7 ms·

The light is off. War is over

225 points by ivanmaeder 7y ago

samspenc 7y ago
TL;DR: he stayed over at a friend's place in a densely packed condo unit. Condo building has a home automation system with binary codes that has a limit of 16 combinations. With 40 units nearby, each unit controls at least 1 other automation system in a neighbor's apt, so one of his neighbors was accidentally toggling his light. Even better are the replies from other Twitter users on the same thread on what they experienced with their home automation systems. Here's one that tickled me: "We had an Airbnb guest once who (probably accidentally) connected his Spotify Connect to my living room sound system. Months after he was gone, death metal would start without a warning, volume went up, silence after 5 seconds. It took weeks before I figured it out" It's crazy how sometimes these automation systems that are supposed to make our lives easier, make it more complicated instead. I wonder when the issues that we see today with smart houses and smart TVs will show up in the upcoming generation of "smart" cars.
- zzo38computer 7y ago
  I do not use home automation, and I do not use smart houses and smart TVs. But if I did want to have an automation system for some things, I would prefer to wire everything (rather than making it wireless) so that it doesn't have the problems you mentioned. Too many thing now they do wireless, even though I want it to be wired instead.
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    That ups the cost by a LOT though, so people don't. I have no desire for a "smart home", smart tv is about it, I have some external wireless cameras. No camera in my home except on my phone. You can't hack it if its not there.
- 6510 7y ago
  I think when things get bad enough we will return to simplicity. (keeping some of the good stuff) This week I see 2 coffee machines to complicated for me to make coffee. 1 kitchen light I couldn't switch on and a dishwasher I couldn't get to work. Every time a group of people gathered around the automation then gave up. I just had a message exchange where I explained (to the owner) how to get music out of a laptop, bluetooth dongle, amplifier setup. Windos really wants you to switch on bluetooth from the configuration screen every time. The dongle needs a reset periodically (or just vanishes) and the amplifier likes to change its input channel. Between bluetooth and mp3 the quality is complete shit by 1980 standards.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    Some modern coffee machines are so bewildering, it makes me feel like Arthur Dent trying to explain to an alien computer how to make tea. It really makes H2G2 seem remarkably prescient.
    - tetris11 7y ago
      "So first you have to turn it on, because it offs itself every chance it gets. Then you have to wait for it to do a cleaning cycle as indicated by this unnoticeable red dot, and god forbid you don't have a cup under there. Once finished, you empty the junk water into this plant..."
      - VBprogrammer 7y ago
        Microwave ovens have similarly obtuse interfaces. To the point that I've been known to go out of my way to buy one with an old fashioned mechanical timer to avoid the whole shit show.
        pas 7y ago
        I found almost every one of them has "express" buttons, basically just smashing start adds one or half a minute. I so far found one microwave oven that required the whole ritual each and every time. It was so bad I forgot to set it to max time, so we can just pause it and resume it (like cheap kitchens that abuse consumer-grade microwaves do) - though maybe it was so bad there wasn't resume. So if you opened the door before it thought it was time, you had to set it up again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        catalogia 7y ago
        The '+30' button is all that I ever use, which makes me think dials are probably better. A dial would be simpler, one quick turn instead of several button presses. I can't say I was previously annoyed with my microwave, but now I don't think I'll look at it the same again.
- kuu 7y ago
  Similar to the related story, in our office the speakers of a meeting room are "smart speakers", so anyone who is on the same LAN can join and play Spotify on these speakers. I have to admit we had done some little pranks with that :)
- garmaine 7y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. It's an accurate summary.
  - justin66 7y ago
    I didn't downvote, but offering a tl;dr of something that takes 30 seconds to read is a braindead thing to do.
    - s_m_t 7y ago
      It took longer for twitter to (fail to) load than it took for me to read the tldr
    - mprev 7y ago
      Brain dead is harsh. There are too many twitter threads that go absolutely nowhere and yet build a fraction of a story into multiple tweets. I have only enough attention in a day for so many things structured as a story. I’d rather save that attention for things I know I’ll enjoy rather than the episodic retelling of a battle over a light switch.
    - toast0 7y ago
