8 ms·

How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

92 points by zdw 4y ago

joshspankit 4y ago
Side track: For those who have the skills and desire to simply remove the battery from a tablet and leave it connected to power 24/7, maybe we need a resource for how to do that for each one. For example: Some can have the battery wires cut no problem, some need a capacitor, some need something more complex.
sneak 4y ago
home assistant, dozens of cheap nfc stickers, and ios shortcuts that trigger home assistant actions when you boop the appropriate sticker with your locked phone.
- xiconfjs 4y ago
  can you elaborate further on this?
- dainiusse 4y ago
  IMO this is absurd. If you need a phone in your hands - it is quicker to open the UI and do the thing
  - ga_to 4y ago
    I would bet it's not. Based on the same starting point (phone in pocket) how many steps are there actually? UI Option: - take out phone - unlock phone - leave current app - find and open control app - find icon to toggle action - lock phone - put phone back in pocket NFC option: - take phone out of pocket - bump phone against NFC sticker - find NFC sweet spot - put phone back in pocket
    - bmurphy1976 4y ago
      It is absurd. Get a button instead. Button option: - press button
      - sneak 4y ago
        Buttons are $20. NFC stickers are $0.20.
    - tehbeard 4y ago
      Your NFC option missed the "move to be within arms reach of said NFC sticker" step. For some actions colocation might make sense. But having to stand up to go rub a magic sticker on the wall or coffee table to turn on the lights seems pretty dumb compared to a few thumb flicks.
- bmurphy1976 4y ago
  That's a really weird suggestion. Get some buttons. Ikea Tradfri buttons work. Aquara makes some as well but I have no experience with them.
  - kristofferR 4y ago
    I fully recommend the Aqara Wireless Remote Switch H1 [1]. They are quite cheap, yet feel premium (unlike the IKEA buttons, which are both tiny and feel cheap). [1] https://www.aqara.com/eu/product/wireless-remote-switch-h1 https://www.aqara.com/eu/product/wireless-remote-switch-h1
- TheFragenTaken 4y ago
  On Android at least, HomeAssistant also supports customised quick settings buttons and widgets, for specific scenes/lights/buttons. It's super handy, since you can access quick settings without unlocking your phone, and have widgets on a dedicated page on the home screen.
wkat4242 4y ago
The battery issue with tablets is for sure a problem. Phones too. I had a test bank of 10 devices with openSTF (smartphone test farm) and 3 phones cracked open from bloated batteries within the year. What I do now is open up old tablets, remove the battery and replace it with a DC-DC converter. Because tablets and phones won't turn on without seeing a battery, you can't power them though USB with the battery removed. But the DC-DC option works ok. Sometimes you need to remove the battery protection circuitry from the battery because the tablet needs to see it. This can be a bit hazardous. But usually providing about 4 volts is enough. Of course all this is not for those without electronics knowledge. Ps I also detest Google's removal of the shortcut buttons under the power button menu :(
- hattmall 4y ago
  >n from bloated batteries within the year. Is this from the battery being on the charger constantly? I remember having a similar problem years ago. I thought most devices now would manage charging by letting it drain a bit automatically. At the time though they didn't so I for my continually connected devices I just used simple plug timers that cut it off for a few hours a couple times a day.
  - IronHerald 4y ago
    There's also the possibility of using Advanced Charging Controller - though it requires root. Essentially you can set it up so when the battery reaches eg. 100% it stops charging, and resumes only once it reaches eg. 15%. Surprisingly the Android devices that I have still don't ever stop charging on their own, constantly keeping 100%. [Advanced Charging Controller (ACC)](https://github.com/VR-25/acc https://github.com/VR-25/acc) [BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries](https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-...)
    - dementik 4y ago
      I do this with my tablet: It is running Fully Kiosk Browser, reporting to Home Assistant. When device reaches 20%, it turns on Oneplug usb relay and turns it off at 80%.
leoedin 4y ago
I've been wanting a "house tablet" for a while - something to interact with my (app only) heating controls and play music on spotify. Has anyone found an acceptable setup? I had an old Android tablet permanently wall mounted for a while, but it was too slow (single core). I'd love an "appliance" style android tablet - but these don't seem to exist.
- ilyt 4y ago
  I'd love something like that but with some low power screen (e-paper? One of those super low power memory LCDs) and running 2 weeks off charge. Just so it can be constantly on and display status while not requiring tethering.
  - sh4rks 4y ago
    Connecting a screen to a raspberry pi could be an idea
    - thedanbob 4y ago
      I’ve got a raspberry pi in a touchscreen case that I bought for my 3D printer but frequently gets repurposed for home automation. When we have someone house sitting while we’re away I set it up with a dedicated Home Assistant screen so they can turn on the garage lights from the house.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      Power usage. It is fine for stationary stuff but no chance you gonna have that had any sensible battery life. And even if you get to like a day, having to remember to put yet another device on charger every day is PITA. I actually was building kind of monitoring screen; idea was to just leave it connected to ethernet and boot off network so it doesn't have any problems with SD durability or need any installation in case I wanted to have more than one.
      - silversmith 4y ago
        I currently have an old windows tablet on the wall, with fullscreen browser running and connected to a charger 24/7 - the power drain amounts to less than 10EUR a year. I'm looking into turning off the screen based on motion sensors, but... the payout just isn't as much as it seems at first.
kristofferR 4y ago
One of the smartest things I did was to place a wireless wall switch next to my bed. A quick press turns off all the lights in my apartment, for when I want to go to sleep. A double press turns some of the lights on with the lowest brightness, so I can grab a glass of water or have a quick pee in the middle of the night. Holding the wall switch puts all the lights at full brightness for when I want to wake up. If you work from home, a macropad or Streamdeck is also recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJSREjWH7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJSREjWH7Y
azubinski 4y ago
Somewhere there should be an article "How to spend time in a pleasant conversation with Google Assistant instead of reading dumb asrtehnica articles". Otherwise, the balance will be disturbed.
kristofferR 4y ago
2023 is "The Year of the Voice" for Home Assistant, so you'll at least be able to directly add prompts and sentences that it'll understand and respond to, instead of relying on Google's/Amazon's/Apple's dumb "AI". Hopefully the OSS speech to text will be good, since then it'll work as good as you program it to. Not relying on "the cloud" for voice assistance would be awesome.
harry8 4y ago
Can also get a long way just with Tasmota smart plugs. Set up timers, can still press a button on the side of it to turn on and off. Mqtt for phone control override and can go the full home assistant if you want to go that way. Also very helpful provide detailed power consumption stats. Athom do both tasmota and esphome pre-installed. Haven't tried esphome plus. I get their stuff from Ali and it has been ok so far. Anyone had good experiences with something else and I'm all ears.
jpdb 4y ago
I currently have a SmartThings Hub and Homeassistant Yellow, but if I were starting over today, I'd be all in on Matter (mostly thread) and avoid ZWave and Zigbee outright. I'm mostly stuck to zwave because of my blinds, but I think I will slowly replace all my smart home related things with Matter. There's still a few sensors that there don't have a Matter equivalent yet, but I think that'll change soon.
- shellfishgene 4y ago
  Is the matter stuff more expensive, or about the same? There seem to be not that many products yet?
