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Let's talk about "smart" homes

Go ahead . . . violate the K I S S protocol and watch a cascade effect make your life miserable for a week or three. Imagined luxuries and conveniences become rabbit holes. Go ask Alice.
 
Abacinator said:
I just want it set up so when I say, "RED ALERT!!," all the house lights turn red and the Enterprise-D klaxon starts blaring throughout the house :nerd :rofl
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My Lucky Doltstar Dryer does it.


It downloaded 2GB of updates before that. (this part is true.)


:dunno
 
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Eldritch said:
I'm pretty much horrified by everything you are considering.

I have a buddy (a plumber) that is tinkering with learning some code so he can host a raspberry pi machine to try and run this stuff locally in his house without outside surveillance on his home and habits, but I am still waiting to see if he succeeds.
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As a coder... I can't imagine this being worth the effort.

Though my house is set up pretty dumb right now, as I like it. The thing with the whole ecosystem things that differs from individual smart products is, for an individual project, they are pretty limited in what they can know about you. Like, Hue lights, at most, can have info on what settings your lights are on, what schedule, etc. Even that is more then you would want to share, but compared to the Apple Home stuff or IFTTT or Alexa or any of the other tools, it's not that much. Many of those tools can report things like browser history and other details that they don't really have any business knowing about.
 
Yeah see that's my issue - I just want to be able to have a centralized control for lights and temp that includes dimmers, motion sensors, and timers. I don't even care if it's wifi enabled or if I have to set it up from a single location, but it seems like all these smart home systems are "all or nothing" types - either it has 16 million color combinations (that I'll never touch again after initial setup), connects to your TV for ambient mood lighting, gives you a virtual reach around, etc, or it can turn on and off and that's it.
 
Pushrod said:
Go ahead . . . violate the K I S S protocol and watch a cascade effect make your life miserable for a week or three. Imagined luxuries and conveniences become rabbit holes. Go ask Alice.
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This. When we did the rundown on the house, the owner decided to use the system I recommended against. The set limits were too narrow. ( not my choice). So the house was too cold for him and in order to set it higher, he needed somebody to change the set limits with a laptop, modem, and the custom software. LOL! That wasn't the funny though. The funny was that he started a fire in the fireplace to warm up the house and the chimney had never been tested and backed up. So his introduction to his $25-50 million custom home was a cold weekend and smelly house. He still had the nice warm floors though. And the shades in the art room still came down automatically when the sun was shining toward the art.
 
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Check out Home Assistant. When I finally get the time and inclination that is what I am going to start out with at my house. It can all go on Pi and doesn't need internet connectivity it all runs on your LAN and you are in charge of everything. It interfaces with most devices and it seems to have a decent community for ongoing support.

And before you start fucking with this you need to get over to the What is this thread you started and post a damn video of you burning down your house because you have murder hornets. There should be a if you start a thread you have to update the issue before you can start another one. :afm199
 
afm199 said:
I had pretty extensive experience in this, and wired one of the first smart homes ( we're talking very smart and very expensive, programmable shades, curtains, lights throughout the house and on 12 acres of landscape, heated floors, heat and AC. You name it, we controlled it. Cost $750k in 1989-93 dollars.) Also smart wired three wells to fill a pond with a waterfall and take water from the pond for irrigation. Serious control wiring.

I'll tell you the same thing I told them. Get the simplest possible system because I guarantee they won't warranty it or make it in ten years. Smart systems are only as smart as last year.
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People with too much money. I have never had that problem.

I don't understand the need to have your heater/AC linked to your other stuff. How often do you change that schedule on a modern AC system. Like virtually never. It's already automated.

I have used this stuff since 1983/84. It is inexpensive and reliable enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)

I have X10 modules that STILL work from back then. I only use them for outside lights and fountains, anymore, so I have about 35 spares. :laughing
(Whoops: + One router and one outside camera).
 
clutchslip said:
People with too much money. I have never had that problem.

I don't understand the need to have your heater/AC linked to your other stuff. How often do you change that schedule on a modern AC system. Like virtually never. It's already automated.

