes). These things are the literal opposite of sustainability.

Did we all collectively go mad ?

It's okay if you decide for yourself that you want no part in this. But I don't think our global waste problem will be solved by berating people that enjoy smart homes as a hobby, convenience, or both.

I've been a fan for about 5 years now and I have everything connected as well. It used to be a big pain and it still can be sometimes, so I don't agree 100% with the comment you replied on that it saves time in a significant way. Though I assume that depends on your setup and how much you tinker with it. I know I will never get back the time I invested over the years in trying to make things work by not having to press light switches anymore.

But you know what? It's fun. I like it. It's the closest thing to an Iron Man like house we have so far. And I will be damned if I let it be ruined by you shaking your head and calling us enthusiasts mad.

> But you know what? It's fun. I like it. It's the closest thing to an Iron Man like house we have so far.

That's the only argument I can accept, "it's cool". I still believe it's not sustainable in any way, shape or form and that it's going to be a major pain in the ass down the line both in term of waste and long term maintenance.

It's like huge diesel trucks running straight pipes, some people think it's fun, I'm glad most people don't and that most places ban them.

We'd get more time to spend on "real life" if we used automation's productivity improvements to reduce working hours to 4 hours a day rather than by getting gadgets rolling our blinds and setting the AC automatically.

That's fair. But it's a valid argument, don't you think?

I mean, I agree - of course we'd be better off if we finally got a grip on our mad consumerism. Granted, I don't have any numbers, but from my gut feeling, I would wager that huge diesel trucks are a bit more extreme, impact wise. Of course these gadgets are not great from an environmental perspective. But pretty much nothing is if you break it down. You can expand your argument to almost any area. From phones to gaming consoles to plastic toys for kids to clothes ... everything is going to end up in a landfill eventually and we'd be better off not using these things in the first place. I hope this doesn't sound like whataboutism, that's not what I try to say. I just think it's kind of odd to single out smart home devices when talking about the environment. I'd be gladly proven wrong though.

I don't quite know what to make of the last sentence of your comment. Yeah, automation's productivity improvements to reduce working hours to 4 hours a day would be sweet. Sign me up, I'd even sacrifice all my smart home stuff for it. But it's got literally nothing to do with the argument at hand. It's not like the people have chosen that we want to control our lights with our voice over cutting our working days in half. Unless you mean that you just can't understand the argument that the smart home automation gives us more time to focus on real life. That I agree with. But again, that's not the point. It's fun.

Regarding long term maintenance: we're in the very early stages still. I sincerely hope for more cross-compatibility further down the road. Also, open source projects have done wonders so far to increase the maintainability of smart home products. But that's for enthusiasts, not your everyday I-bought-alexa-and-hue smart home fan.

It's like people only see one side of home automation: "everything is connected to the internet"

Please do some reading or at least inform yourself this is not the case.

99% of all "smart" devices in my home are connected to local APIs only without any need for the internet.

Have you ever used a car from 1970 ? How's the electronic holding ? Internet isn't the only issue, instead of a physical switch you introduce 50 points of failure to save 5 seconds per day.

Last year my parent's electric blind motor died, no manual backup, they had to wait two weeks for a replacement, this was a large window/door thing, it was in closed position and blocked 70% of the daylight in the living room/kitchen. The house is not even 5 years old, I dread the day I inherit it and have to deal with this bs

It isn’t even really that convenient having smart home devices. Managing the extra network overhead to keep their spying packets away from everything else is not convenient. I wouldn’t mind a smart TV but I want root access if I buy one

I just toss them on their own VLAN.

My dishwasher and washing machine do meaningful work for me, saving many hours each day/week. But what you describe is saving a minute here, a second there. Spending time on things that matter is all well and good, but is there really a difference between doing those things for 4 hours rather than 3 hours and 52 minutes?

No it's CHEAP. A 31" Sony Trimaster costs $30,000. Getting a 4K OLED screen the size of a windshield for $1,500 is beyond suspicious.

The other day I went to my parent's place. I literally couldn't turn the lights on because the Google Home there didn't recognise me. Smart things that add value are okay, but smart things with a single point of failure are just stupid.

That does indeed seem stupid. There are plenty of smart switches that also have buttons.

To be honest, I think they've gotten so used to not using the switches they don't realise they're not working. Will be inconvenient if the internet goes down...

I keep seeing this exact comment at the top in every thread about smart devices. It's basically copypasta at this point. Even the replies follow the same pattern we've seen a thousand times.

I wish there was a way to detect "standard comments" and filter them out or put them in a different tab. It's not just this topic. Another example is the "I quit X and couldn't be happier" we see in every thread about Big Tech, regardless of the content of the article.

I understand that these comments resonate with a lot of people but when clicking a thread I expect to read comments about the actual topic (the new intrusive ads that LG just introduced), not generic comments about smart devices in general.

