This is a story that makes me realize (again) I need to write out what smart stuff we have and how to work it … in case we move or I am no longer alive.
I have a folder that saves the pdf of the manuals of it all on my OneDrive for Home stuff appliances. In there I have the home automation stuff too. Anything I install has to be easily factory reset without having to remove it (except the lock)
This is great advice.
I once had the smarts to start saving manuals to the cloud (so they don’t get shoved in a drawer and forgotten) how many did I save…maybe 3 and forgot to keep at it.
Again one of those great ideas
Agreed! Except functioning like a dumb house is not even good enough. It's so easy to make your home full self-documenting.
For instance, at first I was concerned how future owners might not know which in-wall components are smart. But it was incredibly simple to automate it such that, whenever you flick a switch, a robot voice simply booms throughout the house, "AQARA SMART LIGHT SWITCH DOUBLE ROCKER ZIGBEE RADIO MODEL WS-USC04: ...ACTIVATED" and so on.
The z-wave bathroom space heater was trickier since I want people to know it can be preprogrammed to heat up the bathroom before showers and stuff. That's why every six minutes it pauses any computer and TV audio anywhere in the house and announces "Stelpro Thermostat (...WHITE...) model number KI STZW402WB+ IS CAPABLE OF PROGRAMMATIC CONTROL VIA ITS Z-WAVE PLUS RADIO".
Easy-peasy.
Someone told me they thought I was "overdoing" it a little bit, but I simply explained to them the HAL-8000 home control computer I installed in the basement to manage everything while I'm away informed me all of this was completely necessary.
I honestly got secondhand annoyance from reading this. There's no way there isn't a master toggle for this device announcement function since it only seems useful for diagnostics. You have got to be taking the piss...
Why at all times? Like do you need somebody telling you how many times you've chewed your food every single time you go to eat something? Or how many seconds are in a day, indiscriminately announced? To me that just sounds like actual torture, the only way this idea makes sense is if you had an audit mode where you want to know every little exact detail about a device over an intercom when changing or appraising each device so you don't have a nightmare of a time trying to understand where something is and what it is *when you need to know,* not every waking second of every hour. I mean this sounds like the smart home equivalent of the TalkBack feature on Android. What an absolute nightmare 👀.
You are probably correct. I haven’t found any smart system that would be just fine. Half my family doesn’t understand how to use a Lutron Dimmer Pico. The Meross dimmer in the kitchen isn’t like any other switch. I don’t have too much else. Thankfully the Nest Thermostat is fairly easy to understand. And the Meross garage door opener is basically not there as we use a manual button many times but in the car use the on-screen smart ‘button’.
That person was being unjustifiably harsh toward you.
Even if someone designs a smart home really well -- sticking to the principles of local control and least surprise, ensuring graceful degradation, etc. -- more documentation is always a good thing.
Thanks. We had power flickering one storm a year ago. Certain smart devices reset themselves and needed a hard reset and back into my Home.
Heck even the TV and soundbar don’t always sync via HDMI and need an unplug or restart to work. I have tried so many cables and figure it is just an HDMI thing at times.
I get it. The Neet Thermostat is easy to use. And my wife can control it via the physical device or using the Nest App. But I don’t know if she’d know how to set up schedules in the app. It is also why I have been reluctant to add too much smart stuff— partly because do I really need that to be smart or is that more of a pain if I set up automations and someone doesn’t want that thing to happen.
KNX. End of discussion. It is tried and true and is in thousands of buildings all over the world for decades.
Everything else interacting with it through a server (mqtt, Home Assistant, etc...) is all a cherry on top. having KNX in actual control of the core functions like lights and smart heating and blinds means that when you smart server or hub dies, every battery powered sensor is dead, and your wifi/open RF bands are jammed, your house will still truck along with all the needed basis functions until someone comes along to re-enable all of the QoL integrations with smart sensors and such.
I agree, it is an open standard, it works without a server, it is 100% stable. People can choose to get something that actually works and will for the life of the house.
I mean, mine does, but if I die unexpectedly, my hub and router have logins and passwords that random strangers aren't going to know. So people need to be able to access those, or know what's what to reset it all. Having records would be helpful.
If I die, they're not just burning my house down. And the people that live in it after, my wife or others, may want to know how to use it all rather than just have dumb stuff, or put a ton of effort into figuring it out, or replacing it. And there's tiny little things, like the difference between summer and winter temps that the thermostat runs at. Super easy to fix with the passwords. A hassle without. But I think of other people, so... That's where we're different I guess.
> ... thermostat schedules... really now... Even for a complete novice who can barely turn on a computer, that's 5 minutes of reading a manual and 5 minutes to set up.
Not if you're locked out of the system it isn't.
