So-called ‘smart home’ appliances and gadgets have become an ever-more present thing the past years, with nary a coffeemaker, AC unit or light bulb for sale today that doesn’t have an associated smartphone app, cloud service and/or subscription to enable you to control it from the beach during your vacation, or just set up automation routines to take tedium out of your busy schedule. Yet as much as [Calvin Wankhede] loves home automation, he’d very much like for it to not stop working the moment his internet connection goes down, or the company running the service goes bankrupt. This is where his journey to create an off-line alternative smart home based around Home Assistant and other (open) software began.
Although Home Assistant (HA) itself has become significantly easier to use, what becomes readily apparent from [Calvin]’s journey is that setting up and managing your own smart home infrastructure is a never-ending project. A project that involves finding compatible hardware that can tie into HA, whether or not without reflashing the firmware, resolving configuration issues and other assorted fun. If you are into this kind of thing, it is of course a blast, and it’s a good feeling when it finally all works.
Unfortunately, interoperability across smart home and similar IoT devices is still a far-off dream, even with the introduction of Thread and Matter (which incidentally are among the worst product names to search for, period), as Matter’s uptake is pretty abysmal. This thus leaves off-line smart homes mostly as the domain of the tech-inclined in search of a hobby.
Considering wether to have my working setup broken by some stupid update and getting ripped of features (Windows 11, Sonos, etc.) OR investing some time to make sure everythings working and updating when I actually want it and being able to secure it properly…. that’s not a tough choice. Been running Home Assistant for over a year now and yeah setup might be tricky, but if you look out what you buy it’s quite trivial. Way better than depending on some company to update their cloud connected product, not selling your data, no breaking their product…. etc.
This.
And yes, I feel bad that the Home Assistant door is marked “you must be Tech+5 to enter”, because everyone deserves to not be held hostage by cloud vendors. So I think the more we all invest in keeping HomeAssistant as free as possible of dirty clouds, the more clean product availability will improve.
I do see that Home Assistant is more accessible today than it was even two years ago. And that comes from the thousands of people contributing to the project. While it’s still far from being as easy as the commercial IoT players, the difficulty gap is indeed closing.
Sadly IoT makers continually partner with vendors who offer cloud integration through proprietary systems that vacuum your data for every drop of profitable personal info. In order to get vendors willing to sell products without privacy violating clouds, the world needs to demand products without them. So if you buy a LiftMaster garage door opener, be sure to hook it up using a ratgdo or OpenGarage device instead of using MyQ. If you buy a Tuya device, short circuit it in Home Assistant with LocalTuya. Reflash those Xiaomi smart plugs with Tasmota. We need to somehow show the companies that while we appreciate their products, their cloud offerings are despised.
Even better, instead of buying cloud tied hardware and freeing it, how about supporting vendors like Athom, Martin Jerry, or Domestic Automation that sell devices with open firmware already in place: esphome, Tasmota, wled. Very plug and play with HA
Ah, and Kauf lightbulbs: another esphome vendor
Price, selection and availability are the main problems
When you have an internet outage is when you realize why you should have gone offline……
Not even just that. Having to have the processing done in the cloud significantly slows things down. When I hit the switch to turn off my lights they don’t turn off, they turn off, in worst cases, 10-15 seconds after I hit the button. My switches server needs to communicate with the home automations companies server and then that communicates back to my home automation hub.
That’s how it seemed integrating almost anything into Samsung SmartThings was like anyway. With Caseta, Philips Hue, etc.
Why.
In the actual worst cases I could hit the button and nothing would happen. Or a company stops keeping their server on and now all those devices don’t talk to anything.
Doing it locally is about ensuring it will work quickly and reliably even if the manufacturers decide to start cutting operating expenses.
Sounds like a you problem honestly. I have a bunch of smart devices (lights, switches, garage door opener) from a bunch of different companies and they all activate within a second or two at most.
I like how we no longer say “that hasn’t been my experience” and instead go with the much more confrontational “that sounds like a you problem.”
Not just here; I’m seeing it everywhere. Whether intentional or not, it comes off as lacking in empathy, which is not how we make the world a better place.
It’s an aspect of the “fundamental attribution error”. When we see someone doing something, we attribute it to the personality of the person and not the circumstances at the time. (It’s got a wikipedia page.)
For example, if someone cuts you off in traffic you immediately think that he’s a bad driver, you don’t consider that he might be rushing to the hospital with a sick child.
It’s been amplified quite a bit in the political forum, where you can paint someone (or their party) as bad when they do something because they’re inherently bad, and not because of the circumstances or situation.
I see it all the time in the news nowadays. The urge to paint “the other side” as completely awful is very strong.
Both are valid ways to say the same thing, both can invite more questions, which is hopefully the ultimate aim of the comment in the first place.