Ugh, in every thread there's some guy complaining about people's opinions, just because they don't specifically mention the brands and events from the specifc article linked.

"A Panasonic TV gave your voice-search data to the police? Irrelevant! We're discussing a Mitsubishi smart-stove phoning the FBI because it detected you cooking Panda meat."

I wish these people would realize that the problem is smart devices in general and stop complaining that the tiniest of circumstances make an entirely new case.

I understand that this sort of emotional populism resonates with people: "lol, no - this case is totally different and you have to suck it!" but when I click on a headline I expect to see people engaging with the heart of the issue, not dodging and dissembling because they're offended by the implications.

----

Yeah, I get ya. It is annoying that people don't address the specific topic at hand, but you have to realize that the specific brand (LG) of the TV isn't the issue - companies blatantly invading our privacy is. If we get too distracted on which company is doing it this week we'll look up in a few years and realize we're arguing over whether Samsung or LG is sending our records to the government instead of fighting for a blanket users-rights bill and it'll be too late, both will be.

For me personally, as an owner of an LG device who just yesterday had to accept new T&Cs for these ads, I'm very interested in the actual topic but I understand your point. That's why I'm theorizing about a function separating "general comments" from "topic-specific comments".

I've got a Samsung TV. Don't code that function to be too specific or we won't be able to share legal resources.

So far I've only got minor ads in the options screen and when switching inputs but if you guys roll over (or spend your efforts fighting other smart-device owners) then who knows.

I imagine for many (most?) people, it's not that they want the "internet connected garbage"; it's that they want the big 4k TV and they're wiling to put up with the garbage that comes with it.

They also want streaming from their service of choice (thus "apps") and casting.

That's kind of it, though. Nobody asked for ads. Of course it makes the manufacturer money, but also severely degrades the UX. I wonder how much higher demand would need to get for them to offer a shit-free experience for a bit more money.

I imagine most people on HN would take the latter, but most people in the broader population aren't that bothered by ads, and most people would probably put up with ads rather than pay e.g. an extra $50 (especially if it's a side-to-side option, like an "ad-free upgrade").

The kindle is probably a good test case for this hypothesis. The base version has an option to show ads on the off screen for a nominally reduced purchase price. I wonder how many people choose ads.

I also wonder what kind of price sensitivity we are looking at when it comes to a 1,500 tv.

The trouble is the people who will spend money to remove ads are exactly the people who the advertisers want to target.

Just don't connect it to WiFi. Problem solved.

I have a Mac mini serving content to the (not dumb, but deaf, dumb and blind) TV.

I heard rumor (that sounded believable enough to me) that the content-detection part of "smart TVs" (i.e. they sample pixels in each frame to figure out what show you're watching) is valuable enough that the software will try any unsecured wifi network in the area to phone home. On hearing that, I immediately password-protected my guest network that had previously been open (I live in the boonies),

Internet of "Things" indeed. John Carpenter, eat your heart out.

Some TVs will actively try and connect to any open wifi they can see without your consent or intervention. And wait until 5G is cheap enough so that any device can embed an always on cellular connection.

Imagine a compromised TV acting as a bot: perhaps committing wire fraud over an open WiFi hotspot.

Imagine the FBI knocking on your door.

Brave new world.

> Just don't connect it to WiFi. Problem solved.

This may work until 5g (or a successor) rolls around and becomes cheap enough for iot devices to just embed a cell, so as to provide "a seamless experience" and to jam ads down our throats come hell or high water.

Perhaps we’ll figure out how to piggyback off that connection to get free internet.

At that point there won’t be a TV in our home. I simply won’t tolerate it on principle.

A bit of an aside but this T-Mobile thing too is really pissing me off. I’m fine with “if you don’t pay, you have to view ads”, but if I’m paying and still getting ads/tracking - not happy.

We need legislation and different technology options to capture this.

On the TV front - an enterprising young startup could make really nice looking TVs with guaranteed no ads and probably sell for at least double the price.

Maybe I'll look into "presentation displays" for my next "tv". I use an appletv and external audio anyway -- the "tv" is just for display only.

That’s what I do. Apple TV + Sony Bravia TV that has never been connected to the Internet, and external speakers. I was looking at others like Samsung but they came with this external piece for the TV (like a receiver type thing?) and I’m just like - I want this thing to just display video and output audio, not do all this other stuff.

I recently bought a roku tv and this wasn’t an option, I had to setup an account just to activate it before I could use it.

None of my TVs are connected to the Wifi... or at least that's how it used to be.

One of my TVs, a Samsung, will pop up a huge window complaining it doesn't have internet access, and it will keep it on screen until it gets internet access, which happens fairly quickly after my wife starts complaining. Ironically the thing it complains about is wanting to update it's antivirus, which is only needed because it is connected to the internet.

