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>Building my offline smart home took the better part of a weekend Yeah, right. Nobody in their right mind should be making their home "smart" for the convenie

>Building my offline smart home took the better part of a weekend Yeah, right. Nobody in their right mind should be making their home "smart" for the convenience or efficiency. It's a hobby. A frustrating, inconvenient, burdensome, potentially expensive, challenging, neverending hobby. It taught me to love light switches.

corethree 3y ago
It's actually easier now then ever before. Buy smart bulbs for cheap off of temu. They all integrate with alexa or google home automagically. I now never touch a light switch. "Computer dim lights to 40%." I never bother touching a light switch. This guys set up is too complicated. The easy way to do it nowadays is to buy smart devices that integrate with the google or alexa echo system and you just talk to alexa or google to get it to do what you want.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > It's actually easier now then ever before. Agreed, but Alexa fails hard if you have no internet, and my understanding is that Google Home also becomes mostly inoperable. I've tried Home Assistant but could never get it to work reliably. HomeKit is great and works offline if you have a home hub (an Apple TV, a HomePod, or an iPad).
  - petemir 3y ago
    > Agreed, but Alexa fails hard if you have no internet It also fails hard with Internet. I’m sick of being on my living room asking Alexa to turn on the light just to get the bedroom light turned on (each room has its own Alexa/Light pair, so there should be no confusion).
    - corethree 3y ago
      Try google assistant. Google assistant actually has a little bit of an LLM in it, so it's a bit smarter.
      - jfim 3y ago
        It's still pretty dumb, though. For example, it'll often misunderstand "turn all the lights off" as turn the lights off or worse, turn the lights on (even though they're already on).
        stacktrust 3y ago
        Alexa has been most reliable when a command does not require a third-party cloud service. For Amazon Basics WiFi smart plugs, the device type can be configured as "Light" instead of "Plug". Echo 4 works as a Zigbee hub, avoiding dependency on a third-party cloud service.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      If they're assigned to the same room as the lights there shouldn't be, but check in the (awful) app which of your Alexa devices picked up your voice. Walls reflect sound, and things like curtains muffle it, and you might be surprised which device picks up your voice best in different positions. I had to adjust placement etc. to prevent the Alexa in my son's room from regularly picking up my commands from my room better than the Alexa in my room when the doors are open.
      - petemir 3y ago
        Yes, I had interference at one moment and moved the devices to the farthest points on each room, so that doesn't happen now, but the problem I mentioned before (turning on the wrong light) still happens. I forgot to say that the problem mostly occurs when I ask Alexa to set the (unspecified, but hopefully the one belonging to the room the corresponding Echo is) light's brightness to X. Sometimes, in that case, it turns on the light from the other room. I didn't check the audio transcript when this happens though, that's a good one, thanks.
        vidarh 3y ago
        That's an odd one. Not seen that. Lots of aggravating little quirks, though. Annoyingly so many of them would be trivially addressable by users if we just had a way of adding simple rules. E.g. "this request on this device refers to X", or more generally "when you hear X it probably means Y". As an alternative, I've spent more time than I should passive-aggressively repeating the same instruction and then flagging every single failure in the app. I have no idea if it makes any difference, or if the things I've done that with that have improved were due to general improvements to their voice recognition, but it gives me some limited satisfaction (I now wonder what the financial tradeoff is of fixing the reported issues vs. any benefit potentially gained by just having the reporting function but sending it straight to the bin to make people feel like they're being heard...) One of my goals for this year is to experiment with HomeAssistant or similar to at least start to replace or supplement my Alexas.
        petemir 3y ago
- tcfhgj 3y ago
  Alexa and Google Home are literally microphones with connections into the cloud
  - tharne 3y ago
    I'm always amazed that everyone seems okay with this, and will even say so when pressed on it. But those same people will get a look in their eyes as if they're going to shit their pants, if someone else picks up their unlocked iPhone and starts scrolling.
    - Johnny555 3y ago
      I'm amazed that people are afraid of a home assistant in their living room, yet carry a cloud connected microphone+camera around with them all the time (with the added feature of sending GPS tracking data back to the manufacturer, carrier, and apps that you granted location permission to, like a weather app). If you trust that your phone isn't listening when it's not supposed to, why don't you trust the home assistant (even if it's made by the same manufacturer)?
      - tharne 3y ago
        I 100% agree with you on this. And I don't carry a traditional smartphone for exactly the reasons you mention.
      - laserlight 3y ago
        > If you trust that your phone isn't listening when it's not supposed to, why don't you trust the home assistant Do home assistants claim they are not listening when they are not supposed to?
    - corethree 3y ago
      It's because they have sexts on their phone. A recorder is not as big of a deal. Especially if I'm fully aware that the entity listening to the recording is listening to billions of people and couldn't care less about my one voice.
  - 3y ago

corethree 3y ago

It's actually easier now then ever before. Buy smart bulbs for cheap off of temu. They all integrate with alexa or google home automagically. I now never touch a light switch. "Computer dim lights to 40%." I never bother touching a light switch. This guys set up is too complicated. The easy way to do it nowadays is to buy smart devices that integrate with the google or alexa echo system and you just talk to alexa or google to get it to do what you want.

