Smart Home S**t

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  • microkorg1

    Got a Nest doorbell and thoroughly recommend them, gives good comings and goings at your door/garden/road. Means you can also speak to delivery people if you are not home.

    Went with this over Ring because it constantly records and you can view everything as a timeline, even when theres no alerts.

    We have a smart bulb above our front door. This is very effective. Have it set on timer to come on/off with day/night. After 11pm at night I have it dim to 25% so its still giving some light but not glaring.

    Have some other smart bulbs but they never get used 'smartly' just as regular lamps. We have a couple of bedside lights with smart bulbs so we can dim them as dont have a wall dimmer switch. Its a pain in the ass to open app to dim them and if we were dimming regularly then Id opt for a regular dimmer switch on wall :)

  • sted0

    latest stuff i found and would install if by bathroom wouldn't had a nice big window:

    app controlled, turns on/off the pure white on manual

    smartplugs are great stuff one thing that are a lot of average households are using

    • Light behind stone. That’s it.monospaced
    • shower and electricity makes sense...uan
    • I've never seen a shower without a light. Makes perfect sense.monospaced
    • yeah it is that simple.sted
  • i_was-1

    Hey

    don't.

  • nico4120

    https://www.home-assistant.io
    steep learning curve but theres nothing you can't do with that. I run mine on a raspberrypi and I control everything through homekit

    • Ahh! This is the one my GoogleFu was failing to find yesterday. I couldnh't for the life of me remember what it was.Nairn
  • fyoucher10

    What I did:

    https://wyze.com

    Go there, buy everything (i.e. Home security camera that's wireless is $35). Home monitoring is cheap AF (one year is cost of ADT's one month). They do door locks, doorbells, cameras, home security, sensors galore, etc.

    It's so cheap, that once technology gets obsolete, you won't feel bad about having to redo everything. Hooks ups nicely with iPhone too.

    Get the motion sensors ($11) and the bulbs ($15). Hook it up so that lights automatically come as you enter a room. Hook it up to Google so you can control it with your voice (Hey Google, turn off the lights).

    Get the Wyze plug which'll allow you to control anything plugged in. We use that for lamps that don't use standard bulbs.

    And get the leak sensor when it's available, wish I had that two months ago.

    We have these window shades. Expensive AF, but look great and so worth it. We can control them via our iPhone and Google, Lutron switches, and remotes attached to the bed. We have them automatically open and close at dusk/dawn too.
    https://www.serenashades.com

    Then get Google's Home Mini ($35). We got one for every main room. It's cheap so who cares. It acts as a second speaker too. We use it for asking questions, the weather, playing Spotify, etc etc – through voice control. Handy when you don't want to carry your phone around the house.

    And finally, make sure your WiFi is up to snuff. We have Verizon Gig service and bought two Verizon Wifi "Expanders" (not Extenders...Expanders connect to your existing coax cables which your house should already have everywhere). We get 300mbps in our backyard, and nearly 500mbps throughout the house on WiFi. We cut cable a few months back and use YouTube TV for anything live (like football and the news).

    • I have a few wyze plugs for hard to reach lamps, which I can turn on and off via the app, but had to use IFTTT and connect to weather underground to automate itbulletfactory
    • ^Amazon sells buttons for thatfyoucher1
  • mekk1

    yeah boys, I wonder how people are still amazed by an app controlled light bulb and some speaker and a microphone while they still put diesel in their heating they bought from isis.

    Get your shit together, a cctv cam lousily connected to your router doesn't make a home "smart".

    • hue light alexa users be madmekk
    • Electric heating from 100% renewable sources, hater :)lnu
  • lnu-1

    I got a couple of (groups of) lightbulbs connected to Google via the IKEA gateway, mostly because it's the easiest way to group and dim the lights. I communicate through a Google Nest/Hub in the kitchen, wich can also control the TV, play music, answer questions and (I have actually used this) read me recipies in easy steps.
    That's about as smart as my house will get, apart from the car charger, which is a system of it's own.

  • face_melter0

    The film kinda plays on the society-eats-itself whereas the book is all about the building, as an entity, deciding to absolutely fucking molest and destroy the residents. As someone who works in architecture, it is a concept I am 100% behind.

  • mekk2

    I like the idea of a smart home, e.g.

    - you have a big window to the south and your heating system knows that sun us gonna be heating up the room (time/date, weather forecast) and therefore shuts down to save energy.

    - you have a solar roof and the house knows when energy is likely being produced from it and schedules the washing machine so no coal energy is used for that

    in the two above examples you'd need a lot of capable hardware and a software protocol to build that. It is also built around only getting data from outside and own sensors, and then making a decision offline on a computer running in the house.

    I like that.

    What I don't like is pointless and stupid "smart" devices that are nothing else but a simple web service running on a toaster to inform you via internet that your toast has reached peak brownnness. That stuff is made so insecure and shit, it's scary.

    --

    In my definition, a smart home gathers relevant data to save energy and maximize comfort by automating itself while being only accessible by physical access and not from an android phone in india. A dumb smart home is just a pile of shitty outdated hardware that will drown you in microservices only designed to sell more horseshit.

