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).
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... End result is light automation that works 95% of the time with the 5% remainder being enough to sour the whole experience.
This isn't home-assistant's "fault," it's the zwave product space being a convoluted mess that HA tries to paper over. Other integrations are better but each integration is a separate plugin thing so quality depends on who wrote the plugin.
My house got a 10% premium due to the home-assistant setup according to the realtor. Lights and music and blinds all easily controlled from an iPad mounted to a thing in the hall. I left all the equipment including the raspberry pi that ran HA, but I took the SD card for privacy reasons. 99% certainty that they don't even know what Z-wave is let alone how to rebuild the network... I'm sure that if I buy a "smart house" in the future it will be beyond my abilities.
Monitor your logs and see if some node out there is screaming or otherwise taking up a lot of bandwidth, as your experience is not at all typical of how ZWave should work.
It's funny because I have exactly three types of devices:
- Several Inovelli Red dimmers - A few Zooz Zen34 remote switches - An HUSBZB-1 USB stick attached to the machine running Home Assistant
And I've never heard of anyone else having the same sort of trouble with any of the above. Definitely an exercise in frustration.
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.
I still get the issue that makes it need to reboot every now and then however. Edit: https://github.com/zwave-js/node-zwave-js/issues/3906 -- apparently there is a firmware fix for this now? Will try out later.
[1] https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zigbee-problems-how-to...
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...
I think some people are just so drawn to tech that they end up in these kind of rabbit holes. It reminds me of my nerd friends in uni who spent weeks configuring their linux distro from scratch just to start over a few months later, they were showing me their new shiny shells, how the trackpad finally worked with X and Y drivers, how their tiling window manager was better than macos'.
I don't think the end goal for them is to have a useable thing, it's more about tinkering and probably some form of attention seeking.
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 early adoption phase. Smart blinds suck now but there is no reason why they cant be as reliable as an automatic garage door. It's a motor with RF control. It's not a complex thing.
Yes, during the same trip (to my parents') I visited an old friend and his parents' house had a good old wood stove, ie: a metal box with a chimney and a door to put wood in it
> Are you on a digital or analog thermostat?
analog (I use my body to determine if I'm cold or warm and my brain to act accordingly)
> New technology will always have an early adoption phase.
Fortunately lots of tech die in that phase and are never seen again, looking at "the house of the future" of the 40s, 50s, 60s I'd say most of it never goes mainstream
> Smart blinds ... no reason why they cant be as reliable ... It's not a complex thing.
Adding even a bit of complexity to an extremely simple system makes it much less reliable and less durable. You need PCBs, antennas, motors, software (with their updates ?), electricity, all of that to do something you could do with your arms in two seconds. Not even talking about the amount of e-waste generated and the fact that no one will be able to source spare parts by the end of the decade. And we all know these things aren't even built to last in the first place (motors with plastic gears, &c.)
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-light gas stoves normally don't need electricity to function - in a outage you can light them with a match or sparker.
There have been gas heaters that don't require electricity but not central gas heaters, this true.
Eastern California, where I currently live, has experienced a half-dozen days-long electrical outages in the last year alone. A the time two months, when I spent four days snowed-in, with it 45-40 degrees inside my apartment, is notable. What does or doesn't work without electricity is an important question.
Electric-light gas stoves normally don't need electricity to function - in a outage you can light them with a match or sparker."
Does your parent's wood stove work work without electricity? As in, can you light it with a match or sparker?
"Eastern California, where I currently live, has experienced a half-dozen days-long electrical outages in the last year alone. A the time two months, when I spent four days snowed-in, with it 45-40 degrees inside my apartment, is notable. What does or doesn't work without electricity is an important question."
Yea this totally sucks and you make a good point. You parents' blinds needs a manual backup, just like how automatic garage door systems have a manual override. One of the things I try to focus on is to have my home still function if the server is down. My light switches all work without a server or the internet, but my sunrise lights will not. I think that's a good compromise.
My parents didn't have a wood stove but the last house I lived had one and it lit only by a match. The Gp's description is literally the only time I have even heard of a wood stove didn't require hand lighting, that's normally how they work.
(Your tense seems to indicate you're confusing me with the original commenter you replied to FYI - who's parents did have an unusual wood stove apparently requiring electricity. It doesn't offend me but I thought I'd note it in case there was some confusion to clear up).
Also while I dont give a damn about lightbulbs I would really like more sophisticated control over heating.
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 turn off the lights after 30 seconds. When I press it again, it turns off the noise and stops the sleep tracking. If we didn't have Home Assistant we'd have to do all these things manually multiple times a day. Instead it just takes a single button press.
It's a small example, but things like this will keep popping up, and I'm looking forward to making them easier.
They set their own bed/wake routines which was really great because we kinda got the buy in from them on how they want to do it and it's the same every time. They like to come by ever now and then and update the routine, add a step or piece of information. It's fun to do with them and it's nice to have them do their own thing but also not need an adult for everything thing.
Systems like this balloon in complexity with all of the different server hardware, IoT standards, subnets, cables, etc. For the average user, things that aren't easy or set-and-forget are probably too much. That sense of overwhelm is my personal experience, at least.
The other thing that jades me to automation is that in my experience with technology, you either get a easy to use, but limited, remotely brickable, subscriptionware, or you have to roll your own, and end up debugging your bathtub. Neither is very appealing.
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.
I'd love to have some sort of presence detection that will work with multiple people (including a child) without embedding a chip into our necks, but haven't found anything that seems reliable, yet. Room assistant sounds pretty cool, but I haven't had the time to play with it - and I'm not "installing" bluetooth on my toddler.
Early on I had 5-15 minute timers in most rooms, but my wife and I have ended up sitting in a dark bathroom, or worse cooking in a dark kitchen - flailing our arms to get the lights back on far too many times.
So, I made the timers in most rooms 30 minutes (20 in the bathroom, 5 in closets). That worked well everywhere but the kitchen; I added a second motion sensor there, and it pretty much always gets it right now.
Once in a while the light will shut off in the living room when we're still and zoned out on our phones or a movie, but that's rare enough that it's not a big deal. Also we get to laugh at ourselves for being perfectly still for an entire half hour.
--- Edit ---
I imagine presence detection is significantly easier with one occupant, and I've daydreamed about setting up a "one-person-home" mode that just turns on the light in whatever room last detected someone and off everywhere else. But honestly everything works so well as-is, that I don't think it's really worth the effort.
Every time I think about expanding this, I remember what a PITA it was to setup the basic stuff. And I don't bother. I'll walk my lazy ass to the switch instead.
Doesn't help that Smartthings is a dumpster fire of shitty UX that glitches regularly. Anything "better" like HomeAssistant is the rough equivalent of using Linux desktop in the late 90s/early 00s.
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.
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 change temperature targets depending on time of day and day of the week.
The best type of switches are the ones that work without intervention. The most common is the sunset porch lights and the sunrise alarm clocks. Other good ones are humidity sensors that trigger bathroom fans, TV/stereo/console that turns on when you pick up your game controller, floor lights that trigger only at night when it senses movement, lights that change color temperature and lumens depending on time of day, etc.
Also if you need a wake up/sunrise light:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/wake-up-light-alarm-wi...
What I meant, if it wasn't clear, is to have this as an option. In addition to what's already in place.
It's an interesting balance IMHO. If you can control everything you can build a lot on top, but even just being able to control a few things might already provide you a lot of benefit.