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For my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every u
by efitz 3y ago
For my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every upgrade I ever made on the home, warranty docs, QR codes to download smart home apps to control the devices, plot maps, floor plans, a 1-page list of repairmen for everything- you name it. I made short YouTube videos for everything like turning the water on/off, hose bib and sprinkler shutoffs, device pairing, etc. I put dozens of hours into documenting my home, and felt a sense of accomplishment that I was doing a “warm handoff” of the home.
The new owner sold the home after two years. From the listing photos she had ripped out most of the smart home stuff and had crappily remodeled (painting river stone hearth, etc). YouTube showed zero hits on it he videos I made. I sincerely doubt that she even bothered to look at the binder I handed over.
I will never put that amount of effort into documenting a home again. I know what I’ve done and I keep just enough docs around for my own purposes.
- waveBidder 3y agonothing productive to add, but man that sucks.
- beachy 3y agoI have a home-built system for monitoring the levels in our water tanks (we live on rain water). Of course some people get by with a simple float indicator, but why would I do that when I could be using high accuracy hydrostatic sensors, esp32, influxdb, grafana, spring, keycloak and mysql running in AWS? I certainly wouldn't want to be getting support calls if we were to ever sell, so I would probably remove it myself if that happened.
- edrxty 3y agoWhy would you use AWS for that? That seems like an extremely strange external dependency for a house running on rainwater.
- Sakos 3y agoBecause they can, I guess? There can be fun had in over-engineering personal projects. It can also be educational. It's no more odd than > grafana, spring, keycloak
- beachy 3y agoJust for history. Current values are available without internet on the esp32.
- SpaghettiCthulu 3y agowhy not use a local server, even just an RPi?
- j45 3y agoSometimes the library pushes easier to a cloud. Managing storage and more can still be work and worth doing as a second step since most of the time it’s worth doing the setup over at least one more time.
- beachy 3y agoMainly visions/delusions of a water monitoring SaaS, but it would probably run just fine on a pi
- camel_gopher 3y agoI did something similar but with a small netgate box.
- bigiain 3y agoNah, sell them a monthly subscription for the cloud service. Or put ads in their dashboard and alerts. (Or both. Then work out how to sell their water usage data to 700 "partner" 3rd parties...)
- arcanemachiner 3y agoThen go out of business and leave them with an expensive paperweight.
- c22 3y agoThe last time I bought a house I paid about $600 for a pre-purchase inspection and the inspector basically prepared such a binder for me. A few hundred pages of photos and suggested fixes for not only all the defects she found, but also suggested ongoing maintenance schedules and routines for all the systems of the house, photos of the water shutoff, etc. and even a thumb drive with a few videos she shot and a sewer scope. I was updating the binder as I added/changed stuff but ultimately figured it's probably easier to just a hire another inspection when it's time to sell. There were no smart devices, though, that may have added a premium.
- 20after4 3y agoThat sounds like $600 well spent. My pre-purchase inspection didn't even uncover some fairly obvious unsafe wiring.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoMine was a fifteen minute jobby where the guy glanced down the crawlspace and took a picture of the (flat) roof with a selfie stick. Basically a box ticking exercise for getting a mortgage. That said, it was a fairly new house (late 2000's) and not lived in much due to the owner finding a new partner pretty quickly and living there mosts of the time.
- hnick 3y agoI've already lived in my home for a decade and think that would be money well spent. There are probably time bombs coming due I don't know about.
- Wistar 3y agoA few years ago, I wrote the following comment in another thread here on HN. It is germane to this thread: Back in the early 90s — on a recommendation from a realtor who was a close friend of my brother's — I hired an inspector who was close to retirement. He worked with his wife who served as his assistant tasked with, in essence, taking dictation of her husband's near constant commentary as he conducted an incredibly thorough inspection. Every outlet tested for proper ground, every nook and cranny looked at, wood moisture content, HVAC pitot readings, masonry, roof … just a super-duper detailed inspection that took about 6 hours to complete. At the end of the inspection, he summed up by saying the house was good and that he had no qualms recommending the house. Two days later, he stopped by with a three-ring binder that contained his inspection report. It first contained a summary that concisely covered the positive and few negative aspects of the house. Then there was a section about the history of the house: the year built, the name of the builder, changes in the neighborhood since it had been built, earthquakes it had gone through, flood events in the area, and so on. It also included the manufacturer names of things such as the windows, door hardware, etc. The third section was lengthy, covering the precise state of the electrical, plumbing, structural, envelope, etc, and included all the notes his wife had taken during the course of the inspection. It included a sub-section with warnings about certain materials that likely contained asbestos and would need to be dealt with if we ever did remodeling. Finally, the largest section was what he called a "maintenance work order" arranged as a schedule for the ongoing, recurring upkeep of the house but beginning with things he thought needed to be done immediately, replacement of the circuit breaker box, splash blocks under each outdoor faucet, tuck-pointing some of the chimney's brickwork, etc. And then his estimates as to when he thought systems might need to be replaced, the water heater, furnace, roofing, etc. As I discovered when the water heater burst, his estimates were pretty much spot-on. Over time, I added notes as we upgraded things, added low-voltage wiring, and remodeled the basement. Nine years later, when I sold the house, the buyer was elated to have this owner's manual and I am fairly certain that the book was key to a very fast sale of the house which we did without a realtor. As I look back on it now, I realize that inspection was perhaps the best $350 I have ever spent. When we bought our next house, the inspection took about an hour and produced a few page report, most of it boilerplate.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoTo be fair, smart homes absolutely suck. Especially about four or five years removed, or, in this case, an owner change. This is like writing code vs figuring out someone else's code. Those are totally different things, and code is a bunch of readily accessible text files. Smart homes? Some device in the attic, some device in the basement, some wiring that goes who knows where, where does all this info go? What was the model of this shit? Oh it has NOTHING on the front because serial numbers are gauche.