It might come off as sounding less empathetic but the internet is often a cold, dry place and has always been open to interpretation, you can rise above it all and look past what you might see as a personal slight and also look out for other clues (like important information that follows the comment) to see empathy.
When you have to rely on wireless point-to-point or satellite for your ISP 5-15 second delays aren’t unusual. I refuse to buy wifi devices that require in internet connection to work because they are unreliable and insecure by definition. On my HA setup z-wave has been fastest and most reliable.
or if you get locked out because someone thought you said something bad
https://medium.com/@bjax_/a-tale-of-unwanted-disruption-my-week-without-amazon-df1074e3818b
Ive been using Homeassistant for 3 years now, and its been rock solid ever since i moved away from hosting it on a raspberry pi, so definetly run homeassistant os on a dedicated machine, or run it through a VM or docker (ive been using docker the last two years and i havent had a single problem)! The only real problem ive ever encountered is when proprietary cloud services i integrate remove their integrations or break their api’s…. Looking at you Tesla, Yale and Mitsubitshi…… But ive allways found some solutions thanks to the awesome homeassistant community.
Isn’t hosting on raspberry pi in fact hosting on dedicated machine?
Technically yes but Raspberry PI quickly hits hardware limitations. Better get an old PC or laptop. Even better if you have a beefier home server and can run it on VM or Docker
This was rhetorical question – but since you answered…
It is not necessarily better to pickup full blown computer for “glorified web server”.
You need to review conditions of the project (available power, technical skill of the person, finances, space available, …)
I have found that over the past year or so, HA has become less stable in the long term. The fact that they release a new patch for it each week hides this issue for most, but as I only update it once a month I do see it fall apart within a couple of weeks. Nothing major happens, in fact the weird thing is that the rules engine stops working properly. Some rules don’t trigger and some other trigger but only part of the rule is run. I don’t have a lot of time on hand to play around with rules and integrations, so for the past year my system has not changed at all, yet the behavior of HA has. A simple restart of HA always fixes the issue.
Huh, I’ve dealt with a lot of systems they have that problem, but my instance of HA isn’t one of them. (Mostly they suffer from memory leaks). And I’m actually running a pretty resource constrained setup, on a Pi 3b. I also only upgrade at most once a month. Just wanted to share a data point with you: might be worth seeing if it’s some sort of underlying hardware issue, rather then HA per se.
What version RPi were you using? If you had issues with it, do you think they’d still exist if you upgraded to the latest model?
This applies to all smart homes, not just offline ones. Once you’ve got an offline smart home configured you just have to keep replacing the batteries.
If it’s online then good luck when the service you’re using goes bust or introduces subscriptions.
The other alternative is to buy into one echo system rather than protocol. Ie buy all hive or Phillips hue rather than use agnostic zigbee/thread/zwave devices. The issue is those ecosystems are mega expensive compared to generic bulbs for example!
This is my trade and profession for the last decade, our shop is inadvertently adding a pre-made Home Assistant with a special integration driver for the close source system we use as the interface for everything.
That seems like quite a slip-up to do inadvertently. Can you elaborate on the system?
Yeah… is “inadvertently” actually the word you want there?
inadvertently
/ˌɪnədˈvəːt(ə)ntli/
adverb
without intention; accidentally.
“his name had been inadvertently omitted from the list”
Anyway: is the driver you’re using one of the Home Assistant ones or something you’ve had to develop in house?
I’ve been running Domoticz since August 2018. As long as my router is running everything works. I can VPN into my router should I need to connect when I’m away. The only outside API it’s running is Openweathermap. It receives my own weather station over 868 MHz. It switches lights over 433 MHz and Philips Hue. It switches my thermostat via Opentherm. It connects to my smart meter via a P1 cable. It receives temperature, humidity and pressure from a couple of ESP8266 scattered around the house. Then there’s some door sensors and some smart bulbs that only needed an app to connect to the WiFi, but are now handled by a little script I wrote for them. I’ve only had problems with SD cards crapping out, but the current one has been holding on for quite some time now.
Setting it all up cost quite a lot of time, but it was spread out over time and was fun to do.
Domoticz FTW!
Mine’s hooked up to IKEA Tradfri for lights, and various ESPEasy nodes for temperature/humidity and remote I/O. It links to Kodi, and it links to Pushover, and it links to email.
It’s basically the glue that sticks all the incompatible pieces together. Undoubtedly other systems do too, but Domoticz is comprehensive and unpretentious.
I had issues with SD cards in the past until I got a Sandisk High Endurance one… It’s more expensive than the others, but I have one running my dashcam for 3 years without issues.
I´ve started with HA few months ago and found it damn easy to use and install (although i don´t use the managed version, wanting to keep control on the underlying OS)
I´ve got a variety of devices, most of them using Zigbee. My guess is that if you stick to Zigbee, it´s going to be way more easy than having to reflash wifi devices…
Just how bad does your fiddling to make it work have to be for the convenience of the home automation that actually works reliably (as its not some darn cloud service) worth it?
