19 ms·

I've been doing home automation for a long time. I just got a house that I own that I'm excited to jazz out. That said, I built up an ideology that any automat

by kodah 4y ago

I've been doing home automation for a long time. I just got a house that I own that I'm excited to jazz out. That said, I built up an ideology that any automation added should never replace physical items. All automation should have physical kill switches. Any occupants of the home should have appropriate access to things that you would normally give them physical access to. I implemented walking lights successfully in my old house by replacing switches and doing some neat presence detection (near-field and general) tricks. That mode could be turned off at the front of the house, and frankly I found myself using it because it'd get old sometimes, and other times you really do want all the lights on. My garage door opener was another. With near 100% accuracy my garage door would open when I was coming down my alley way. It never false opened though, even if I stopped at the grocery store in front of my house. It sometimes failed to open and I actually had to push a button in my car. Another note, not mentioned here from my skimming, is to never rely on cloud devices. Anything worth doing is worth doing off-line. If your home automation and security can be killed by chopping fiber or coax, then you have neither reliable automation or security. There's infinite options for off-line applications and liquidated DC servers are stupidly cheap to purchase. Last, if you're going to do home automation, make sure you start by building it on a separate network from your browsing network (preferably air gapped) - especially if you intend on using WiFi devices. They will crowd and slow down your network. Vary your solutions. Put some on LoRa, some on WiFi, some on Ethernet, some on ZWave, etc...