- grogenaut 3y agoI have trouble finding the right code for my hardware projects and I check things into github including schematics, gerbers and code. then come back 3 years later and realize yeah I forgot to push that last actual commit. now I imagine someone else debugging that.
- j45 3y agoThere really is starting to be a case for more remote control only smart home automation .. and then learning to handle those remote commands. Leaves what people are familiar with and trust in place.
- darkwater 3y agoI have a (mostly) DYI smart-home, I mean, DYI as in "a Frankenstein of vendors and devices glued together by Zigbee, MQTT and Home Assistant", with some hard-deps on it in a couple of rooms and that gave me some bad nights when thinking about "what if I sell the home one day?" but reading the threads here I feel reassured: they will probably just rip it away and put some low-tech solution and call it a day.
- walteweiss 3y agoIs it possible to rip off the devices and use it at your new location?
- bombcar 3y agoBy the time you sell they’re likely all scrap value or worse, and the time to remove would be more than the cost to buy new.
- natmaka 3y agoFor a fair part of the population, especially those using at home a crappy PC crashing twice a week, 'smart home stuff' means that some bug or backdoor may lead them into a mess: lock them out, let an intruder in, over/under-heat for weeks while they are out of town... They don't want any part of this.
- xyzzy123 3y agoI don't think I could bring myself to extensive home automation installed by a previous owner, especially if there are cameras in the system. I have no way to know they're not maintaining access somehow without re-installing / re-flashing everything and linking to "fresh" cloud accounts.
- phero_cnstrcts 3y agoOr sensors that register if you’re home or not. They could even install something that isn’t necessarily connected to the internet but can be remotely accessed from nearby.
- Gigachad 3y agoIf I bought a house that had a bunch of IoT junk, my first step would be to rip it all out.
- j45 3y agoAgreed. At the same time any home automation needs to be able to be cloud and vendor independent. It begins with registering the property an independent email address for any accounts used during setups before taking them offline. Easy to manage for future tenant or sale. Gear is more able to be cloud independent or be made cloud independent, leaving a greater chance to leave at most a local wifi network and local appliance with touch screen (pi) that can peacefully operate without the internet, plugged in and hung on a wall like any other appliance in a mechanical room of the home. The more off the shelf parts can be, the greater the chance of it surviving.
- mhh__ 3y agoSome people just aren't the type.
- mikepurvis 3y agoThe only thing I was handing over when I sold my last house was a Nest and a few Hue lights. The Nest was easy to factory reset, and the Hue stuff was operational without being plugged into a router, so hopefully they were able to continue with it as it was, and get it linked up to the phone app if and when they cared to do so.
- Nzen 3y agoWhile I sympathize with your position, it is entirely possible that a person inheriting the smart home might benefit. I'm reminded of wmsmith's anecdote [0] two months ago about a smart home de-ghosting of a widow who couldn't drive the smart homing. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37860529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37860529
- erhaetherth 3y agoThe good news with smart bulbs is that they're easy to unsmart. Just unscrew them and put your dumb bulb back in. I replaced almost all my bulbs with smart bulbs, and then got annoyed having to ask Google to turn on the lights all the time. My solution? Even more technology of course. I found these little buttons that fit neatly over my existing switches so it not only keeps the switch in the correct position but makes it just as easy to turn off/on as before. But now they're dimmable and remotely controllable which is a plus in my books. Also my apartment is dumb and barely has a single built-in light so it's just lamps everywhere; without smart bulbs I'd probably have to flick a million switches or lamp-ropes.
- petemir 3y agoCould you share a link to your found solution? Thanks!
- StingyJelly 3y agoSmart home automation isn't for everyone. Many relatives see it as that weird hobby I have and don't see much of the value. (And I agree given the time I spend tinkering.) Even I would likely rip out most of the inherited smart home stuff in order to replace it or at least flash opensource firmware on it. Another important point I learned is that everything should work as a dumb home when the wifi, gateways, HomeAssisant or some sensors are down.