Personally I really don’t see the practical appeal of HA at all – a decent IR/RF/wifi remote can get you all the remote activation you might really ‘need’. It can even be on your phone – many of them come with IR. And for everything else walking across a room and down the hall etc to press buttons and turn dials is such a hardship…
Only low-mid end phones come with IR, and it is not always trivial to use it (many will not support teaching and only have popular brands). Additionally, some automations do need remote access (for example, i am mostly out of the country so i disable the heating, but i want to arrive with a warm house when i’m back)
Try it and you’ll never go back from your “remote assisted” world.
I think not.
Turn on lights in the living room:
With home automation:
1. Walk into room.
2. Pull out phone.
3. Unlock phone.
4. Switch to HA program.
5. Scroll through all the various light controls for the whole house.
6. Select living room light.
7. Select “turn on living room light.”
8. Wait for phone to communicate with server and with the light so that the light goes on.
9. Light doesn’t go on.
10. Repeat “light on command”
11. Wait again.
12. Light finally goes on.
13. Why did I go in the living room in the first place?
Without home automation:
1. Walk into the living room.
2. Flip switch as I go by.
3. Light goes on immediately.
4. Continue with whatever I came in there to do.
This leaves out all of the time spent configuration the system and maintaining the data for the control system every time a light bulb is replaced.
Sorry. I don’t see the advantage to home automation.
1. Walk into room.
2. Touch *nothing*, light comes on automatically because motion (or occupation if you have the money) sensors are a thing…the light coming on or not can further be governed by time or illumination sensors.
why the F would you turn lights on with a phone???
Install crap loads of complicated sensors to detect entry and occupation.
Go in room, light comes on.
Sit down, quietly read book or watch TV – light goes off.
Get up, dance a jig so that the occupancy sensors register you are there.
Read, jig, repeat.
Thanks, no.
To paraphrase you ‘why the F would’ I want the lights to come on automatically?!?!
I like the gloom to stay darn gloomy and relaxing when walking around the house in a more bedtime mode – even moonlight is more than enough to a glass of water etc. I don’t want my kitchen to in effect flashbang me just because I walked into the room. Its bad enough when your schedule doesn’t match the rest of the house so you have to get dazzled because the wakeful folk actually need the light…
I want lights to come on not based on time of day, or ambient light level in the room but when I actually want them! Turn the lights on when you are reading, playing with sharp objects at your workbench or when you are currently very adapted to the bright light so want the space you are walking into to be similarly illuminated. And really there is no way for the computer behind HA to actually know what I want this time.
And for things like central heating it is so far from the end of the world if you have decent insulation to have it run while you are not home once in a while, its all thermostatically controlled, probably has a simple timer as well – and actually from the point of view of never having damp problems in weird spots keeping the space consistently heated can be a good thing…
Don’t get me wrong though the actually playing with HA as a project doesn’t sound like a bad way to pass some time. It just really doesn’t seem practical in nearly all cases.
Wait, what? Don’t you know you can have a physical switch co-exist with HA? It can be your same wall switch location, or even places where you don’t have a wall switch. Or both.
Home Automation isn’t about making life more complicated. It is about making life easier. For me, that means switching lights off automatically after I’ve gone to bed. Or switching outdoor lights on, based on sunset, so I don’t have to do it by fumbling around in the dark when I get home late.
I suppose much like anything else, it may not be for everyone. But it is a great addition to simply certain aspects of life for those that choose to.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how these systems should work then. With the correct setup the system knows what room you’re in, not just just sees motion in a place and reacts. Having run HA for 3 years now I can confirm it does groundbreaking for me, but that’s solely because I realised I don’t want to invest in the plethora of sensors required to do the job properly and a half-way house is more complex than either extreme. However, it’s great for CCTV, data logging, turning my driveway lights on when I get home so I can see up the drive when reversing in, monitors and logs my energy usage so I don’t have to be home when providing meter readings (im away more than home, and smart meters impose other restrictions I want to avoid). Simple stuff. Would i recommend it to my parents? No. Do I enjoy having it? Yes.
*nothing goundbreaking
perhaps viewing “home automation” as a sport,
would help ,highly competitive at that
my personal and work spaces are mostly
de~digitalised,except for the things that are
intrinsicaly of the computer/software relm
ie:phone,laptop,solar charge controller and inverters.
What I do have are skills,and a lot of those are
focused on,food,and basic comforts.Other things
like moving around and doing things in total darkness,are to me,just fun,and of course proof
of my ability to create a three dimensional mental
map of my suroundings,and navigate while doing
tasks,in total darkness.
This is just an adjunct to my work,designing and
building largish metal stuff,its a very lean process,
paper,pencil,tape measure,chalk,and start cutting
stock,and as I can work with curves and spirals
that keeps me from having to do liniar scut work.
