Reminds me of that post
“My room mate asked if I could unplug his book so I can charge my cigarette, the future is stupid”
Are the persons a little mixed up?
Who buys this?
IME, about 90% of the twats at Reddit/r/smarthome. They they whine when the next Sonos or such they switched to gets bricked yet again.
Why are they twats? Because you do not like smarthome devices so people who do are twats? Seems pretty shallow dude
Because they’ll buy cloud enabled devices and call you an idiot for suggesting that might be a poor long-term plan. Then they bitch and moan when their devices get bricked, yet again, and then they’re back on the cloud-device bandwagon next time.
I have literally hundreds of sensors, switches and other IOT devices I’ve either bought or built myself because nobody made one. Not a one needs an internet connection to work because I learned long ago that it doesn’t pay to rely on outside services. Hell, I only started using HA recently because I figured it was going to fade away as well. I’ve seen their commitment to keeping things self-hosted, so a few years ago I let myself get convinced to move away from NodeRed and my own codebase. But if they disappeared tomorrow I’d still be able to use my devices with a minimum of hassle.
The post the other day about charging their something with their couch and 10 yr old them…
Charging their doorbell with their couch
OMG! We have meta, I’m so excited guys!
Back around 2011, I remember reading a headline along the lines of “Samsung Galaxy 2 receives Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich on Sprint” and understood it completely while also thinking that just 5 years earlier that I’d call 911 if someone said that because they were clearly having a stroke.
I don’t agree with this… I use Govee everything and control it through Google … I can’t imagine forgetting a Google password. I don’t care much about privacy on my lighting control. Yes everything is over complicated but pick a brand and a control device and you’re fine. Before I consolidated I had 4 different lights and controlling apps and if I messed up a stored password I could easily reset one of them using an email addy …mostly disposable ones
Just turn them on with the switch…
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Is that an issue?
We still have switchboards… Don’t we?
Not if you forget your password
I build my own smart lights to avoid this kind of bs. Thanks to ESPhome i didn’t even need to program them myself. Everything is in an offline VLan and connected to Homeassistant.
I have been looking into this kind of thing. My impetus is wanting to connect my Android alarm clock to Home Assistant and set it to trigger my espresso machine to power on 30mins before I wake up. I saw ESPhome recommended for the smart plug. I’m sure I’ll find other uses once I set it up though, maybe even building my own light bulbs.
I use it to slowly turn the lights on 20 minutes before my alarm goes off. It’s great fun
ESPhome
First time i’m hearing about it. Sounds very cool! Would you mind sharing your setup and how it works?
I’ve got a Sever running Homeassistant with the ESPHome Addon. The Lights got a custom PCB in them using a ESP32 and a 4 channel warm/cold white led strip driver. But you can also build them using of-the-shelf parts. They are mains powered without a switch, instead i wired the switches to a sensor input. This allows me to control the light either via the switch, or Homeassistant. They even got some buttons directly on them to force them on/off if my server is down. I also got a radar in there for presence detection. Basically the same as an infrared motion sensor, but it doesn’t turn the light off while im on the toilet. Thanks to using Homeassistant, I can change the color temperature and brightness of the lights depending on the time of day. It’s really nice to have some dim and warm lights in the evening before going to bed.
But ESPHome isn’t limited to some custom build stuff. Anything that uses an ESP32* chip can be flashed to run ESPHome instead of whatever it came with. I got some sonoff relays that control my shutters and an Emporia Vue 2 to measure my power usage. Depending on the device you might be able to flash it either via Wifi or you have to disassemble it to get to the programming pins. The nice thing about the ESP32 is that a vendor cannot lock the firmware. You can always flash something custom.
ESPHome isn’t limited to Homeassistant however. You can also have each device run a web-server to control it, or connect it to MQTT.
Also i should mention some alternatives:
- Tasmota: similar to ESPHome, but while ESPHome as the configuration compiled into the firmware Tasmota can be reconfigured on the fly. Not like the update process of ESPHome is slow however.
- WLED: if you only want to control some addressable RGB led strips. It does that one job way better than ESPHome.
Everything is in an offline VLan
This is the way.
I don’t need ANYONE to control my house when not in my house, and if that means I don’t get to either, then oh well.
I find it funny how people who are not working with any kind of electronics are the ones who have smart homes, smart bulbs, smart keys, smart tv’s. People who work in it have nothing connected to the internet, except their own server with a hammer next to it.