  - jpdb 4y ago
    Relatively the same price, I'd say. But there's definitely not they many products out yet so maybe that will change. I think the biggest difference in price I saw was from my Z-Wave blinds versus Thread / Matter ones. However, the overwhelming majority of the cost for that is the blinds themselves so it's probably not the best comparison.
    - kps 4y ago
      I don't think Matter will add to price; for many devices, I suspect the opposite. The open-source Matter implementation (disclosure: I worked on bits of it) has wide support from silicon vendors. JoeBulbCo will basically be able to pick from a selection of high-volume ICs, run ‘make’, and ship it. JoeBulbCo competes on how good — or how cheap — their bulb is.
kristofferR 4y ago
I've got an old iPad Air 2 lying around and a full Home Assistant setup, but I haven't bothered doing anything with it - frankly, I don't get it. Unless your place is quite small, a wall mounted tablet just seems like a hassle. Even disregarding all the hassle with the mounting and interface config, what are the advantages? Having to walk to a single position to control my smart home doesn't seem very smart, honestly? Can anyone educate me?
- harry8 4y ago
  Imagine it in the kitchen used like a smart clock. Shows time, weather, time until next public transport departures from different stops on different routes, fuel prices at local filling stations, some electricity usage stats maybe..? Keep yourself on track getting out the door in the morning with a glance? Some people like to put the phone down with the keys and not use it and be tied to it at home. Walking to a tablet may be preferable than going to a work desk with a laptop or whatever to switch something on or off and we're used to doing that with light switches etc. Not exhaustive, not necessarily how i do everything either. I bet people are using a tablet as a controller in ways and for reasons that make sense that i haven't thought of too.
Helmut10001 4y ago
Why voice? It is such a bad interface. I have a Shelly I4 with 4 (physical) buttons that trigger different automations in home assistant on my server, e.g. "Switch off everything" -> HASS -> Connects via Ethernet/Wifi to 6 Shelly Plug S in the room and switches those off. The Shelly Plug S use 0.5 Watt and I have Wifi anyway, so why another device or transmission standard?
- ocharles 4y ago
  I think voice is a fine interface for a lot of smart home things. If I'm watching TV and want the lights on/off, I don't want: * To have to reach for my phone * To have a tablet mounted within reach (that's more clutter) * To have to get up to the light switch/nearest controller. This sounds lazy but that is literally the point of all this stuff - to make things convenient. Likewise, if I'm in the kitchen and want to set a timer, I don't want to have to use my hands (I'm probably already using them), I just want to yell that I need a imer set.
  - Helmut10001 4y ago
    Yes, I hear these arguments over and over. Yet, in cars, it is already increasingly recognized that touch screens (another interface) are worse than physical buttons. The examples you name are somewhat exceptions where I can imagine, if someone is really lazy, that a language control could be better than buttons, but in most cases I think the difference is minuscule. I have to walk 2 Meters from the couch to the button ("and I wanted to get a new drink anyway"). On the other hand, I can see that language is really good for information/knowledge retrieval. Ask ChatGPT to help you with something.. and get the answer via voice.
    - DharmaPolice 4y ago
      The difference is voice does not have to be a replacement for a button but just another option. My light switch in my bedroom is on the other side of the room to my bed and if I'm falling asleep it's much easier to give a voice command than get out of bed and press a button on the wall and then fumble back to bed in the dark. Not to mention when you notice you've left a light on in the hallway/another room. But I also have my lights on a button on my remote and yes, often it's easier to just press that.
sandos 4y ago
And the top recommendation, Home Assistant, just started their year on working on adding voice support! Oh, the irony.
- timbit42 4y ago
  It has it's uses but a true smarthome doesn't need you to tell it what you want.
esskay 4y ago
I've all but given up on smart home tech. Almost all of them use the old 2.4ghz wifi band which nothing else in my home uses, and for some reason despite being connected to (any) router that supports both they'll fail to communicate with anything on the 5ghz band. Sure, there are going to be ways around it - but there should need to be. The whole point of this stuff is to make things 'easy', and having to screw around enabling a bunch of legacy settings for brand new hardware isn't 'easy' for the end user.
- clbrmbr 4y ago
  There are very few IoT chips that support 5 GHz. Espressif finally announced the C5 with dual-band but otherwise all ESP32s are on 2.4 GHz. Thread is 100% 2.4 GHz. Seems the plan is to move high bandwidth applications, and most Wi-Fi users to 5 GHz leaving just IOT devices on 2.4.
- cube2222 4y ago
  There's not much reason to have 5GHz for smart home devices. 2.4GHz has better range and is ubiquitous. 5GHz has better throughput, but my lightbulb doesn't need 500MB/s of transfer. Most routers will just create two networks with the same name on both frequencies by default, which will work out of the box for 95% of the people. As other commenters have mentioned, usually devices can communicate with each other across those networks without issues.
- avianlyric 4y ago
  That sounds like an issue with your router. There’s absolutely no reason why a device using 2.4ghz WiFi shouldn’t be able to talk to a device using 5ghz WiFi, with both WiFi networks are on the same logical LAN. It’s not like devices can detect what frequency the other device on network is using, just like it can’t detect if the device is connected via Ethernet, plugged into power, or running on a battery. I would check to make sure your router is properly propagating broadcast packets around your network. That’s the number one cause of smart home discovery fails.
alkonaut 4y ago
The best controller for lighting by far is the light switch. "Smart lightbulbs" behind dumb switches might seem like an easy solution, but it makes everything dumber (If you have a light switch you must not switch off because then you can't turn the "smart" light on, then you have a dumber house not a smarter one). Smart switches which fall back to regular switches if they malfunction is fantastic. Add some scenarios for double/triple clicks and you can do a lot without even bringing out your phone. E.g. switch off all the lights when leaving either by double clicking the switch next to the front door, or trigger that same "all off" scenario through the alarm being armed or the door being locked. Making "smart home" stuff is about integration, which requires tinkering. But making a subset of your home smart such as "smart lighting" doesn't have to be so daunting.
- clbrmbr 4y ago
  Good idea to multiplex some scene functions onto the local smart switch.
- ClikeX 4y ago
  I personally like the Shelly switches. They're just WiFi relays, so you can control them remotely, but also use a normal wall switch to control them.
  - alkonaut 4y ago
    I like shelly for their openness, but I still find them a bit less reliable than some more premium things like Plejd. Unfortunately Plejd isn't very open. It's doable (e.g. using with HA) but not pleasant yet. Hopefully that might change though
  - Jnr 4y ago
    I like Shelly devices a lot.
  - silversmith 4y ago
    The best part is you get to choose from wide variety of normal looking switches, not some designers coffee break sketch of "advanced and futuristic". Shelly seems to be more US-centric, over on EU side I've had good experiences with Sonoff ZBMINI relays - same idea, only on Zigbee connection instead of WiFi.
teekert 4y ago
A friend of mine just bought this thing (Aqara magic cube), looks really cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRf9RT2YgaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRf9RT2YgaI
azubinski 4y ago
