Slightly Intelligent Home | Hacker News Reader

Slightly Intelligent Home

blog.gabrielsimmer.com

53 pointsgmemstr72 comments

So, not like the "slightly intelligent home" is a term of art or anything like that, but what the author means is simply that he doesn't have as much home automation as some other folks, good for him, but perhaps a nicer kind of slightly intelligent home would be one where no matter how much home automation you have, everything gracefully degrades or is invisible to the inhabitants, e.g. you still have physical switches, your lights do not suddenly all switch on after power loss, you can still get in the house if your Raspberry Pi dies, if you're tired of an automation you can easily rip it out, etc.

In other words, a smarter-than-Smart Home, no?

An intelligent home!

A lot of intelligent lighting solutions still give you physical switches, although that can create some annoying behaviours when recovering from power loss unless the devices also had some solid state memory of their last on/off state.

Yeah, a lot is possible with current tech (e.g. you can tell Hue lights what to do after power is restored) and I think my own home automation gets pretty close, but I guess I was hoping to see a blog post from someone who had really thought it through and had come up with some "slightly intelligent" home automation do's and don'ts re: graceful degradation, avoiding lock-in, ease of use for other people in the home who may hate the idea of home automation, security, how to deal with hardware that fails, what automations are likely to be brittle and need frequent reconfiguration vs. what'll just keep on working, when to go with proprietary vs. DIY, how to document things etc.

Really, that recovery after power loss is one of those minor-but-irritating things that seems to come up often. Couple examples:

I bought a "smart" power bar, mostly for shits 'n giggles. Other than being able to control it with an app, and I don't, it could be any power bar. Except when we get a power blip, and every outlet returns to the default state of OFF when it comes back.

An LED light fixture came with a remote. OK, fine, I don't really care. Our bedroom has four hard-wired multi-way switches, so I can turn it on or off from any doorway and beside the bed. The only problem is that while the fixture has controllable brightness and white balance, its default power-on setting is full brightness, "daylight" white balance. The only way to turn the light off and get it straight back to the desired settings is to do so solely via the little remote.

Surprised that there’s no mention of Home Assistant. It’s great for even lightweight home automation.

But based on the title I was expecting something less intelligent, like simple lamp timers. You can get surprisingly far with those and some motion sensors, without needing a hub or apps at all.

I wouldn't exactly call it great. Most user groups have tons of reports of issues, they seem to need to fuss with it every update, and if you aren't careful with lots it can burn out some SD cards.

> Most user groups have tons of reports of issues, they seem to need to fuss with it every update,

I’d say issues are a pretty small group of people, it’s just that it has a lot of users.

> they seem to need to fuss with it every update

Updates are seamless almost every time?

> and if you aren't careful with lots it can burn out some SD cards.

Cheap SD cards don’t like Databases, expensive one’s still might have issues. But you are neither forced to use SD cards, nor an rPI with HA. I used to have a PI4 with an SSD, and nowadays a VM on x86 hardware.

I use Home Assistant as my smart home hub, and I've even got it on a beefier mini-PC after it ate (a high quality) SD card. This is hundreds of currency more expensive than a PI.

But my main complaint is how high maintenance it is. I do think they've got a little bit better in the last 6 months, but it used to be there was a intentional deprecation and breaking change in nearly every major (i.e monthly) update. Updating requires carefully reading through the change logs.

Then once you've fixed your configuration, that update might have fixed some bug you've been having only to introduce a new one.

My installation spent the better part of the last 12 months with at least one annoying bug at any time.

> This is hundreds of currency more expensive than a PI.

I run it as VM on a tiny Proxmox < €100 server that also runs a bunch of other things.

I’ve been using HA for several years now, I almost never have update issues, updating on every notification. I had a tiny incompatibility this major update that only made issues with once HACS component (community store, not tested by base HA). The last actual issue was some time mid 2022, and even that wasn’t major.

> I've even got it on a beefier mini-PC after it ate (a high quality) SD card. This is hundreds of currency more expensive than a PI.

Only if you buy new and get something much more powerful.

I run HASS in a VM on an old small form-factor desktop they were going to throw away at work. The most expensive part of that PC (that I paid for) is the quad intel NIC that I use for my router VM. It can NAT + FW (pf) + VPN (wireguard) at gigabit speeds without breaking a sweat.

This is an HP EliteDesk 800 G2 with an i5-6500 and 32 GB RAM. Similar boxen can be had off ebay for peanuts if you don't live in the boonies (or you'll have to pay for shipping). They may consume more than an RPI, but they are very quiet (I run it 24/7 in a studio apartment and am very sensitive to noise). They're also able to do much more than said pi, since they can use standard off-the-shelf components (regular DIMM RAM, regular SSDs, regular expansion cards, etc).

The problem is HA hammers the DB all day.