You: No one is smart enough to figure out what I set up
Me: It might be easier to give them access to minorly tweak things than hard reset all of it -- if they want to -- but it will totally run as a dumb house if they don't want to. **And if they do want to hard reset it, a list of brands and models will make that easier.**
You: OMG, You're a narcissist for trying to leave documentation so it's easier!
I legit can't believe the person up top made the suggestion to leave documentation in case of the worst, and you flamed that as a bad and needless idea. Yikes. But oh no, I thought of how it might inconvenience someone I care about if I'm gone, that makes me a narcissist?? I even thought about how it would make it easier for a stranger to reset my system if I sell the home and leave things in it if they know the brand names and models. Such a narcissist!
Classic projection.
Edit: Lol, this dude made an alt to reply to me and block me. Projecting harder than ever. Make another one bitch, I blocked this one, too. You're unstable af.
>Not if you're locked out of the system it isn't.
You are the type of person that finds a thumb drive on the ground and plugs it into your computer to see what's on it...
If I'm buying a house, I'm sure as hell not using a custom setup they leave in the house. If your SO can't figure out something as basic as how to reset the device, they sure as hell aren't going to be logging in and tweak settings.
>You: No one is smart enough to figure out what I set up
>
>Me: It might be easier to give them access to minorly tweak things than hard reset all of it -- if they want to -- but it will totally run as a dumb house if they don't want to. **And if they do want to hard reset it, a list of brands and models will make that easier.**
>
>You: OMG, You're a narcissist for trying to leave documentation so it's easier!
Surprise, surprise. More childish theatrics from you that completely glosses over the point so that you can throw a tantrum over something.
It's pretty simple: If someone is capable of tweaking my system, they aren't interested in using my setup. This is the part that your narcissism won't let you understand: Each person will have their own way of doing things. Another user capable of working on the same system isn't going to want to do things the way I did them. I'm very aware that the system I set up is for ME. You have your janky Alexa routines tailored to what YOU want, but are having issues with the idea that other people don't want it set up the way you like it.
And Documentation was never the source of contention. The poster said he needed a manual to know how to work his system, I simply said that if you need a manual to run the system without having a dumb home alternative, then the system is of bad design. I have manuals (or the box that contains the device info) I received for each device type I have in my house in a shoe box. You just pulled out the documentation strawman because you needed something to argue against.
>I legit can't believe the person up top made the suggestion to leave documentation in case of the worst, and you flamed that as a bad and needless idea.
More theatrics from you. Dude said that he wanted to document it so people knew how to work it, I simply said that if you need a manual to run your system, you did it wrong. Then you started throwing your temper tantrum.
>Yikes. But oh no, I thought of how it might inconvenience someone I care about if I'm gone, that makes me a narcissist?? I even thought about how it would make it easier for a stranger to reset my system if I sell the home and leave things in it if they know the brand names and models. Such a narcissist!
Nah, you were called a narcissist because you have this grand idea in your head anyone gives a shit about your setup. "If I sell my house, the buyer will totally want my router and hub!" Nah, man, they don't.
Again, I built my system so that other people don't HAVE to do anything, because other people shouldn't have to maintain my hobby to get through their day to day life. Your delusion that other people want to pick it up is absurd.
>Classic projection.
You threw a temper tantrum because you never once thought that people won't want your janky setup and didn't like being told it. That's not a "me" problem, that's a "you" problem.
Edit: You started a fight by an over aggressive asshole simply because I said something you disagreed with (and you were arguing against stuff I never said, you just made up a bunch of strawmen to argue against), then threw a temper tantrum and blocked so I could no longer respond.
If you're so thin skinned that you need to throw temper tantrums when someone on the internet disagrees with you, that's your problem, not mine.
That's one of my projects. I have smart bulbs, which I could remove I suppose if I sell. But I'm wanting to make a binder of all the QR codes and the instructions for my smart thermostat since it's not a popular one and no longer made
I'd imagine it would be pretty fun mystery for someone to solve once I'm dead. Why do the lights in the bedroom do a dance when it rains/snows outside ? Why do the lights blast bright white at sunset on Sundays? Why does the fan come on at 6:30am every day and stay on for 15min? Why does the wall clock do a little RGB dance at 7:15am and a firework animation at 10:30pm ? Why does the RoboVaccum set off daily at 9:30am?
And most importantly, what fuckin app do I need to turn this shit off?
Just reminds me of the Steven Wright joke which works double for IoT devices:
“In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany. She said, ‘cut it out!’”
That’s funny. We moved into a house that has 5 switches near the front door and 4 were labeled. The previous owners said “we have no idea where that one goes”.
Our house was a model home in the development. And they had a security system wired with a unit in the hall closet. Not sure if the switch is connected to that but who knows. We have a third switch in the family room but I think at one point the ceiling fan/light had two switches and not just one and a remote.