My personal experience of using Ikea's Dirigera with different end devices (not only manufactured by Ikea) integrated with Google Assistant is very positive an is far away from this strange statement: "Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant: They demand that you learn specific device names and structures for commands, while they frequently get even the most simple command astoundingly wrong". I set the device names in the Ikea app, and then I command these devices with my voice in almost free form. Sometimes it's even fascinating, because Ikea knows the names of all the colors of their light bulb, and I just don't remember them.
tuananh 4y ago
sensors is the key to an "actual" smart home. sensors along with lots of automation rules will make the home works for you, instead of requiring you to shout at the assistant.
- testmasterflex 4y ago
  That’s exactly my vision with Loodio (https://Loodio.com https://Loodio.com) that today only has a motion sensor but even that makes a huge difference. Sensors are also getting cheaper by the minute. For example, I can add a microwave sensor for under a dollar and read hand gestures.
- bretto13 4y ago
  Motion and door sensors tied to lights that come on and adjust with light intensity and time of day is the best automation I've setup. It's so nice to walk into a dark room and have the lights turn on (without blinding you), then turn off when you're gone. Much better than fiddling with dimmers.
  - tuananh 4y ago
    you can even group sensors together to have better detection. i love those new presence sensors. it's a lot better than the motion sensors from prev gen.
oskob 4y ago
One product is missing from this list: Flic (super small Bluetooth button) I have them scattered all around my house and I never use voice or even apps anymore to control my smart home.
esel2k 4y ago
I have a smarthome or playing with it since more than 5 years (Mystrom, logitech pop, homeassitant) I ended up with the most simple things: - sensors to control the lights: motion and brightness as treshold - save power by reaching low power usage (standby) will turn it off - a few buttons to make RestAPI calls to turn on or off when something is not controlled automatically: lights, power, vacuum cleaner I don’t understand why anybody would use voice assistance. I never got it except rare situations to make a note:while driving, cooking. Everything else a sensors, a button or text entry use the smartphone is the way to go.
srmarm 4y ago
Ikea Tradfri buttons/switches have been a gamechanger for me. They're zigbee, very well built, well supported and cheap. Have a nice solid feel with proper mounts that are magnetic, Have mounted them in place of regular switches around the house and they just work, no user training required (although I use with homeassistnat which is still very hobbish on the setup side) but my wife can use it all without needing to know whats going on in the background. Can do smart stuff in addition, i.e press the on button multiple times to cycle between scenes. The other thing is automations, I've got a bunch of timed automations, certain lights come on at dusk, heating comes on half an hour before the alarm goes off in the morning and heats only the rooms I tend to use at the correct times, so office is heated during work hours and living room comes on for the evening/weekends - all can be overridden from my phone or voice or whatever but ideally that's the exception as I find voice clunky and phone takes quite a few steps. If my phone was able to display the controls for the room I'm in without requiring an unlock that'd be good but for now but generally I find tactile buttons much nicer to interact with.
- ontarionick 4y ago
  I use the Phillips Hue Button, which I quite like! It has 4 buttons on it and doesn’t require external power or batteries to function. The button communicates with the bridge over Zigbee, which is then connected to my Home Assistant instance, so I can control more than just other Hue devices. I put them on the bedside tables, and in living areas near where I have any smart bulbs in dumb lamps. Main button usually toggles the light, other buttons do things like turn on a favourite radio station, toggle other lights, and toggle gas fireplace thermostats. Downside is you need to know what the buttons do (guests usually take a bit of instruction to get used to it), but it works fairly well otherwise. The automations are a real game changer! Some of my favourites that you didn’t mention in your comment: - UniFi external cameras detecting people / vehicles turn on corresponding lights or making voice announcements in the house - motion lighting in closets / pantry - motion lighting in under cabinet lighting at night for night lighting - good night routines that shut off the lights, arm the alarm, tell me the weather for tomorrow, and play white noise - good morning routines paired with an alarm that disarm the alarm, play the morning radio (station depending on weekday vs weekend), turn on the gas fireplace in the bedroom and a space heater in the bathroom - voice announcement / phone notifications triggered by a power usage monitor to tell me when my laundry has finished - auto off timers for light switches / fireplaces that reset the countdown when motion is detected in that area Any time I need to use the voice assistant or my phone is an anti pattern as far as I’m concerned! Phone more than voice assistant, but neither is as nice as a simple button. One thing I do find helpful is some Amazon FireHD tablets mounted on the walls in most rooms. They are powered by a PoE charger, and the screens unlock when motion is detected. I find this to be way better UX then pulling out a phone, unlocking, finding the app, then trying to remember why I pulled out my phone in the first place lol. The FireHD tablets are setup with a dashboard specific for that room (with tabs for controlling other parts of the house too), and are fairly UX-friendly for guests. I run "Fully Kiosk Browser" on the tablets, and that handles the autounlock / displaying the Home Assistant dashboard.
ii550 4y ago
I use the android app "Buttons for Alexa" and achieved exactly this, but on my phone. I have an entire page in my Home Launcher dedicad to buttons to turn stuff on and off - switches :-)
ldoughty 4y ago
Anyone know of a screen solution that isn't an old tablet/phone? I'd love to pay in this area, but I don't want to was mount an old tablet that will be a fire risk. I know the Pi's have a tiny touch screen screen hat, is there other ideas for a wall mountable solution that people can recommend?
- newsclues 4y ago
  I’m interested in a display, perhaps eink, that won’t disrupt my sleep schedule with light. But being able to turn off lights and activate calm music before bed would be nice but I don’t even want to use my phone for an hour before bed.
autoexec 4y ago
The smartest house doesn't hand out the details of your life to 3rd parties or let contractors hear you having sex. We need more options for privacy respecting self-hosted systems that people don't have to design/create themselves. Some home automation tech is pretty nice, but its not worth paying for it forever with the data/privacy being given up, and in the inevitable consequences of having that data used against you for the rest of your life.
- ontarionick 4y ago
  Setup Home Assistant, and only get devices that are 100% local control! There are fairly reasonable options for this. I have a couple devices/services where I haven't been able to find good local only or where I find utility in the cloud connectedness, but that's very much the exception than the rule.
  - wil421 4y ago
    Homebridge plus Apple Home in my opinion is much better than home assistant. If you’re android based or have really complicated automations I could see why home assistant would be better. Home assistant’s lack of compatibility with quite a few brands made me run Homebridge and home assistant together which defeats the purpose of HA.
    - noodlesUK 4y ago
      I'm curious which devices you have that are supported by home bridge but not home assistant. I've had nothing but success using home assistant.
      - wil421 4y ago
        This was over a year ago. Wyze and HA were having spats over API access. Unifi did not have a plug-in and I ended up having to install Homebridge.
        4y ago
cik 4y ago