When I do logging I buffer in ram and dump all at once, and often I just save min/max/avg over a period rather than every transition.

> Most user groups have tons of reports of issues, they seem to need to fuss with it every update,

Tons of users with tons of different integrations means tons of issue. That is true I suppose.

I have a very simple Homeassistant setup with a few different zigbee lights and sensors. It has it's issues but 98% of the time it works just fine. The 2% that are frustrating are issues with zigbee connectivity but homeassistant works pretty well. I'm still not a fan of the yaml configuration but that is being worked on.

> lots it can burn out some SD cards.

more of a hardware issue (raspberry pi) than a software issue.

I run it on an intel nuc and have no issues with SD cards.

Running on a cheap USB stick is the better choice nowadays. They tend to be much more forgiving and faster.

Updates are more of an enthusiast thing - you can treat it as a piece of hardware, isolate it from hostile networks and leave it as-is. You don't have to update and it'll keep working just fine.

It's really refreshing to see a non-Home Assistant solution. Obviously it's great software that meets a lot of needs, but it's basically a complete monoculture, to the point home automation is really only interesting to read about if someone is doing something else.

Small QoL things that I do with my automation. I do use Homebridge for things like connecting to my security system and thermostat.

1. Automate all the ambient lighting to turn on half an hour before sunset. Bonus points since we have a dog at home and I feel better leaving the lights on for him.

2. When we open the front door which is some 4ft away from our neighbor across, our TV lowers the volume to 5% and dims the living room's lighting. Gives our place a bit more privacy and hopefully doesn't disturb any of our neighbors.

3. When all of our phones have left the house, the security system arms itself. Also disarms when we get home.

4. When the temperature on the second floor gets to 76F, our motorized blackout blinds drop down on the second floor, turns on the air condition, and turns on our lights. This is TOTALLY a gimmick for me.

One thing I wish I could have are air purifiers that remembers its settings after its power cycled - so I can control it with a smart outlet/switch upon a certain PPM level. I know "smart" ones exist, but I actually draw the line there. I try to stick with things that have are Thread-enabled or are from brands that I trust.

On 3: Although you didn't give many details about this, I hope that your security system doesn't disarm when any of your cell phones is close to home, regardless of who happens to be carrying it...

My physical (schlage) key doesn't have check my fingerprint, so if someone steals that, they get in. If their cellphone behaves the same way, that doesn't seem like a step backwards, security-wise.

Though if my phone's NFC could unlock my door but required my fingerprint before unlocking my door, that would be kinda neat.

Its a trade-off for us. We had a security system for about a year before we realized it was inconvenient to arm/disarm it, so having a geofence ensured we always have it active when we need it to be. Your point is not invalid though.

> 3. When all of our phones have left the house, the security system arms itself. Also disarms when we get home.

How did you pull this off? My phones go in powersaving mode (disconnecting themselves) even when I set them to not do that. The only way seems to keep the charger plugged.

I use Home Assistant with the Unifi integration that checks if a specific device is connected to my wifi, and since I and my girlfriend always have wifi on at home, this is working very good.

I know I know. Basically checks the ARP table. But in my experience phones disconnect the wifi when idle, even when told not to do so.

I send my phone a ping every few seconds to see if it is on the network[0], possibly that is enough activity to keep it from disconnecting? I use node-red personally but probably not a big difference there. Could maybe try just rigging a 'ping -n 1000000' from the command line overnight to see if that keeps the phone awake?

Although I will say it is sometimes frustratingly slow to first connect to wifi, as if it is only scanning every 30 seconds or more when not connected to a network.

[0]For lighting and ambient music to come on when I get home from work.

Wouldn't that affect battery drain?

Yes, but a ping every few second shouldn't make much difference. The problem is that phones go into power saving mode.

When using whatsapp from the website, that requires (required? Haven't used it in a while) the phone to be online, I occasionally had to wake up the phone.

I can't remember the details, but I had mobile detection reliably working using arp on my router.

I made a software to do actions when devices appear/disappear from the LAN.

https://github.com/ltworf/lapdog

It sends pings and uses the mac addresses.

Do you have iPhones? My solution is specific to the Apple ecosystem, but did indeed require some workaround with Homebridge to get it to be truly automated.

No, android.

1. I'd love to live somewhere where "sunset" or "sunrise" is an actionable thing :D Over here the sun might rise a bit before noon and it might never actually set.

3. I don't arm our security system, but it does set the home to "away" mode, turning off all lights and the coffee maker and other "dangerous" appliances.

4. I'm stealing this one =)

For air purifiers, you can get Ikea's FÖRNUFTIG purifiers that are 100% stupid devices that just start when the power comes on. I'm running them all the time on low power, but I'm considering automating them on the highest power so that they run when we're not at home or not in the room (the loudest mode is kinda loud, the slowest is practically dead silent).

