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Just buy Zigbee and ZWave based home automation products. People are hyperfocused on Wifi products that end up spying on you because that's all they know. Zigbe

Just buy Zigbee and ZWave based home automation products. People are hyperfocused on Wifi products that end up spying on you because that's all they know. Zigbee and Zwave products have no capability to connect to the internet. They must go to a zigbee/zwave router of some sorts. There's a few vendors selling them that definitely aren't Amazon or Google and some that even run entirely internal to your network and some that are cloud based.

unholythree 7y ago
Granted I don't know a ton about Zigbee other than it's the approved wireless standard for BACnet, but I'm glad to see comments like this. It's seemed silly to me that all of this home automation stuff gets marketed as new and revolutionary when it's just balkanized and proprietary implementations of technology that's been in commercial buildings for decades. BACnet seems to have become the defacto standard in serious building automation. It's ridiculous that this home automation market seems to ignore a tried and true open standard for all this proprietary nonsense.
journalctl 7y ago
I don’t see how buying other products will help stop privacy abuses.
pacala 7y ago
Great point. We need to make spying costly though a 2 pronged strategy: * Develop technology that makes it expensive to spy. * Pass legislation that makes it expensive to spy. Bad actors will be still spying, but hopefully we can economically contain the spy activity to high profile targets, instead of mass deploy it for everyone.
core-questions 7y ago
What about rejecting this inane trend toward home automation entirely? In most homes you can realize 99% of the energy savings and convenience of a Nest thermostat with an $50 7-day programmable box. Set it up and forget it entirely; it should just blend into the background. I can't think of a situation it hasn't "handled" for me - my house is a reasonable temperature day and night, my gas bills are within the expected range. If perhaps I spend an hour cold or nobody enjoys an hour of produced warmth due to a routine change, it's not a big deal. I cannot imagine wanting to check my thermostat remotely, or have it connect to the Internet, or _track my presence_ and presumably report it to third party data gathering monstrosities. To give up such a huge piece of information (to yet another company, assuming all the phone-related companies already know this...) without any real "payment" for it besides a self-adjusting thermostat strikes me as pretty mad - especially when I can't see any real reason why such a device even needs to be on the Internet at all to accomplish that. Internet connected lightbulbs? Smart locks? Solutions waiting for problems, most of them badly built, insecure, and probably spying on you in multiple ways. More expensive than they should be, never really providing you much beyond the sort of creature comforts that a more capable person can safely disdain as being for the overly soft and comfortable set. That said, I concur that using a local bus like this makes the most sense if you must do this, but consider what you're spending your money and your time on. I think a lot of this stems from some latent desire to simulate the James Bond / Ladies Man 70's vibe with the remote control that dims the lights, puts the Barry White on, and converts the couch into a bed. It's cheesy and your guests aren't as impressed as you think they are.
- waste_monk 7y ago
  It's not unreasonable to want various subsystems of the house to work cooperatively, or even to have some internet connectivity (although I personally would avoid products that use it). E.g. having your security system (my smart home implementation would include a data diode so the home automation cannot effect the house's security posture) notify the HVAC controller that no one's home so it can turn off the air conditioning, and have the HVAC controller manage the motorized blinds / curtains / etc. so that whichever side of the house is currently facing the sun has the blinds half or fully closed to control the temperature passively. And to know that I usually get home at a certain time (I'm not overly comfortable with GPS tracking options) and start managing house temperature again ~20m before I get home so it's comfortable when I arrive. I'd like my house to automatically close all of my blinds and turn on the interior lighting at sundown each day (not at a fixed time each day as simple controllers do - I want it referring to a pre-computed almanac or dynamically figuring out when the individual sun up / down times for each day are. Maybe integrated with a solar panel system so it can detect when energy output starts to ramp up and use that as the sunup/down times, although that doesn't account for cloud cover). Imagine having a garden irrigation controller that polls rain radar data from the local weather bureau and uses it (along with a local weather station) to decide whether to hold off on watering the plants, in case it rains. And using the local weather station to decide how much (if any) watering is needed. I don't want a smart home that does "ladies man" type stuff as you describe - I want a smart home that actively makes my life easier, by taking care of the little things that only cost a few minutes each day to do (watering the lawn, closing blinds, ...) but waste a lot of time in aggregate.
  - core-questions 7y ago
    > E.g. having your security system (my smart home implementation would include a data diode so the home automation cannot effect the house's security posture) notify the HVAC controller that no one's home so it can turn off the air conditioning Or you could press a button on your way out of the house, and not have to have an array of finicky sensors and interacting components make these decisions for you. Like, seriously, a solution waiting for a problem >and have the HVAC controller manage the motorized blinds / curtains / etc. so that whichever side of the house is currently facing the sun has the blinds half or fully closed to control the temperature passively. You have _motorized blinds_? Seriously, how big is your house that this isn't just a two-minute thing you do to go and close the blinds? Alternately, how lazy do you have to be for this to be something you'd invest thousands of dollars into? Can't even fathom how motorized blinds will hold up to a decade of children abusing them... though, most of the bugmen I've seen who get seriously into home automation are childless. > And to know that I usually get home at a certain time (I'm not overly comfortable with GPS tracking options) and start managing house temperature again ~20m before I get home so it's comfortable when I arrive. That's what my $50 programmable thermostat does. Do you really get home at totally different times every single day, to the point where no 7-day timer routine is sufficient? To the point where (well, not you, but others) consider the idea of letting a bunch of random companies GPS-track them for this purpose? Mindblowing. > I'd like my house to automatically close all of my blinds and turn on the interior lighting at sundown each day Or you could just turn on a light when you need it. Is the wall such a long walk away? Seriously. You'd invest hundreds into each lightswitch so you can control it from your phone, only for it to not work the moment you want to show it off to someone... versus just using the simple, economical, $2 lightswitch that has become a complete commodity item available everywhere and easily designed to last for a hundred years? Talk about a sustainability nightmare. > Imagine having a garden irrigation controller that polls rain radar data from the local weather bureau and uses it (along with a local weather station) to decide whether to hold off on watering the plants, in case it rains. And using the local weather station to decide how much (if any) watering is needed. Imagine missing the point of gardening to the extent that you automate the whole thing instead of actually taking the time to do it, and reaping the psychological benefits of doing so. > I want a smart home that actively makes my life easier, It honestly doesn't sound like your life started "harder" if this is the kind of thing you think makes it easier.