    • +++ So true, always thought the same. Don't call a remote control 'smart'.SimonFFM
    • Your fridge is attacked by ransomware and shows vicious DAP porn until you pay in bitcoin, while your front door cam refuses entry because you got a new haircutface_melter
    • Ummm, "smart" thermostats absolutely do shut down when in direct sun, and that requires NO extra capable hardware/software.monospaced
    • They also adjust heating/cooling so you can avoid peaks and it pre-heats/cools as well, which is "smart" beyond what you describe.monospaced
    • These thermostats take in local data about weather, humidity, etc, as well as interior data in your home, all to adjust and refine their schedules to save energmonospaced
    • @mono - yes. One device can work for itself flawlessly. But how about multiple devices with multiple power sources?mekk
    • I'm not following re: multiple power sources.monospaced
    • A modern house has a solar roof, a battery and is connected to the power grid. A smart house can decide what how to either maintain comfort, reduce cost ormekk
    • or reduce emmissions. Based on what goal is set and what are you are currently doing. Like charging your car when the pv storage is low - does the house "buy"mekk
    • "buy" energy from the grid, stop charging the vehicle or reroutes flow directly from the solar roof to the car? Every time a new decision, based on weather,mekk
    • weather, set profiles, targets, current energy price etc.mekk
    • I see. I guess more work needs to go in, which requires more people to adopt. I don’t agree a smart home must have solar and battery storage though.monospaced
    • That isn’t practical nor reflective of reality. Same with electric cars. Not yet at least.monospaced
    • in your world - maybe.mekk
  • slappy1

    We don't have any voice assistants. We use Ikea smart bulbs to switch on our lamps at sunset (it changes during the year which is cool) and off at midnight. They use minimal power < 3w. If we ever want to use these manually, you can, you just switch them on and off like a normal bulb. They go back to the routine if you leave them on.

    After setting them up, we haven't touched them and they have been all good. Now and then Apple tells me that some of the bulbs are not responding but I ignore these and they all still work fine.

    We also have some Arlo cameras outside, to keep an eye on packages and get a notification when the postie has been.

    I think internet things can be good if you don't need to interact with them to go about your day. We have also been enjoying adding a Yamaha streamer to our hifi. It does what you want, all the time and doesn't ask for updates.

    • I agree. I enjoy the connected device stuff but also without the always-listening voice assistant.monospaced
  • doesnotexist1

    ring is great

    • I have one I need to install. Do I need to pay for the subscription?monospaced
    • you get some amount of time for free...then yeah you should pay for the 60 day backup of the video. otherwise you can't see video of any event it alerts you abtdoesnotexist
    • Yeah. Not ideal but ... yeah.monospaced
    • you can view live for free if you want it to record you have to pay.dbloc
    • That sucks. They should allow you to record it with your own equipment as an option.monospaced
    • yes it sucks but suck it up. it's worth it. also, the app & neighborhood features are great. it's like you care about the community where you live!doesnotexist
  • garbage3

    It's invasive and too clunky.

    My dad has his house rigged up, and the Alexa misfires are so annoying.

    Best use scenario: I went back home a few years ago for a family reunion, and on Christmas morning my brother walked into the room and said "Alexa, play 'Cannibal Corpse - I Cum Blood". It actually worked, the whole house was alive with it, and he blamed it on me. Cheeky fucker.

  • doriangrey1

    Wait. It all still sucks.

    • Maybe try an Amazon echo and a light bulb first. But it’s not time to invest in technology. New standards are due.doriangrey
    • What i don’t get is all the technology is there. It just feels like a half finished product still and it shouldn’t in 2021scarabin
    • So many competing platforms and networking is changing fast!monospaced
    • Apple and Amazon products all work ok on their own. But they work terrible together. In the end it should all just work, platform agnostic, and securely.doriangrey
    • Problem is that Apple doesn’t make ANY smart home products. And they aren’t enticing anyone to either. They shit the bed bad with HomeKitmonospaced
    • Google won’t play nice with them either, and Amazon is just as bad. It’s downright pathetic and the customers all suffer. Fuck Alexa too. No way she is allowed.monospaced
  • shapesalad0

  • dbloc0

    I have a few smart lights set up, but other than that my home is pretty stupid.

  • monospaced0

    Right now I have a bunch of Philips Hue white bulbs in various spots in the house (lamps mostly) which have worked great for years. I can dim lights for story/bed time for the toddler without getting out of bed and disturbing the process. I can just say "set bedtime" and everything updates for each room automatically.

  • monospaced0

    Next step is to update all the in-ceiling lights throughout the house with high quality dimmable LEDs and upgrade all of the light switches to ones that also work on WiFi as smart. Good thing about this is that they function as hard wired switches even if there is no WiFi, but if I want to control any of it with a device, that's an option too.

    • I have leviton switches in my house that work well. Can use goole home to control, or app - or just as a normal switch (which is 99% of the time.bulletfactory
    • I was looking at those :)monospaced
  • monospaced0

    I bought a house last year and updated all the thermostats (four total) with Google Nest learning thermostats. I did this so that I could control things without having to be near the box, nor home at all. It's icing on the cake that it does seem to save some money and that the learning part works mostly. I really enjoy that I can adjust the temps when I'm away when I inevitably forget.

    But fuck if Google won't play nice with Apple. I can't use Siri to control my Nest thermostats without using yet another 3rd party setup, which I'm not willing to do.

    • Four thermostats? That's temp control baby!stoplying
    • 1. main floor 2. upper floor 3. addition in the back 4. basementmonospaced
    • Our energy company sent us a nest thermostat for free, comped our next month's bill since I installed it myself, and has worked great.bulletfactory
    • Yeah I basically got mine for 90% off with promos and rebates. And they send me $250 a year for having them and using peak savers.monospaced
  • stoplying0

    We have and use an alexa and a google home to listen to morning radio and music. My streaming service is through amazon so it's very convenient. The only other "smart" tech I have is the Philips HUE led light strips. They look great in our living room and are pretty painless to set up. No smart thermostats or doorbells for us.

    • I like the idea of controllable lights - I've set some RGB LED arrays up around our front room and have a crappy wee remote to change them.Nairn
  • faxion1

    • I can't understand that accent to save my life but no one's paying me to be a butler either.CyBrainX