Sv. “förnuftig” ~= eng. “sensible, reasonable”.

IKEA’s product names are often annoyingly cute (precocious-kid-like), but I suppose sometimes the products actually live up to them.

Can attest Blue Pure 211+ remembers its speed after being power cycled. And no smart features whatsoever.

> 3. When all of our phones have left the house, the security system arms itself. Also disarms when we get home.

Thanks, now I know to first rob you of your phone and bring that with me when I go burgling your home. Saves me the trouble of defeating your burglar alarm myself.

If you're stealing their phone, you could probably take their keys too and use the $5 wrench method to obtain their security system PIN.

Motion activated lights in areas you just pass through is the biggest QoL improvement in my book. There's no reason to have the hallway or bathroom lights on all the time, just have them turn on with motion and turn off X minutes after no motion is detected.

Second one (seriously) is voice-activated profiles. "Good morning" -> dim lights, open curtains. "Good night" -> lights off, curtains down. "Movie time" -> lights off in the living room, TV turns on, Apple TV turns on, TV switches to correct HDMI input.

>There's no reason to have the hallway or bathroom lights on all the time, just have them turn on with motion and turn off X minutes after no motion is detected.

goes dark when you're taking a long shit. so you have to get up and wave your hands with your trousers down and asshole covered in shit, like a psychotic

my experience is that you set the timer to take longer to go off in particular rooms to get around this problem, and that waving a single arm - while irritating - is sufficient.

How about waving your arm once to turn on a light switch and then wave it again to turn it off?

Kind of like moving a wall switch up once, and then down once?

Yes that was the idea. :)

then you are back to having a light switch that you might absentmindedly forget to turn off costing money.

This created a wonderful image in my head. Thanks for that. I take famously long shits too, and this would be a deal breaker for me. I guess a smart toilet would solve this. Wouldn’t even need to be that smart: “someone’s there: keep the lights on”. Like the seatbelt light in my car.

it's happened to me in public toilets. at least the motion sensor detects movement inside the cubicle so you don't have to open the door, but I shouldn't say more in case I give the devil more ideas.

I thought the same thing, but if we're talking about building our own smart home, I assume the solution for that would be relatively simple?

For instance, add a pressure sensor under the bathmat (or seat) in front of the toilet so that the turn-off timer doesn't run while it senses pressure. Alternatively, maybe infrared heat sensor or CO2 sensor to detect presence of living mammals in the room. But both of these approaches can be messed up by your cat/dog spending all day/night laying on the bathroom mat keeping the lights on.

The cool thing about building your own smart home is you can design system to do anything on any kind of assumption. The bad part is you're turning your home into an test of your engineering design prowess, and most part-time novices aren't going to be super happy with how they score... especially if their score ends up being an input to their home valuation.

>relatively simple

>pressure sensor, infrared heat sensor, CO2 sensor

we have very different definitions of "simple". and they need extra work to account for other use-cases (I cringe to use this term), such as lying motionless in a nice, relaxing bath.

a light switch on a cord works every single time, needs no maintenance, no firmware updates, the CCP can't spy on you through it, and you can make it look nice by hanging a decorative weight on the end.

a real "smart bathroom" shouldn't be about wallace and gromit gadgetry, it should be about making the experience more hygienic and dignified. such as: a bidet, rather than toilet paper.

My "relatively" qualifier does a lot of work... relative to projects like rebuilding transmissions or doing hobby robotics, I think adding a few bluetooth/wifi enabled sensors and a bit of logic to toggle a light is pretty simple.

And yeah, that's what I mean by doing your own design engineering... are you actually going to solve for that "once in a year" case? Or do you just use a switch to toggle to "normal mode" for when you want to take that long bath?

I don't have any kind of platonic ideal for what a "smart bathroom" might be, I just like thinking through the design/engineering possibilities.

> For instance, add a pressure sensor under the bathmat (or seat) in front of the toilet so that the turn-off timer doesn't run while it senses pressure. Alternatively, maybe infrared heat sensor or CO2 sensor to detect presence of living mammals in the room. But both of these approaches can be messed up by your cat/dog spending all day/night laying on the bathroom mat keeping the lights on.

Instead of ripping up your floor or adding weird heat and CO2 sensors, you could just buy a dual-tech (PIR and ultrasound) wall switch occupancy sensor to replace the PIR occ sensor. This problem has been solved already.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lutron-Maestro-Dual-Tech-Motion-...

The solution is to have motion control an ambient light in the bathroom but not the main light. Use a (smart) switch to control the main light and use it when you're going to be there a while. Set up the system not to turn off the ambient light when the main light is on, no matter how much time passes.

This way you get the convenience of hands-free when you're just washing your hands or something, but you have all the light you want--for a bubble bath--or whatever.