I will vote (and have) with my vallet next time, and that includes never buying Samsung again. I will also "try it out" in the shop before buying another brand.

I thought that's what I wanted too, but then I got the big 4k TV and in the end the "smart" features are really convenient. You don't have to control a separate box to watch something. You don't have to cast from your phone. You don't have issues with an Apple TV show not casting to a Chromecast. You just click on it with the TV remote.

And if you think you'll put up with it just to avoid connecting the TV, your family members won't.

So I just blocked the ads via DNS. So far so good.

> Am I ever tempted to get a bigger, higher-def, TV? Sure, but then I remember that they're all "smart" and realize I don't actually have a problem with how I'm watching TV now.

If you ever are tempted, there are still a few good dumb TVs out there. Admittedly they get less, so vote with your wallet!

> I don't want smart anything in my house. My lights are hardwired to a switch on the wall. My washer and drier need me to turn dials and push buttons and go ding when they're done. My fridge has no microprocessor in it.

I would update that to: "I don't want smart anything in my house [that isn't fully open source]." Obviously this is not great for the average person, but at least for a programmer I can review, test and improve these devices.

One thing I will never have in my home that is closed source is a camera or microphone. I want to know _exactly_ how this data is used and where it goes.

curious if that also applies to your phone

> Obviously this is not great for the average person, but at least for a programmer I can review, test and improve these devices.

Please God no. The last thing I want to do after coming home from work is the same shit I was doing at work. I like the simplicity of shit just acting as expected.

> Please God no. The last thing I want to do after coming home from work is the same shit I was doing at work. I like the simplicity of shit just acting as expected.

I understand, but a side project feels different. I do it because I want to, not because I need to.

I use a 5k monitor hooked up to a Linux desktop that I built. Works great, and all the components are dumb. The day they bake ads into all computer monitors is the day I move off grid and start taking permaculture farming seriously.

This is my approach as well. The UX isn't as good as pure-TV apps. I specifically have to use the screen zoom functionality when trying to select what to watch from the couch. But after the selection process, it works great.

I have a lot of "smart" devices and they aren't connected to the internet. Home assistant and Zigbee2mqtt is amazing and it's all local. The only internet "smart" devices I have are a ecobee thermostat and a water monitoring system, both are in their own VLAN with only access to the internet. My thermostat can be controlled manually if internet is out.

I own a LG 4K OLED TV, I put it in the same VLAN add above and block all requests to the internet. Instead I use an nvidia shield for streaming tv and movies.

I think only a small (but substantial) number of people actually want home based Smart/IoT products. And I think there's the extra push we see here to advertise to them because they're big trender spenders. Inshallah this article is part of a push-back that will encourage some TV companies to take a step back and get a little less intrusive on their customers.

One of the biggest IoT markets is large corporations with large workforces they would like to manage. A lattice of job-relevant IoT devices give them an automated layer to monitor and control. It lets them enhance safety, productivity, communication and motivation to their own likings. IE to their own profits. Usually at any personal expense or detriment on the part of their work force they can reasonably expect to get away with.

Just use an Apple TV and don’t connect your smart tv to the internet. Stream everything through apps on Apple TV or cast it with airplay.

Exactly what I do and I love it. The AppleTV Plex app was a game changer.

This is my plan when I eventually don't have a choice and need to replace my TV. But I am also worried: we've gotten to a point where manufacturers ship products with a known backlog of bugs and plan to fix them with software updates.

There is usually a path to upgrade without internet access. You usually get the firmware from the manufacturer website, put it on a usb stick, plug it into the tv and it picks up the upgrade from there.

Enable WiFI, Update, disable WiFi.

(May have to change your WiFi password as well.)

Which works until TV manufacturers make their TVs wardrive and find a neighbor's wifi, or build cellular modems into 'em.

Then you open the back of the TV, find the WiFi antenna, and clip it or scratch it off the PCB. :-)

Heh, until they TV will be in an error state or something after you do this....

The solution will be someone building an upscale TV with no ads and no BS. TVs are just too cheap to not go down the adware path hardcore.

If you do some research and find a reasonably engineered TV, the inclusion of "smart" functionality doesn't necessarily detract from the device's utility. About 5 years ago I bought a 55" 4K TV based purely on its performance as a PC monitor. It happened to be an Android TV. After moving, I stopped using it as a monitor and started using it as a TV.

It's been a mostly positive experience. It even received an update within the last year. The update exchanged some old bugs for some new bugs, but for the most part it turns on and streams videos without much fuss. It's the first TV I've owned that correctly sequences my audio receiver's power over HDMI, and successfully passes through the TV remote's playback controls to the blu-ray player.