      All i could get from the link was that the person was having some trouble with a fan, I guess, and that twitter threads must be readable for someone, but they don't usually work for me (Chrome on Android, no plugins). I especially like how tapping 'show this thread' doesn't actually do anything; but it is a welcome change from getting the usual 'you've loaded too many pages' error I usually get when clicking a twitter link. So, I was happy to get the tldr.
    - aspaviento 7y ago
      One man's trash is another man's treasure.
  - 6510 7y ago
    Maybe they don't know Twitter is to complicated to use.
- jacobush 7y ago
  I have done that with Spotify. :)
- andai 7y ago
  > My inclination is to go Full Lawful Good and turn off everyone’s lights tonight at 10pm to make sure we all get a good night of sleep and wake up rested and ready for a productive Saturday.
- djrogers 7y ago
  It’s not a home automation system - those are extremely common wireless fan/light controllers. It’s just an RF remote.
marcoperaza 7y ago
Take out the bulb and get a floor lamp. Better yet, unplug the damn thing altogether.
- kelnos 7y ago
  Seriously. This is not just a "minor annoyance" to live with. I'd replace the entire fan with something with good ol' pull cords, and then send an invoice to the condo complex. Assuming they'd refuse, I'd likely even consider taking it to small claims court.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  This is exactly what I do in such situation. In hotels I usually disconnect the tv, fridge, annoying lights, etc.
mosselman 7y ago
How is this a liveable situation? Just tell the owner to put it something else.
- hnlmorg 7y ago
  That was my first thought too. I don't understand how the other owners are happy to live with that.
  - zyztem 7y ago
    People sometimes like challenge in their lives. See Everest climbing & etc
    - Yizahi 7y ago
      He did use Twitter to write a normal blog post broken into pieces, so challenge version looks probable.
      - posh_somme 7y ago
        This is very typical Twitter usage. Few people actually have blogs.
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
Nobody was ever fired for using a wired system.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Mine uses IR, I was expecting a lot of problems from blocked view but it works just fine.
  - tmikaeld 7y ago
    IR these days are strong enough to bounce off walls and glass, so might not even need to point it at the receiver at all.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  You're WIRED !
sbr464 7y ago
I would of just gone to the circuit breaker panel. Problem solved.
- baud147258 7y ago
  Well it depends if the circuit breakers are accessible and correctly labeled to cut just the ceiling fan/light. But yeah, that's a good last resort measure.
- PascLeRasc 7y ago
  It turns out the circuit breakers are mixed with other apartments as well. For 5 bonus points on your digital logic final, construct the apartment complex's truth table.
worldsayshi 7y ago
I have no idea how to read this Twitter thread. It's just overflowing with suggested content that is not related to the post. Broken UX.
- cwyers 7y ago
  I have had that happening to me recently as well. The link that's supposed to expand the thread doesn't work for me either. But weirdly, reloading the page did.
  - tasuki 7y ago
    > The link that's supposed to expand the thread doesn't work for me either. Same here. Reloading is of no help, though logging out helps. Twitter has become near unusable.
    - cwyers 7y ago
      Sometimes when reloading doesn't work, I select the URL in the bar and hit enter, which does a... hard reload, I guess? And that works. At any rate, yeah, it's so broken.
  - worldsayshi 7y ago
    > reloading the page did. Yup, that worked. :/
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  Twitter was conceived as a 'micro-blogging' platform. Each Tweet being an independent semantic entity on itself with a 140 - expanded to 280 - character limit. The entire point was to post succinct status updates. Naturally, people tend to use tools in ways that go beyond the original intended design purpose. Creating entire threads using @ mentions is one of those behaviors. Proper UX, readability and findability are opportunity costs happily paid in return for tapping directly into a large audience in real time. Since Twitter is an ad company, it won't fix this because there's zero incentive to do so. On the contrary. If more people are willing to use Twitter and stay on Twitter, the better. Arguably, Twitter offers the least number of affordances to accommodate long form writing and reading. But here we are. Medium valiantly tried to offer an answer - proper UX combined with the directness of Twitter - but failed since they were fighting an uphill battle from the get go because their business model consisted of competing with an incumbent using the same tactic: building another content silo as a private venture.
jentulman 7y ago
I would love to do some sort of homeAssistant type automation, but I've been dithering for ages because everything I read up on all the various light and appliance control protocols make me feel my entire home would become a massive UI/UX nightmare for myself and visitors. I want smarts, but I also never want to have to reboot a lightswitch.