There is also something about all this “automation” that hints at bieng victemised by
having to do anything “simple”
I haven’t really looked into home automation.
Are there not “smart” switches that support manual, direct user interaction?
Home automation doesn’t mean no switches. My house still has light switches. But sometimes the sunlight goes away while I’m in the middle of something I can’t easily put down.
The work automation implies something is automated, not just accessible via smart devices. You can still have functional physical interfaces by opting for smart switches instead of wall modules or bulbs.
Without home automation:
1. Walk into the basement.
2. Flip switch as I go by.
3. Light goes on immediately.
4. Continue with whatever I came in there to do.
5. Leave and forget to switch off light because hands are full.
6. Light stays on for 2 weeks.
With home automation:
1. Walk into the basement.
2. Flip switch as I go by.
3. Light goes on immediately.
4. Continue with whatever I came in there to do.
5. Leave and forget to switch off light because hands are full.
6. Lights shut off on schedule later that evening.
You can do this for anything you want off, closed, or locked at a certain time of day (e.g. garage doors, door locks).
Yup, my favorite custom automation involves all my exterior locks. I added sensors to the deadbolts (and the outside gate lock). In the evening, the back porch light comes on if it’s after sunset and any of those locks are not locked. A gentle reminder to lock up for evening. Same state switch triggers a phone notification if it’s after 10 pm. A side effect is that when I unlock the back door at night to do something, the porch light turns on, without me fumbling for the switch.
It can be as bad as you like it to be. It is called home automation, you can automate actions that you perform regularly without excluding manual actions.
The light switches I have in my home are Z-Wave, this means that they work as regular switches, but can also receive on/off commands from a home automation system.
for example, I have configured my home to switch on lights automatically just before sunset and turn them off at midnight, which is just after the time I normally go to bed.
The thermostat settings adjust automatically when the system detects that my phone home or not. I am always with my phone so that works for me.
The behavior of the system changes when I have the guest mode active.
My morning routine is pretty settled, so the lights turn on automatically with the alarm clock on my phone rings. The radio starts playing shortly after so I can get the latest news.
Home assistant will tell be a dad joke while I’m having breakfast. and inform me about journey time to work.
Home automation is all about making life easier. I haven’t used the app on my phone to turn on/off a light in years.
It can be smart home or a dumb home, it is your choice.
You’ve never gotten comfortable in bed and realized that someone left the lights on in the living room? Or were away from your house and forgot whether you left the garage door open or wondered if it decided to open while closing? Or wanted to turn off the water to your house while away, or have it turn off if the water heater starts leaking? Or wanted to get notified when you’re out getting groceries (or doing your own thing at home) that your dishwasher or clothes washer started leaking and you really should race home now to correct things? Or wanted your thermostat to be one setting when you’re away, another when you’re home, and a 3rd setting when you’re going to sleep? How about having it do that when your schedule isn’t regular and your smart home reacts based on your location. How about having your ceiling fans turn on when your system detects that the nearby rooms have a large temperature differential when compared with thermostats setpoint and the temperature in the central room with the fan? If all the colour balance bulbs out there didn’t have garbage lumen output, have the bulbs shift into yellow and orange as the evening goes on to help you better able to get to sleep.
Yes it is about convenience but also more than that. I mean, why have the ovens we have today when you can have a wood fired oven and you just need to add another log or open/close the air damper. There are still people who do that quite successfully today but I think many people are fine having our ovens automatically regulate their temperature to a setpoint.
In my 55 years, I have never seen a washing machine burst a water line and start leaking.
I’ve had the main water connection leak – that caused water damage to the wall and wallpaper. Would home automation have caught that? Nope. Didn’t think so.
I’ve had a drain for the heating get clogged and leak water into the attic – would your home automation cover that?
I’ve had automatic bleeder valves in the heating system get stuck and dribble water – again causing water damage. It seems you are supposed to periodically go around and check that the bleeder valves are working properly. If I have to go check them, then I can also bleed the heater pipes at the same time. I had the automatic bleeders replaced with manual ones that I bleed a couple of times year. While I’m at it, I check the fill level of the water in the heating system.
I don’t have colored light bulbs in the house. I don’t see the point. Lights are to see with, not make some artistic statement.
The heating system has a scheduler. It doesn’t have remote access.
Before I leave home on vacation, I fool proof the house, anyway. Water off, heating off. Last look through the house that all the windows are closed and locked and everything is shutoff or unplugged. Receiving a warning when I’m already in another country that an appliance is still running is little help – unless every appliance or every outlet in the house can be remotely controlled.
Sorry. There’s useful automation (set point on the oven, heating schedule) then there’s unnecessarily complicated stuff to make your life easier that ends up just adding complications.
> I’ve had the main water connection leak – that caused water damage to the wall and wallpaper. Would home automation have caught that? Nope. Didn’t think so.