I have used this stuff since 1983/84. It is inexpensive and reliable enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)

I have X10 modules that STILL work from back then. I only use them for outside lights and fountains, anymore, so I have about 35 spares. :laughing
(Whoops: + One router and one outside camera).
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x10 was one of the only simple systems that actually worked. I lost track of how many "integrated" systems were dead at ten years and no longer had parts available.

O, yeah, the money? We're talking build $10-25K mockups of stone walls and windows for ONE viewing and then get rid of them.
 
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Eldritch said:
I'm pretty much horrified by everything you are considering.

I have a buddy (a plumber) that is tinkering with learning some code so he can host a raspberry pi machine to try and run this stuff locally in his house without outside surveillance on his home and habits, but I am still waiting to see if he succeeds.
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It's very possible. Look up Blue Iris.


The biggest problem with most of the DIY shit is that it takes CONSTANT tinkering and babysitting.
 
gnahc79 said:
That's a rabbit hole that no one should really go down, the full DIY/open source approach. Too much time and energy to get all of that up and running. 10x the energy to keep it all running. The support number/call center when things go awry is you :laughing
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I agree, it is better to never have access to these kinds of services. However, some people like a project...


mikev said:
It's very possible. Look up Blue Iris.


The biggest problem with most of the DIY shit is that it takes CONSTANT tinkering and babysitting.
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Yeah, I think he is down. Mainly he wants it for digital security cameras he can access from his cell without using an outside service that could access the records, so he needs to host the video himself.

I agree a lot of the other device management is probably not worth the hassle and better to just use analog.
 
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I have some. I try and keep it on the device and not embedded in the home.

I use Alexa as my "hub". I have wyze bulbs for my lighting. Nest for interior cameras and alarm. Ring for exterior cams and doorbell.

And then various amazon plugs for various automation around the house.

I've had a Logitech Harmony Elite (worthless) to control everything with.

Ernie nailed it with my "WHY". I do not want to hardwire any of this shit because in 6 months a firmware upgrade could make it no longer compatible with something rendering it useless.

I use IFTTT for various forms of automation.

I do not want any one source to have or control everything - this helps limit my exposure (in theory)

EDIT: I also run all connected devices on a VLAN, completely isolated from the rest of the network
 
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augustiron said:
This is my feeling as well.

Just my damn phone is bad enough.
GPS always off unless navigating, all permissions turned off on apps, minimal apps in the first place.

yet somehow I keep getting ads for things I have only spoken about in the flesh probably too close to the damn phone.

Fucking creepy.

Brand new pixel 5a

No more digital spies.
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It's the worst. Things I talk about verbally with somebody next to me for the first time ever consistently show up on social media ads. It's fucking wild.
 
I like my home dumb. All the smart home stuff really isn't an inconvenience for me to do manually. I have exterior light timers that I adjust monthly with the changing sunrise sunset times. No internet connection there. I have a few exterior Blink cameras that I only turn on when gone and at night. That's it.
 
bojangle said:
I like my home dumb. All the smart home stuff really isn't an inconvenience for me to do manually. I have exterior light timers that I adjust monthly with the changing sunrise sunset times. No internet connection there. I have a few exterior Blink cameras that I only turn on when gone and at night. That's it.
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xThis.

All of my clients who I like got the same recommendation. Use a few timers or a photocell.

I had opportunity to build my entire house "smart." Free equipment. Nothing I wanted and everything I would have used is now no longer in production. People don't understand the new mentality. I have thirty year old Lutron dimmers that work just like new. In the meantime, Lutron has gone through several iterations of "smart dimmers." Today "throw it away" is the new paradigm.
 
We've automated our outdoor lights and it works well. Originally we had Wink which was super easy to set up but that company is in it's death spiral and I dropped after they had a multi-week outage

Z-Wave switches work well because they give you a mesh network. Transitioned to "Hubitat" which supports everything local, but it's been a bit of a PITA to get working right. We integrated with Alexa, but you can also use a local IP address controlled panel on any tablet/phone

I seem to recall someone posted a thread about this not too long back
 
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