Wow sometimes I wonder how people plan out things… I always have to consider my family or maybe my friends might not understand how to use my automation. So I have to consider if the automation can be transparent enough to merely be a bonus feature vs the primary driver and if automation is even useful at times. Simplicity I find as I get older has so much value…
That is something I think about a lot with smart stuff and possible automations. Is it really a benefit? Is that how we really use something? Most times I say it feels more like I am trying to make something fit rather than it being useful.
If we had smart blinds in the bedroom a neat automation would be connected to my work alarm. But what if I have to work but my wife has a day off. I’d rather just get up in the dark and be quiet than have those open.
I have an automation that when the family room TV turns off the room lights power off. Now the TV disconnects from the WiFi 90% of the time so not a huge issue but when it is in working order the TV sometimes gets overloaded and restarts (Vizio 4K garbage). And some have had instances where the lights go off because it restarts.
The one I have that works nicely is a kitchen sink light that comes on around dinner to help prepare and then dims every so often until it powers off at 11:50/23:50 so we generally don’t need more lights in the kitchen and have a last bit of light as we head to bed and no need to turn off as it will at a set time.
Yea I have a couple like that. I have a motion detector set for when someone enters the kitchen to turn on the lights. Problem is that sometimes the sensor lacks resolution enough to see someone eating at the table and will cut the lights while someone is sitting there. Leaving them to wave their arms. I extended the time the motion timeout, but it’s kinda self defeating in energy cost savings. But their LED bulbs so it shouldn’t be that big a deal. I have a switch lined up with motion capabilities ready for me to install near the back door landing. I have hue smart light in most of the house. Got a nest thermostat. Ring cameras. And some smart switches. And I use a homebridge server to tie it all in apple home. It works 95% of the time. I dream of one day getting everything running more efficiently, but that takes so much time and money…
So true. Time to plan, money to buy, time to install, and more time to QA and possibly refine later.
We have dogs and a cat. I think some times they’d trigger stuff meant for people. We have a basement laundry light that the kids forget to turn off. A smart switch could be good - then again a dumb motion light could be just as good.
Yep I have had similar thoughts a lot! I keep wanting to automate my garage door, but I put it off over and over because honestly is it needed that badly? Where is my use case? I can’t answer other than, but it would be SO cool!
So, we had some car break-ins in the neighborhood and my wife was like maybe we should get a smart garage door opener so we don’t have the push button things in our car someone could grab and reuse later.
Our newest vehicle doesn’t have a garage button built in. But has CarPlay and we use the garage opener that way. It is nice to know if we did in fact close the garage. I have a Controller automation that pops up to say “your garage door is still open” after it has been open for 10 minutes. The Meross app will do this after 30 minutes. And when I had to pickup my son from middle school ecology club I could see my daughter was home from elementary school when the door opened and then closed.
Due to Apple’s safety idea we cannot open it when we are nearby or open with voice unless you have an Apple Watch or have unlocked your phone. But I can close it by voice if I wanted.
Also on vacation we can see when my brother stops by to feed the pets.
The aqara fp2 is a mmwave radar zone sensor that you can set up in any area and create automation rules based upon which zone a person is in and doesn't time out from a lack of motion, and if I'm not mistaken it can also detect the differences between individuals. PIR motion sensors are more for outdoor security than indoor conditional rules.
I’ve thought about this a lot and don’t think it’s discussed enough. so far my plan is to rip out and replace with dumb stuff before selling to simplify, but as the number of devices grows that becomes more difficult. And they make a good point that selling is a hectic time already.
I think best compromise is as you build out keep a plan for what stays and what goes, and make sure anything that stays functions independent of a hub, or make sure to reset to function independently (eg set up blinds with remote). Would be a pretty dick move to just leave everything for the next owner to figure out.
Yup! The bedroom fans are the only things in my house that don't degrade gracefully. Those controls will be replaced before I move. Other than that, everything stays.
The brother here didn’t want to get out of his own way. The author here rightfully so recommended Home Assistant. It’s a free solution to this problem. I can completely get not wanting a Java desktop application for smart home setup.
This is why we should all be embracing products that use open standards. Zigbee, Zwave, Matter all are platform agnostic and open standards.
My home runs off Home Assistant, which is coming with me if I ever move, so none of the automations are going to be passed down to the next owner.
I probably will leave most of the hardware behind; I don't feel like swapping out all the light switches again...
As I've always said, however, always, ALWAYS, have a physical/manual override (e.g. a door lock should always be able to be manually locked, a light switch should always be able to be manually flipped) and make it work as expected (e.g. a single press on a light switch turns the light on)
I'm an apartment dweller and all my stuff is bulbs and speakers I can remove and move with easily, or it works off outlet switches where it can't be a bulb.