twawaaay 4y ago
We rented an airbnb, very nice, very luxurious. Had motion activated lights everywhere. We slept with the light on because it malfunctioned and there was no physical switch to turn it off -- we actually called the owner and he said there is no need, "they will turn off automatically". It is funny people can't envision things breaking... (And before you ask, the light was in a corridor but there was no door to the bedroom. The switch was stuck on because it was broken not because it overlooked the bed -- it did not)
- Markoff 4y ago
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    That's not something most people want to do, might violate the Airbnb agreement, and who knows what else might go wrong when it came time to turn things back on? Maybe people just think it's a bad idea.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Maybe those people are two afraid of BS eventuallities? I have anxiety and wouldn't think twice of doing that...
    - Markoff 4y ago
      surely I wouldn't care about some Airbnb agreement instead of sleeping with lights on, that's basically unusable apartment for me and breaks Airbnb agreement way more than trying to solve the issue if renter doesn't care to fix it immediately not sure what should go wrong when you switch on the power again, blackouts happen
  - twawaaay 4y ago
    There are good reasons not to. A lot of apartments here have security devices which will call for assistance when the power is turned off. Then there are devices that expect power 24/7 like fridge. Also, since I was abroad, I relied on the Internet that was at the apartment that would be cut off if the power was turned off. Also... you know... there are these funny little devices called switches that allow you to turn individual devices on and off without cutting power to entire apartment. Just saying...
    - mejutoco 4y ago
      Breaker boxes, at least were I am, are split in areas, that you can switch off independently. Switching the area were the lights were and leaving kitchen and router solves all your concerns except the security devices when power is off (which I personally never saw). My first reaction would have been what OP suggested.
- xbmcuser 4y ago
  This reminds me a few years ago on a family holiday to malaysia I was sharing the room with my 10 year old cousin. I go downstairs to smoke suddenly his father calls me and tells me that my cousin called him crying in pitch black room as the lights went off. As he was lying on the bed reading a book motion censors did not detect any movement and the power cut off. Luckily he had his phone with him otherwise he would have been scarred for life. Why the fuck would they use motion censor for the light I would understand if they use it for the aircon or something but even then with the key card in the slot why would they set it like that.
  - tasuki 4y ago
    > Luckily he had his phone with him otherwise he would have been scarred for life. From the lights turning off? A ten year old?
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      Could be just a hyperbolic turn of phrase. The commenter may not be a native english speaker. The kid may have a developmental disability or a specific recent trauma related to this. Who fucking knows, it's none of our business. The story contributes to the discussion and makes its point either which way, what do you get from calling out this detail like this?
      - coldtea 4y ago
        The parent may have a condition making him nitpicky, curious, and blunt (like Aspergers) or a specific professional or other curiosity related to this. Who fucking knows, what do you get from calling him out like this? See how it goes both ways?
        tasuki 4y ago
        Hehe, I very much do have a condition making me nitpicky and excessively curious! Thank you, your comment made me smile :)
        4y ago
- shangxiao 4y ago
  > It is funny people can't envision things breaking... This is what enraged me about the Therac-25 design which ended up killing people. There's a whole report to read on the design, failure and follow up but to paraphrase the designers eliminated the physical locking mechanism and had this attitude that "oh it's electronic so it won't wear out and fail".
  - pmontra 4y ago
    Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 Software errors killing people with excessive radiation doses.
    - Thiez 4y ago
      It's a bit sad to see it coming up to regularly. On the one hand it's a very classic example of programming bugs leading to injury and death. On the other hand it's so long ago that bringing it up so often makes it seem like it's the only good example of dangerous software. Software must be pretty amazing and safe that we have to keep bringing up an example from the late 80s.
      - thatguy0900 4y ago
        More that software that is critical is written with some level of care, and then never touched again out of fear of breaking it. See all the stories of hospital machines running windows xp.
        MobiusHorizons 4y ago
        That actually has a lot more to do with drivers not being provided by manufacturers for newer operating systems
      - smugma 4y ago
        It is useful to have a canonical example. Shared understanding of the problem, etc. It’s related to why memes exist.
- erfgh 4y ago
  Just turn it off at the fuse.
- smitty1e 4y ago
  Some fixtures may support yanking a bulb.
- type0 4y ago
  > It is funny people can't envision things breaking... By comparison the Clap switch is so simple that if it is quite at least you can sleep at night
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Take out the bulbs.
  - yencabulator 4y ago
    A lot of modern light fixtures have LEDs built in to the gadget, no separate "bulb".
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
> Anything worth doing is worth doing off-line. But this is directly against the easiest line of profit so no, vendors will not stop going in that direction even if it makes no sense to most people.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bratbag 4y ago
  I think most people's perception of what makes the most sense, involves someone else dealing with as much of the hassle as possible. Which is why online enabled devices are popular and why companies cater for them. If they could sell large numbers of offline versions at a markup, they would.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Then have it as selling point. "Here is a box, we just run a container on it with your stuff, you can configure it in cloud as usual but all the stuff is run locally. Pay us monthly for convenience of setting it from cloud and software updates but don't worry, if we get out of business It Will Still Just Work".
senko 4y ago
> That said, I built up an ideology that any automation added should never replace physical items. All automation should have physical kill switches. Any occupants of the home should have appropriate access to things that you would normally give them physical access to. Ah, the ideal of progressive enhancements. We know how that ended for HTML and JavaScript. I agree with you but long term I believe that's going to be a losing game (except basic safety access akin to fire stairs today).
ruleforty 4y ago
In my case I don’t enter my home through the garage when leaving the house for the dog or just walking to the local shops and beach. I solved opening the garage door when leaving by a much simpler approach: “Alexa, I’m leaving”(regex for various phrases) along with an Aqara button if I was on the phone. For arrival of my car only, and not triggering when I would walk nearby (park and beach 1 block in either direction), I had home assistant dialed in to notice the Bluetooth connection to my cars audio by its ID from within the app etc. along with the proximity and whether I was moving towards or away. Away would close and towards would of course open. This was particularly tricky but as you explain always failsafes in place: garage door opener in car and for the opening mechanism was set to close in 2 mins but reset if there was motion in the garage. If I was marked away and there was motion in the garage it would close and also sound an audible alarm. None of those of course would have been possible without NodeRed. It’s so much fun to use.
