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Comment by jstummbillig | Hacker News Reader

As someone who gets caught in the occasional "could you just fix x – what do you mean y is not working? It always worked before you got here"-trap, essentially signing up to run your parents entire smart home setup, indefinitely, feels like some special kind of hell.

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My choice with their new house was pretty simple. They wanted a smart home, and being the tech son I would inevitably have to help them at some point. So either I debug a system that is open and familiar, with remote access and reliable software/hardware. Or I deal with some closed proprietary trash which will end-up with me on the phone with some incompetent cash grab company. As mentioned in my post, the latter would have cost 3 to 4 times the price of all the hardware we bought (see the link) and we would just get some SBC or cheap tower instead.

With the current setup, I can easily connect via VPN to configure network devices. Ubiquiti also makes it very simple to apply network changes or upgrade it remotely (as long as it's from the same brand). I set up extensive monitoring and alerting to proactively resolve issues. I also gave my parents some training and docs on how to plug things to the Ethernet sockets (if they want to setup a new printer for example) or what to do to bypass the router (rewiring) in case the main router fails.

As a side note to helping my parents. They are both 70, not the most tech literate people but they manage to do all basic things without much trouble. I put them both on Ubuntu 8 years ago, never had any issues whatsoever. I get maybe one message or call in 6 months for a question, but it's usually web related. Once in a while when I get home I update the distro, but that's pretty much all the maintenance I do. I have Teamviewer on all their devices, just in case but never really had to use it so far.

> They are both 70, not the most tech literate people but they manage to do all basic things without much trouble. I put them both on Ubuntu 8 years ago, never had any issues whatsoever. I get maybe one message or call in 6 months for a question

Okay, so can I hire your parents?

I had a few questions if you don't mind answering as I'm doing something similar for a vacation home (and my own, but this is more relevant to the remote one).

    How many IoT devices are you working with?

I don't have the best router up north and some of my lousier routers can't handle more than about 25 devices before they start crapping the bed.

    Do they disconnect often from your router (and do the successfully reconnect)?

Similar router problem, though I've found some of the more finickier devices I own can have problems in my home where I have a number of options for connections.

    If you haven't had these problems, what router are you using?

    What about "the internet is down"?

This was less of an issue when everything was Z-Wave/ZigBee, but all of the cheap stuff is WiFi. This mostly only concerns "the lights" and "the plugs". I don't want a switch to stop being able to control devices it's not directly attached to if home assistant or the target device can't reach the internet. All of the ones that I own broadcast state and can accept commands via UDP over the local network so I was thinking of writing something that HA could call, locally, which would issue those commands and receive the statuses (so they'd always be local-only).

I only have only few (less than 10) IoT devices using WiFi and they are spread over 2 fairly good access points. The rest are either wired or using ZigBee. My router doesn't have WiFi functionality itself, it's a Unifi Dream Machine SE[0] with the APs and cameras connected in PoE. It's plugged on a UPS, so hopefully the internet should still work if the electricity cuts.

Regarding your issues, I'm not an expert but I would recommend deploying more access points (pick some good ones) on the areas where your IoT devices are. Best advice I have is to wire your access points, I always had bad results when bridging them wirelessly. Although if you are in a remote area with little interference, you could get better results.

[0] https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-unifi-os-cons...

There’s another aspect though - when you come to sell the home it’s easy to market Crestron, Control4 and others specifically because they are standard (albeit expensive) solutions and have a whole ecosystem of consultants who can be brought in to diagnose and fix issues, upgrade stuff.

With DIY you are usually left with at best ripping it all out and selling it without any “Smart Home” promises, you can I guess still market that it has structured cabling to enable smarts though?

Yeah that's a good point. In our case, all smart systems can work independently (via their own app or physical controls) or be integrated with other smart home platforms. It's true that if they would ever move out, the HA instance might be gone, making the house loose a bit of its brains when it comes automation. But the base to build on is there, still has value I guess. And the rack with Ethernet in all rooms has some value too.