Speak for yourself my main server is explicitly firewalled from the modem
Well, many industries seem very interested in dragging us “happy with being manual people,” kicking and screaming, into all this tech crap.
Sometimes it can make sense… other times it doesn’t. Many tech entrepreneurs want to just own shit and claim they have brains and ideas when they don’t.
Remember the juicero? A wifi connected juice press using proprietary juice bags? It was a very extremely expensive overengineered piece of junk. With features that are wholly unneeded… and what is even dumber is that the juice bags can be squeezed by hand faster and more efficiently than by the machine!
Still, the ‘inventor’ got 120 million dollars in investments. The company went under a long time ago, but he probably is still sitting on a pile of cash.
I have a friend who has wireless everything, and bragged he even had a wifi coffee maker.
So when I asked him for coffee, he walked to the kitchen, grabbed a cup, but it under the coffee maker, walked back, fidgeted with his phone while showing me how cool it was, walked to the coffee maker, got the cup, came back and handed it to me.
He did appreciate me asking about wireless mugs.
Oh, reading your reply made me feel a bit hypercritical, LOL! While I’ve never heard of the “juicero,” I do own a “Bartesian.” It’s a cocktail-making machine, where you supply the alcohol, and the various cocktail mixers come in a Keruig-like packet. You insert the packet, select the strength of beverage you want, between non-alcoholic (who does that?) to strong, place the appropriate cocktail stemware (or Soho cup) underneath, then drink away.
I’m not too hypercritical though…it works really well, and is a party hit.
That machine you described sounds a hell of a lot more practical than the juicero. I am not a fan of keruig machines because I feel they are wasteful (but that is just me. I won’t argue that they are very convenient). But a keruig machine but for cocktails sounds like a decent idea.
I got a single-cup Keruig for a gift, but found that when it gets used by several people in short duration, condensation builds in the electronics, and shorts it out. I returned 2 of them for replacements before figuring out what was causing the problem. My daughters like to use it for tea, so I normally use an old Corningware 6-cup percolator. We use the reusable cups…While I can certainly rationalize justification for being much less of a tree-hugger for other things, I choose to be too much of a tree hugger to enjoy the full Keruig experience.
Oh I can control my stuff remotely. After connecting to my VPN that is.
There must be simpler ways than every bulb having a network interface…
Maybe, if it were up to me the entire control system would be centered in my electrical panel. But doing that after the fact is quite difficult.
Why don’t just use simple lightswitches?
Because then the lights wouldn’t change brightness or color temperature with the angle of the sun, my motion sensors wouldn’t work, and the light wouldn’t turn on together with my morning alarm.
I see you’re a person of culture. I too get flashbanged every morning by all my lights.
Speaking of color temp, I shift my local environment’s hue with blues in the morning to assist with alertness, and reds at night for improved low-light vision. I do it manually with an IR remote I have conveniently velcro-taped to the wall next to the light switch. I am interested in your automated setup, I could see it being useful for tying the lights to the security cameras (motion is detected, triggers main lights to full brightness, play doberman_barking.mp3).
I explained my setup here
My phone lets me listen to over 10,000 different songs.
How many different songs do you listen to each week?
Oh, I just play my 15 favorites on loop.
Not sure, I usually listen to DJ sets on soundcloud
I blame Spotify for its crappy algorithm. I have over 2000 songs on my liked list and shuffle gets me the same 30 every day.
Don’t let ‘em
https://stevenaleong.com/tools/spotifyplaylistrandomizer
(What’s the worst that can happen, Spotify account/credit card stolen… publication of all listening data… I am paranoid, still trusted the guy and his tool for Tru-Ly Random Playlists)
…assume not True-Random Truly 😉
Thanks!
Their recommendations thing is still relatively new and developing, but I love listenbrainz recommendations. You can set it up to follow your music listens on multiple different music streaming apps (and locally too, I think). It made it easier for me to bite the bullet and cancel Spotify.
yeah, same here. i think their algorithm must select the songs that cost them the least amount to play at that time.
Clear your cache. That supposedly works.
I have and it does for a short while.
If you don’t like it, stop using it. There’s no one to blame but yourself.
Yeah, you’re right. I pick 2000 songs and put them in a list, then tell it to shuffle all 2000 songs, and it plays the same 30 over and over again. That’s all my fault.
You keep using a service/app that you know doesn’t work the way you want it to. Do you know the definition of insanity? xD
I have 7500 songs downloaded on my phone (actually downloaded, the .opus files) and I use Poweramp to listen to them. It consumes less battery, the quality is the same or better and the shuffle option works as expected. I also don’t need to log in to anything.