There is still the problem of sometimes forgetting to turn the switch off, but since it's smart, it's easy for Siri to turn it off when you go to bed, etc.

Just time your longest shit, add 5 minutes and put that in the timer.

If it takes longer than that, consult your doctor. =)

> goes dark when you're taking a long shit. so you have to get up and wave your hands with your trousers down and asshole covered in shit, like a psychotic

This is hilarious to me. I am currently taking a long shit lit only by my laptop's screen.

Also, I have fortunately long mastered the art of wiping my butt without looking.

> There's no reason to have the hallway or bathroom lights on all the time

Who does that, rather than just turning them on when you need them and then turning them off again?

You don’t have kids, do you? =)

It’s easier to automate than enforce.

Also, when I come in from the store, both hands full of shopping, it’s kinda nice to have the lights come on automatically.

This nailed it for me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34063118

Its always fun when I, an engineer, talk to a tech enthusiast. They assume since I'm an engineer I love tech, and are surprised to discover otherwise.

I've built commercial IoT devices, I will never have one in my home.

As a engineer, tech enthusiast, software developer, and middle age Gen Xer, I love the analog reliability of a wall switch that simply opens and closes the flow of electrons in a circuit. No updates, no services, no spying, no improvements.

Semi-related to this, what's everyone's process for selling their IoT-enabled home?

My last home purchase came from a hobbyist who sunk way too much time into IoT during COVID, and it wasn't the greatest pass-down.

Am assuming this is going to be more and more of a problem.

I can't speak to what others have done / are doing, but there's movement within the general "building science" community to improve the documentation around home systems. As more technical devices get added to homes' mechanical systems (PoE, ERVs, whole-home dehumidifiers), it's important that new owners (or even you, as current owner!) have access to an operating manual for the home. Maintenance procedures and schedules, numbers for service technicians, general operating instructions and troubleshooting, etc.

(Of course my mind goes to "maybe there's a SaaS opportunity here?", but I suspect that if it's difficult to get people to even gather documentation about maintaining their home's systems, it'll be even more tricky to get people to pay for it.)

On the "building science" side, do you know any search terms or group names that might help me find out more?

It makes sense! The industry went from no-HVAC, to locally-controlled HVAC, to the modern (solar, networked HVAC, data network, IoT) era in the span of about 50 years.

> Lights and lightbulbs are maybe the biggest no-brainer thing you could automate around your home, at least in my eyes. Automate them to wake you up, turn off when you leave the house, turn on when it gets dark in the evening, when you're away, and so on

Not a no-brainer to me. I installed motion-activated lights in certain rooms of my house, but they aren't connected to the network. They turn on when you get close, turn off after 15 minutes of inactivity. Seems to cover all the above use cases except using them as an alarm. I don't use an alarm anyway, so no big deal to me. In general, smart home automation always seemed like a lot of money, a lot of homework, and fairly dubious benefits to me.

I hate those. They always turn off when I'm in the room. Then I'm waving my arms around every 15 minutes and it's more of a pain than just switching on the lights as I enter a room.

That's also used at offices to encourage workers to leave at night. Why are you here at 8pm? Let's switch off the lights every 5 min unless you get up and wave your hands.

These days you can get mmwave presence sensors which don't have the same issues motion sensors do.

Mmwave stuff is really expensive still, I'm waiting for them to come down to sane prices first.

Top 2 would be bedroom presence (don't do stuff if someone is in the bedroom, but sleeping, can't do that with IR) and living room presence (If I'm on the couch, don't turn off stuff, I might need it).

Not sure of the quality but I am seeing Chinese-made mmWave presence sensors for sale for 30-45$/unit.

Buy dual tech occ switches with both PIR and ultrasound sensors, problem solved.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lutron-Maestro-Dual-Tech-Motion-...

I also wondered about this

I was assuming most on this site would agree with the sentiment in the article

But to me it seems utterly pointless - barely perceptible, or perhaps even negative utility (e.g. programmed lights automatically coming on at times when you didn't want them after all, having to faff about with apps and wifi)

I just really struggle to see using a physical 'on demand' light switches as an inconvenience

Just seems like gadgets for the sake of gadgets, which is fine, I understand the appeal of that

My slightly connected home: Caséta dimmers everywhere except outdoor security lights that use Craftmade (Bond) on/off wall switches. Heat exchanger on a timer (Craftmade/Bond smart plug). Three mini split heat pumps controlled by Bond Bridges via IR.

Next up is adding some scene keypads (Bond Sidekick).

(Bond employee here.)

A printer without a cartridge preferably, it can hold a pen.

It's awkward that I've already fought off a HP printer years ago, after the great Cyan debacle.

Author: Here are the hoops I jumped through to avoid all my data going to the cloud. Also Author: And here is how I funnel all my data to Apple cloud.

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