- GeekFortyTwo 7y ago
  My rule for home automation at my house: a stranger walking in the front door should be able to intuitively use my house without instruction. Extra features are fine, but if they cannot turn on the light without 6 steps, then it's wrong. eg: my kitchen lights are all on Z-Wave dimmers. Each is still a normal wall switch to the average person and can be fully controlled from there. I probably use the switches 20% of the time and voice control about 75%(other automations account for maybe 5%). Anyone who enters my kitchen will be able to have light, I just get the conveniences. Another example: my living room has no ceiling lights, just floor lamps. These are not setup with automation because I have not found a way to control them that makes sense to non-trained users. Therefore we keep the traditional lights.
  - joshstrange 7y ago
    This! Every smart device I have with the exception of 1 lamp in my office and 2 bedside tables in my bedroom are on z-wave switches. Eventually I might add zigbee buttons or a panel by the fan switch that controls the bedside table lights but honestly I see no real need. They have pull-strings you can use (and break automation but I'm the only one using those so I don't care as much). The z-wave switches I use is the Leviton DZ15S-1BZ [0], they run about $45 a pop but work flawlessly. I think I've had one lose connection less than 10 times total across all switches in the past year if that. My only complaint is their size. They are chunky and if you have a tight electrical box you might have issues. That said I've installed 6 or so of these and they are easy to install (other than the shoving, pushing, cursing, crying, and begging them to fit part lol), I can install one in less than 30min easily. I just keep buying a new switch every few months, I'm a little over halfway there till I have full coverage (already have full coverage in rooms I care about, so what's left is the guest room, some bathrooms/closets, and 1 3-way that I can't bring myself to replace right now as it will "burn" 2 switches). My top tips to people looking at getting into home automation would be: * Go with SmartThings, Wink is dying if not dead and ST works with Alexa/Google voice assistants. It also has a nice API/SmartApp ecosystem. * Z-wave > Zigbee and NEVER use a Wifi device, they are a security nightmare IMHO * Make SmartThings your single point of truth, don't buy stuff that "Works with Alexa" unless it's zigbee or z-wave. * Make everything fallback to switches (real preferably but virtual if needed) on the wall, anyone should be able to walk in and use your lights without a crash course. [0] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MZ0WVKH/ https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MZ0WVKH/
rambojazz 7y ago
I was very confused until I realized this is a wireless system using 4 bits encoding to identify the receiver, but there are 40 households.
- jrumbut 7y ago
  "4 bits ought to be enough for anybody"
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    Even if you think N bits ought to be enough, it should still take pranksters into account.
- hoseja 7y ago
  Seems to me like the inevitable conclusion to The King's Toaster. https://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html https://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html
  - rambojazz 7y ago
    ahahah very spot on!
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    To nitpick the story a bit, using time for any kind of cooking is a fire waiting to happen. Use a thermostat, work with temperature. (Same for coffee machines, measure throughput, not time, unless you want your coffees to progressively get smaller as the machine clogs up)
    - huffmsa 7y ago
      Right. The engineer assumes immediate, uniform, consistent heat in the elements. But it's pretty true to life. Ovens and toasters get a bit wonky as they get old.
- ginko 7y ago
  Maybe you could make it work by carefully setting the IDs so there are no two units within range of each other that are sharing the same ID. Essentially turn it into an extended graph coloring problem.
diffuse_l 7y ago
I hate those automated systems. The company i work for moved to a new building about a year ago, and all the curtains and lights are automated. Not surprisingly, the lights are too bright, and there is no way to control the light levels manually. I asked the maintanace crew to lower the light intensity. After a full day of fiddling with the system, they managed to somewhat dim the lights, which reverted back to full on blast aftet a few minutes. Having anticipated that, I built a "complex" system of shades using papers and masking tape, which somehow survived to this day. The best part? The desginers of the office come to show their creation to potenial customers every few weeks and show off thier marvelous design. A classic case of "You are not the customer". And that without even going into the "automatic shading system" which opens the curtains at the worst possible moment, and can't be changed because "we need it that way for our green certfication". Sorry, had to vent off...
- ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
  Our office is marketed as 24/7 operation. We needed our office manned 7 days a week 5am-11pm, so it seemed like a good fit, only building management turn off climate control during the weekend, causing the temperature in the office to rocket up to unbearable levels. Their explanation was that they had to turn it off at the weekend to keep their green credentials.
  - mabbo 7y ago
    Funny how the person paying the electricity bill always gets so concerned with their "green certification". Hint: there isn't any green certification that can be revoked, afaik. The big standard I often see is "LEED", but if you check them out, once a building gets LEED certified (at the design stage) you could literally build anything and there is no mechanism to remove that certification in your building.
    - ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
      United Kingdom, not USA so maybe it's different
  - 7y ago
rrix2 7y ago
I stayed in an AirBnB that was like this recently, most frustrating experience I've had in a while. Thought i was losing my sanity when the lights turned on and fan spun up to high speed at 2:30 after I'd been out drinking... Left them a note in the private review. I don't know how I'd be able to interact with my neighbors if I was constantly in battle with them like this.
yoz-y 7y ago
Product idea: tin foil hats for ceiling fans, or something similar to ruin their reception.
huffmsa 7y ago
Had thr same thing happen in my parents house home from school one summer. Fans were set to the same receivers channel from.the factory. So I'd get in at 1am, turn my light off, which would turn theirs on. Took a few days to figure out what was going on.
bergoid 7y ago
Entire text: Short Thread: staying with some friends and last night after everyone went to bed I could not figure out how to turn off the large ceiling light in their living room. There is a wall controller that seemed fairly straightforward. There is a large main light, a smaller light on top that faces up, several levels of brightness, and a fan. Each time I tried to turn off the upward facing light, something else would turn on. After ten minutes, I woke up my wife to ask her to help. It only got worse. Each time we thought everything was off, a few seconds later something else (or everything else) would turn back on. Minute twenty, I started laughing out of sheer frustration at what felt like a Myst puzzle. Couldn’t wake our friends cause they have a small kid. Suddenly, we solved it. Everything went off and stayed off and after waiting a full minute we realized it was gonna stay that way. This is circa 1am. I finally went to sleep. This morning we asked about what the deal was with the light. The answer has broken me. Our friends are in a newly built condo complex. The fan controls use a binary code to connect to the fans. Additionally the controls were only supposed to have a signal reach of 30 feet. They reach much, much further. There are almost 40 units within reach. Based on the binary code limitation there’s only 16 possible code options. So everyone in this building controls the main light and fan of at least one other person; maybe more. From 12:30 to 1am last night, I was engaged in a proxy war with up to three other apartments, as they in turn, set my fan to high and my lights to the brightest setting, until everyone gave up. Our hosts have been here for six months and have found a way to live with it by imagining who in their building they might be interacting with. This one guy who they think particularly might be an asshole and they have suspicions about when he’s running the show. I am staying here again tonight. I look forward to wrestling control of the lights from what is essentially angry ghosts in my own personal AITA post. My inclination is to go Full Lawful Good and turn off everyone’s lights tonight at 10pm to make sure we all get a good night of sleep and wake up rested and ready for a productive Saturday. The light is off. War is over.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  binary code, eh? Odd way to describe a remote control.
  - hiisukun 7y ago
pjc50 7y ago
"Any sufficiently complex home automation system is indistinguishable from being haunted" This is just a plain digital radio one; I'm sure with the involvement of computers it could have been made much more intractable. My own experience closest to this was an office meeting room that had dimmable lights ... with a standard "boolean" momentary switch. There were, of course, no instructions. We sort of figured out that holding the switch down would sometimes put it into a cycle of brightness from which releasing the switch would leave it at right level, but it wasn't reliable and we often sat in the dim light, defeated by the UX.
waffle_ss 7y ago
Surprised he didn’t unscrew the bulbs if he was really at it for hours.
- mceachen 7y ago
  Don't worry, progress has taken care of that too. Many fixtures are now via LED, soldered onto the fixture and not repairable/replaceable.