The problem is that I want to control things with my voice. I have no desire to pass screens all over the house, nor do I carry my phone - or frankly most technology with me. When I'm going upstairs, and I determine I'd like to - I want my lights, outside to turn on; sometimes, I want the stair lights to turn on. Sometimes I want neither. The real issue is that voice is currently a clumsy interface. But for many of us, it's ideal - just not there yet.
jon-wood 4y ago
It appears we're doing "smart home" again, so its time for my regular plea to stop calling shitty light switches automation. Automation is when you don't have to think about what state devices are in, and while it takes some tinkering can be achieved using something like Home Assistant to bridge various different devices together. Each room in my house has Hue bulbs in all the light sockets, and sensors which can detect ambient light levels and motion. If I walk into a room and it's dark, the lights turn on, because I probably want to be able to see what I'm doing. When they stop detecting motion they turn off. There's some additional complexity in rooms where its normal to occupy them for an extended period without moving about much. The bathroom has a button I can press which disable motion detection for an hour so I can have a bath without being plunged into darkness ten minutes after getting in. Some day I'll get round to replacing that with a leak sensor that picks up there being water in the bath. The living room will ignore the motion sensor and assume it's occupied when the TV is playing media, or has it's input set to a games console, and the bedroom knows when I typically go to bed and once it detects motion around that time it doesn't turn off the lights until I tell Siri I'm going to sleep, at which point the motion sensor turns off until my alarm goes off in the morning. Finally, the Home Assistant app is tracking when I enter and leave a geofence around my home. When I leave, everything turns off. When I get back, it turns back on again. The end result of all this is that I don't ever really think about lighting, and because its all automated I can also use it for subconscious prompts about time of day - for the lighting in my work area shifts from a quite stark daylight tone to a much softer one at the end of the work day, while all the lighting dims itself as bedtime approaches.
- shellfishgene 4y ago
  Have you tried any of the 24 Ghz/mmWave presence sensors which supposedly don't have the lack of movement problem?
  - jon-wood 4y ago
    Somewhere deep on my todo list is building a grid of ESP32s around the place reporting BLE signal strengths to a central node which can then do triangulation to work out where people are based on devices they typically carry with them (I for example am almost always wearing an Apple Watch, and carrying my phone).
vasco 4y ago
I really wonder what people that are interested in home automation are trying to solve. DIY I understand, as it's cool electronics tinkering, and home automation can be a fun project. But for people that just buy it and customize it, I have no clue what the end goal is. Is the big issue to stop pushing the normal light switch button? Is that a huge chore? If I think home automation what I have wishes about is something putting my dishes or clothes in machines and then putting them back, cleaning floors, things like that. Automating turning a light, playing music or whatever are just a 2 second thing, that's very down the list of my home tasks to automate.
- mguerville 4y ago
  I got smart light switches for security reasons so I can have timed lights when on vacation and make it look like we’re home. A smart thermostat to save a bit on HVAC cost, and an alexa that is exclusively used as kitchen timer and weather quick checks. But i similarly couldn’t find rational reasons to go further into home automation outside of the itch to tinker with more tech.
- subpixel 4y ago
  I’m old enough to remember the first iteration of this home control trend: multi-room wired speakers. I can’t count the times when I was in high school and had to let some dad demo their multiple speaker setup. It never worked all that well, volume levels were off, and there was often an echo of music coming from some empty room. I’m reminded of this every time someone calls out to their home assistant in my presence to do something like change the music on their tinny bluetooth speaker that’s already being controlled from their phone, which is sitting in plain sight. There’s an element of performance in it. Look at how far I’ve come, etc. I don’t care for it but it’s a general, atavistic trait we probably share as humans to one degree or another.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Is the big issue to stop pushing the normal light switch button? Is that a huge chore? It does kinda suck, to be honest. Especially when the lights in question are downstairs, and I'm not. After the kids are done turning on every last light in the house, walking from place to place and turning off 40 different lights is tedious. Hitting the scene button at the top of the stairs to turn off the entire downstairs, on the other hand, I can do without slowing down. The extra automation possibilities are nice, too. Even just little things like having the front lights turn on automatically when you arrive home at night. The robotic vacuums are nice, too, now that you mention it. Kind of expensive but definitely a quality of life improvement. But if I could have only one bit of home automation, it would be the door locks and garage doors. Those were the first things I made remote controllable and I wouldn't willingly give them up.
ur-whale 4y ago
Home Assistant FTW! Huge fan here, I use it everywhere. Combined with some of those, it works wonders: https://www.shelly.cloud/en-ch/products/product-overview/shelly-plus-1-pm-2-pack/shelly-plus-1-pm https://www.shelly.cloud/en-ch/products/product-overview/she...
LunarAurora 4y ago
What about complex human gestures? I've read some articles last year on google soli being used to control home appliances [1]. The tech is there (+cheap ?), the potential is rich, and it does requite neither yelling nor screens (it could be intrusive tough) [1] https://www.wired.com/story/google-soli-atap-research-2022/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-soli-atap-research-2022/
evrydayhustling 4y ago
I get the privacy concerns and I'm glad to see these alternatives, but why does this article act like voice is a bad way to control a smart home? It's incredibly intuitive and extremely powerful to be able to adjust anything from anywhere with your hands full. In fact, it's one of the only applications where voice control is obviously an improvement.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Being able to just call a bunch of named timers while cooking is pretty great. As well as being able to say add milk to the grocery list without taking out your phone. I haven’t much else where voice is actually better.
aquova 4y ago
Good news, Home Assistant is rolling out their voice integration, so you can yell at it now too! https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/01/26/year-of-the-voice-chapter-1/ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/01/26/year-of-the-vo...
mindaslab 4y ago
Use switches
pcdoodle 4y ago
I removed my hub about 5 years ago. Insteon switches create a mesh network and have relationships with each other without internet or hub. There's also a usb interface module if you want offline LAN control.
Topgamer7 4y ago
I upgraded to a pixel 7 pro, and ever since Google assistant just hasn't worked. Clicking the app doesn't do anything. Clicking the mic button doesn't work. Ok Google doesn't work. I can get it to work for like 30 min if I clear data, force close a bunch of Google apps and restart. But it's driving me nuts!
eteos 4y ago
Maybe it's different with Alexa (I use Google Home), but I disagree with the premise of the article. Firstly, for a product that you use every day I don't see it as much effort to learn to say the right commands. Once you know it, you don't unlearn it. I also have the Google Hub, and an app for controlling the lightning (Phillips Hue), but I rarely interact with those, since via that route it takes more steps and more time to get what I want.
somat 4y ago
My bright idea was to find 48v lightbulbs and run everything off power over ethernet. Mainly because POE switches are pretty easy to get, and the switch interface usually works much better than the bullshit cloud only interface that usually comes with "smart" lights. I never actually did it. But still think it would work.

