4 ms·

To 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

To 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 ago
I 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 ago
There 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Is it possible to rip off the devices and use it at your new location?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    By 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.
  - darkwater 3y ago
    most of them, totally. The issue is that in some room there is no way to control directly the power to the bulbs, they are always on and you can switch them off only from central electric panel (because they are all zigbee bulbs)
chimprich 3y ago
> What was the model of this shit? Oh it has NOTHING on the front because serial numbers are gauche. I'd really like some kind of standard for model IDs. Maybe something like a domain name and a model number. It would also be good if devices came with a QR code printed on them that linked to the manual.
- bombcar 3y ago
  If it has an FCC ID you can search in that. Can be hard to find.
  - AtlasBarfed 3y ago
    But ... you might have to tear open a wall. Climb a ladder. Unscrew a plate cover and hope you can see it. Oh crap, now you have to remove it from the wall. Might as well tear out everything. And this is on the hardware side. Software? Did the former owner have passwords and everything tied to HIS ACCOUNT? Does he hand over some account? What personal info is in that former account. NOPE, big nope. The problem with smart home is this: - if the company wants to make money on the software, it will go with lock-in or fake open, which is what it is today. And that is a miserable failure - if the company wants to make money on the hardware, the software is a cost so it sucks. The solution is PROBABLY that the hardware vendors can only implement protocols, but CANNOT implement middleware. It can basically only provide information and take commands. The a software company makes the hub. It cannot have any interest in any particular devices, it cannot "partner" with a hardware firm. But of course that's only one part of the problem, with security and the central account. The software hub would need to provide some way to "move" an account with transparency on historical data reset. But the industry is so effing far from this. Maybe SmartThings was close, but they got acquired by Samsung and now push Samsung products and basically discontinued everything pre-Samsung. They highlight that there's no good money in pure middleware. The device vendors have to come together and do some sort of independent software company that they all can't meddle in. But then there's still soft pressure to only support devices in the "in group", so that still doesn't work. Really, this is an operating system + driver problem. The central core is the OS, and the devices are "drivers". A consumer OS can be priced at about $50 tops, and it needs about 10 million people a year buying it. THen it gets the critical mass. The other option is that some group close to the core of Linux take this on as the next big project. This could have important implications for Linux desktop, because it would create a Linux-aligned group that all the device manufacturers have to prioritize, and that provides the outreach to them also supporting device drivers for the Linux OS. I mean, that is a BIG undertaking. It would take someone like Torvalds with talent, hard work, and some form of charisma (not necessarily Torvalds' brand)

grogenaut 3y ago

I 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 ago

There 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 ago

I 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 ago
Is it possible to rip off the devices and use it at your new location?
- bombcar 3y ago
  By 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.
- darkwater 3y ago
  most of them, totally. The issue is that in some room there is no way to control directly the power to the bulbs, they are always on and you can switch them off only from central electric panel (because they are all zigbee bulbs)

chimprich 3y ago

> What was the model of this shit? Oh it has NOTHING on the front because serial numbers are gauche. I'd really like some kind of standard for model IDs. Maybe something like a domain name and a model number. It would also be good if devices came with a QR code printed on them that linked to the manual.

bombcar 3y ago
If it has an FCC ID you can search in that. Can be hard to find.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  But ... you might have to tear open a wall. Climb a ladder. Unscrew a plate cover and hope you can see it. Oh crap, now you have to remove it from the wall. Might as well tear out everything. And this is on the hardware side. Software? Did the former owner have passwords and everything tied to HIS ACCOUNT? Does he hand over some account? What personal info is in that former account. NOPE, big nope. The problem with smart home is this: - if the company wants to make money on the software, it will go with lock-in or fake open, which is what it is today. And that is a miserable failure - if the company wants to make money on the hardware, the software is a cost so it sucks. The solution is PROBABLY that the hardware vendors can only implement protocols, but CANNOT implement middleware. It can basically only provide information and take commands. The a software company makes the hub. It cannot have any interest in any particular devices, it cannot "partner" with a hardware firm. But of course that's only one part of the problem, with security and the central account. The software hub would need to provide some way to "move" an account with transparency on historical data reset. But the industry is so effing far from this. Maybe SmartThings was close, but they got acquired by Samsung and now push Samsung products and basically discontinued everything pre-Samsung. They highlight that there's no good money in pure middleware. The device vendors have to come together and do some sort of independent software company that they all can't meddle in. But then there's still soft pressure to only support devices in the "in group", so that still doesn't work. Really, this is an operating system + driver problem. The central core is the OS, and the devices are "drivers". A consumer OS can be priced at about $50 tops, and it needs about 10 million people a year buying it. THen it gets the critical mass. The other option is that some group close to the core of Linux take this on as the next big project. This could have important implications for Linux desktop, because it would create a Linux-aligned group that all the device manufacturers have to prioritize, and that provides the outreach to them also supporting device drivers for the Linux OS. I mean, that is a BIG undertaking. It would take someone like Torvalds with talent, hard work, and some form of charisma (not necessarily Torvalds' brand)