225 points by ivanmaeder 7y ago

TL;DR: he stayed over at a friend's place in a densely packed condo unit. Condo building has a home automation system with binary codes that has a limit of 16 combinations. With 40 units nearby, each unit controls at least 1 other automation system in a neighbor's apt, so one of his neighbors was accidentally toggling his light. Even better are the replies from other Twitter users on the same thread on what they experienced with their home automation systems. Here's one that tickled me: "We had an Airbnb guest once who (probably accidentally) connected his Spotify Connect to my living room sound system. Months after he was gone, death metal would start without a warning, volume went up, silence after 5 seconds. It took weeks before I figured it out" It's crazy how sometimes these automation systems that are supposed to make our lives easier, make it more complicated instead. I wonder when the issues that we see today with smart houses and smart TVs will show up in the upcoming generation of "smart" cars.

zzo38computer 7y ago
I do not use home automation, and I do not use smart houses and smart TVs. But if I did want to have an automation system for some things, I would prefer to wire everything (rather than making it wireless) so that it doesn't have the problems you mentioned. Too many thing now they do wireless, even though I want it to be wired instead.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  That ups the cost by a LOT though, so people don't. I have no desire for a "smart home", smart tv is about it, I have some external wireless cameras. No camera in my home except on my phone. You can't hack it if its not there.
6510 7y ago
I think when things get bad enough we will return to simplicity. (keeping some of the good stuff) This week I see 2 coffee machines to complicated for me to make coffee. 1 kitchen light I couldn't switch on and a dishwasher I couldn't get to work. Every time a group of people gathered around the automation then gave up. I just had a message exchange where I explained (to the owner) how to get music out of a laptop, bluetooth dongle, amplifier setup. Windos really wants you to switch on bluetooth from the configuration screen every time. The dongle needs a reset periodically (or just vanishes) and the amplifier likes to change its input channel. Between bluetooth and mp3 the quality is complete shit by 1980 standards.
- catalogia 7y ago
  Some modern coffee machines are so bewildering, it makes me feel like Arthur Dent trying to explain to an alien computer how to make tea. It really makes H2G2 seem remarkably prescient.
  - tetris11 7y ago
    "So first you have to turn it on, because it offs itself every chance it gets. Then you have to wait for it to do a cleaning cycle as indicated by this unnoticeable red dot, and god forbid you don't have a cup under there. Once finished, you empty the junk water into this plant..."
    - VBprogrammer 7y ago
      Microwave ovens have similarly obtuse interfaces. To the point that I've been known to go out of my way to buy one with an old fashioned mechanical timer to avoid the whole shit show.
      - pas 7y ago
        I found almost every one of them has "express" buttons, basically just smashing start adds one or half a minute. I so far found one microwave oven that required the whole ritual each and every time. It was so bad I forgot to set it to max time, so we can just pause it and resume it (like cheap kitchens that abuse consumer-grade microwaves do) - though maybe it was so bad there wasn't resume. So if you opened the door before it thought it was time, you had to set it up again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        catalogia 7y ago
        The '+30' button is all that I ever use, which makes me think dials are probably better. A dial would be simpler, one quick turn instead of several button presses. I can't say I was previously annoyed with my microwave, but now I don't think I'll look at it the same again.
kuu 7y ago
Similar to the related story, in our office the speakers of a meeting room are "smart speakers", so anyone who is on the same LAN can join and play Spotify on these speakers. I have to admit we had done some little pranks with that :)
garmaine 7y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted. It's an accurate summary.
- justin66 7y ago
  I didn't downvote, but offering a tl;dr of something that takes 30 seconds to read is a braindead thing to do.
  - s_m_t 7y ago
    It took longer for twitter to (fail to) load than it took for me to read the tldr
  - mprev 7y ago
    Brain dead is harsh. There are too many twitter threads that go absolutely nowhere and yet build a fraction of a story into multiple tweets. I have only enough attention in a day for so many things structured as a story. I’d rather save that attention for things I know I’ll enjoy rather than the episodic retelling of a battle over a light switch.
  - toast0 7y ago
    All i could get from the link was that the person was having some trouble with a fan, I guess, and that twitter threads must be readable for someone, but they don't usually work for me (Chrome on Android, no plugins). I especially like how tapping 'show this thread' doesn't actually do anything; but it is a welcome change from getting the usual 'you've loaded too many pages' error I usually get when clicking a twitter link. So, I was happy to get the tldr.
  - aspaviento 7y ago
    One man's trash is another man's treasure.
- 6510 7y ago
  Maybe they don't know Twitter is to complicated to use.
jacobush 7y ago
I have done that with Spotify. :)
andai 7y ago
> My inclination is to go Full Lawful Good and turn off everyone’s lights tonight at 10pm to make sure we all get a good night of sleep and wake up rested and ready for a productive Saturday.
djrogers 7y ago
It’s not a home automation system - those are extremely common wireless fan/light controllers. It’s just an RF remote.