- kodah 4y ago
  In my experience presence detection, if you want it to be useful, almost always has to be custom for your situation. Everyone has different patterns based on personal preference and living situation. Glad you figured yours out! NodeRed is great. I don't use it but if you don't want to spend a ton of time writing rote automation in code it's a dope option (and that's an absolutely fair take to have imo).
Narkov 4y ago
> That said, I built up an ideology that any automation added should never replace physical items. All automation should have physical kill switches. Any occupants of the home should have appropriate access to things that you would normally give them physical access to. I call this the grandma test. Can grandma come over to my place and still operate everything she needs without a CompSci degree. It is definitely possible to have a very smart home but still have physical fallbacks that cater for most visitors.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  There was an ad doing the rounds recently in Europe showing a geek setting up voice-activated home automation. And then getting a tooth removed under heavy anaesthetic. Turns out "Mmmmffmghfff!" is not a valid Alexa command. Also a bad idea to have a voice activated door during torrential rain. (Which is a silly example. But even so.) It's not even a UI problem. No one is going to be happy if the power goes off and they can't get in or out. Or the lock fails open and everyone can get in and out.
  - supermatt 4y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwPtcqcqz00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwPtcqcqz00
wongarsu 4y ago
> liquidated DC servers are stupidly cheap to purchase Though not always cheap to operate, depending on your electricity costs. I agree that liquidated equipment is great for these purposes (both servers, thin clients and small form factor office computers), but do a rough estimation of not just purchase cost but also yearly electricity cost. Some stuff is great, some stuff is being liquidated because of uneconomical TCO compared to newer equipment.
- ilyt 4y ago
  They are never cheap to operate. They got out of DC for a reason. Few modern ones (on Intel side, AMD seems to be terrible with idle power usage) are not too bad but get something old and you'd be seeing 100W+ constant usage
- kodah 4y ago
  This is a salient point. Any tips on hardware I could buy or build that can run many containers or VMs with variable power?
  - belthesar 4y ago
    The ultra small form factor PCs that have become popular in the business market are honestly great for this. Many times they're using laptop CPUs, which significantly shrink their TDP, leading to less heat waste and power consumption while still having all the good accelerators folks desire for many homelab concerns (video codec accelerators for home media servers, VT-x/d for virtualization acceleration, etc). Grabbing three of those and installing a healthy amount of local storage and RAM and/or using a NAS for decentralized storage will get most homelabbers a real long way to doing nearly anything they want to do, and allow for simple and reliable high availability configs if you're like me and your homelab projects suddenly creep into being production systems.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    I don't know what kind and how many VMs are you planning to run, but simple desktop hardware can go a long way. And they scale back power usage nicely too, when not utilized. My setup is small and old, I run an AMD FX-6100 with 20 gigs of RAM, six hard drives and an SSD, and idle power draw is around 15W.
Ord3rChaos 4y ago
Great philosophy! I do this for everything, not just automation. My rule is: "Make everything optional."
bombcar 4y ago
This is why I like the Lutron switches - they work both manual and via HomeKit and if you change state one way you still can the other way - and they have a physical tiny tab you can pull to kill power to it if needed as a third backup.
- qubitcoder 4y ago
  Agreed. On a related note, I use these smart bulb dimmers all over the house: https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/StandAloneControls/Dimmers-Switches/SmartBulbDimmer/overview.aspx https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/StandAloneContro... They work beautifully with Hue bulbs and HomeKit, as well as offline without WiFi. It also avoids the situation of people disabling smart bulbs by using the physical switch.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Those little guys are great. The Hue button thing (with four settings is nice too) though I’m not entirely sure how beneficial dimmable is in most areas.
nonethewiser 4y ago
All the power to you, and that is a good philosophy, but my god do I hate smart homes.
- sumtechguy 4y ago
  IoTs application in the home is neat and flashy but kind of a head scratcher. Everyone trying to get a lock on it and get that sweet sweet recurring monthly revenue. IoT application in the home looks cool, until you realize you are going to be replacing light switches every few years. My parents have light switches from the house they bought in the 70s, that was built in the 40s that have never been replaced and still work. Raise your hand if you think any of this zigbee/wifi enabled junk will still work in 70+ years much less 20 with no replacement? IoT works good in an industrial case where getting at something is a real pain. Such as monitoring a piece of equipment 3 miles up some rando dirt road and the people that maintain it cost 200 dollars an hour just to drive for 6 hours to look at it or worse have to go get a part and wait another 2-3 days. Rather pay them 200 an hour to fix something than 200 an hour to plug in a computer to read some outputs then drive home. my new house has all zigbee enabled stuff. I had zero say in it. I will use them for awhile. But I know eventually I am going to get extremely angry at them and will just go buy a pile of eaton and ge light toggle switches and basically not worry about it again. Also someone in this thread suggested a separate network. Good idea. Guess I am going to be buying a decent router at some point.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    >Raise your hand if you think any of this zigbee/wifi enabled junk will still work in 70+ years much less 20 with no replacement? Surely you aren't also expecting to use the same lightbulbs for 70 years? Of course most of the Zigbee stuff won't last 70 years, but it isn't fundamentally all that different from light bulbs and other household appliances not tending to be able to handle regular use for 70 years. Especially lately with most 'smart' light bulbs being in the same form factor as 'dumb' ones. As for switches, it's a digital system, if the switch breaks you are carrying a device capable of fulfilling the same function in your pocket (and potentially even wearing such a device on your wrist).
ilyt 4y ago
It's shame there is not much commercial pull in more of "local hub" model. Just have everything talk (via MQTT or whatever) to local hub (that could double down as internet router, or whatever else) running a container with queue server. Then you can just spin up second "app" (another container) with local controller, or connect that queue to vendor's cloud and their own app. Or have failover between one and other. Hell, integrate the two where you have one place to add all of your rules, but what is possible to do locally would be done. The vendor could charge monthly for their cloud toys but not have to run all automation in the cloud (cost savings) and the user would get a box that can be configured from anywhere, but do vast majority of tasks locally and not be dependent on internet for basics.