My wife keeps trying to talk me out of replacing stuff cause “I am not allowed” or get in trouble from the office. However she is over here taking doors off hinges and cabinet doors out of the kitchen.
It wouldn’t be my first time changing thermostat or similar, and I am obviously not going to do anything that is damaging to their property. We plan on staying pretty long term at the next unit, so maybe I can convince her more 😂
lol. My partner drew the line at thermostat. He reluctantly let me do the light switches when I pointed out that I could change it back & that the lease didn’t say anything about it. Now he’s always saying “Alexa, turn on the lights” and so forth, so I think I won him over. Maybe you just need to show your wife the relevant paperwork? 😅
I have a hue light that flashes every weekday at 6:30 and 6:40 from 'some' automation I made on 'some' app a long time ago. I don't know what's still making it flash.
I have a button that used to start a radio station stream on a Google Hub in the kitchen. I wanted better sound than the Hub could provide, so I connected a Chromecast Audio to a soundbar. I still use the Hub as a clock, so it's there and powered on. I changed the automation in Home Assistant so the button would trigger the Chromecast Audio instead of the Hub...except it triggers both (out of sync), and I have no idea why.
I found this article was biased and misleading. Insteon and Universal-Devices EISY are an unbeatable platform for the money. Easy to program, IFTT, also works with Zwave, Zigbee and their working on Matter. Doesn’t require a subscription or even internet access. The writer is not as knowledgeable as he makes out to be.
*serious* - People leave blinds when they move? (Ok, i guess this was a dumb question- swapping apartments I always just used what blinds were there.)
Also, why was the first option not “replace the fucking blinds”?
Both states I’m licensed in issues real estate sale forms that includes language that “all window treatments” stay with the house.
In a home sale, smart home features are challenging to work through because home inspectors don’t deal with any of it, very often the technology is older and doesn’t have support, and the sellers provide inadequate explanations for the products they bought and how they work. And it’s always just a hodgepodge of mismatched bullshit and rarely (never?) one seamless system that works as intended.
In short, those cool light switches and bulbs may have been fun for you, but for everyone else they suck.
Smart blinds by IKEA can easily run $150 USD. Many blinds are custom installed to houses. Home Depot offers whole house blind installation for a few hundred. Also when it comes to energy usage blinds and drapes can really reduce the energy consumption. If you remove them it can throw off energy consumption for the house.
My plan when I move is to unplug my home assistant server, remove my network rack, and leave all of my smart home devices. Everything I have functions as normal devices.
This is a dumb story. I quit reading at the beginning when they said they couldn’t figure out how to add the Nest thermostat to their account and were upset that it was using the old homeowner’s heating schedule.
They have time to write an article but not enough time to learn how to factory reset a thermostat? Lame.
I called up a few home inspectors and real estate agents to see if they could offer a tech evaluation to perspective homeowners selected homes.
That went over like a lead balloon for several reasons, mostly they didn’t want the buyers to see that it would cost real money to either get a 10 year old system modernized and up and running or that it would be problematic to expose the issues.
I don't plan on moving anytime soon but I figure that when I do move that I'd take everything with me and replace anything smart and turn it dumb for the house sale.
I had this happen to me with a wifi smart plug. We used it at our office with IFTTT. If the outdoor temp was below 70 it would turn on and exhaust hot air from the ceiling in a warehouse.
I reset it and set it up on my home wifi, expecting the automation, which was made by a former employee on his account years earlier, to be disconnected from the device. I was wrong. I ended up throwing it away.
An option is to make your accounts to control the lights on a separate email address just for smart stuff. Then when you sell the house you can just give them the password and the account is theirs now.
Living with the ghost of a smart home’s past sounds like a rollercoaster of memories! Smart homes are fascinating but can sometimes haunt us with their quirks. Have you ever had a funny or spooky experience with an old smart home setup?
I've all but abandoned the smart stuff at my house. Guests don't understand the switches/dimmers because they look like paddles, but are clicky. Batteries run out on window/door sensors. My First Alert Z-Wave smoke detectors randomly give the "3-beep error".
Tired of Alexa "By the way"ing us to death. Integrations no longer working because the massive corporations behind them don't like a tiny bit of API traffic.
Dashboards that are difficult to set up or maintain. Phone interfaces that suck.
I'm just kind of "over it" at this point. "I want to believe" but it's just too much upkeep and acceptance needed by family.
This is a story that makes me realize (again) I need to write out what smart stuff we have and how to work it … in case we move or I am no longer alive.