92 points by zdw 4y ago

Side track: For those who have the skills and desire to simply remove the battery from a tablet and leave it connected to power 24/7, maybe we need a resource for how to do that for each one. For example: Some can have the battery wires cut no problem, some need a capacitor, some need something more complex.

sneak 4y ago

home assistant, dozens of cheap nfc stickers, and ios shortcuts that trigger home assistant actions when you boop the appropriate sticker with your locked phone.

xiconfjs 4y ago
can you elaborate further on this?
dainiusse 4y ago
IMO this is absurd. If you need a phone in your hands - it is quicker to open the UI and do the thing
- ga_to 4y ago
  I would bet it's not. Based on the same starting point (phone in pocket) how many steps are there actually? UI Option: - take out phone - unlock phone - leave current app - find and open control app - find icon to toggle action - lock phone - put phone back in pocket NFC option: - take phone out of pocket - bump phone against NFC sticker - find NFC sweet spot - put phone back in pocket
  - bmurphy1976 4y ago
    It is absurd. Get a button instead. Button option: - press button
    - sneak 4y ago
      Buttons are $20. NFC stickers are $0.20.
  - tehbeard 4y ago
    Your NFC option missed the "move to be within arms reach of said NFC sticker" step. For some actions colocation might make sense. But having to stand up to go rub a magic sticker on the wall or coffee table to turn on the lights seems pretty dumb compared to a few thumb flicks.
bmurphy1976 4y ago
That's a really weird suggestion. Get some buttons. Ikea Tradfri buttons work. Aquara makes some as well but I have no experience with them.
- kristofferR 4y ago
  I fully recommend the Aqara Wireless Remote Switch H1 [1]. They are quite cheap, yet feel premium (unlike the IKEA buttons, which are both tiny and feel cheap). [1] https://www.aqara.com/eu/product/wireless-remote-switch-h1 https://www.aqara.com/eu/product/wireless-remote-switch-h1
TheFragenTaken 4y ago
On Android at least, HomeAssistant also supports customised quick settings buttons and widgets, for specific scenes/lights/buttons. It's super handy, since you can access quick settings without unlocking your phone, and have widgets on a dedicated page on the home screen.

wkat4242 4y ago

The battery issue with tablets is for sure a problem. Phones too. I had a test bank of 10 devices with openSTF (smartphone test farm) and 3 phones cracked open from bloated batteries within the year. What I do now is open up old tablets, remove the battery and replace it with a DC-DC converter. Because tablets and phones won't turn on without seeing a battery, you can't power them though USB with the battery removed. But the DC-DC option works ok. Sometimes you need to remove the battery protection circuitry from the battery because the tablet needs to see it. This can be a bit hazardous. But usually providing about 4 volts is enough. Of course all this is not for those without electronics knowledge. Ps I also detest Google's removal of the shortcut buttons under the power button menu :(

hattmall 4y ago
>n from bloated batteries within the year. Is this from the battery being on the charger constantly? I remember having a similar problem years ago. I thought most devices now would manage charging by letting it drain a bit automatically. At the time though they didn't so I for my continually connected devices I just used simple plug timers that cut it off for a few hours a couple times a day.
- IronHerald 4y ago
  There's also the possibility of using Advanced Charging Controller - though it requires root. Essentially you can set it up so when the battery reaches eg. 100% it stops charging, and resumes only once it reaches eg. 15%. Surprisingly the Android devices that I have still don't ever stop charging on their own, constantly keeping 100%. [Advanced Charging Controller (ACC)](https://github.com/VR-25/acc https://github.com/VR-25/acc) [BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries](https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-...)
  - dementik 4y ago
    I do this with my tablet: It is running Fully Kiosk Browser, reporting to Home Assistant. When device reaches 20%, it turns on Oneplug usb relay and turns it off at 80%.

leoedin 4y ago

I've been wanting a "house tablet" for a while - something to interact with my (app only) heating controls and play music on spotify. Has anyone found an acceptable setup? I had an old Android tablet permanently wall mounted for a while, but it was too slow (single core). I'd love an "appliance" style android tablet - but these don't seem to exist.

ilyt 4y ago
I'd love something like that but with some low power screen (e-paper? One of those super low power memory LCDs) and running 2 weeks off charge. Just so it can be constantly on and display status while not requiring tethering.
- sh4rks 4y ago
  Connecting a screen to a raspberry pi could be an idea
  - thedanbob 4y ago
    I’ve got a raspberry pi in a touchscreen case that I bought for my 3D printer but frequently gets repurposed for home automation. When we have someone house sitting while we’re away I set it up with a dedicated Home Assistant screen so they can turn on the garage lights from the house.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Power usage. It is fine for stationary stuff but no chance you gonna have that had any sensible battery life. And even if you get to like a day, having to remember to put yet another device on charger every day is PITA. I actually was building kind of monitoring screen; idea was to just leave it connected to ethernet and boot off network so it doesn't have any problems with SD durability or need any installation in case I wanted to have more than one.
    - silversmith 4y ago
      I currently have an old windows tablet on the wall, with fullscreen browser running and connected to a charger 24/7 - the power drain amounts to less than 10EUR a year. I'm looking into turning off the screen based on motion sensors, but... the payout just isn't as much as it seems at first.

kristofferR 4y ago

One of the smartest things I did was to place a wireless wall switch next to my bed. A quick press turns off all the lights in my apartment, for when I want to go to sleep. A double press turns some of the lights on with the lowest brightness, so I can grab a glass of water or have a quick pee in the middle of the night. Holding the wall switch puts all the lights at full brightness for when I want to wake up. If you work from home, a macropad or Streamdeck is also recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJSREjWH7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJSREjWH7Y

azubinski 4y ago

Somewhere there should be an article "How to spend time in a pleasant conversation with Google Assistant instead of reading dumb asrtehnica articles". Otherwise, the balance will be disturbed.

kristofferR 4y ago

2023 is "The Year of the Voice" for Home Assistant, so you'll at least be able to directly add prompts and sentences that it'll understand and respond to, instead of relying on Google's/Amazon's/Apple's dumb "AI". Hopefully the OSS speech to text will be good, since then it'll work as good as you program it to. Not relying on "the cloud" for voice assistance would be awesome.

harry8 4y ago

Can also get a long way just with Tasmota smart plugs. Set up timers, can still press a button on the side of it to turn on and off. Mqtt for phone control override and can go the full home assistant if you want to go that way. Also very helpful provide detailed power consumption stats. Athom do both tasmota and esphome pre-installed. Haven't tried esphome plus. I get their stuff from Ali and it has been ok so far. Anyone had good experiences with something else and I'm all ears.

jpdb 4y ago

I currently have a SmartThings Hub and Homeassistant Yellow, but if I were starting over today, I'd be all in on Matter (mostly thread) and avoid ZWave and Zigbee outright. I'm mostly stuck to zwave because of my blinds, but I think I will slowly replace all my smart home related things with Matter. There's still a few sensors that there don't have a Matter equivalent yet, but I think that'll change soon.