It’s not just theirs, I swear every fuckin streaming service has made the most dogshit algorithm of all time. If I have a playlist of 100 songs, and I hit shuffle and repeat, I expect a list to be generated with each song in a random order that will get played through until each song has been played once, and then ideally a new randomized list is generated to listen to the same 100 songs again in a different order.
For every streaming service I have used so far, my experience is that it’ll just pick a cluster of maybe 10-15 songs, and cycle through exclusively that until the algorithm either decides you want to listen to something not on your playlist, or the internet connection breaks for a second and the algorithm just gives up completely on randomization.
all 10,k at once.
I have 800 downloaded songs
When was the last time you listened to No. 658?
Mine play at random. Actual random, not depending -on-corporate-feels-random.
Picked by random index or ordered in a random sequence? The former has some small chance of playing the same song twice in a row while the latter plays every song before repeating, so the latter is superior.
My music folder is 8006 files (53.7GB) but I probably only listen to maybe 200 of them that are actually in my normal playlist.
I have over 6,00 songs on Media Monkey. I let them play at random while I’m cooking. Often I will skip one if I’m not in the mood and sometime I will delete one. Varity is the spice of life!
The kind I have, worst that happens is I can’t change the color or warmth of the light until I am reconnected. They still work with the switch going on or off, and they are set to return to default color/warmth settings when the fixture they are in is physically turned off so I also won’t be stuck with rave party disco lights.
That technology would be okay if it was 100% open source, and came with a hard-copy manual alongside purchase so I could write a Python script to control it from my PC. Then and only then would I consider deploying such a technology in my home.
Just buy ZigBee compatible bulbs, they run locally
Wow, just like my cheap LED bulbs. I even implemented some smart switches. When you press on the one side they turn of and when you press the other side they turn off. It’s like magic. I can even do it hands-free with my feet!
You can even change the brightness by flicking that switch real quickly
You just described home assistant. The only part not open sourced is the firmware in the device you want to control.
Zigbee device + zigbee usb bridge and you can talk to the device directly or via an MQTT abstraction layer provided by another open source service. The MQTT way makes it even easier to do.
Yeah I’m never buying those bulbs again. Learned that lesson years ago.
Being able to change colors from your phone is neat but let’s face it, you’re going to have it on the same setting forever anyway.
Maybe once I start selfhosting I’ll fuck with HomeAssistant but till I control what connects to what, how, and why, I’m good.
I view them as a new and separate product.
The regular lights, the “big light” as my neurodivergent friends call them, are normal bulbs with electroc-mechanical dimmers. The bulbs still burn out, the dimmers still break, and sometimes the power goes out entirely in storms or for maintenance, but in general they are pretty reliable. But I need to get up and manually actuate the switch to turn it on or off.
The smart lights are luxury lights and plugged into floor or table lamps. They set the mood and the tone. I’ve never liked the modes where they change color or brightness automatically, but I do like the ability to make the house green on St. Patrick’s day, or make certain rooms red, orange, or purple for Halloween. Or sometimes just whatever mood we want to go for. Being in lamps, that makes it easy to do things like reset them or just manually turn the electricity off if they are misbehaving.
I would prefer if they were on an open-source locally-hosted software. When I first did my investigation a few years ago there were a couple of projects in their infancy so maybe I need to look again.
I like using the smart bulbs as part of my wake up alarm. HomeAssistant starts fading the lights on 10 minutes before my alarm is set to go off.
I bought the bulbs before Hue made accounts mandatory, so I blocked the bridge from all internet access, and it never got the update. If I ever need new/more bulbs, I’ll be just buying some generic zigbee bulbs.
Hue bulbs are just zigbee. You can get an offline zigbee hub, plug it into Home Assistant, and control it without needing the Hue hub anymore. Then just keep using your existing bulbs and buy generic zigbee ones as needed to replace when they fail.
If it’s just dimming you could go with dumb dimmable bulbs and just make the light switch “smart”.
Apparently modern dimmers just PWM the power so it wouldn’t take much to make something that does that. I assume LED bulbs work nicely with dimmers by now.
The smart light switch has exactly the same problems as the smart bulb, and it’s much harder to replace.
But the benefit of a smart switch is that it remains “always on” for remote control, and physical actions on the switch also reflects on its state at the software level.
That said, I’d go with stuff that don’t need online connectivity.