unholythree 7y ago

Granted I don't know a ton about Zigbee other than it's the approved wireless standard for BACnet, but I'm glad to see comments like this. It's seemed silly to me that all of this home automation stuff gets marketed as new and revolutionary when it's just balkanized and proprietary implementations of technology that's been in commercial buildings for decades. BACnet seems to have become the defacto standard in serious building automation. It's ridiculous that this home automation market seems to ignore a tried and true open standard for all this proprietary nonsense.

journalctl 7y ago

I don’t see how buying other products will help stop privacy abuses.

pacala 7y ago

Great point. We need to make spying costly though a 2 pronged strategy: * Develop technology that makes it expensive to spy. * Pass legislation that makes it expensive to spy. Bad actors will be still spying, but hopefully we can economically contain the spy activity to high profile targets, instead of mass deploy it for everyone.

core-questions 7y ago

What about rejecting this inane trend toward home automation entirely? In most homes you can realize 99% of the energy savings and convenience of a Nest thermostat with an $50 7-day programmable box. Set it up and forget it entirely; it should just blend into the background. I can't think of a situation it hasn't "handled" for me - my house is a reasonable temperature day and night, my gas bills are within the expected range. If perhaps I spend an hour cold or nobody enjoys an hour of produced warmth due to a routine change, it's not a big deal. I cannot imagine wanting to check my thermostat remotely, or have it connect to the Internet, or _track my presence_ and presumably report it to third party data gathering monstrosities. To give up such a huge piece of information (to yet another company, assuming all the phone-related companies already know this...) without any real "payment" for it besides a self-adjusting thermostat strikes me as pretty mad - especially when I can't see any real reason why such a device even needs to be on the Internet at all to accomplish that. Internet connected lightbulbs? Smart locks? Solutions waiting for problems, most of them badly built, insecure, and probably spying on you in multiple ways. More expensive than they should be, never really providing you much beyond the sort of creature comforts that a more capable person can safely disdain as being for the overly soft and comfortable set. That said, I concur that using a local bus like this makes the most sense if you must do this, but consider what you're spending your money and your time on. I think a lot of this stems from some latent desire to simulate the James Bond / Ladies Man 70's vibe with the remote control that dims the lights, puts the Barry White on, and converts the couch into a bed. It's cheesy and your guests aren't as impressed as you think they are.

