Smart Home S**t
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- ideaist
Hey gang,
I own a home now.
Feels good; boy becomes man and what not.
I feel the need to have a smart home topic to post setups, tech, etc.
XO for relevant and irrelevant insights, knowledge, etc!
- ideaist0
My older bro installed the Next x Yale Lock this weekend:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.co…
https://store.google.com/ca/prod…
I'm curious of others setups; I don't want 100% of my home to be technology based BUT I've been behind for so long it feels nice to at least have 1 "smart" home piece now.
- ideaist1
^
Amateur mistake.
- Nairn3
Don't.
- Don't make my home "smart"? I've been on the fence and still am on said fence.ideaist
- Smart homes are so lame. A home should be a sanctuary, and comforting. Smart shit ruins that vibe.nb
- @nb I agree; trying to have 1 foot in and 1 foot out of smart technology.ideaist
- Also have you ever listened to someone ask Alexa to turn down the music or whatever? God it’s so fucking tiresome and lamenb
- I'm avoiding Google product(s) except for some of the nest offerings as they seem to be the "best of the best" with few alternatives. The lock, camera, etc.ideaist
- I got Hue lights and thought that would be nice. It is a nice idea but fuck if it ever works. Don't bother with that nonsense.CyBrainX
- I shouldn’t use the word lame. What I mean is it’s very uncoolnb
- Make your home a peaceful refuge from the dorky world of tech!nb
- It's all fun and games until a firmware updates fucks everything and you're locked out your house.face_melter
- ^Nairn
- Just get a butler! FFS.shapesalad
- I have my fire alarm connected to my phone, so that when there's a fire, and I'm not home, I can turn it off remotelydrgs
- ..and let all the other inhabitants of the block where I live die a horrible death.Nairn
- The Nest thermostats definitely add to the sanctuary feel. They feel more elegant and less intrusive than traditional thermostats, which look like computers.monospaced
- Nest listening to everything you say lol
https://gizmodo.com/…grafician - I'm talking about the thermostats, lol. Those don't have a mic. That's an entirely different, unrelated product.monospaced
- That article is about the security equipment, which I would expect to have microphones.monospaced
- There is a huge headache in constantly updating firmware of every device to keep your network securenb
- scarabin10
We have google home in every room and every light and most switches are “smart”. We have an IR blaster (RM mini) that replaces all infrared remotes. Nest cams everywhere. Thermostat. Just went all in.
I honestly don’t feel like my life is any easier. It took hours of dicking around in 3-4 different apps, creating custom scenes, making sure everything plays well together, and every so often they’ll release an update that breaks everything so i have to do it again. Walking into a room and telling google to turn your lights on take twice as long as just flipping a switch. Half the time you tell her to turn on the lights and she’ll start rattling off locations of all the lighting stores in your area while you just stand there in the dark. Also, you can’t change its name so you have to say “google” every time you want to do anything, which frankly, is some corporate bullshit.
On one hand it’s nice being able to say “movie mode” or something and have the lights change color, dim, a projection screen comes down, a projector fires up, and the inputs change (there’s a kind of sci-fi satisfaction in that) but on the other hand a smart home has its drawbacks.
- It giveth AND taketh, eh?
I feel too, it's really in its infancy which is not always a great time to go "all in".ideaist - yup same here (Alexa though, couldn't get g-home from amazon where im at go figure)GuyFawkes
- I’m gonna put motion sensors in each room and have the lights come on automatically so i don’t have to say anything. But that’s $45/sensorscarabin
- Oh yeah, and if your internet goes out you can’t turn on your philips hue lights. That’s real fun when they’re all philips hue lightsscarabin
- See, I don't want lights coming on whenever I enter, or when it THINKS someone is coming/going.monospaced
- @scarabin - could you use ultrasonic distance sensors instead? They cost like £3 a piece.Nairn
- Yeah but in this case i want someone else responsible for it working, if that makes sense. Thought about making my own system but it’s too much troublescarabin
- yeah that whole thing when the internet goes out sucks shitGuyFawkes
- Sounds like a living hellnb
- It giveth AND taketh, eh?
- 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
- 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
- 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
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.
- dbloc0
I have a few smart lights set up, but other than that my home is pretty stupid.
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- 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
- 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.
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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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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".