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We are building a new house right now. All subcontractors know the rules - no "smart" devices or "wifi enabled" appliances or mechanicals. All lightswitches a

by rsync 7y ago

We are building a new house right now. All subcontractors know the rules - no "smart" devices or "wifi enabled" appliances or mechanicals. All lightswitches are plain-old hi-voltage only switches. Thermostats are dumb, unprogrammable, with no memory or scheduling or timing. The locks on the doors use physical keys. The smartest thing we have are the sonos speakers and we pug those in with ethernet. Everyone will be pleasantly surprised when they interact with our house. This is what luxury will come to look like as time goes on ...

amdavidson 7y ago
Not having programmed schedules on thermostats seems ludicrous to me. I don't have "smart" thermostats, they can only be programmed with the buttons on the front of them and they cannot talk to one another, but how do you turn down the heat when you leave for the day? or even set different temperatures for daytime and nighttime? manually?
- rsync 7y ago
  We're cheating a bit here because we live in California ... so we don't need AC mechanicals (which is a big win for simplicity) and when we leave the house we simply turn off the heat. If we lived in Duluth we could probably do the same thing for day-long absences, provided the house was very properly insulated, but you are correct - we would need a timer/schedule on the thermostats for any longer absences.
nwah1 7y ago
Do you not have any mobile devices, or do you rely on 4G? Or do you use the device Edward Snowden recommended to connect your phone to the internet via ethernet cables?
- rsync 7y ago
  Well, we do have a wifi access point for our single wireless network ... and the only clients that connect to it are actual humans with devices they are using. Nothing to do with mechanicals or appliances or "smart home". Also, totally unrelated and not really relevant, but we don't have mobile phone service out here ... zero bars of ATT and maybe one bar of VZW, depending on where you stand ...
dbbk 7y ago
> Everyone will be pleasantly surprised when they interact with our house. ...you're aware that the vast majority of homes are not 'smart homes' already?

by rsync 7y ago

amdavidson 7y ago

Not having programmed schedules on thermostats seems ludicrous to me. I don't have "smart" thermostats, they can only be programmed with the buttons on the front of them and they cannot talk to one another, but how do you turn down the heat when you leave for the day? or even set different temperatures for daytime and nighttime? manually?

rsync 7y ago
We're cheating a bit here because we live in California ... so we don't need AC mechanicals (which is a big win for simplicity) and when we leave the house we simply turn off the heat. If we lived in Duluth we could probably do the same thing for day-long absences, provided the house was very properly insulated, but you are correct - we would need a timer/schedule on the thermostats for any longer absences.

nwah1 7y ago

Do you not have any mobile devices, or do you rely on 4G? Or do you use the device Edward Snowden recommended to connect your phone to the internet via ethernet cables?

rsync 7y ago
Well, we do have a wifi access point for our single wireless network ... and the only clients that connect to it are actual humans with devices they are using. Nothing to do with mechanicals or appliances or "smart home". Also, totally unrelated and not really relevant, but we don't have mobile phone service out here ... zero bars of ATT and maybe one bar of VZW, depending on where you stand ...

dbbk 7y ago

> Everyone will be pleasantly surprised when they interact with our house. ...you're aware that the vast majority of homes are not 'smart homes' already?