shellfishgene 4y ago
Is the matter stuff more expensive, or about the same? There seem to be not that many products yet?
- jpdb 4y ago
  Relatively the same price, I'd say. But there's definitely not they many products out yet so maybe that will change. I think the biggest difference in price I saw was from my Z-Wave blinds versus Thread / Matter ones. However, the overwhelming majority of the cost for that is the blinds themselves so it's probably not the best comparison.
  - kps 4y ago
    I don't think Matter will add to price; for many devices, I suspect the opposite. The open-source Matter implementation (disclosure: I worked on bits of it) has wide support from silicon vendors. JoeBulbCo will basically be able to pick from a selection of high-volume ICs, run ‘make’, and ship it. JoeBulbCo competes on how good — or how cheap — their bulb is.

kristofferR 4y ago

I've got an old iPad Air 2 lying around and a full Home Assistant setup, but I haven't bothered doing anything with it - frankly, I don't get it. Unless your place is quite small, a wall mounted tablet just seems like a hassle. Even disregarding all the hassle with the mounting and interface config, what are the advantages? Having to walk to a single position to control my smart home doesn't seem very smart, honestly? Can anyone educate me?

harry8 4y ago
Imagine it in the kitchen used like a smart clock. Shows time, weather, time until next public transport departures from different stops on different routes, fuel prices at local filling stations, some electricity usage stats maybe..? Keep yourself on track getting out the door in the morning with a glance? Some people like to put the phone down with the keys and not use it and be tied to it at home. Walking to a tablet may be preferable than going to a work desk with a laptop or whatever to switch something on or off and we're used to doing that with light switches etc. Not exhaustive, not necessarily how i do everything either. I bet people are using a tablet as a controller in ways and for reasons that make sense that i haven't thought of too.

Helmut10001 4y ago

Why voice? It is such a bad interface. I have a Shelly I4 with 4 (physical) buttons that trigger different automations in home assistant on my server, e.g. "Switch off everything" -> HASS -> Connects via Ethernet/Wifi to 6 Shelly Plug S in the room and switches those off. The Shelly Plug S use 0.5 Watt and I have Wifi anyway, so why another device or transmission standard?

ocharles 4y ago
I think voice is a fine interface for a lot of smart home things. If I'm watching TV and want the lights on/off, I don't want: * To have to reach for my phone * To have a tablet mounted within reach (that's more clutter) * To have to get up to the light switch/nearest controller. This sounds lazy but that is literally the point of all this stuff - to make things convenient. Likewise, if I'm in the kitchen and want to set a timer, I don't want to have to use my hands (I'm probably already using them), I just want to yell that I need a imer set.
- Helmut10001 4y ago
  Yes, I hear these arguments over and over. Yet, in cars, it is already increasingly recognized that touch screens (another interface) are worse than physical buttons. The examples you name are somewhat exceptions where I can imagine, if someone is really lazy, that a language control could be better than buttons, but in most cases I think the difference is minuscule. I have to walk 2 Meters from the couch to the button ("and I wanted to get a new drink anyway"). On the other hand, I can see that language is really good for information/knowledge retrieval. Ask ChatGPT to help you with something.. and get the answer via voice.
  - DharmaPolice 4y ago
    The difference is voice does not have to be a replacement for a button but just another option. My light switch in my bedroom is on the other side of the room to my bed and if I'm falling asleep it's much easier to give a voice command than get out of bed and press a button on the wall and then fumble back to bed in the dark. Not to mention when you notice you've left a light on in the hallway/another room. But I also have my lights on a button on my remote and yes, often it's easier to just press that.

sandos 4y ago

And the top recommendation, Home Assistant, just started their year on working on adding voice support! Oh, the irony.

timbit42 4y ago
It has it's uses but a true smarthome doesn't need you to tell it what you want.

esskay 4y ago

I've all but given up on smart home tech. Almost all of them use the old 2.4ghz wifi band which nothing else in my home uses, and for some reason despite being connected to (any) router that supports both they'll fail to communicate with anything on the 5ghz band. Sure, there are going to be ways around it - but there should need to be. The whole point of this stuff is to make things 'easy', and having to screw around enabling a bunch of legacy settings for brand new hardware isn't 'easy' for the end user.

clbrmbr 4y ago
There are very few IoT chips that support 5 GHz. Espressif finally announced the C5 with dual-band but otherwise all ESP32s are on 2.4 GHz. Thread is 100% 2.4 GHz. Seems the plan is to move high bandwidth applications, and most Wi-Fi users to 5 GHz leaving just IOT devices on 2.4.
cube2222 4y ago
There's not much reason to have 5GHz for smart home devices. 2.4GHz has better range and is ubiquitous. 5GHz has better throughput, but my lightbulb doesn't need 500MB/s of transfer. Most routers will just create two networks with the same name on both frequencies by default, which will work out of the box for 95% of the people. As other commenters have mentioned, usually devices can communicate with each other across those networks without issues.
avianlyric 4y ago
That sounds like an issue with your router. There’s absolutely no reason why a device using 2.4ghz WiFi shouldn’t be able to talk to a device using 5ghz WiFi, with both WiFi networks are on the same logical LAN. It’s not like devices can detect what frequency the other device on network is using, just like it can’t detect if the device is connected via Ethernet, plugged into power, or running on a battery. I would check to make sure your router is properly propagating broadcast packets around your network. That’s the number one cause of smart home discovery fails.

alkonaut 4y ago

The best controller for lighting by far is the light switch. "Smart lightbulbs" behind dumb switches might seem like an easy solution, but it makes everything dumber (If you have a light switch you must not switch off because then you can't turn the "smart" light on, then you have a dumber house not a smarter one). Smart switches which fall back to regular switches if they malfunction is fantastic. Add some scenarios for double/triple clicks and you can do a lot without even bringing out your phone. E.g. switch off all the lights when leaving either by double clicking the switch next to the front door, or trigger that same "all off" scenario through the alarm being armed or the door being locked. Making "smart home" stuff is about integration, which requires tinkering. But making a subset of your home smart such as "smart lighting" doesn't have to be so daunting.

clbrmbr 4y ago
Good idea to multiplex some scene functions onto the local smart switch.
ClikeX 4y ago
I personally like the Shelly switches. They're just WiFi relays, so you can control them remotely, but also use a normal wall switch to control them.
- alkonaut 4y ago
  I like shelly for their openness, but I still find them a bit less reliable than some more premium things like Plejd. Unfortunately Plejd isn't very open. It's doable (e.g. using with HA) but not pleasant yet. Hopefully that might change though
- Jnr 4y ago
  I like Shelly devices a lot.
- silversmith 4y ago
  The best part is you get to choose from wide variety of normal looking switches, not some designers coffee break sketch of "advanced and futuristic". Shelly seems to be more US-centric, over on EU side I've had good experiences with Sonoff ZBMINI relays - same idea, only on Zigbee connection instead of WiFi.