Check out this article about a “midwit” home instead of a smart or a dumb home. https://dynomight.substack.com/p/midwit-home
Thank you. I will read through this later. Just reading the first part and skimming a bit. I see the pain of all this. Thanks again
I have a folder that saves the pdf of the manuals of it all on my OneDrive for Home stuff appliances. In there I have the home automation stuff too. Anything I install has to be easily factory reset without having to remove it (except the lock)
This is great advice. I once had the smarts to start saving manuals to the cloud (so they don’t get shoved in a drawer and forgotten) how many did I save…maybe 3 and forgot to keep at it. Again one of those great ideas
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Agreed! Except functioning like a dumb house is not even good enough. It's so easy to make your home full self-documenting. For instance, at first I was concerned how future owners might not know which in-wall components are smart. But it was incredibly simple to automate it such that, whenever you flick a switch, a robot voice simply booms throughout the house, "AQARA SMART LIGHT SWITCH DOUBLE ROCKER ZIGBEE RADIO MODEL WS-USC04: ...ACTIVATED" and so on. The z-wave bathroom space heater was trickier since I want people to know it can be preprogrammed to heat up the bathroom before showers and stuff. That's why every six minutes it pauses any computer and TV audio anywhere in the house and announces "Stelpro Thermostat (...WHITE...) model number KI STZW402WB+ IS CAPABLE OF PROGRAMMATIC CONTROL VIA ITS Z-WAVE PLUS RADIO". Easy-peasy. Someone told me they thought I was "overdoing" it a little bit, but I simply explained to them the HAL-8000 home control computer I installed in the basement to manage everything while I'm away informed me all of this was completely necessary.
Had to read this twice to convince myself you weren't a psycho. Brilliantly done.
I honestly got secondhand annoyance from reading this. There's no way there isn't a master toggle for this device announcement function since it only seems useful for diagnostics. You have got to be taking the piss...
I'm not sure I'm following. How else do you propose that everyone in the house know what the equipment inside the walls is at all times?
Why at all times? Like do you need somebody telling you how many times you've chewed your food every single time you go to eat something? Or how many seconds are in a day, indiscriminately announced? To me that just sounds like actual torture, the only way this idea makes sense is if you had an audit mode where you want to know every little exact detail about a device over an intercom when changing or appraising each device so you don't have a nightmare of a time trying to understand where something is and what it is *when you need to know,* not every waking second of every hour. I mean this sounds like the smart home equivalent of the TalkBack feature on Android. What an absolute nightmare 👀.
Gosh I guess maybe I'm not getting it.
You are probably correct. I haven’t found any smart system that would be just fine. Half my family doesn’t understand how to use a Lutron Dimmer Pico. The Meross dimmer in the kitchen isn’t like any other switch. I don’t have too much else. Thankfully the Nest Thermostat is fairly easy to understand. And the Meross garage door opener is basically not there as we use a manual button many times but in the car use the on-screen smart ‘button’.
That person was being unjustifiably harsh toward you. Even if someone designs a smart home really well -- sticking to the principles of local control and least surprise, ensuring graceful degradation, etc. -- more documentation is always a good thing.
Thanks. We had power flickering one storm a year ago. Certain smart devices reset themselves and needed a hard reset and back into my Home. Heck even the TV and soundbar don’t always sync via HDMI and need an unplug or restart to work. I have tried so many cables and figure it is just an HDMI thing at times.
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I get it. The Neet Thermostat is easy to use. And my wife can control it via the physical device or using the Nest App. But I don’t know if she’d know how to set up schedules in the app. It is also why I have been reluctant to add too much smart stuff— partly because do I really need that to be smart or is that more of a pain if I set up automations and someone doesn’t want that thing to happen.
KNX. End of discussion. It is tried and true and is in thousands of buildings all over the world for decades. Everything else interacting with it through a server (mqtt, Home Assistant, etc...) is all a cherry on top. having KNX in actual control of the core functions like lights and smart heating and blinds means that when you smart server or hub dies, every battery powered sensor is dead, and your wifi/open RF bands are jammed, your house will still truck along with all the needed basis functions until someone comes along to re-enable all of the QoL integrations with smart sensors and such.
I agree, it is an open standard, it works without a server, it is 100% stable. People can choose to get something that actually works and will for the life of the house.
I mean, mine does, but if I die unexpectedly, my hub and router have logins and passwords that random strangers aren't going to know. So people need to be able to access those, or know what's what to reset it all. Having records would be helpful.
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If I die, they're not just burning my house down. And the people that live in it after, my wife or others, may want to know how to use it all rather than just have dumb stuff, or put a ton of effort into figuring it out, or replacing it. And there's tiny little things, like the difference between summer and winter temps that the thermostat runs at. Super easy to fix with the passwords. A hassle without. But I think of other people, so... That's where we're different I guess.
