I was (naively, looking back) pretty bullish on smart home devices. Automating schedules, presence detection, etc. Every time I looked to invest more into it, the marketplace felt like a minefield of e(ventual)-waste and headache.
I still struggle with it. It feels like a missed opportunity these days, but I just don’t trust companies to treat me or my devices with respect. I’ve ultimately boomeranged back to “no (cloud) smart devices.”
Shelly BLU: lots of lost events. I have one on my kitchen. It mostly works to make the lights switch on when I walk in. Not always though, and when it doesn't it's a pain. It's also PIR alone, so small movements don't register. If I'm cooking, or doing the dishes, the timer runs out and switches the lights off. Getting them to switch on is a pain.
A bunch of Matter-over-Thread devices I have: hard to secure. I'll end up setting up a Thread Border Router on my IoT VLAN and get HA to connect to it, but that means yet another component to run separate from HA, which requires its own upgrade mechanism, backup, etc.
Matter-over-WiFi: haven't yet found one that would fit what I need. Will require expanding my IoT WiFi network to other parts of the house. My main APs don't serve IoT because a few tens of those would easily congest the radios, despite being very low bandwidth.
Most devices are PIR-only, or use subpar mmWave sensors, or a combination of both which tends to be hit-and-miss.
I haven't found a device that doesn't require a proprietary app for setup, which means tracking and the risk of them becoming e-waste.
I'm planning to build some out of cheap sensors from AliExpress and ESP32s but I haven't had the time and have too many other projects in flight.
Just buy Hue, problem solved - although for best results it needs custom setup which is a higher initial time investment, buth then it's set and forget.
"Just buy Hue" is a massive initial expense! Due to the fact that the previous owners of my place were the least practical people on the planet, on the ground floor alone there are 33 light spots, most GU10.
The cheapest Hue option is a 4-pack of Hue Essential for £63. That would be 9 of those for £567 in light bulbs for the ground floor alone.
Buy used! They were/are really popular so there's always a number of items selling for reasonable prices, and they don't really have perishable properties (besides power on time which is _long_).
> 33 light spots, most GU10
That's a sad situation, but even if a bit ugly - a GU10->E27 adapter cotst ~$1.
Yeah but most of them are embedded in the ceiling, so would require some sort of renovations for that. It's really baffling that they'd do this.
Thanks for the tip on second hand, I might have a look.
I still have a lot of the same stuff I bought, which falls into two main categories:
* Hue bulbs, which get active updates and are still maintained by Philips, and honestly are pretty good, if insanely overpriced, especially the HomeKit bridge
* "iHome" smart outlets which I belieeeeeeeve were once upon a time made by Belkin? They've ended support but the outlets themselves are very reliable, and pairable/managable entirely within the Home app so I barely noticed when they were discontinued. Picked up a 4-pack of them on fleabay recently for $20 and they work great still.
Mind you I'm not saying I'm great at this, if anything I'm lucky in that I really haven't had any smart home tech go poorly for me, apart from some other outlets that were some no-name brand. They're still kicking around my house but they need power cycles far more often than the iHome ones.
I would be interested in Hue, except Philips sold me an earlier iteration of a smart lamp which I loved for its ability to gently wake me up in the morning by slowly turning up the light. I love waking up without a loud alarm clock. In fact, I loved that so much I invested in a smart home hub to get Hue bulbs, and then Philips promptly bricked my original lamp. Unless I eventually bought a fancier home hub, which could grandfather it in!
No matter the convenience of a given smarthome feature, it will have to overcome the hurdle of all the time and money I invest in setting it up being liable to get vaporized at the click of a button from the supplier. Ultra frustrating experience, but one that instantly cured me of any romantic notions about the futuristic smart home.
FWIW I use a lot of Hue in my house, and I've not had that experience. But absolutely validate the frustration. That said, in the present, Hue seems to be one of the most if not the most stable ecosystems for smart lighting. Which isn't to say it's perfect but I have far fewer problems than most people I'm friends with, haha.
My Hue system is pretty good at my house, my complaints are:
(1) After a momentary power outage all the lights wind up switched on. It happens a lot at 3am and it's annoying as hell to get up at night and turn all the lights off. I really ought to program my homelab server to check the light status when it comes up and if > 80% of the lights are on between 11am and 6am it oughta turn them all off or maybe return the system to a snapshot of where it was before the power down event.
(2) The hue hub crashes every month or so, it always comes up after being power cycled except for the time that my son blew the circuit breaker screwing around with guitar amps. Now that I think about it I oughta put a WiFi smart plug on it so my homelab can reboot it.
(3) When things go wrong my wife becomes dependent on me which is a hassle, particularly when I am out of town. It's one of those things like having a home theater that requires two remote controls and then finding your family can't manage to watch TV anymore. (God, I want to punish everybody in the electronics industry that anything to do with Logitech Harmony going away)
(4) I'm the only one at home that notices it, but the color rendering of RGB lights is terrible. If you want good color rendition of things in the environment you want a spectrum which is smooth like a black body spectrum but if you want strong RGB effects you want three laser-like lines so you can get a good choice of saturated colors.
In ordinary life it doesn't matter a lot but my arts n' crafts involve making fine sensory distinctions like I load this paper into my inkjet printer
and one side is a little more whitish and less mottled and the other side is a little yellowish and you can really see the paper grain... if you've got a very bright light with good color rendering it is easy to tell the difference but under RGB lights it is difficult. And of course if you are evaluating the quality of prints or clothes or something you want the best CRI you can get.
When I had to get a lot of work done on my house after a kitchen fire (appliance but not a smart one), I told pretty much everyone involved "nothing smart." (OK, the new dryer has a moisture sensor but that's it. Didn't have much that was smart anyway aside from a couple of Alexas that I use rarely.
