Controlling My Family’s Smart Home Is Driving Us Mad
wired.com
wired.com
1) things must fail to being dumb, not non-functioning. Dumb/old behavior must exist in parallel, Just consider selling the home or having an AirBnB guest. Would you need to write any notes with instructions for them to use the home? Then you probably failed. Typical example is the “don’t touch this switch, the bulb is smart” idiocy. Things must only be made smarter, never dumber or more cumbersome. I repeat: smart bulbs must never ever be connected to traditional switches. Just use smart switches behind your regular switches.
2) This one follows from 1: you will be required to know how to do basic electrical work safely, such as replacing switches and dimmers. You will not build anything that isn’t frustrating without knowing (or spending money on) electrical work. Manufacturers will try to sell you gadgets that make things smart without needing an electrician but ignore those.
3) Unfortunately you’ll need to know a bit about networking and computers. Don’t embark on it if you aren’t comfortable tinkering with computers. You’ll spend more time tweaking smart home things than you’ll ever save through the smarts. Remember: smart home tech is still on the level where it’s a hobby. It costs time.
4) Get things that support local-only operation. At least things that fall back to local only (e.g using a web service for extrnal access but still working local use even if the service is down).
5) Low power wireless mesh networks will fail to connect, drop nodes. Plan for it.
6) Don’t get anything that requires a subscription to function.
7) Don’t buy things from companies whose business is ads and dealing in PII, rather than building good gadgets. You know which those are.
8) Most things have no use being “smart”. Fridges, stoves, ovens etc. I’d avoid all A/V equipment too. Only connect smart things that actually make things easier with very simple means. Being able to switch of all lights in the house when you leave with a double click on the switch by the door is really convenient and saves you a lot of work (or electricity). “Dimming the lights and starting a movie” might be cool but is gimmicky and gets old quickly.
Me thinks you're not the target market then. The oven is the first thing I'd want to smart-ify. Being able to check that the oven is off, remotely, is worth the world (or at least, my house not burning down). Normal people don't understand the security implications or about the dependence on a cloud service, as long as it works enough of the time.
But a simple timer can do that job too for both stoves and ovens. A timed or smart circuit breaker when overheating would be a lot “smarter” than a microcontroller, Wi-Fi, app..,
My smoke alarm is “smart” (notifies me). It will also tell me if I forgot something on the stove. If the alarm could shut off the stove then that would be great. But putting me + an app + some startup’s web service in between is too many moving parts in my opinion.
Putting something online means it needs software patches. Which makes it a million times more complicated than it needs to be.
If my fridge broke down I would like to be remotely notified, but having it online isn’t worth the risk (mostly that the manufacturer would brick it - not that I’d be hacked to be honest) and hassle, plus chances are that when it breaks down so did the notification system.
I'd also counter that it's totally fine to replace normal bulbs with smart bulbs!
It works exactly as before, but the bulb gains some useful powers!
Colour temperature, RGB colours and so on, are all useful features of smart bulbs that can be used connected to a standard switch!
Turning lights on and off isn't the only function, and for many not even the primary function, of smart lighting!
I think most countries have similar laws. Exactly what level of knowledge you need to do it legally varies. Where I live most things are off limits to non-electricians other than 1-1 replacement of existing installations. I some times use that loop hole to replace a dumb switch with a smart one, or do other such basic repairs. Other times I try to do most of the work myself but have an electrician bless my work before I power it up again. Obviously I encourage no one to do any kind of electrical work they aren't 100% comfortable doing.
> I'd also counter that it's totally fine to replace normal bulbs with smart bulbs!
Yes. But the point of my post wasn't that it's EASIER to make a home smart by doing that, it was that by putting a smart bulb behind a dumb switch, you have created a frustrating experience. A bulb that can be controlled from a phone but can be completely disabled by a switch somewhere, isn't really that "smart"...
> It works exactly as before
if you can hook it up that way, then you have made your home a little bit smarter. Just make it pass the "smart test". I.e. does the old/dumb switch work still? Can someone buy or rent the home and not need to know that a specific switch must be set to "on" for the smart feature to work? Does the app work 100% of the time to switch the light on/off regardless of any switch positions? Great, the home is smarter.
If the app some times doesn't switch the light on because a switch has ben flipped to the "wrong" position? Then I'd say the home was actually smarter before. The physical switch functoining and the remote controllability/color temperature/voice command are adding less smartness than the feature "the light switches on the walls actually switch on and off the lights" were. That's what I mean by that smart things should only ADD functionality and be careful to not remove it.
Is this sarcasm? This whole post kinda reads like the "A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?" quote.
It definitely is not! By "very simple" I mean "this is very simple compared to actually trying to create a smart home without following these rules".
Creating a smart home that goes beyond something that is either trivial or frustrating, is definitely not easy. But the rules themselves are pretty easy to understand I think. Such as "don't buy anything that needs a subscription" or "you either need to hire or be an electrician".
Not sure what you think is sarcasm. I still think the post is pretty understandable?
I think it’s a lot of rules - you even allude to there being infinite - and while each might be easy to understand for an IT crowd like HN, I think some of them might be hard to understand in the general population.
A lot of them looks like the product of hard learned lessons too.