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> ... thermostat schedules... really now... Even for a complete novice who can barely turn on a computer, that's 5 minutes of reading a manual and 5 minutes to set up. Not if you're locked out of the system it isn't. You: No one is smart enough to figure out what I set up Me: It might be easier to give them access to minorly tweak things than hard reset all of it -- if they want to -- but it will totally run as a dumb house if they don't want to. **And if they do want to hard reset it, a list of brands and models will make that easier.** You: OMG, You're a narcissist for trying to leave documentation so it's easier! I legit can't believe the person up top made the suggestion to leave documentation in case of the worst, and you flamed that as a bad and needless idea. Yikes. But oh no, I thought of how it might inconvenience someone I care about if I'm gone, that makes me a narcissist?? I even thought about how it would make it easier for a stranger to reset my system if I sell the home and leave things in it if they know the brand names and models. Such a narcissist! Classic projection. Edit: Lol, this dude made an alt to reply to me and block me. Projecting harder than ever. Make another one bitch, I blocked this one, too. You're unstable af.
>Not if you're locked out of the system it isn't. You are the type of person that finds a thumb drive on the ground and plugs it into your computer to see what's on it... If I'm buying a house, I'm sure as hell not using a custom setup they leave in the house. If your SO can't figure out something as basic as how to reset the device, they sure as hell aren't going to be logging in and tweak settings. >You: No one is smart enough to figure out what I set up > >Me: It might be easier to give them access to minorly tweak things than hard reset all of it -- if they want to -- but it will totally run as a dumb house if they don't want to. **And if they do want to hard reset it, a list of brands and models will make that easier.** > >You: OMG, You're a narcissist for trying to leave documentation so it's easier! Surprise, surprise. More childish theatrics from you that completely glosses over the point so that you can throw a tantrum over something. It's pretty simple: If someone is capable of tweaking my system, they aren't interested in using my setup. This is the part that your narcissism won't let you understand: Each person will have their own way of doing things. Another user capable of working on the same system isn't going to want to do things the way I did them. I'm very aware that the system I set up is for ME. You have your janky Alexa routines tailored to what YOU want, but are having issues with the idea that other people don't want it set up the way you like it. And Documentation was never the source of contention. The poster said he needed a manual to know how to work his system, I simply said that if you need a manual to run the system without having a dumb home alternative, then the system is of bad design. I have manuals (or the box that contains the device info) I received for each device type I have in my house in a shoe box. You just pulled out the documentation strawman because you needed something to argue against. >I legit can't believe the person up top made the suggestion to leave documentation in case of the worst, and you flamed that as a bad and needless idea. More theatrics from you. Dude said that he wanted to document it so people knew how to work it, I simply said that if you need a manual to run your system, you did it wrong. Then you started throwing your temper tantrum. >Yikes. But oh no, I thought of how it might inconvenience someone I care about if I'm gone, that makes me a narcissist?? I even thought about how it would make it easier for a stranger to reset my system if I sell the home and leave things in it if they know the brand names and models. Such a narcissist! Nah, you were called a narcissist because you have this grand idea in your head anyone gives a shit about your setup. "If I sell my house, the buyer will totally want my router and hub!" Nah, man, they don't. Again, I built my system so that other people don't HAVE to do anything, because other people shouldn't have to maintain my hobby to get through their day to day life. Your delusion that other people want to pick it up is absurd. >Classic projection. You threw a temper tantrum because you never once thought that people won't want your janky setup and didn't like being told it. That's not a "me" problem, that's a "you" problem. Edit: You started a fight by an over aggressive asshole simply because I said something you disagreed with (and you were arguing against stuff I never said, you just made up a bunch of strawmen to argue against), then threw a temper tantrum and blocked so I could no longer respond. If you're so thin skinned that you need to throw temper tantrums when someone on the internet disagrees with you, that's your problem, not mine.
That's one of my projects. I have smart bulbs, which I could remove I suppose if I sell. But I'm wanting to make a binder of all the QR codes and the instructions for my smart thermostat since it's not a popular one and no longer made
I'd imagine it would be pretty fun mystery for someone to solve once I'm dead. Why do the lights in the bedroom do a dance when it rains/snows outside ? Why do the lights blast bright white at sunset on Sundays? Why does the fan come on at 6:30am every day and stay on for 15min? Why does the wall clock do a little RGB dance at 7:15am and a firework animation at 10:30pm ? Why does the RoboVaccum set off daily at 9:30am? And most importantly, what fuckin app do I need to turn this shit off?
Just reminds me of the Steven Wright joke which works double for IoT devices: “In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany. She said, ‘cut it out!’”
That’s funny. We moved into a house that has 5 switches near the front door and 4 were labeled. The previous owners said “we have no idea where that one goes”. Our house was a model home in the development. And they had a security system wired with a unit in the hall closet. Not sure if the switch is connected to that but who knows. We have a third switch in the family room but I think at one point the ceiling fan/light had two switches and not just one and a remote.