teekert 4y ago

A friend of mine just bought this thing (Aqara magic cube), looks really cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRf9RT2YgaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRf9RT2YgaI

azubinski 4y ago

My personal experience of using Ikea's Dirigera with different end devices (not only manufactured by Ikea) integrated with Google Assistant is very positive an is far away from this strange statement: "Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant: They demand that you learn specific device names and structures for commands, while they frequently get even the most simple command astoundingly wrong". I set the device names in the Ikea app, and then I command these devices with my voice in almost free form. Sometimes it's even fascinating, because Ikea knows the names of all the colors of their light bulb, and I just don't remember them.

tuananh 4y ago

sensors is the key to an "actual" smart home. sensors along with lots of automation rules will make the home works for you, instead of requiring you to shout at the assistant.

testmasterflex 4y ago
That’s exactly my vision with Loodio (https://Loodio.com https://Loodio.com) that today only has a motion sensor but even that makes a huge difference. Sensors are also getting cheaper by the minute. For example, I can add a microwave sensor for under a dollar and read hand gestures.
bretto13 4y ago
Motion and door sensors tied to lights that come on and adjust with light intensity and time of day is the best automation I've setup. It's so nice to walk into a dark room and have the lights turn on (without blinding you), then turn off when you're gone. Much better than fiddling with dimmers.
- tuananh 4y ago
  you can even group sensors together to have better detection. i love those new presence sensors. it's a lot better than the motion sensors from prev gen.

oskob 4y ago

One product is missing from this list: Flic (super small Bluetooth button) I have them scattered all around my house and I never use voice or even apps anymore to control my smart home.

esel2k 4y ago

I have a smarthome or playing with it since more than 5 years (Mystrom, logitech pop, homeassitant) I ended up with the most simple things: - sensors to control the lights: motion and brightness as treshold - save power by reaching low power usage (standby) will turn it off - a few buttons to make RestAPI calls to turn on or off when something is not controlled automatically: lights, power, vacuum cleaner I don’t understand why anybody would use voice assistance. I never got it except rare situations to make a note:while driving, cooking. Everything else a sensors, a button or text entry use the smartphone is the way to go.

srmarm 4y ago

Ikea Tradfri buttons/switches have been a gamechanger for me. They're zigbee, very well built, well supported and cheap. Have a nice solid feel with proper mounts that are magnetic, Have mounted them in place of regular switches around the house and they just work, no user training required (although I use with homeassistnat which is still very hobbish on the setup side) but my wife can use it all without needing to know whats going on in the background. Can do smart stuff in addition, i.e press the on button multiple times to cycle between scenes. The other thing is automations, I've got a bunch of timed automations, certain lights come on at dusk, heating comes on half an hour before the alarm goes off in the morning and heats only the rooms I tend to use at the correct times, so office is heated during work hours and living room comes on for the evening/weekends - all can be overridden from my phone or voice or whatever but ideally that's the exception as I find voice clunky and phone takes quite a few steps. If my phone was able to display the controls for the room I'm in without requiring an unlock that'd be good but for now but generally I find tactile buttons much nicer to interact with.

ontarionick 4y ago
I use the Phillips Hue Button, which I quite like! It has 4 buttons on it and doesn’t require external power or batteries to function. The button communicates with the bridge over Zigbee, which is then connected to my Home Assistant instance, so I can control more than just other Hue devices. I put them on the bedside tables, and in living areas near where I have any smart bulbs in dumb lamps. Main button usually toggles the light, other buttons do things like turn on a favourite radio station, toggle other lights, and toggle gas fireplace thermostats. Downside is you need to know what the buttons do (guests usually take a bit of instruction to get used to it), but it works fairly well otherwise. The automations are a real game changer! Some of my favourites that you didn’t mention in your comment: - UniFi external cameras detecting people / vehicles turn on corresponding lights or making voice announcements in the house - motion lighting in closets / pantry - motion lighting in under cabinet lighting at night for night lighting - good night routines that shut off the lights, arm the alarm, tell me the weather for tomorrow, and play white noise - good morning routines paired with an alarm that disarm the alarm, play the morning radio (station depending on weekday vs weekend), turn on the gas fireplace in the bedroom and a space heater in the bathroom - voice announcement / phone notifications triggered by a power usage monitor to tell me when my laundry has finished - auto off timers for light switches / fireplaces that reset the countdown when motion is detected in that area Any time I need to use the voice assistant or my phone is an anti pattern as far as I’m concerned! Phone more than voice assistant, but neither is as nice as a simple button. One thing I do find helpful is some Amazon FireHD tablets mounted on the walls in most rooms. They are powered by a PoE charger, and the screens unlock when motion is detected. I find this to be way better UX then pulling out a phone, unlocking, finding the app, then trying to remember why I pulled out my phone in the first place lol. The FireHD tablets are setup with a dashboard specific for that room (with tabs for controlling other parts of the house too), and are fairly UX-friendly for guests. I run "Fully Kiosk Browser" on the tablets, and that handles the autounlock / displaying the Home Assistant dashboard.

ii550 4y ago

I use the android app "Buttons for Alexa" and achieved exactly this, but on my phone. I have an entire page in my Home Launcher dedicad to buttons to turn stuff on and off - switches :-)

ldoughty 4y ago

Anyone know of a screen solution that isn't an old tablet/phone? I'd love to pay in this area, but I don't want to was mount an old tablet that will be a fire risk. I know the Pi's have a tiny touch screen screen hat, is there other ideas for a wall mountable solution that people can recommend?

newsclues 4y ago
I’m interested in a display, perhaps eink, that won’t disrupt my sleep schedule with light. But being able to turn off lights and activate calm music before bed would be nice but I don’t even want to use my phone for an hour before bed.

autoexec 4y ago

The smartest house doesn't hand out the details of your life to 3rd parties or let contractors hear you having sex. We need more options for privacy respecting self-hosted systems that people don't have to design/create themselves. Some home automation tech is pretty nice, but its not worth paying for it forever with the data/privacy being given up, and in the inevitable consequences of having that data used against you for the rest of your life.

ontarionick 4y ago
Setup Home Assistant, and only get devices that are 100% local control! There are fairly reasonable options for this. I have a couple devices/services where I haven't been able to find good local only or where I find utility in the cloud connectedness, but that's very much the exception than the rule.
- wil421 4y ago
  Homebridge plus Apple Home in my opinion is much better than home assistant. If you’re android based or have really complicated automations I could see why home assistant would be better. Home assistant’s lack of compatibility with quite a few brands made me run Homebridge and home assistant together which defeats the purpose of HA.
  - noodlesUK 4y ago
    I'm curious which devices you have that are supported by home bridge but not home assistant. I've had nothing but success using home assistant.
    - wil421 4y ago
      This was over a year ago. Wyze and HA were having spats over API access. Unifi did not have a plug-in and I ended up having to install Homebridge.
      - 4y ago

cik 4y ago

The problem is that I want to control things with my voice. I have no desire to pass screens all over the house, nor do I carry my phone - or frankly most technology with me. When I'm going upstairs, and I determine I'd like to - I want my lights, outside to turn on; sometimes, I want the stair lights to turn on. Sometimes I want neither. The real issue is that voice is currently a clumsy interface. But for many of us, it's ideal - just not there yet.