> I’ve had a drain for the heating get clogged and leak water into the attic – would your home automation cover that?
Yes for both, with a properly placed leak sensor. The problem is you’d have to figure out where a sensor would best be placed – but HA can indeed help with leaks.
Home automation isn’t going to solve either, the best it can do is tell you the floor is wet… And unless you plaster sensors absolutely everywhere it probably won’t even do that – too many places a leak could form and the sensors will only be put in the places problems are more expected and the lowest points where water might pool. Which will be equally useless in many cases as the leak isn’t fast enough to flow it soaks into the building instead…
> Home automation isn’t going to solve either, the best it can do is tell you the floor is wet
The question wasn’t whether HA would solve a leak, it was whether it would *catch* a leak.
The answer is yes, with a properly placed sensor (but as you noted, ‘properly placed’ can be tough to determine!). Will it solve the leak? Probably not, unless you can automate a shutoff valve somewhere that matters.
Still, the key with leaks is to resolve them as quickly as possible, before damage piles up. In that regard, HA can indeed help with notification.
I have water sensors in the cabinets beneath each sink, in a tray under my water filter system, in the drain pan around my water heater, and on the floor in the utility room under the laundry machines and water softener. When they detect a leak it sends an alert to my phone and it shuts off the house main water valve. The total cost for sensors and remote valve actuator was less than $300. And yes, it’s gone off. I also test it every time I change batteries in the sensors.
When we leave the house the burglar alarm is armed. The range is checked and we’re alerted if we left any burners lit or the oven on. Any stray lights, TVs, and/or fans are turned off. And when we return, the alarm is disarmed.
The smoke detectors and burglar alarm provide us with alert notifications no matter where we are. If we’re not home we can call a neighbor to check on the house.
After dark the exterior house lights turn on as we approach home, so we can see nobody’s lurking in the shadows around the garage. And once we’re inside, they shut themselves off again.
An indicator in the bedroom flashes red whenever something security related in the house needs attention, helping ensure we don’t forget to close and lock doors at night.
The smart plug on the sump pump alerts me if the pump is running continuously, indicating the float detector might be jammed. Similarly the smart plug on the refrigerator monitors electric consumption, indicating if something is wrong.
Those are just some of the automatons protecting the house. But there are plenty of conveniences and energy savings that home automation also enables.
When we head out of the city the thermostat and water heater cut back. And when we start heading home, they resume and we return to a comfortable home.
Using voice to turn on the stairwell lights when your arms are loaded with laundry is also quite useful.
When the laundry machines in the basement are finished with their cycles, the smart plugs detect the drop in power consumption and notifies us, so we can go fold the clothes before they get wrinkled. And the lights come on to lead us down to the laundry room.
When the vacuum cleaner decides to scrub the floors, it turns on the lights as it moves around the house so it can see various obstacles (that’s a euphemism for dog poop.)
Window shades open at sunrise and close at sunset. The grow lights over the orchids turn on and off according to a cycle that encourages blooming at certain times of the year, as does the water misting system. And I’m reminded to water the plants if I ignore them for more than 7 days.
We’ve found the older we get, the more we appreciate the assistance, especially with tasks we were supposed to remember. Of course none of these are anything we can’t live without. But honestly, the conveniences don’t “add complications”. It’s a simple matter of observing something we do repeatedly, and then letting the house do it instead. They cost a bit of money to implement, although prices have dropped significantly.
Throughout 20 years of this I’ve learned that many people have wildly different needs and abilities, and I never tell someone that what they’re doing with IoT is unnecessary. I’m not in their shoes.
“I’ve had the main water connection leak – that caused water damage to the wall and wallpaper. Would home automation have caught that? ”
– Yes. leak sensors are a thing, so are remote actuated valves. Mains water leak detected, set an automation to shut off the water main to the house.
“I’ve had a drain for the heating get clogged and leak water into the attic – would your home automation cover that?”
– Again, yes. Leak sensors are still a thing
“I’ve had automatic bleeder valves in the heating system get stuck and dribble water – again causing water damage.”
– (sigh) Still yes. Still, leak sensors are a thing
There is a huge difference between something as simple as manually setting a temperature for thermal regulation in an oven and home automation… One is taking work away from the person, but knows exactly what that person wanted at all times as you set it and that setting is only ever changed when you turn the dial, while the other is trying to take heaps of rules, sensors, switches and remote connections with no certainty at all that the input of the person in the room just put in will remain – I turn the lights on in the living room manually, and you from your bed turn them off again etc…
My very-low-spec router runs a little HTTP server that implements If-None-Match and Prefer: wait. The state of each smart device in my home is stored in a separate file. ESP8266es connect to the webserver and wait for their state file to change (or PUT changes to their state file). The UI is all client-side javascript, so there’s only about 2MB RAM usage and almost zero load on the router.