waste_monk 7y ago
It's not unreasonable to want various subsystems of the house to work cooperatively, or even to have some internet connectivity (although I personally would avoid products that use it). E.g. having your security system (my smart home implementation would include a data diode so the home automation cannot effect the house's security posture) notify the HVAC controller that no one's home so it can turn off the air conditioning, and have the HVAC controller manage the motorized blinds / curtains / etc. so that whichever side of the house is currently facing the sun has the blinds half or fully closed to control the temperature passively. And to know that I usually get home at a certain time (I'm not overly comfortable with GPS tracking options) and start managing house temperature again ~20m before I get home so it's comfortable when I arrive. I'd like my house to automatically close all of my blinds and turn on the interior lighting at sundown each day (not at a fixed time each day as simple controllers do - I want it referring to a pre-computed almanac or dynamically figuring out when the individual sun up / down times for each day are. Maybe integrated with a solar panel system so it can detect when energy output starts to ramp up and use that as the sunup/down times, although that doesn't account for cloud cover). Imagine having a garden irrigation controller that polls rain radar data from the local weather bureau and uses it (along with a local weather station) to decide whether to hold off on watering the plants, in case it rains. And using the local weather station to decide how much (if any) watering is needed. I don't want a smart home that does "ladies man" type stuff as you describe - I want a smart home that actively makes my life easier, by taking care of the little things that only cost a few minutes each day to do (watering the lawn, closing blinds, ...) but waste a lot of time in aggregate.
- core-questions 7y ago
  > E.g. having your security system (my smart home implementation would include a data diode so the home automation cannot effect the house's security posture) notify the HVAC controller that no one's home so it can turn off the air conditioning Or you could press a button on your way out of the house, and not have to have an array of finicky sensors and interacting components make these decisions for you. Like, seriously, a solution waiting for a problem >and have the HVAC controller manage the motorized blinds / curtains / etc. so that whichever side of the house is currently facing the sun has the blinds half or fully closed to control the temperature passively. You have _motorized blinds_? Seriously, how big is your house that this isn't just a two-minute thing you do to go and close the blinds? Alternately, how lazy do you have to be for this to be something you'd invest thousands of dollars into? Can't even fathom how motorized blinds will hold up to a decade of children abusing them... though, most of the bugmen I've seen who get seriously into home automation are childless. > And to know that I usually get home at a certain time (I'm not overly comfortable with GPS tracking options) and start managing house temperature again ~20m before I get home so it's comfortable when I arrive. That's what my $50 programmable thermostat does. Do you really get home at totally different times every single day, to the point where no 7-day timer routine is sufficient? To the point where (well, not you, but others) consider the idea of letting a bunch of random companies GPS-track them for this purpose? Mindblowing. > I'd like my house to automatically close all of my blinds and turn on the interior lighting at sundown each day Or you could just turn on a light when you need it. Is the wall such a long walk away? Seriously. You'd invest hundreds into each lightswitch so you can control it from your phone, only for it to not work the moment you want to show it off to someone... versus just using the simple, economical, $2 lightswitch that has become a complete commodity item available everywhere and easily designed to last for a hundred years? Talk about a sustainability nightmare. > Imagine having a garden irrigation controller that polls rain radar data from the local weather bureau and uses it (along with a local weather station) to decide whether to hold off on watering the plants, in case it rains. And using the local weather station to decide how much (if any) watering is needed. Imagine missing the point of gardening to the extent that you automate the whole thing instead of actually taking the time to do it, and reaping the psychological benefits of doing so. > I want a smart home that actively makes my life easier, It honestly doesn't sound like your life started "harder" if this is the kind of thing you think makes it easier.