The most frustrating thing about it is that there's apparently a defect in its hardware accelerated video decoder. When Netflix came out with their fancier compression codecs last year, 4k shows started completely glitching out. Folk were complaining about it on reddit for months. Luckily I have a friend who works at Netflix who was able to start busting some skulls and get it patched over. For now...

I figure I've got at least another year or two before the built-in Android functionality is obsolete to the point of being inconvenient, or the streaming apps stop coping with the buggy video decoder. Since the TV works pretty well as a monitor, though, I should be able to just hook up a more modern external Android TV device and keep going with a roughly similar experience. I'm hopeful that it will even continue to seamlessly power on and off.

My other TV is a "dumb" 1080p Samsung plasma screen I bought second hand in 2010 from a particularly sketchy dude on Craigslist. It's still going strong, other than some occasional power supply buzzing and perhaps a bit of phosphor fade. It's travelled across the country and even survived a bachelor party camping trip. Honestly though, it's more of a pain to use than the Android TV, even as a dumb monitor.

Being able to adjust the colour temperature and hue of my house lights is nice, so is doing it by speaking to my watch or speaker.

Turning all the lights out when I'm finally comfy in bed is nice. Turning the string of Christmas lights on the lanai on, which don't have a switch indoors or anywhere near the door, is nice.

Being able to ask for an album or genre to play and having it happen: nice! Having a certain light turn on at sunset: nice.

None of these things were broken before, but they weren't as nice. It isn't garbage.

Although having it reset during a 3 am power outage, resulting in lights turning on in my formerly dark bedroom: not as nice! Still a few bugs in the system...

Scheduling my thermostat, smart outlets, and sprinklers works much better via a computer. Dial lamp timers suck, and programming a complex schedule via four push buttons and an eight-segment display is miserable. (I would not mind using bluetooth instead of wifi, but wifi is more widely used)

Network monitoring allows my solar array to be remotely monitored for faults & diagnosed. Network access allows my sprinkler controller to track the weather for more accurate water usage modeling...

Ordinary light switches and light bulbs are great. But some things stand to benefit from smarts.

I bought a 4K Sony this year and it’s been an entirely simple experience. I didn’t connect it to my wifi, so I see nothing except a gray textured screen. Works great.

Counterpoint. I have a 4yr old 4K Sony TV, it was a higher end model, and it's horrible. It runs Android and is apparently underpowered. When I turn it on (from standby, not from zero power), it can often take 30-60 seconds to turn on...AFAIK it's recovering from garbage collection. That doesn't happen every time. Just tried now and it took 4 seconds to turn on and 10 more seconds until it would actually respond to button presses on the remote.

The screen is (was) covered in ads for TV programs and movies. Fortunately I was able to turn all that off but the home screen is designed around ads so without them it looks clunky. (unlike say Apple TV which just shows the apps)

A few times in the last 4 years it has crashed and rebooted in the middle of watching something (that process takes 1-2 mins? Just timed a reboot, 1 min 20 seconds but crashes take longer)

I hoping to get something dumb next time I get a TV. Unfortunately dumb TV generally seem more expensive. Like I have to by a business display TV and are often missing features (like no lag, no interpolation modes)

This is why I still use a 480i CRT from the early 1980s.

Shelves of VHS haven't broke and don't need fixing!

I feel for you. I too am sticking to an obsolete unsmart TV. In 2016 I had to change my home heaters, and nowadays they're all "smart". The app that's supposedly used to control them never could find one of them; instead of a temperature knob and an on/off switch, you constantly need to dive into cascading menus; and of course I'm confident that this smart sh*t will be the reason why they'll fail in the future, for instance when the screen will fail and make the heater unusable.

I recently got a 55 inch 4k TV after having a 40 inch HD TV for some years.

I regret having friends suffer through that quality to watch things like the last season of Game of Thrones just because I liked hosting. I had friends with better TVs that didn't say anything because I liked having people over and they didn't.

I've never connected it to the internet and glad I haven't but there really is a night and day difference in quality. I've slowly upgraded my parent's TVs and they have really appreciated it.

My washer sends a message to my phone when I leave the laundry in it. Has saved me countless loads of mildewy smelly wet clothes in the morning.

I set a timer on my phone. No internet required. Never missed it yet

Yes, but that’s one of many things that I don’t have to worry about. You can do you, I prefer the connected home. If configured correctly it’s like having a very basic butler.

I don't consider setting a timer something I worry about and given my experience with smart home devices the inverse is true for them.

I mean thats great and all but I really very much prefer to be the sort of person who remembers to remove their laundry.

Sure, and I’d like to have the physique of LeBron James, the looks of George Clooney, and the intelligence of John Von Neumann, but here I am instead.

> My lights are hardwired to a switch on the wall.

Oh you mean like an ethernet cable?

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