Can you please provide more information? This sounds intriguing, and I’d like to know more.
It’s a type of HTTP “long polling”, unfashionable now that we have websockets, but easy to implement on a microcontroller. I found a good description here: https://blog.fanout.io/2016/11/21/moving-from-polling-to-long-polling/
Essentially the device (an ESP8266) says “send me , but only when it changes. I will wait up to x seconds”. The server keeps the connection open for up to x seconds. Then, when another device, or a UI, or a script, changes the file (I use HTTP PUT requests for this), the server sends the new version to the device immediately.
I get very low latency – even smart sockets with buttons, where pushing the button sends a PUT request to the server, which then sends that same data back to the socket to turn it on/off, feel instant. And because everything is simple files and HTTP, building a browser-based UI is almost trivial.
Thank you. I’m going to research this and possibly implement it in my own home.
There is a use case for people who are unable to interact with regular light switches or other environmental controls due to physical disability. Having a tablet based control system that can be accessed through assistive technology such as an eye tracker enables control of the environment through home automation technology.
This was one of the key takeaways from https://hackaday.com/2024/01/09/37c3-the-tech-behind-life-with-quadraplegia/ for me, actually. [Jan] calls out “normal” home-automation things as being tremendous quality of life improvements for him.
Now think about how many people have limited mobility, and how many more are going to as e.g. the baby boom in the US moves into its 80s.
Some company will make a ton of money by realizing that the real audience for home automation isn’t freaks who do it for fun (guilty as charged) but people who actually need the tech. And that company will be doing many people a favor at the same time.
This is proper joined up thinking but my only worry is the predatory nature of companies that are built for profit around vulnerable people, there will be more of these companies than the ones doing real favours for humanity.
… and the boomers would happily pay hundreds of dollars per month because many of them haven’t kept up to date with technology, still remember when TVs and mobile phones months of salary, and assume that a handful of ESP32s and a few kB of bandwidth really worth the extortionate fee they are being charged. Then the providers would STILL leave security holes, or just straight-up sell their personal information.
It would be a profitable business to be in, if you were a greedy soulless scumbag.
Bah. I’ve been running OpenHAB for years now with both fully custom boards and devices with Tasmota flashed onto them. I absolutely refuse to use any “smart” relays or such that require an Internet connection, there is no hardware functionality that requires such and the only reason for such requirements to exist is for the manufacturers to collect and sell the data.
I don’t like having to configure everything myself, I don’t like having to build my own boards, but I am not trading offline functionality for the convenience of being tracked at all hours.
Many years ago, I invested in HA to manage a radiator in a space that is supposed to be kept as cold as possible but still frost free.
I have another radiator set to keep a base temperature, and one on a HA switch to go on either by a temperature switch telling it that the room is getting too cold, or by me turning it on manually when I know the temperature is going to drop.
I drove 200km to check that the radiator had turned on when the system lost contact with the Internet.
It does not comunicate directly between the temp sensor and the outlet even though they are in the same room, they need to communicate over the internet via a Server (probably a toaster in someones closet) with an uptime that would make Windows Vista look like a Unix system…
Fuck internet dependent HA systems, the radiator was off and the waterpipes had frozen leading to water damage…
(now I have installed a lightbulb on the same outlet as the radiator, so I can call someone to go check in the window if the light is on)
I once had a similar problem – putting heat in an under-porch space to prevent a temporary water connection from freezing. Solved with an extension cord, a small 500w electric heater, and a fixed-point (3 Celcius) AC thermostat. Simplest is usually best.
I’ve used those thermostatic outlets – and had them die once a year, so I need to check repeatedly. I’ve been experimenting with other solutions; thermostats in the heater body, thermal snap discs, digital controllers… haven’t seen yet what will happen. Might try a capillary thermostat too, actually.
Ever look into wiring one of those old paraffin wax switches from a 1970s car choke so it turns off the power when it gets warm? They’re stupidly reliable old tech.
I would suggest failing safe, if possible – could you tolerate being too warm better than being frost free? If so, I’d start with the state of having the second radiator come on by a hardwired thermostat anytime it’s under a certain maximum temperature, and only turn off when the HA has a connection and commands it to do so.
This anecdote shows that many of the “problems” solved by HA can be solved for free by knowing who your neighbours are and being nice to them.
Pick your poison. You can set up Home Assistant and have complete control of just about everything and be able to choose from a wide range of devices. Or you can lock into a given manufacture and have to live with their limitations but in software and hardware.
The search of HA compatible devices isn’t that hard actually but the setup can be difficult.
Funny aside, I had a smart switch in the media room called “media room”. I decided I wanted a dimmer so I swapped it out, took the switch that was “Media Room”, moved it to the light on the outside of the shop door and renamed it “shop”. I then put the dimmer in and called it “Media Room”
Now, every time I ask Alexa (I know) to turn on or off the media room lights half the time the shop light responds and half the time the media room light responds.