- ozim 3y agoHome automation is for me exactly the same as designer kitchen or designer day room. Yeah it was great for the previous owner but it sucks for me as I have different tastes and needs. I am going to rip it all off and do what I want. But in reality I just don’t buy anything that is advertised “one of a kind” because I know it will be more of a hassle to deal with it even if it looks cool. For me cool looking fancy stuff does not add value but rather lowers the value because I know I will have to rip it all of which is just more work. I also rather buy apartment/home with some default IKEA kitchen because I know then it will be super easy to rip it out and replace with what I want. Where most of the time I think I would just stick with that default IKEA depending on how long I plan to own the place.
- subpixel 3y agoHome automation is a mystery to me. I have a coffee maker I can program to turn on in the morning, some ring cams for deterrence, and an automatic thermostat. I feel like everything else is overkill. Also starting and maintaining a fire in the wood stove is something I enjoy.
- philjohn 3y agoIt is and it isn't. It's definitely on the "you don't need it" side of the scale, but if done thoughtfully it can make everyday life just a bit easier. Some of my favourite automations: 1. Whenever someone arrives home and it's started to get dark outside, automatically turn the hallway lights on if they're off 2. When turning off the TV in the lounge, and it's dark outside, and the lights are dimmed, bring them up to 100% warm white so you can see where you're going 3. Motion sensors in the hallway and landing to turn the lights on when they detect motion at night. Do I NEED any of these? Of course not. But I like having them.
- ozim 3y agoTalking about preferences I hate motion sensor lights I usually rather to walk in dark and get my eyes used to darkness. I still turn on lights when I get to bathroom or I get a glass of water in the end but somehow it feels better if I turn it on at the destination. Other thing is I hade all kinds of status LEDs - it is just insane with the bright ones. I know it is nice for quick troubleshooting during the day to know if the internet is on or not - but in the middle of the night they should be lowest brightness on all appliances or turned off. But not all vendors provide the option.
- mock-possum 3y agoI mean that sucks, but… the thing I did when I bought my house, is rip out all the perfectly nice brand new carpeting. I don’t want carpeting, I want hardwood. Not everybody is into smart devices.
- delecti 3y agoThere's a pretty enormous gulf between what you did and nothing (also it sound like you went a bit wild with home automation). I think you'd be doing your due diligence by just providing a list of products littered around the house, without also spending dozens of hours.
- somehnguy 3y agoI love the idea, but yeah that outcome was predictable. Home automation is very much still in the hobby stage and most people simply don't care about it. I own my home & am into automation - but I don't plan on living in this house forever. As such I try to only install things that can be easily reversed when I move out, e.g wireless instead of hardwired smart switches - devices that piggyback on 'normal' home things. Otherwise I'm just giving the next owners thousands of dollars of things they don't want & unnecessary headaches.
- recursive 3y ago> most people simply don't care about it. That's an optimistic view. I think the most common position would be one of active avoidance. I know that's true for me.
- somehnguy 3y agoYou’re (presumably) an informed tech geek based on hanging out here - so your view makes sense. I do not believe that’s the case for the general not tech-informed public though. When I think of friends and family not in tech most of their view seems to be “neat, would love it, don’t want to put in any effort to make it work, so I’m fine without”
- mrweasel 3y agoThere is also the option that she did read the binder and decided "No way am I going to deal with all the crap" and had all the "smarts" yanked out an replaced with something that requires much less maintenance. That would have been my reaction.
- VoodooJuJu 3y agoShe did herself and the next owners a favor by ripping out the smarthome crap. It's like shag carpet: faddy, kitsch, and high maintenance. Smarthome stuff in particular is just so overkill. I don't want to overengineer my home. I don't want apps and QR codes and documentation just to water my garden or operate the lights. I'm not a nerd who enjoys tinkering with this stuff. I have shit to do. I want my hose to work like a hose, my washing machine like a washing machine, etc. And that's the case for most people. Playing with smarthome gadgets is a fun niche hobby, but it's not a hobby most people want.
- bpye 3y agoI agree that smart home stuff can be excessive however I really like the Hue white ambiance bulbs. I live in Vancouver and so in the winter it gets dark early - and the days are often gloomy too. I can have cool. Lighting from morning to evening and then have it get warmer as it gets towards the evening. That alone is worth it for me.
- hedgehog 3y agoThe binder I wish I had would have schematics for the structure and systems, maintenance records, checklists, vendor receipts, and manuals. No such luck.
- nonethewiser 3y agoI wouldn’t want all that smart home shit either. Nice of you, but not everyone’s taste.
- data-ottawa 3y agoWhen I was new to house shopping my wife and I found this house we loved. It had intricate patterns of mixed woods in the hardwood, French doors closing off a super nice dining room with wainscotting, and this super cool mid century river stone fireplace. We had made all these plans to renovate the upstairs which was all that was needed. Then the day of the sale came, we got massively outbid, it sold at a silly price. We figured whoever bought it loved it equally. Nope, a year later it was back on the market. The dining room had been torn out to make the ground floor open plan, the hardwood was completely replaced with cheap grey vinyl floor boards, and the fireplace was replaced with a small dining area. It was painful to look at was clearly a well finished house turned into a cheap looking listing on AirBnB.
- spikej 3y agoI did similar -- not to the level of Youtube videos -- but have that list for spouse in case something happens to me.