marcoperaza 7y ago

Take out the bulb and get a floor lamp. Better yet, unplug the damn thing altogether.

kelnos 7y ago
Seriously. This is not just a "minor annoyance" to live with. I'd replace the entire fan with something with good ol' pull cords, and then send an invoice to the condo complex. Assuming they'd refuse, I'd likely even consider taking it to small claims court.
StreamBright 7y ago
This is exactly what I do in such situation. In hotels I usually disconnect the tv, fridge, annoying lights, etc.

mosselman 7y ago

How is this a liveable situation? Just tell the owner to put it something else.

hnlmorg 7y ago
That was my first thought too. I don't understand how the other owners are happy to live with that.
- zyztem 7y ago
  People sometimes like challenge in their lives. See Everest climbing & etc
  - Yizahi 7y ago
    He did use Twitter to write a normal blog post broken into pieces, so challenge version looks probable.
    - posh_somme 7y ago
      This is very typical Twitter usage. Few people actually have blogs.

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago

Nobody was ever fired for using a wired system.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Mine uses IR, I was expecting a lot of problems from blocked view but it works just fine.
- tmikaeld 7y ago
  IR these days are strong enough to bounce off walls and glass, so might not even need to point it at the receiver at all.
agumonkey 7y ago
You're WIRED !

sbr464 7y ago

I would of just gone to the circuit breaker panel. Problem solved.

baud147258 7y ago
Well it depends if the circuit breakers are accessible and correctly labeled to cut just the ceiling fan/light. But yeah, that's a good last resort measure.
PascLeRasc 7y ago
It turns out the circuit breakers are mixed with other apartments as well. For 5 bonus points on your digital logic final, construct the apartment complex's truth table.

worldsayshi 7y ago

I have no idea how to read this Twitter thread. It's just overflowing with suggested content that is not related to the post. Broken UX.

cwyers 7y ago
I have had that happening to me recently as well. The link that's supposed to expand the thread doesn't work for me either. But weirdly, reloading the page did.
- tasuki 7y ago
  > The link that's supposed to expand the thread doesn't work for me either. Same here. Reloading is of no help, though logging out helps. Twitter has become near unusable.
  - cwyers 7y ago
    Sometimes when reloading doesn't work, I select the URL in the bar and hit enter, which does a... hard reload, I guess? And that works. At any rate, yeah, it's so broken.
- worldsayshi 7y ago
  > reloading the page did. Yup, that worked. :/
CaptArmchair 7y ago
Twitter was conceived as a 'micro-blogging' platform. Each Tweet being an independent semantic entity on itself with a 140 - expanded to 280 - character limit. The entire point was to post succinct status updates. Naturally, people tend to use tools in ways that go beyond the original intended design purpose. Creating entire threads using @ mentions is one of those behaviors. Proper UX, readability and findability are opportunity costs happily paid in return for tapping directly into a large audience in real time. Since Twitter is an ad company, it won't fix this because there's zero incentive to do so. On the contrary. If more people are willing to use Twitter and stay on Twitter, the better. Arguably, Twitter offers the least number of affordances to accommodate long form writing and reading. But here we are. Medium valiantly tried to offer an answer - proper UX combined with the directness of Twitter - but failed since they were fighting an uphill battle from the get go because their business model consisted of competing with an incumbent using the same tactic: building another content silo as a private venture.

jentulman 7y ago

I would love to do some sort of homeAssistant type automation, but I've been dithering for ages because everything I read up on all the various light and appliance control protocols make me feel my entire home would become a massive UI/UX nightmare for myself and visitors. I want smarts, but I also never want to have to reboot a lightswitch.

