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As the resident Tech Guy in a few circles (family/friends) I often get asked what I'd recommend with regard for "smart" products. Due to the widespread and appa
by jahsome 1y ago
As the resident Tech Guy in a few circles (family/friends) I often get asked what I'd recommend with regard for "smart" products. Due to the widespread and apparently default lack of support for offline-friendly operation, my answer is always the same: dumb as possible.
edit: a more succinct way of expressing my thinking is to say "the less software the better" by which which normies are are often amused.
- jama211 1y agoWhich will just lead you to a lower quality smart device with the same pitfalls but less features a lot of the time.
- jahsome 1y agoI disagree with your point about quality, but I'll indulge you for the sake of discussion. Given the choice between "lower quality" that will always work, or convenient-until-inevitably-bricked, I'll always advocate for the former.
- jama211 1y agoThe question was about when they ask for a smart device specifically. Not when they ask for a dumb device. My comparison is NOT between smart vs non smart devices.
- tencentshill 1y agoApple Homekit certification is a good, easy label to recommend. It requires offline/LAN-only basic operation.
- mentalgear 1y agoIt's the right approach, but if only it was an open and cross-platform protocol.
- hn_acc1 1y agoThis. Not buying an Apple device just to set something up.
- macintux 1y agoHomeKit certification doesn't mean that it can only be configured via Apple devices.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoBut it’s certified to support apple for lan mode and not necessarily something else, right?
- macintux 1y agoI wouldn't recommend picking one that doesn't tell you what tools you can use to configure it, but that's a wise precaution regardless of HomeKit.
- ncallaway 1y agoIsn't that basically what the Matter protocol is?
- section_me 1y agoMatter turned into a cluster fuck of devices. Use you're android phone to provision a device and connect it to your setup, most people use Google Home or homeassistant, smartthings is also an option, maybe others. But it's only to onboard the device for the most part. It'll still connect to your WiFi, give you next to no visibility as to what's going on in a failure and no interface to control it should your controller go down. It's also not very well supported in things like homeassistant, despite what they say.
- jsheard 1y agoTech enthusiasts: My entire house is smart. Tech workers: The only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize. (stolen from @PPathole on Twitter)
- jahsome 1y agoThat's fantastic, thanks for sharing :)
- jdwithit 1y agoI wish society still used AIM Away Messages so I could make mine this, forever.
- codeduck 1y agoDevops: The gun may only anger it so we keep a sledgehammer nearby in case
- therein 1y agoManagement: Let's wait until James Hamilton's yacht makes landfall and then he'll fix it in 3 minutes.
- Den_VR 1y agoAlignment Researcher: Thermite is the safest way to be sure.
- scrps 1y agoJust put the printer precariously close to an open window on a high floor and threaten it with a performance review every once and a while.
- teddyh 1y agoDo you have a link to the original? This is the earliest version I have found: <https://imgur.com/6wbgy2L https://imgur.com/6wbgy2L>
- anonymars 1y agoRelevant xkcd: https://m.xkcd.com/2030/ https://m.xkcd.com/2030/
- bdangubic 1y agoI am same resident tech guy and I always answer the same way - never connect anything to wifi, no matter what it is. it is that simple and always works. if whatever thing you have does not work without wifi - return it.
- Xenoamorphous 1y agoYou lose convenience/functionality though. E.g. it’s convenient for me to turn on the aircon an hour before I get home in the summer. Edit: I'm not talking on a day to day basis, but when I go on a trip. And I don't have a porch nor I like beer. Amazing that some people downvote for stating the obvious, which is that you can lose some convenience. There's trade offs when you connect something to the Internet? That's also obvious. When I get back home in the summer from a short trip away, with a toddler and a million bags it is definitely convenient for me to have a cool home and not a 40+ degrees celsius one.
- bdangubic 1y agoyup!!! but you also do not lose any sleep over aircon turning on your gas stove :)
- ElevenLathe 1y agoIMO, its more convenient to pick up some cold beer on the way home and enjoy it on the porch while the AC chills things down.
- brewdad 1y agoIf your schedule is consistent a standard programmable thermostat does the job for pretty cheap. My Ecobee is convenient but will probably go back to an offline model when it dies or loses support. Once I dialed in my preferred schedule, I rarely touch it except to lock a set temperature when going out of town.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Marsymars 1y ago
- 05 1y agohttps://devices.esphome.io/made-for-esphome https://devices.esphome.io/made-for-esphome
- pseudosavant 1y agoI have a rule that I don't put in any smart devices that aren't at least as smart as a dumb device. They must do everything a dumb device can do when there is no internet. I've had good luck with the TP-Link/Kasa/Tapo wall switches and bulbs.
- coldpie 1y agoI just use my hands to turn light switches on and off. Worked for 200 years so far and I see no sign of that ever changing.
- bombcar 1y agoYou’ve been turning lights on for 200 years?!
- pseudosavant 1y agoAnd I eat shits bigger than you for breakfast.
- zimpenfish 1y ago> I just use my hands to turn light switches on and off. Difficult if you're not there though? Whereas a smart bulb/switch can turn it on when you're not there (crime deterrence) or when you're almost home (handy in hallway with no light.) (Niche uses, perhaps, but "I just use my hands" is reductive silliness.)
- cardanome 1y agoBoth of your use cases do not require any from of smart device and certainly no internet connection. In fact you could even use an simple analog switch if you want the lights to go on at certain times. And for the hallway I would suggest the tried and true motion sensor. Sure for really complex logic and a lot of flexibility you might want an micro controller eventually but those are truly niche uses. "Smart" devices are insanely overengineered for the simple problems they solve and the huge problems they can cause.
- bunderbunder 1y agoWhen people ask me about Internet connected door locks, I tell them about the coworking space I used to be a member of. More than once I got stuck standing outside in the rain waiting for the smart door lock to come back online after a squirrel jiggled the cable drop by running down it or some k8s pod in the cloud service got knocked over by a chaos gremlin or someone was using a vacuum cleaner that generated too much noise in the wifi spectrum or who even knows what.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoAlso, there's a fundamental security issue with allowing doors to be unlocked remotely. Door locks aren't particularly secure (it doesn't take too much expertise to learn how to lockpick them), but they require someone's physical presence in order to unlock/bypass as that provides a disincentive for criminals to be seen lurking around a door with various tools in hand. Once you remove the requirement for a physical presence, it's more or less risk-free to attempt to hack the door and you can wait until you are successful to then approach the door.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoI don't even like icemakers in my refrigerators. Meanwhile, my parent's Samsung refrigerator keeps annoying them with ads on it's uselessly huge screen.