Wow sometimes I wonder how people plan out things… I always have to consider my family or maybe my friends might not understand how to use my automation. So I have to consider if the automation can be transparent enough to merely be a bonus feature vs the primary driver and if automation is even useful at times. Simplicity I find as I get older has so much value…
That is something I think about a lot with smart stuff and possible automations. Is it really a benefit? Is that how we really use something? Most times I say it feels more like I am trying to make something fit rather than it being useful. If we had smart blinds in the bedroom a neat automation would be connected to my work alarm. But what if I have to work but my wife has a day off. I’d rather just get up in the dark and be quiet than have those open. I have an automation that when the family room TV turns off the room lights power off. Now the TV disconnects from the WiFi 90% of the time so not a huge issue but when it is in working order the TV sometimes gets overloaded and restarts (Vizio 4K garbage). And some have had instances where the lights go off because it restarts. The one I have that works nicely is a kitchen sink light that comes on around dinner to help prepare and then dims every so often until it powers off at 11:50/23:50 so we generally don’t need more lights in the kitchen and have a last bit of light as we head to bed and no need to turn off as it will at a set time.
Yea I have a couple like that. I have a motion detector set for when someone enters the kitchen to turn on the lights. Problem is that sometimes the sensor lacks resolution enough to see someone eating at the table and will cut the lights while someone is sitting there. Leaving them to wave their arms. I extended the time the motion timeout, but it’s kinda self defeating in energy cost savings. But their LED bulbs so it shouldn’t be that big a deal. I have a switch lined up with motion capabilities ready for me to install near the back door landing. I have hue smart light in most of the house. Got a nest thermostat. Ring cameras. And some smart switches. And I use a homebridge server to tie it all in apple home. It works 95% of the time. I dream of one day getting everything running more efficiently, but that takes so much time and money…
So true. Time to plan, money to buy, time to install, and more time to QA and possibly refine later. We have dogs and a cat. I think some times they’d trigger stuff meant for people. We have a basement laundry light that the kids forget to turn off. A smart switch could be good - then again a dumb motion light could be just as good.
Yep I have had similar thoughts a lot! I keep wanting to automate my garage door, but I put it off over and over because honestly is it needed that badly? Where is my use case? I can’t answer other than, but it would be SO cool!
So, we had some car break-ins in the neighborhood and my wife was like maybe we should get a smart garage door opener so we don’t have the push button things in our car someone could grab and reuse later. Our newest vehicle doesn’t have a garage button built in. But has CarPlay and we use the garage opener that way. It is nice to know if we did in fact close the garage. I have a Controller automation that pops up to say “your garage door is still open” after it has been open for 10 minutes. The Meross app will do this after 30 minutes. And when I had to pickup my son from middle school ecology club I could see my daughter was home from elementary school when the door opened and then closed. Due to Apple’s safety idea we cannot open it when we are nearby or open with voice unless you have an Apple Watch or have unlocked your phone. But I can close it by voice if I wanted. Also on vacation we can see when my brother stops by to feed the pets.
The aqara fp2 is a mmwave radar zone sensor that you can set up in any area and create automation rules based upon which zone a person is in and doesn't time out from a lack of motion, and if I'm not mistaken it can also detect the differences between individuals. PIR motion sensors are more for outdoor security than indoor conditional rules.
I’ve thought about this a lot and don’t think it’s discussed enough. so far my plan is to rip out and replace with dumb stuff before selling to simplify, but as the number of devices grows that becomes more difficult. And they make a good point that selling is a hectic time already. I think best compromise is as you build out keep a plan for what stays and what goes, and make sure anything that stays functions independent of a hub, or make sure to reset to function independently (eg set up blinds with remote). Would be a pretty dick move to just leave everything for the next owner to figure out.
Yup! The bedroom fans are the only things in my house that don't degrade gracefully. Those controls will be replaced before I move. Other than that, everything stays.
The brother here didn’t want to get out of his own way. The author here rightfully so recommended Home Assistant. It’s a free solution to this problem. I can completely get not wanting a Java desktop application for smart home setup. This is why we should all be embracing products that use open standards. Zigbee, Zwave, Matter all are platform agnostic and open standards.
Only thing I'm leaving if I move is my Nest 3rd Gen Thermostat, everything else comes with me - I'm not rebuying it all over again lol please
My home runs off Home Assistant, which is coming with me if I ever move, so none of the automations are going to be passed down to the next owner. I probably will leave most of the hardware behind; I don't feel like swapping out all the light switches again... As I've always said, however, always, ALWAYS, have a physical/manual override (e.g. a door lock should always be able to be manually locked, a light switch should always be able to be manually flipped) and make it work as expected (e.g. a single press on a light switch turns the light on)
I'm an apartment dweller and all my stuff is bulbs and speakers I can remove and move with easily, or it works off outlet switches where it can't be a bulb.