GeekFortyTwo 7y ago
My rule for home automation at my house: a stranger walking in the front door should be able to intuitively use my house without instruction. Extra features are fine, but if they cannot turn on the light without 6 steps, then it's wrong. eg: my kitchen lights are all on Z-Wave dimmers. Each is still a normal wall switch to the average person and can be fully controlled from there. I probably use the switches 20% of the time and voice control about 75%(other automations account for maybe 5%). Anyone who enters my kitchen will be able to have light, I just get the conveniences. Another example: my living room has no ceiling lights, just floor lamps. These are not setup with automation because I have not found a way to control them that makes sense to non-trained users. Therefore we keep the traditional lights.
- joshstrange 7y ago
  This! Every smart device I have with the exception of 1 lamp in my office and 2 bedside tables in my bedroom are on z-wave switches. Eventually I might add zigbee buttons or a panel by the fan switch that controls the bedside table lights but honestly I see no real need. They have pull-strings you can use (and break automation but I'm the only one using those so I don't care as much). The z-wave switches I use is the Leviton DZ15S-1BZ [0], they run about $45 a pop but work flawlessly. I think I've had one lose connection less than 10 times total across all switches in the past year if that. My only complaint is their size. They are chunky and if you have a tight electrical box you might have issues. That said I've installed 6 or so of these and they are easy to install (other than the shoving, pushing, cursing, crying, and begging them to fit part lol), I can install one in less than 30min easily. I just keep buying a new switch every few months, I'm a little over halfway there till I have full coverage (already have full coverage in rooms I care about, so what's left is the guest room, some bathrooms/closets, and 1 3-way that I can't bring myself to replace right now as it will "burn" 2 switches). My top tips to people looking at getting into home automation would be: * Go with SmartThings, Wink is dying if not dead and ST works with Alexa/Google voice assistants. It also has a nice API/SmartApp ecosystem. * Z-wave > Zigbee and NEVER use a Wifi device, they are a security nightmare IMHO * Make SmartThings your single point of truth, don't buy stuff that "Works with Alexa" unless it's zigbee or z-wave. * Make everything fallback to switches (real preferably but virtual if needed) on the wall, anyone should be able to walk in and use your lights without a crash course. [0] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MZ0WVKH/ https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MZ0WVKH/

rambojazz 7y ago

I was very confused until I realized this is a wireless system using 4 bits encoding to identify the receiver, but there are 40 households.

jrumbut 7y ago
"4 bits ought to be enough for anybody"
- im3w1l 7y ago
  Even if you think N bits ought to be enough, it should still take pranksters into account.
hoseja 7y ago
Seems to me like the inevitable conclusion to The King's Toaster. https://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html https://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/ktoast.html
- rambojazz 7y ago
  ahahah very spot on!
- yoz-y 7y ago
  To nitpick the story a bit, using time for any kind of cooking is a fire waiting to happen. Use a thermostat, work with temperature. (Same for coffee machines, measure throughput, not time, unless you want your coffees to progressively get smaller as the machine clogs up)
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    Right. The engineer assumes immediate, uniform, consistent heat in the elements. But it's pretty true to life. Ovens and toasters get a bit wonky as they get old.
ginko 7y ago
Maybe you could make it work by carefully setting the IDs so there are no two units within range of each other that are sharing the same ID. Essentially turn it into an extended graph coloring problem.

diffuse_l 7y ago

I hate those automated systems. The company i work for moved to a new building about a year ago, and all the curtains and lights are automated. Not surprisingly, the lights are too bright, and there is no way to control the light levels manually. I asked the maintanace crew to lower the light intensity. After a full day of fiddling with the system, they managed to somewhat dim the lights, which reverted back to full on blast aftet a few minutes. Having anticipated that, I built a "complex" system of shades using papers and masking tape, which somehow survived to this day. The best part? The desginers of the office come to show their creation to potenial customers every few weeks and show off thier marvelous design. A classic case of "You are not the customer". And that without even going into the "automatic shading system" which opens the curtains at the worst possible moment, and can't be changed because "we need it that way for our green certfication". Sorry, had to vent off...

ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
Our office is marketed as 24/7 operation. We needed our office manned 7 days a week 5am-11pm, so it seemed like a good fit, only building management turn off climate control during the weekend, causing the temperature in the office to rocket up to unbearable levels. Their explanation was that they had to turn it off at the weekend to keep their green credentials.
- mabbo 7y ago
  Funny how the person paying the electricity bill always gets so concerned with their "green certification". Hint: there isn't any green certification that can be revoked, afaik. The big standard I often see is "LEED", but if you check them out, once a building gets LEED certified (at the design stage) you could literally build anything and there is no mechanism to remove that certification in your building.
  - ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
    United Kingdom, not USA so maybe it's different
- 7y ago

rrix2 7y ago

I stayed in an AirBnB that was like this recently, most frustrating experience I've had in a while. Thought i was losing my sanity when the lights turned on and fan spun up to high speed at 2:30 after I'd been out drinking... Left them a note in the private review. I don't know how I'd be able to interact with my neighbors if I was constantly in battle with them like this.

yoz-y 7y ago

Product idea: tin foil hats for ceiling fans, or something similar to ruin their reception.

huffmsa 7y ago

Had thr same thing happen in my parents house home from school one summer. Fans were set to the same receivers channel from.the factory. So I'd get in at 1am, turn my light off, which would turn theirs on. Took a few days to figure out what was going on.

bergoid 7y ago

Entire text: Short Thread: staying with some friends and last night after everyone went to bed I could not figure out how to turn off the large ceiling light in their living room. There is a wall controller that seemed fairly straightforward. There is a large main light, a smaller light on top that faces up, several levels of brightness, and a fan. Each time I tried to turn off the upward facing light, something else would turn on. After ten minutes, I woke up my wife to ask her to help. It only got worse. Each time we thought everything was off, a few seconds later something else (or everything else) would turn back on. Minute twenty, I started laughing out of sheer frustration at what felt like a Myst puzzle. Couldn’t wake our friends cause they have a small kid. Suddenly, we solved it. Everything went off and stayed off and after waiting a full minute we realized it was gonna stay that way. This is circa 1am. I finally went to sleep. This morning we asked about what the deal was with the light. The answer has broken me. Our friends are in a newly built condo complex. The fan controls use a binary code to connect to the fans. Additionally the controls were only supposed to have a signal reach of 30 feet. They reach much, much further. There are almost 40 units within reach. Based on the binary code limitation there’s only 16 possible code options. So everyone in this building controls the main light and fan of at least one other person; maybe more. From 12:30 to 1am last night, I was engaged in a proxy war with up to three other apartments, as they in turn, set my fan to high and my lights to the brightest setting, until everyone gave up. Our hosts have been here for six months and have found a way to live with it by imagining who in their building they might be interacting with. This one guy who they think particularly might be an asshole and they have suspicions about when he’s running the show. I am staying here again tonight. I look forward to wrestling control of the lights from what is essentially angry ghosts in my own personal AITA post. My inclination is to go Full Lawful Good and turn off everyone’s lights tonight at 10pm to make sure we all get a good night of sleep and wake up rested and ready for a productive Saturday. The light is off. War is over.

mixmastamyk 7y ago
binary code, eh? Odd way to describe a remote control.
- hiisukun 7y ago

pjc50 7y ago

"Any sufficiently complex home automation system is indistinguishable from being haunted" This is just a plain digital radio one; I'm sure with the involvement of computers it could have been made much more intractable. My own experience closest to this was an office meeting room that had dimmable lights ... with a standard "boolean" momentary switch. There were, of course, no instructions. We sort of figured out that holding the switch down would sometimes put it into a cycle of brightness from which releasing the switch would leave it at right level, but it wasn't reliable and we often sat in the dim light, defeated by the UX.

waffle_ss 7y ago

Surprised he didn’t unscrew the bulbs if he was really at it for hours.

mceachen 7y ago
Don't worry, progress has taken care of that too. Many fixtures are now via LED, soldered onto the fixture and not repairable/replaceable.