by kodah 4y ago

twawaaay 4y ago

We rented an airbnb, very nice, very luxurious. Had motion activated lights everywhere. We slept with the light on because it malfunctioned and there was no physical switch to turn it off -- we actually called the owner and he said there is no need, "they will turn off automatically". It is funny people can't envision things breaking... (And before you ask, the light was in a corridor but there was no door to the bedroom. The switch was stuck on because it was broken not because it overlooked the bed -- it did not)

Markoff 4y ago
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  That's not something most people want to do, might violate the Airbnb agreement, and who knows what else might go wrong when it came time to turn things back on? Maybe people just think it's a bad idea.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Maybe those people are two afraid of BS eventuallities? I have anxiety and wouldn't think twice of doing that...
  - Markoff 4y ago
    surely I wouldn't care about some Airbnb agreement instead of sleeping with lights on, that's basically unusable apartment for me and breaks Airbnb agreement way more than trying to solve the issue if renter doesn't care to fix it immediately not sure what should go wrong when you switch on the power again, blackouts happen
- twawaaay 4y ago
  There are good reasons not to. A lot of apartments here have security devices which will call for assistance when the power is turned off. Then there are devices that expect power 24/7 like fridge. Also, since I was abroad, I relied on the Internet that was at the apartment that would be cut off if the power was turned off. Also... you know... there are these funny little devices called switches that allow you to turn individual devices on and off without cutting power to entire apartment. Just saying...
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    Breaker boxes, at least were I am, are split in areas, that you can switch off independently. Switching the area were the lights were and leaving kitchen and router solves all your concerns except the security devices when power is off (which I personally never saw). My first reaction would have been what OP suggested.
xbmcuser 4y ago
This reminds me a few years ago on a family holiday to malaysia I was sharing the room with my 10 year old cousin. I go downstairs to smoke suddenly his father calls me and tells me that my cousin called him crying in pitch black room as the lights went off. As he was lying on the bed reading a book motion censors did not detect any movement and the power cut off. Luckily he had his phone with him otherwise he would have been scarred for life. Why the fuck would they use motion censor for the light I would understand if they use it for the aircon or something but even then with the key card in the slot why would they set it like that.
- tasuki 4y ago
  > Luckily he had his phone with him otherwise he would have been scarred for life. From the lights turning off? A ten year old?
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    Could be just a hyperbolic turn of phrase. The commenter may not be a native english speaker. The kid may have a developmental disability or a specific recent trauma related to this. Who fucking knows, it's none of our business. The story contributes to the discussion and makes its point either which way, what do you get from calling out this detail like this?
    - coldtea 4y ago
      The parent may have a condition making him nitpicky, curious, and blunt (like Aspergers) or a specific professional or other curiosity related to this. Who fucking knows, what do you get from calling him out like this? See how it goes both ways?
      - tasuki 4y ago
        Hehe, I very much do have a condition making me nitpicky and excessively curious! Thank you, your comment made me smile :)
      - 4y ago
shangxiao 4y ago
> It is funny people can't envision things breaking... This is what enraged me about the Therac-25 design which ended up killing people. There's a whole report to read on the design, failure and follow up but to paraphrase the designers eliminated the physical locking mechanism and had this attitude that "oh it's electronic so it won't wear out and fail".
- pmontra 4y ago
  Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 Software errors killing people with excessive radiation doses.
  - Thiez 4y ago
    It's a bit sad to see it coming up to regularly. On the one hand it's a very classic example of programming bugs leading to injury and death. On the other hand it's so long ago that bringing it up so often makes it seem like it's the only good example of dangerous software. Software must be pretty amazing and safe that we have to keep bringing up an example from the late 80s.
    - thatguy0900 4y ago
      More that software that is critical is written with some level of care, and then never touched again out of fear of breaking it. See all the stories of hospital machines running windows xp.
      - MobiusHorizons 4y ago
        That actually has a lot more to do with drivers not being provided by manufacturers for newer operating systems
    - smugma 4y ago
      It is useful to have a canonical example. Shared understanding of the problem, etc. It’s related to why memes exist.
erfgh 4y ago
Just turn it off at the fuse.
smitty1e 4y ago
Some fixtures may support yanking a bulb.
type0 4y ago
> It is funny people can't envision things breaking... By comparison the Clap switch is so simple that if it is quite at least you can sleep at night
nonethewiser 4y ago
Take out the bulbs.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  A lot of modern light fixtures have LEDs built in to the gadget, no separate "bulb".