Then, as if to add insult to injury, if I turn the dimmer all the way bright the smart bulbs flash on and off at about 10Hz.
It was at this point that I basically gave up on home automation.
You probably needed to talk to amazon and get them to disassociate both items from your home setup, then re-associate them according to your tastes.
That sounds like an Alexa problem.
Cloud services are best avoided.
When your myQ garage door openers stop working for months at a time, and when myQ inevitably folds up shop, the DIY approach seems to make a lot more sense. If it were just a light bulb, who cares, but for many devices/appliances that are expected to last decades, better to take control yourself.
My experience with myQ is that it is an unreliable POS that is off-line whenever I want to use it.
“Unfortunately, interoperability across smart home and similar IoT devices is still a far-off dream, even with the introduction of Thread and Matter (which incidentally are among the worst product names to search for, period), as Matter’s uptake is pretty abysmal.”
Threaded Matter. Might even make a nice logo.
I could have a pretty extensive Home Automation system (and have a drawerfull of ESP8266/Tasmota devices, and an rPi home server with MQTT running 24/7), but I haven’t really done much, because it doesn’t seem like it would appreciably improve our life to justify a big effort. Philosophically, I avoid any commercial stuff that needs Internet for basic function. All I’d want from the Internet connection is connection to the home server for some level of remote monitoring and basic control. In any case, the automation should be simple, dependable and self-contained.
I periodically follow this guy, who has put a lot of effort into his DIY home automation:
https://tech.scargill.net/
There’s a fair few more disastrous consequences of smart home tech described here too, and a bit about how bad things get when smart home tech is combined with the virus of DRM.
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/09/27/the-coming-tyranny-of-smart-technology-is-worse-than-you-think-but-there-is-hope/
Wow. I never thought there would be so many people opposed to home automation. If it’s not for you, that’s fine, but many people who read Hackaday are tinkerers. Is everything completely functional and serves a purpose? Heck no. However it helps build skills and offers a unique hobby.
Build it youself and make it a good system, then nobody will argue against it. Otherwise all the mentioned problems apply. There is no energy saving when the switches (sensors, smart meters, communication gear) draw more power than the occasionally forgotten light. Motion sensors looking on the sidewalk are the worst, go down the road and get blasted with high beams at every third house :-/
I have the habit of turning on the things I need instead of turning off the things I don’t need, so if I forget something, it is usually in off state. You can make your routines your best friend or your worst enemy — for example: always switch off the oven before taking the pot away, and the risk of leaving it on by accident is much reduced. My home automation is a well maintained set of such routines, you might call them proved code snippets for everyday actions, running on brain 1.0 hardware (it is like a n old SD card, tends to get bit flips if reprogrammed too often).
Not apposed… Just the application has to make ‘sense’. Light switches work fine when you walk into a room. Light is on until I want them off by … by flipping the manual switch. Why ‘automate’ that? Heat? Just set the manual thermostat to 70F and done (no computer needed). Done… I like to tinker … but it has to make ‘sense’ (to me). I am a believer in the KISS principle. No need to make life more complicated with electronics that need ‘trouble shooting’ now and then. Being a software developer I know the problems the ‘cloud’ causes and the security risks. So there would have to be a ‘very’ good reason to route data to the ‘cloud’ down to phone and back again for example. So far I haven’t found any ‘good’ reason. Anything I do is ‘in house’ — period. No Alexa (and now, no AI), etc. allowed either. Sure I’ve done ‘fun’ things like a ‘book switch’. Pull out a book in the library, and some lights come on. I use a ‘redis’ server as my automation database for KISS. Cool. Open a door and a light comes on the Star Trek Computer console alerting that a certain door is now open. I get that. But refrigerators, dryers, washing machines, … nope. Turn the water off before you leave on vacation and set the temp down a bit on the manual thermostat. Done. Oh, and lock the doors on the way out.
Oh and as above… build it yourself. No need to ‘buy’ some companies ‘solution. All part of the ‘fun’.
Nah, a thermostat I can understand wanting to automate. I wouldn’t mind if the temperature was less comfortable when no-one’s home at that time of day. When it’s cold, I wouldn’t mind letting most of the house cool down overnight while just keeping the bedrooms warm until the sun comes back out and the house warms back up. When the temperature near the thermostat is moderate, but some rooms vary, I wish it would know to turn the fan on and circulate some air every now and then. When the temperature is fine but the humidity is high, I wish it would run the air conditioner for awhile or something. In the season where in the afternoon it’s hot and in early morning it’s cold, i wish it could keep the temperature from going too far in either direction without me changing it multiple times a day.
So yeah, probably going to build something eventually.
My home automation is an aging X-10 system.