So the sum of the whole thing doesn’t add up to simple.
I think the parent addressed this, and I agree: if you are going to do this well, then you need to be comfortable tinkering with computers and networks.
I've built a smart home setup based on openHAB. It's not perfect, and it does occasionally break (fortunately rarely, and usually because I decided to update or mess with something), but I have everything in the home behind one app, and everything works predictably and consistently.
Anything that actually needs controls is having those removed from the consumer facing parts: What can you make your "smart TV" do vs what the manufacturer can modify? how about your "smart" phone? Anyone think the "internet enabled appliances" aren't going the same way?
I really miss the ability to say "turn on lights 15 minutes before sun sets", i.e. a time that is relative to the time of year (and your location).
trigger:
- platform: numeric_state
entity_id: sun.sun
attribute: elevation
below: '10'
We schedule the dishwasher and washer. We have solar panels so we run them I the middle of the day when we aren’t home but the sun is at its peak.
We schedule the lights to turn on in the morning because we have a schedule for when we get up due to work.
We schedule the radiators because we know we aren’t home midday, but still want it warm in the evening when we arrive home.
None of this feels like “a tightly defined schedule” it’s just set to some reasonable assumptions when we set stuff up. And If myself or my SO works from home it’s just two taps in the app to keep the hearing going, if we have a weekday off and want to sleep in, it’s two taps as well.
None of that is overly complicated and I’d compare it to what you used to need to do with your “dump alarmclock” or manually controlled “dumb radiator”, now it’s just an app.
An old dishwasher repairman once told me you shouldn't run the dishwasher when you're not home, because sometimes the valve sticks open and floods the kitchen (which he had seen).
My dishwasher will unload water onto the floor if you put items in the wrong place.
A friend's dishwasher will unload enough water to fill a 24" planter on certain cycles, under conditions he's not figured out yet.
They're terrible. I'm not asking for a lot. Clean dishes, water stays in. At least they have WiFi now /s. Priorities!
Just being home isn’t necessarily enough - you’re working from an office upstairs, are you going to notice a leak? Or will it leak for 3 hours until you notice, at which point it’s equivalent to running it when you’re out of the home?
I could see some form of sensors plus a solenoid driven valve on the water main being infinitely valuable to help limit the extent of the damage in such a case.
simple. analog. all that's required is that the valve be able to actuate after N+ years of disuse, which is actually a tall order.
> all that's required is that the valve be able to actuate after N+ years of disuse, which is actually a tall order.
Too true. Regular tests and preventative maintenance tend not to happen in too many households. I too am guilty of this, I would say that I find the seal in the shut-off valve for toilets to be dried and leaky a majority of the time I've gone to turn off the water to replace components inside the tank.
Now from a repairman’s perspective it ends up feeling different, because even if the change is one in 10 million washes, he might still be going out to tons of such situation so from his perspective it happens “often enough” but in reality you should’t structure your life around it. You might however if you know your running very old equipment of if you know you wouldn’t be ensured if an accident happened or such of cause, but for us, being able to run our washer and dishwasher on solar for the next 40 years greatly outweighs the fact that we may once have to deal with a leakage, though in all likelihood we won’t.
So, the only thing you can actually do is preheat the oven, and flick the oven light off and on. Can't turn it off if it's already on, can't turn burners off if they're on. I have zero idea why you'd ever want to control the light from afar. So essentially, it's 'smart abilities' are mind bogglingly useless. Oh well.
Or you know, actually solve the problem at the source. If your dedicated you can remove the switches, otherwise a simple strip of tape does wonders.
Trying to solve anything by “telling everyone to avoid doing something that seems obvious m” is a disastrous pattern not just in the smart home but everywhere.
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Smart bulbs are stupid anyways, either get occupancy sensors or keep your toggle switches/dimmers, why do you want to control your lighting from a phone app??? Novelty does not equal utility.
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Wow. What a sentence.
I solved this problem by using three methods - homeassistant is number one. The second, is only integrating / purchasing devices that I can either manually flash open source software on (think tasmota for instance,) or the solution's API has been re'd. The third thing is Shelly. Shelly products are the shit. I'm not a shill either; I've purchased every single Shelly I own (~40.)
Shelly makes automating lights and switches amazing because you don't replace the switch, they're literally wife proof. I've also flashed all my Shelly devices to communicate to homeassistant directly, however they have native non cloud integration capabilities.
Again, this doesn't solve the main problem of fragmentation - home assistant addresses this by being a black box, but it's not for normies, I don't know how it ever could be. It has gotten super slick though. The other issue is stuff like Shelly requires a technical brain - the way they're installed you'd be playing with mains current, and no Suzie home maker should be doing that...
I'm imagining person recognition via security camera feeds. Again, ideally, all done locally.
So a solution is to stick expensive single-purpose buttons everywhere? That feels like a step backwards.
Might expectations be too high? Ultimately everything has to be controllable by a human. Maybe expectations would be better set if this were called a "Connected Home."
I just avoid buying IOT devices that don't work with my preferred system.
Mine happens to be Homekit. Apple centric. I currently don't have a star projector because none of them connected to homekit last I looked.
Doesn’t sound like there is much of a coherent strategy at work here.