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That's good. Side note - just like most people don't need an intelligent personal assistant to manage and respond their emails and book their flights, most peo
by wg0 17d ago
That's good.
Side note - just like most people don't need an intelligent personal assistant to manage and respond their emails and book their flights, most people also don't need smart homes. Century old toggle switches are more than enough in a 3 room apartment or 5 room house unless you have a mention.
- qingcharles 17d agoMy primary beef with smart home (having tried it) is that every person that visits your home ends up confused about some element of it. A light switch that goes up and down is universally understood.
- apexalpha 17d agoMy smarthome has regular switches and wifi. There's no reason to not do both. Also a quick NFC sticker in each room taking you to a small HTML site containing settings (temp, ventilation, lights, shutters, setting a alarm by the lights) has been golden. No one wants to: download Shelly app + AC app + look for ventilation IR controller + figure out how casting works for the TV + figure out how to use the Shelly app to turn lights into an alarm. It's too much friction for little gain. But a quick tap? Great. But tapping your phone on a NFC sticker bringing all those controls together per room in stead of per category (all lights in Shelly app. Person in room #1 has no interests in the lights in room #4 at the same time.). IF you tap it while not on Wifi yet it just tells you to connect to Wifi. :-) One "all house" sticker next to the front door allows any last person leaving or first person entering to put the entire house in active / idle mode. Works wonders. And as soon as local AI is quick enough the stickers will be a microphone!
- throwaway314155 17d agoThat's clever and all - solid setup, good work. But I still think you either overestimate the average house guest or have particularly savvy/young house guests.
- apexalpha 17d agoMost people think it's cool but use it once. The regular-ceiling-lights-as-alarm service gets positive feedback. Weird how smarthome companies never market that, seems easy win.
- Atreiden 17d agoNot sure I totally understand what you mean by light alarms. Do you just flash ceiling lights to notify the user of something?
- apexalpha 16d agoNo they gradually turn on from 0% to 60% to simulate sunrise. Accompanied by the shutters slowly opening, if you want. Then after 20 min an actual alarm goes off, just in case.
- shifto 17d agoI have a hugely integrated smart home. 2 rules; 1. Everything can still be manually operated in the way people expect it to. 2. Local only.
- rockostrich 16d agoMy primary beef with my home built in 1963 is that half of the switches aren’t wired to what you would expect and I have no attic or basement with access to make it easy to rewire. Home assistant and smart switches are a godsend because I can repurpose the existing switch boxes to actually do what I want them to do with the added bonus of being able to control them remotely from my phone.
- suprfnk 17d agoNeed is a big word. Convenience is also a factor. We have 8 light buttons in our living room/dining room/kitchen space. It is very convenient to us that we have 1 button for turning all of them on/off at the door to upstairs (at night turn off all lights and go to bed upstairs, in the morning come downstairs and turn on all lights) - but also have 1 on/off button near our back door for when we leave/come home. Next to that: on/off toggles a schedule where the lights are bright and cold-ish by day, and low and warm by night without us having to manually adjust each light every hour or something. Again, need is a big word. But it's very convenient and pleasant.
- Semaphor 17d agoI personally just find it convenient, even in my 3.5 room apartment. Though I do have switches that work.
- LeBit 17d agoI once made the mistake a buying a light bulb that needed a phone app to turn on and off. That was my light bulb moment.