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago

> Anything worth doing is worth doing off-line. But this is directly against the easiest line of profit so no, vendors will not stop going in that direction even if it makes no sense to most people.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bratbag 4y ago
I think most people's perception of what makes the most sense, involves someone else dealing with as much of the hassle as possible. Which is why online enabled devices are popular and why companies cater for them. If they could sell large numbers of offline versions at a markup, they would.
ilyt 4y ago
Then have it as selling point. "Here is a box, we just run a container on it with your stuff, you can configure it in cloud as usual but all the stuff is run locally. Pay us monthly for convenience of setting it from cloud and software updates but don't worry, if we get out of business It Will Still Just Work".

senko 4y ago

> That said, I built up an ideology that any automation added should never replace physical items. All automation should have physical kill switches. Any occupants of the home should have appropriate access to things that you would normally give them physical access to. Ah, the ideal of progressive enhancements. We know how that ended for HTML and JavaScript. I agree with you but long term I believe that's going to be a losing game (except basic safety access akin to fire stairs today).

ruleforty 4y ago

In my case I don’t enter my home through the garage when leaving the house for the dog or just walking to the local shops and beach. I solved opening the garage door when leaving by a much simpler approach: “Alexa, I’m leaving”(regex for various phrases) along with an Aqara button if I was on the phone. For arrival of my car only, and not triggering when I would walk nearby (park and beach 1 block in either direction), I had home assistant dialed in to notice the Bluetooth connection to my cars audio by its ID from within the app etc. along with the proximity and whether I was moving towards or away. Away would close and towards would of course open. This was particularly tricky but as you explain always failsafes in place: garage door opener in car and for the opening mechanism was set to close in 2 mins but reset if there was motion in the garage. If I was marked away and there was motion in the garage it would close and also sound an audible alarm. None of those of course would have been possible without NodeRed. It’s so much fun to use.

kodah 4y ago
In my experience presence detection, if you want it to be useful, almost always has to be custom for your situation. Everyone has different patterns based on personal preference and living situation. Glad you figured yours out! NodeRed is great. I don't use it but if you don't want to spend a ton of time writing rote automation in code it's a dope option (and that's an absolutely fair take to have imo).

Narkov 4y ago

> That said, I built up an ideology that any automation added should never replace physical items. All automation should have physical kill switches. Any occupants of the home should have appropriate access to things that you would normally give them physical access to. I call this the grandma test. Can grandma come over to my place and still operate everything she needs without a CompSci degree. It is definitely possible to have a very smart home but still have physical fallbacks that cater for most visitors.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
There was an ad doing the rounds recently in Europe showing a geek setting up voice-activated home automation. And then getting a tooth removed under heavy anaesthetic. Turns out "Mmmmffmghfff!" is not a valid Alexa command. Also a bad idea to have a voice activated door during torrential rain. (Which is a silly example. But even so.) It's not even a UI problem. No one is going to be happy if the power goes off and they can't get in or out. Or the lock fails open and everyone can get in and out.
- supermatt 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwPtcqcqz00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwPtcqcqz00

wongarsu 4y ago

> liquidated DC servers are stupidly cheap to purchase Though not always cheap to operate, depending on your electricity costs. I agree that liquidated equipment is great for these purposes (both servers, thin clients and small form factor office computers), but do a rough estimation of not just purchase cost but also yearly electricity cost. Some stuff is great, some stuff is being liquidated because of uneconomical TCO compared to newer equipment.

