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Let's talk about "smart" homes

I had a remote control to turn on my xmas lights. That's as smart as my house gets. Well, I do have the burglar alarm with an English-accented lady voice that says "Disahmed" when I hit the unlock button.
 
Sharxfan said:
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
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This sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. Airgapped to the world at large, but locally networked. If it runs off of POE even better.
 
afm199 said:
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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Was that you who had the guy that built a 2300 sq ft (?) family room out of knotty pine with fireplaces, bar, etc. And then when they saw it done, they didn't like it and had it complete redone. $200k job, or some nonsense. Whee.
 
fuck smart homes, I want analog switches on the wall, I want crank windows in my car, I don't want MS, apple or google in my lights, fridge or stove.
 
NorCalAthlete said:
I want smart home control without any uplink / internet connectivity. I may just go with manual devices individually, but it would be nice to have a simple smart home setup with minimal extra connectivity crap.
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Have a look at Hubitat. No Internet connection required as long as you’re not trying to control it with Alexa or similar. Use Zigbee or Z Wave devices, which are not IP based.
 
clutchslip said:
Was that you who had the guy that built a 2300 sq ft (?) family room out of knotty pine with fireplaces, bar, etc. And then when they saw it done, they didn't like it and had it complete redone. $200k job, or some nonsense. Whee.
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No, but I can identify, :laughing.
 
mercurial said:
It's all a useless waste of money and time unless you enjoy tinkering with the kit, as a hobby.
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Totally this. The only thing I think is worth a shit are occupancy sensors...
 
tzrider said:
You haven’t lived until you can say, “Alexa, turn on the air compressor.”
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We have a couple of smart plugs and its nice to be able to turn on my 3d printer and fire off a design to it without having to get off the couch. haven't really done much with lighting though.
 
Holeshot said:
Totally this. The only thing I think is worth a shit are occupancy sensors...
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This, the occupancy sensors on our Ecobee thermostat work well. Didn't really think we needed a smart thermostat, but have been pleasantly surprised that it works well.

We bought a house in June and we were thinking about adding several smart things, like appliances, lights, etc, but so far we have concluded we don't need them. But we are interested in a smart feature on a GE dishwasher, not to tell us about what cycle it's on, but its ability to notify us if a flood happens; yes we've had 2 dishwasher floods and they suck.
 
I am going to start looking into this seriously soon because I want to be able to turn things on/off upstairs because I am getting tired of having to go upstairs and do it all the time when the kids forget. I also want to build out my own alarm system as the original one we got burned up due to a lightning strike and I don't want to get into a monitoring contract. Also want to put a moisture sensor on our upstairs AC blower to make sure we don't have it leaking onto the upstairs roof again when we get it fixed.
 
Use cases I'm exploring this for:

1. Master bedroom doesn't get much natural light in the morning, leaving it somewhat dark when I wake up. I would like the bedroom dimmer to be set with my alarm clock to come on ~20%-30% in the morning and 100% after 20-30 min of slapping the snooze button.

2. Porch light set to turn on when it gets dark, off when it gets light, but dim itself when no motion detected (though not completely off as it illuminates the walkway between the garage and the house)

3. Heating / AC is already on timer settings to go up or down +/- about 3 degrees each direction depending on the time of day + day of week, but I would like to add occupancy settings and also kill temps + lights if nobody is home.

4. I want the bathroom lights go into "night mode" and only come on about 30%-50% from midnight - 7am unless manually overridden and cranked up at the dimmer switch

5. I want the bathroom fan to come on automatically depending on humidity and not just a manual on/off.

I'm aware that I can get various switches to do all of this individually, and am exploring how to get all that working too, but I figured if I was going to be upgrading everything I'd at least check out what the smart home options were.
 
Sharxfan said:
I am going to start looking into this seriously soon because I want to be able to turn things on/off upstairs because I am getting tired of having to go upstairs and do it all the time when the kids forget. I also want to build out my own alarm system as the original one we got burned up due to a lightning strike and I don't want to get into a monitoring contract. Also want to put a moisture sensor on our upstairs AC blower to make sure we don't have it leaking onto the upstairs roof again when we get it fixed.
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Hmm. The kids have feet.
 
NorCalAthlete said:
Use cases I'm exploring this for:

1. Master bedroom doesn't get much natural light in the morning, leaving it somewhat dark when I wake up. I would like the bedroom dimmer to be set with my alarm clock to come on ~20%-30% in the morning and 100% after 20-30 min of slapping the snooze button.

2. Porch light set to turn on when it gets dark, off when it gets light, but dim itself when no motion detected (though not completely off as it illuminates the walkway between the garage and the house)

3. Heating / AC is already on timer settings to go up or down +/- about 3 degrees each direction depending on the time of day + day of week, but I would like to add occupancy settings and also kill temps + lights if nobody is home.

4. I want the bathroom lights go into "night mode" and only come on about 30%-50% from midnight - 7am unless manually overridden and cranked up at the dimmer switch

5. I want the bathroom fan to come on automatically depending on humidity and not just a manual on/off.

I'm aware that I can get various switches to do all of this individually, and am exploring how to get all that working too, but I figured if I was going to be upgrading everything I'd at least check out what the smart home options were.
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Remember that you have to remember what the programs are.
 
tzrider said:
It would be extra great if you could get them to come on when they smell poop.
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Why don't toilets have a vent built into them that would allow you to just pipe the air right out of the room from the toilet bowl?

Then you could have it automatically come on when somebody sits down on the seat.
 
Climber said:
Why don't toilets have a vent built into them that would allow you to just pipe the air right out of the room from the toilet bowl?

Then you could have it automatically come on when somebody sits down on the seat.
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I'm sure some of those zany Japanese models have something like that. Basic Toilets are cheap and have an EUL of like 50 years.

Installing air venting systems in a water sloshing device like that sounds like a recipe for horror though.
 
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