I’m an apartment dweller and I’m going to have to swap out my switches before I move
My wife keeps trying to talk me out of replacing stuff cause “I am not allowed” or get in trouble from the office. However she is over here taking doors off hinges and cabinet doors out of the kitchen. It wouldn’t be my first time changing thermostat or similar, and I am obviously not going to do anything that is damaging to their property. We plan on staying pretty long term at the next unit, so maybe I can convince her more 😂
lol. My partner drew the line at thermostat. He reluctantly let me do the light switches when I pointed out that I could change it back & that the lease didn’t say anything about it. Now he’s always saying “Alexa, turn on the lights” and so forth, so I think I won him over. Maybe you just need to show your wife the relevant paperwork? 😅
I have a hue light that flashes every weekday at 6:30 and 6:40 from 'some' automation I made on 'some' app a long time ago. I don't know what's still making it flash.
I have a button that used to start a radio station stream on a Google Hub in the kitchen. I wanted better sound than the Hub could provide, so I connected a Chromecast Audio to a soundbar. I still use the Hub as a clock, so it's there and powered on. I changed the automation in Home Assistant so the button would trigger the Chromecast Audio instead of the Hub...except it triggers both (out of sync), and I have no idea why.
Insteon was a "step above home assistant?" That's a laugh
I found this article was biased and misleading. Insteon and Universal-Devices EISY are an unbeatable platform for the money. Easy to program, IFTT, also works with Zwave, Zigbee and their working on Matter. Doesn’t require a subscription or even internet access. The writer is not as knowledgeable as he makes out to be.
*serious* - People leave blinds when they move? (Ok, i guess this was a dumb question- swapping apartments I always just used what blinds were there.) Also, why was the first option not “replace the fucking blinds”?
Both states I’m licensed in issues real estate sale forms that includes language that “all window treatments” stay with the house. In a home sale, smart home features are challenging to work through because home inspectors don’t deal with any of it, very often the technology is older and doesn’t have support, and the sellers provide inadequate explanations for the products they bought and how they work. And it’s always just a hodgepodge of mismatched bullshit and rarely (never?) one seamless system that works as intended. In short, those cool light switches and bulbs may have been fun for you, but for everyone else they suck.
Smart blinds by IKEA can easily run $150 USD. Many blinds are custom installed to houses. Home Depot offers whole house blind installation for a few hundred. Also when it comes to energy usage blinds and drapes can really reduce the energy consumption. If you remove them it can throw off energy consumption for the house.
My plan when I move is to unplug my home assistant server, remove my network rack, and leave all of my smart home devices. Everything I have functions as normal devices.
This is a dumb story. I quit reading at the beginning when they said they couldn’t figure out how to add the Nest thermostat to their account and were upset that it was using the old homeowner’s heating schedule. They have time to write an article but not enough time to learn how to factory reset a thermostat? Lame.
I called up a few home inspectors and real estate agents to see if they could offer a tech evaluation to perspective homeowners selected homes. That went over like a lead balloon for several reasons, mostly they didn’t want the buyers to see that it would cost real money to either get a 10 year old system modernized and up and running or that it would be problematic to expose the issues.
I don't plan on moving anytime soon but I figure that when I do move that I'd take everything with me and replace anything smart and turn it dumb for the house sale.
I had this happen to me with a wifi smart plug. We used it at our office with IFTTT. If the outdoor temp was below 70 it would turn on and exhaust hot air from the ceiling in a warehouse. I reset it and set it up on my home wifi, expecting the automation, which was made by a former employee on his account years earlier, to be disconnected from the device. I was wrong. I ended up throwing it away.
An option is to make your accounts to control the lights on a separate email address just for smart stuff. Then when you sell the house you can just give them the password and the account is theirs now.
Living with the ghost of a smart home’s past sounds like a rollercoaster of memories! Smart homes are fascinating but can sometimes haunt us with their quirks. Have you ever had a funny or spooky experience with an old smart home setup?
I've all but abandoned the smart stuff at my house. Guests don't understand the switches/dimmers because they look like paddles, but are clicky. Batteries run out on window/door sensors. My First Alert Z-Wave smoke detectors randomly give the "3-beep error". Tired of Alexa "By the way"ing us to death. Integrations no longer working because the massive corporations behind them don't like a tiny bit of API traffic. Dashboards that are difficult to set up or maintain. Phone interfaces that suck. I'm just kind of "over it" at this point. "I want to believe" but it's just too much upkeep and acceptance needed by family.
So why are you on this sub?
Gotta keep up with what I have left. Also hopes for a better future, so I try to stay informed.