jon-wood 4y ago

It appears we're doing "smart home" again, so its time for my regular plea to stop calling shitty light switches automation. Automation is when you don't have to think about what state devices are in, and while it takes some tinkering can be achieved using something like Home Assistant to bridge various different devices together. Each room in my house has Hue bulbs in all the light sockets, and sensors which can detect ambient light levels and motion. If I walk into a room and it's dark, the lights turn on, because I probably want to be able to see what I'm doing. When they stop detecting motion they turn off. There's some additional complexity in rooms where its normal to occupy them for an extended period without moving about much. The bathroom has a button I can press which disable motion detection for an hour so I can have a bath without being plunged into darkness ten minutes after getting in. Some day I'll get round to replacing that with a leak sensor that picks up there being water in the bath. The living room will ignore the motion sensor and assume it's occupied when the TV is playing media, or has it's input set to a games console, and the bedroom knows when I typically go to bed and once it detects motion around that time it doesn't turn off the lights until I tell Siri I'm going to sleep, at which point the motion sensor turns off until my alarm goes off in the morning. Finally, the Home Assistant app is tracking when I enter and leave a geofence around my home. When I leave, everything turns off. When I get back, it turns back on again. The end result of all this is that I don't ever really think about lighting, and because its all automated I can also use it for subconscious prompts about time of day - for the lighting in my work area shifts from a quite stark daylight tone to a much softer one at the end of the work day, while all the lighting dims itself as bedtime approaches.

shellfishgene 4y ago
Have you tried any of the 24 Ghz/mmWave presence sensors which supposedly don't have the lack of movement problem?
- jon-wood 4y ago
  Somewhere deep on my todo list is building a grid of ESP32s around the place reporting BLE signal strengths to a central node which can then do triangulation to work out where people are based on devices they typically carry with them (I for example am almost always wearing an Apple Watch, and carrying my phone).

vasco 4y ago

I really wonder what people that are interested in home automation are trying to solve. DIY I understand, as it's cool electronics tinkering, and home automation can be a fun project. But for people that just buy it and customize it, I have no clue what the end goal is. Is the big issue to stop pushing the normal light switch button? Is that a huge chore? If I think home automation what I have wishes about is something putting my dishes or clothes in machines and then putting them back, cleaning floors, things like that. Automating turning a light, playing music or whatever are just a 2 second thing, that's very down the list of my home tasks to automate.

mguerville 4y ago
I got smart light switches for security reasons so I can have timed lights when on vacation and make it look like we’re home. A smart thermostat to save a bit on HVAC cost, and an alexa that is exclusively used as kitchen timer and weather quick checks. But i similarly couldn’t find rational reasons to go further into home automation outside of the itch to tinker with more tech.
subpixel 4y ago
I’m old enough to remember the first iteration of this home control trend: multi-room wired speakers. I can’t count the times when I was in high school and had to let some dad demo their multiple speaker setup. It never worked all that well, volume levels were off, and there was often an echo of music coming from some empty room. I’m reminded of this every time someone calls out to their home assistant in my presence to do something like change the music on their tinny bluetooth speaker that’s already being controlled from their phone, which is sitting in plain sight. There’s an element of performance in it. Look at how far I’ve come, etc. I don’t care for it but it’s a general, atavistic trait we probably share as humans to one degree or another.
rootusrootus 4y ago
> Is the big issue to stop pushing the normal light switch button? Is that a huge chore? It does kinda suck, to be honest. Especially when the lights in question are downstairs, and I'm not. After the kids are done turning on every last light in the house, walking from place to place and turning off 40 different lights is tedious. Hitting the scene button at the top of the stairs to turn off the entire downstairs, on the other hand, I can do without slowing down. The extra automation possibilities are nice, too. Even just little things like having the front lights turn on automatically when you arrive home at night. The robotic vacuums are nice, too, now that you mention it. Kind of expensive but definitely a quality of life improvement. But if I could have only one bit of home automation, it would be the door locks and garage doors. Those were the first things I made remote controllable and I wouldn't willingly give them up.

ur-whale 4y ago

Home Assistant FTW! Huge fan here, I use it everywhere. Combined with some of those, it works wonders: https://www.shelly.cloud/en-ch/products/product-overview/shelly-plus-1-pm-2-pack/shelly-plus-1-pm https://www.shelly.cloud/en-ch/products/product-overview/she...

LunarAurora 4y ago

What about complex human gestures? I've read some articles last year on google soli being used to control home appliances [1]. The tech is there (+cheap ?), the potential is rich, and it does requite neither yelling nor screens (it could be intrusive tough) [1] https://www.wired.com/story/google-soli-atap-research-2022/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-soli-atap-research-2022/

evrydayhustling 4y ago

I get the privacy concerns and I'm glad to see these alternatives, but why does this article act like voice is a bad way to control a smart home? It's incredibly intuitive and extremely powerful to be able to adjust anything from anywhere with your hands full. In fact, it's one of the only applications where voice control is obviously an improvement.

Spivak 4y ago
Being able to just call a bunch of named timers while cooking is pretty great. As well as being able to say add milk to the grocery list without taking out your phone. I haven’t much else where voice is actually better.

aquova 4y ago

Good news, Home Assistant is rolling out their voice integration, so you can yell at it now too! https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/01/26/year-of-the-voice-chapter-1/ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/01/26/year-of-the-vo...

mindaslab 4y ago

Use switches

pcdoodle 4y ago

I removed my hub about 5 years ago. Insteon switches create a mesh network and have relationships with each other without internet or hub. There's also a usb interface module if you want offline LAN control.

Topgamer7 4y ago

I upgraded to a pixel 7 pro, and ever since Google assistant just hasn't worked. Clicking the app doesn't do anything. Clicking the mic button doesn't work. Ok Google doesn't work. I can get it to work for like 30 min if I clear data, force close a bunch of Google apps and restart. But it's driving me nuts!

eteos 4y ago

Maybe it's different with Alexa (I use Google Home), but I disagree with the premise of the article. Firstly, for a product that you use every day I don't see it as much effort to learn to say the right commands. Once you know it, you don't unlearn it. I also have the Google Hub, and an app for controlling the lightning (Phillips Hue), but I rarely interact with those, since via that route it takes more steps and more time to get what I want.

somat 4y ago

My bright idea was to find 48v lightbulbs and run everything off power over ethernet. Mainly because POE switches are pretty easy to get, and the switch interface usually works much better than the bullshit cloud only interface that usually comes with "smart" lights. I never actually did it. But still think it would work.