CharlesW 3y ago
> It's actually easier now then ever before. Agreed, but Alexa fails hard if you have no internet, and my understanding is that Google Home also becomes mostly inoperable. I've tried Home Assistant but could never get it to work reliably. HomeKit is great and works offline if you have a home hub (an Apple TV, a HomePod, or an iPad).
- petemir 3y ago
  > Agreed, but Alexa fails hard if you have no internet It also fails hard with Internet. I’m sick of being on my living room asking Alexa to turn on the light just to get the bedroom light turned on (each room has its own Alexa/Light pair, so there should be no confusion).
  - corethree 3y ago
    Try google assistant. Google assistant actually has a little bit of an LLM in it, so it's a bit smarter.
    - jfim 3y ago
      It's still pretty dumb, though. For example, it'll often misunderstand "turn all the lights off" as turn the lights off or worse, turn the lights on (even though they're already on).
      - stacktrust 3y ago
        Alexa has been most reliable when a command does not require a third-party cloud service. For Amazon Basics WiFi smart plugs, the device type can be configured as "Light" instead of "Plug". Echo 4 works as a Zigbee hub, avoiding dependency on a third-party cloud service.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    If they're assigned to the same room as the lights there shouldn't be, but check in the (awful) app which of your Alexa devices picked up your voice. Walls reflect sound, and things like curtains muffle it, and you might be surprised which device picks up your voice best in different positions. I had to adjust placement etc. to prevent the Alexa in my son's room from regularly picking up my commands from my room better than the Alexa in my room when the doors are open.
    - petemir 3y ago
      Yes, I had interference at one moment and moved the devices to the farthest points on each room, so that doesn't happen now, but the problem I mentioned before (turning on the wrong light) still happens. I forgot to say that the problem mostly occurs when I ask Alexa to set the (unspecified, but hopefully the one belonging to the room the corresponding Echo is) light's brightness to X. Sometimes, in that case, it turns on the light from the other room. I didn't check the audio transcript when this happens though, that's a good one, thanks.
      - vidarh 3y ago
        That's an odd one. Not seen that. Lots of aggravating little quirks, though. Annoyingly so many of them would be trivially addressable by users if we just had a way of adding simple rules. E.g. "this request on this device refers to X", or more generally "when you hear X it probably means Y". As an alternative, I've spent more time than I should passive-aggressively repeating the same instruction and then flagging every single failure in the app. I have no idea if it makes any difference, or if the things I've done that with that have improved were due to general improvements to their voice recognition, but it gives me some limited satisfaction (I now wonder what the financial tradeoff is of fixing the reported issues vs. any benefit potentially gained by just having the reporting function but sending it straight to the bin to make people feel like they're being heard...) One of my goals for this year is to experiment with HomeAssistant or similar to at least start to replace or supplement my Alexas.
        petemir 3y ago
tcfhgj 3y ago
Alexa and Google Home are literally microphones with connections into the cloud
- tharne 3y ago
  I'm always amazed that everyone seems okay with this, and will even say so when pressed on it. But those same people will get a look in their eyes as if they're going to shit their pants, if someone else picks up their unlocked iPhone and starts scrolling.
  - Johnny555 3y ago
    I'm amazed that people are afraid of a home assistant in their living room, yet carry a cloud connected microphone+camera around with them all the time (with the added feature of sending GPS tracking data back to the manufacturer, carrier, and apps that you granted location permission to, like a weather app). If you trust that your phone isn't listening when it's not supposed to, why don't you trust the home assistant (even if it's made by the same manufacturer)?
    - tharne 3y ago
      I 100% agree with you on this. And I don't carry a traditional smartphone for exactly the reasons you mention.
    - laserlight 3y ago
      > If you trust that your phone isn't listening when it's not supposed to, why don't you trust the home assistant Do home assistants claim they are not listening when they are not supposed to?
  - corethree 3y ago
    It's because they have sexts on their phone. A recorder is not as big of a deal. Especially if I'm fully aware that the entity listening to the recording is listening to billions of people and couldn't care less about my one voice.
- 3y ago