Edit: The only "problematic" part would be the cameras. Not sure if Unifi cams can work with other platforms than Ubiquiti's. But in any case, the wiring is there (Ethernet) and the cameras can be replaced or a new owner could bring their own Unifi surveillance console (or we could sell it with it).

RE: UniFi, they need to each be flipped into "Standalone" mode and then you just follow the instructions over here:

https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/221314008-UniFi-Video-...

I mostly ended up and recommend Axis for IP surveillance, it has nice MQTT integrations and recessed mount options (https://www.axis.com/products/axis-t94s01l-recessed-mount) but almost anything which can do RTSP will work with either a COTS NVR, or something like Frigate (https://frigate.video).

Another thing to read up on and use when shopping for IP surveillance is ONVIF and the various profiles offered!

In my experience signing up to do it or not is irrelevant because I'll end up doing it anyway since they're my parents, so i'd rather have full easy remote teamviewer/ssh access to the stuff I know works and how it works because I set it up instead of going there to debug some crap they downloaded or bought in the app store/mall that claimed to do x and now it doesn't work and now nothing is working etc etc.

Still can't avoid having at times to go and fix the god damn printer however. Printer driver programmers/designers really make me question if politicians should be the most hated profession in the world.

> Printer driver programmers/designers really make me question if politicians should be the most hated profession in the world.

Trying not to be snarky but really printers are very mechanical I/O devices. I don't think the driver programmers have much fun with their jobs, having to deal with seemingly greedy product requirements and lots of variation in real world use (humidity, paper type, ink quality, yada yada). When I start thinking about this and couple it with my own stupidity, I am amazed anything works at all. How do you even do automated integration tests on a printer?

I'd like to think I am about an average programmer and I am reminded by my own actions everyday that I know nothing. I am constantly learning (and forgetting) new ideas every week.

while it is obvious my comment was hyperbolic, the underlying sentiment still stands regardless. I can be charitable only so far, not complaining that the drivers don't make my color image perfect on a vinyl postcard, not even complaining that I need to realign the heads or whatever every other time I've got to use the printer, those can be mechanical issues and probably not their fault. I just want to print black and white on A4 and a color print every month or so.

But the consistent issues almost every single home printer I've used had with regards to connecting to computers, both wireless and wired is not reasonable. There's a plethora of other issues but that's more on a software in general than driver front so I'll leave them out of it.

All these problems on a windows machine by the way, surprisingly enough I've had less headache with printers on linux than windows. Maybe the lack of software layers to muddle shit helps here, who knows

> I don't think the driver programmers have much fun with their jobs, having to deal with seemingly greedy product requirements, and lots of variation in real world use (humidity, paper type, ink quality, yada yada).

That's a normal job, everyone has greedy product requirements outside of VC money pits. Also don't think their job in the capacities I complained about is very much mechanical at all, yeah it's very much I/O but that doesn't mean much.

>I'd like to think I am about an average programmer and I am reminded by my own actions everyday that I know nothing. I am constantly learning (and forgetting) new ideas every week.

people learn stuff and do their jobs, its not rocket science, nobody know everything nor can hold all the information in the world in their heads. As far as i'm aware printer connectivity isn't some CS open question, it's not a new field that needs exploring, it should've been explored by now. Yes of course drivers are a bit of a moving target regarding support for different architectures, but printers aren't the only things that need drivers and yet seem to be the only ones consistently having this issue ever since I can remember(maybe network cards as well?).

My colleagues and I call this the "Ever since you..." and it's one of our longest-running chuckles.

"Ever since you installed that ad-blocker, the Wi-Fi signal in the den is really weak"— uh, that's not how that works.

It's why I make every effort to never touch or even give advice on technical matters to friends and family anymore. Almost zero upside and unlimited downside—getting angry texts and phone calls at all hours of the day and night, and offering free support for life (and almost always accompanied by zero thank you's).

I thought the same. Having run HA at my own home for a couple years now, theres no way I would take ownership of someone elses install. I love the setup, its just not a "non-tech savvy friendly" ecosystem. Thats what I assume you pay for on the COTS ones.

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