There’s a line that goes from “TV remote” to “fridge that tracks your eating habits and sends it to Amazon”, and everyone is arguing for and against different points on that line. It’s not a slippery slope! What started with me building an LED strip that I can control from an app on my phone doesn’t end with Google knowing when my laundry’s done!
To be frank, I’m not really surprised by any comments on this site anymore. Really gone downhill in the last few years.
A coworker of mine got into the smart home thing, and the bug kinda bit me. I’d played with Home Assistant way back in like 2018 and didn’t want to spend the money to buy any “smart” devices, until I bought a new home in 2020 and it was sort of “all bets are off.” Currently have a wall mounted tablet displaying the dashboard, and HA has probably 100 devices many of which I’ve made using ESPs.
My fifteen second elevator speech on home automation: I’m good friends with my next door neighbor, and he is one of those people that never sleeps who is always outside smoking watching the neighborhood. I had an emergency come up causing me to go out of two for two weeks and forgot to tell the neighbor. He had ZERO clue that nobody was home.
All of my outside lights come on at a randomized interval related to the sunset. The primary main floor lights come on based primarily on sunset with a fixed offset, or, for overcast days like today, based on lux sensors. If I’m not going to be home, various lights throughout the house turn on/off randomly or in a sequence for various time. Motion and occupation sensors and time based lighting means I haven’t touched a light switch in almost three years as it takes nothing more than your physical presence to toggle lights on/off. Heck, I automated my gas fireplace insert! Kept falling asleep on the couch with it running all night, so it gets turned off after 60 minutes. One of the few things I ever have to toggle on the dashboard.
Was this a massive pain (and slightly expensive) to set up? Kinda. Is the upkeep on it difficult? lol no. Does it *just work*? Yes. If had to do all over again, about the only thing I’d do differently is automate more.
I currently have a kitchen island with three pendant LED light bulbs. They are all on the same circuit which has two switch locations, one of which is on/off only and the other has a slider allowing me to dim them.
I want to be able to not only adjust their brightness but also adjust their temperature. Eg: the current bulbs are 5000k which is great for meal prep, but I want to be able to change that to 3500k in the evenings so they’re more like candles than sunlight.
A common solution might be to replace all $10 LED bulbs with $50 Hue “white and color” bulbs, replace both switches with $75 smart switches, and connect them to a $100 hub that talks the necessary protocols. Unless I got really fancy (aka expensive) switches, I’m still only left with the ability to adjust brightness at the switch. So I’m down $400 but can only adjust color via an app or a schedule on the hub.
Plus I now have 6 RF devices to sync, manage and troubleshoot, even though there’s a red runner wire between the two switches and all the bulbs are on one circuit connected directly to one of the smart switches.
We need a protocol for one smart switch to communicate with another via the red runner wire that all 3-way or 4-way standard switches use. That would reduce the RF devices from 6 to 5.
We also need a protocol that carries not only power but data from the smart switch to all bulbs on its switched line. Then bulbs would not need radios at all, as their status is controlled directly on the line, not via RF, and I’m down to just two devices: the hub and the controlling smart switch.
All we need to do this is to develop standards and convince device makers and bulb manufacturers to build to them. Easy peasy…
I use GE zwave switches that have cheaper add-on switches for 2+way setups, and they can control dimming of the main switch.
But of course that doesn’t control temperature. Also my lights are wired as if every physical switch is a satellite and doesn’t have the power the smart switch needs, so I’d need to rewire things significantly. Those are still dumb.
I have some Phillips dumb dimmable bulbs that change temperature based on brightness but they’re too warm for my taste so I have 4 of them plus one daylight bulb in a chandelier and it’s a little ugly.
I’m eternally waiting for the perfect solution. I’m starting to lean towards something like a Shelly behind dumb switches and all smart bulbs, but again no dimming control at the switch. I hate useless switches, and even without any smart home stuff a third of the switches in my house are taped ‘on’ because they go to outlets I don’t want off.
Software isn’t the only problem for smart homes. My neighbor had his house wired with remotely controlled lights that of course used cheap SCRs and a proprietary enclosure. When his 3-way (horrible designation) hallway lights wouldn’t work anymore he of course discovered that the manufacturer had gone out of business and replacements with the same form factor were unobtainable. I’m an EE and have repaired LOTS of electronic stuff but the circuit was virtually indecipherable with all kinds of unmarked components, so he asked me to just convert the wiring to standard.
The whole term “smart home” how it’s used by most hardware manufactures is a freaking misnomer.
As soon as any “smart home” device requires internet access to function – and be it just because the “smart”phone app can’t communicate locally – it is not a “SMART” + “HOME” device at all.
At most it’s a “smart cloud” device -> you don’t make your home smarter you make it more cloudy.
“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”
Put an LDR ON AN ESP32 and point it at the “done” light. , Start your laundry and when the done light goes on, the esp32 sends an IFTTT event and you’ve got your done email. Done. Open source. Free. Simple.