I think there was also a novelty around a lot of smart devices that just didn't translate to much real world benefit. And in my case here, there was also the matter of having more pressing issues than fussing with smart lights and the like--like rewiring a substantial portion of the house when various walls were open..
Homekit certification is the closest you can get. Devices are required to function offline on LAN through an Apple home hub. Apple has a much better track record supporting things than any of these random vendors. And it can be entirely replaced by Home Assistant anyways.
pkthunder · · focus · HN ↗
I still struggle with it. It feels like a missed opportunity these days, but I just don’t trust companies to treat me or my devices with respect. I’ve ultimately boomeranged back to “no (cloud) smart devices.”
cassianoleal · · focus · HN ↗
Smart light bulbs are another minefield of low-CRI, bad connectivity, worse firmwares, nerfed local featureset, etc.
24t · · focus · HN ↗
care to expand on which areas the units are lacking in? I've thought about getting presence sensors recently
cassianoleal · · focus · HN ↗
A bunch of Matter-over-Thread devices I have: hard to secure. I'll end up setting up a Thread Border Router on my IoT VLAN and get HA to connect to it, but that means yet another component to run separate from HA, which requires its own upgrade mechanism, backup, etc.
Matter-over-WiFi: haven't yet found one that would fit what I need. Will require expanding my IoT WiFi network to other parts of the house. My main APs don't serve IoT because a few tens of those would easily congest the radios, despite being very low bandwidth.
Most devices are PIR-only, or use subpar mmWave sensors, or a combination of both which tends to be hit-and-miss.
I haven't found a device that doesn't require a proprietary app for setup, which means tracking and the risk of them becoming e-waste.
I'm planning to build some out of cheap sensors from AliExpress and ESP32s but I haven't had the time and have too many other projects in flight.
poisonborz · · focus · HN ↗
Just buy Hue, problem solved - although for best results it needs custom setup which is a higher initial time investment, buth then it's set and forget.
cassianoleal · · focus · HN ↗
The cheapest Hue option is a 4-pack of Hue Essential for £63. That would be 9 of those for £567 in light bulbs for the ground floor alone.
poisonborz · · focus · HN ↗
> 33 light spots, most GU10
That's a sad situation, but even if a bit ugly - a GU10->E27 adapter cotst ~$1.
cassianoleal · · focus · HN ↗
Thanks for the tip on second hand, I might have a look.
ToucanLoucan · · focus · HN ↗
* Hue bulbs, which get active updates and are still maintained by Philips, and honestly are pretty good, if insanely overpriced, especially the HomeKit bridge
* "iHome" smart outlets which I belieeeeeeeve were once upon a time made by Belkin? They've ended support but the outlets themselves are very reliable, and pairable/managable entirely within the Home app so I barely noticed when they were discontinued. Picked up a 4-pack of them on fleabay recently for $20 and they work great still.
Mind you I'm not saying I'm great at this, if anything I'm lucky in that I really haven't had any smart home tech go poorly for me, apart from some other outlets that were some no-name brand. They're still kicking around my house but they need power cycles far more often than the iHome ones.
kombookcha · · focus · HN ↗
No matter the convenience of a given smarthome feature, it will have to overcome the hurdle of all the time and money I invest in setting it up being liable to get vaporized at the click of a button from the supplier. Ultra frustrating experience, but one that instantly cured me of any romantic notions about the futuristic smart home.
ToucanLoucan · · focus · HN ↗
PaulHoule · · focus · HN ↗
(1) After a momentary power outage all the lights wind up switched on. It happens a lot at 3am and it's annoying as hell to get up at night and turn all the lights off. I really ought to program my homelab server to check the light status when it comes up and if > 80% of the lights are on between 11am and 6am it oughta turn them all off or maybe return the system to a snapshot of where it was before the power down event.
(2) The hue hub crashes every month or so, it always comes up after being power cycled except for the time that my son blew the circuit breaker screwing around with guitar amps. Now that I think about it I oughta put a WiFi smart plug on it so my homelab can reboot it.
(3) When things go wrong my wife becomes dependent on me which is a hassle, particularly when I am out of town. It's one of those things like having a home theater that requires two remote controls and then finding your family can't manage to watch TV anymore. (God, I want to punish everybody in the electronics industry that anything to do with Logitech Harmony going away)
(4) I'm the only one at home that notices it, but the color rendering of RGB lights is terrible. If you want good color rendition of things in the environment you want a spectrum which is smooth like a black body spectrum but if you want strong RGB effects you want three laser-like lines so you can get a good choice of saturated colors.
In ordinary life it doesn't matter a lot but my arts n' crafts involve making fine sensory distinctions like I load this paper into my inkjet printer
<a href="https://www.redrivercatalog.com/browse/60lb-polar-matte.html?srsltid=AU7gw4XeUWnbVrBPJr9DfQX9cv4yVZC1G0mCdilK1P4Ht-LC9FX-yNZo" rel="nofollow">https://www.redrivercatalog.com/browse/60lb-polar-matte.html...
and one side is a little more whitish and less mottled and the other side is a little yellowish and you can really see the paper grain... if you've got a very bright light with good color rendering it is easy to tell the difference but under RGB lights it is difficult. And of course if you are evaluating the quality of prints or clothes or something you want the best CRI you can get.
ghaff · · focus · HN ↗
I think there was also a novelty around a lot of smart devices that just didn't translate to much real world benefit. And in my case here, there was also the matter of having more pressing issues than fussing with smart lights and the like--like rewiring a substantial portion of the house when various walls were open..
tencentshill · · focus · HN ↗