ilyt 4y ago
They are never cheap to operate. They got out of DC for a reason. Few modern ones (on Intel side, AMD seems to be terrible with idle power usage) are not too bad but get something old and you'd be seeing 100W+ constant usage
kodah 4y ago
This is a salient point. Any tips on hardware I could buy or build that can run many containers or VMs with variable power?
- belthesar 4y ago
  The ultra small form factor PCs that have become popular in the business market are honestly great for this. Many times they're using laptop CPUs, which significantly shrink their TDP, leading to less heat waste and power consumption while still having all the good accelerators folks desire for many homelab concerns (video codec accelerators for home media servers, VT-x/d for virtualization acceleration, etc). Grabbing three of those and installing a healthy amount of local storage and RAM and/or using a NAS for decentralized storage will get most homelabbers a real long way to doing nearly anything they want to do, and allow for simple and reliable high availability configs if you're like me and your homelab projects suddenly creep into being production systems.
- npteljes 4y ago
  I don't know what kind and how many VMs are you planning to run, but simple desktop hardware can go a long way. And they scale back power usage nicely too, when not utilized. My setup is small and old, I run an AMD FX-6100 with 20 gigs of RAM, six hard drives and an SSD, and idle power draw is around 15W.

Ord3rChaos 4y ago

Great philosophy! I do this for everything, not just automation. My rule is: "Make everything optional."

bombcar 4y ago

This is why I like the Lutron switches - they work both manual and via HomeKit and if you change state one way you still can the other way - and they have a physical tiny tab you can pull to kill power to it if needed as a third backup.

qubitcoder 4y ago
Agreed. On a related note, I use these smart bulb dimmers all over the house: https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/StandAloneControls/Dimmers-Switches/SmartBulbDimmer/overview.aspx https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/StandAloneContro... They work beautifully with Hue bulbs and HomeKit, as well as offline without WiFi. It also avoids the situation of people disabling smart bulbs by using the physical switch.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Those little guys are great. The Hue button thing (with four settings is nice too) though I’m not entirely sure how beneficial dimmable is in most areas.

nonethewiser 4y ago

All the power to you, and that is a good philosophy, but my god do I hate smart homes.

sumtechguy 4y ago
IoTs application in the home is neat and flashy but kind of a head scratcher. Everyone trying to get a lock on it and get that sweet sweet recurring monthly revenue. IoT application in the home looks cool, until you realize you are going to be replacing light switches every few years. My parents have light switches from the house they bought in the 70s, that was built in the 40s that have never been replaced and still work. Raise your hand if you think any of this zigbee/wifi enabled junk will still work in 70+ years much less 20 with no replacement? IoT works good in an industrial case where getting at something is a real pain. Such as monitoring a piece of equipment 3 miles up some rando dirt road and the people that maintain it cost 200 dollars an hour just to drive for 6 hours to look at it or worse have to go get a part and wait another 2-3 days. Rather pay them 200 an hour to fix something than 200 an hour to plug in a computer to read some outputs then drive home. my new house has all zigbee enabled stuff. I had zero say in it. I will use them for awhile. But I know eventually I am going to get extremely angry at them and will just go buy a pile of eaton and ge light toggle switches and basically not worry about it again. Also someone in this thread suggested a separate network. Good idea. Guess I am going to be buying a decent router at some point.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  >Raise your hand if you think any of this zigbee/wifi enabled junk will still work in 70+ years much less 20 with no replacement? Surely you aren't also expecting to use the same lightbulbs for 70 years? Of course most of the Zigbee stuff won't last 70 years, but it isn't fundamentally all that different from light bulbs and other household appliances not tending to be able to handle regular use for 70 years. Especially lately with most 'smart' light bulbs being in the same form factor as 'dumb' ones. As for switches, it's a digital system, if the switch breaks you are carrying a device capable of fulfilling the same function in your pocket (and potentially even wearing such a device on your wrist).

ilyt 4y ago

It's shame there is not much commercial pull in more of "local hub" model. Just have everything talk (via MQTT or whatever) to local hub (that could double down as internet router, or whatever else) running a container with queue server. Then you can just spin up second "app" (another container) with local controller, or connect that queue to vendor's cloud and their own app. Or have failover between one and other. Hell, integrate the two where you have one place to add all of your rules, but what is possible to do locally would be done. The vendor could charge monthly for their cloud toys but not have to run all automation in the cloud (cost savings) and the user would get a box that can be configured from anywhere, but do vast majority of tasks locally and not be dependent on internet for basics.