Smart switches aren’t really a big deal to swap in. Plus, there’s more options for purely local only devices based on espHome.
The only reason I didn’t go that route is because I have wall sconces that I wanted to separate from pot lights, and I really don’t like doing drywall repairs.
it very much helps to be able to set colour temperature in this scenario
In my case, I don’t want all the bulbs on, and splitting up the circuit now would involve cutting holes in my ceiling and walls. Otherwise, yeah, I would have gone with a smart switch. Most LED bulbs are dimmable these days.
I have one WiFi bulb in my house near the entrance to my office. I turn it red to let my housemates know I have a meeting without leaving my chair.
This is about the only reason I could see for a WiFi light bulb. I could wire something but that’s a lot more work.
Do you manually set the light bulb to red or do you have some kind of automation?
I tried to set up an automation with home assistant, because I use it for everything anyway.
But getting the information “You’re in a call” from microsoft is impossible, if you can’t create an “app” in order to get an api key, if the company sysadmin doesn’t want you to have it.
It is more work, but imagine how cool you would feel with a big red button on your desk that you hit to turn the light on!
Thousands of people found out during 2020!
(I’m sure there was a physical button one somewhere)
Just to mention a few of my use cases:
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I adjust lights from my phone while seated in the sofa to get a good lighting for watching movies. Since my house has open solution between kitchen, dining table and TV corner, it’s nice to be able to reduce all lights to my preference.
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In the room I use as an office, it’s nice to have integrations with my periferals to adjust lighting to accomodate for video call meetings.
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It’s nice to go through the rooms to check which lights are off after going to bed.
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When putting my baby to bed, it’s nice to be able to dim down lights from her bedside while singing lullabies and comforting her. I can also dim lights in the hallway to reduce lights peeping through the cracks around the door and avoid lighting up the room when I leave.
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When on vacation, it’s nice to have lights which can vary a bit during the day to create the apparence of the home not being empty.
… So is this all worth it? Maybe not. Probably not. I’m pretty confident that I would be happy without any smart bulbs in my home. The inconveniences regularily outweigh the conveniences. But the conveniences do exist, and there are times when I am very happy to have them.
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Hass is awesome, but not something you’d probably use instead of an actual switch, I use it for my leds in my office where it makes sense.
I’m of the mind that Home Assistant should live alongside your lights and everything. They should still function without it, but function better with it. Like my lights are all still controllable from normal light switches, but with Home Assistant they change color temperature and brightness throughout the day with the sun.
Exactly, it adds, it doesn’t replace.
So you can set the lights when you’re away, or it’s inconvenient, but you have a switch to act like a normal human otherwise.
Tip: don’t get the smart bulbs, get snack sockets. Easier to fix and reset and bypass if needed.
Yeah that’s probably what I’ll do if I bother.
I’m an electrician, having regular lights is fine lol ;)
?
Lmao autocorrect got me! I meant smart sockets.
I haven’t reconnected all of my smart-bulbs in over two years because every time the software updates or when I have to change devices I have to reinstall everything all over again and find my account information and reset my password and all that, and it’s fucking absurd and I am done with it.
Fuck voice controls, it was fun at first but there are switches on the wall, I will keep using them.
Maybe in a few years some AI program will be released that actually works and can be used to assist with home-control and it will just work autonomously, but I doubt it. These companies have zero intention or motivation to produce things that make our lives better, they go halfway by making something “cool” we want to try, but don’t make efforts to make the new, cool things actually work better and more efficiently for users. No need, if they already buy the thing, then line goes up and that’s all that matters.
That was how I expected things to go when ‘smart’ bulbs came out based on all the other sMaRt stuff, but kinda expected it to improve over time for some silly reason.
We’re experiencing the same thing with AI right now, in that the companies are producing shit that promises the moon and the stars, but they’re not making actual effort to make a powerful, universal product that can actually be broadly useful. Why do that when you can just release incrementally updated models? Why make a product designed to help you do actual business and work when you can make a machine that is good at entertaining you for a few hours until you get bored? They’ve been doing this with smartphones and other tech products for years.
Yeah, I want smart switches w/ manual override, not smart bulbs. I can maybe see those smart bulbs for accent lighting or something, but definitely not for the majority of the lights.
The cheap ones we got have a fallback to 50% brightness warm white, if you turn them off and on again twice within a couple of seconds. Without that I doubt I could live with them either.
Matter over Thread is generally what you should look for. Local control is always possible, and it’ll work with any major ecosystem.
You do need a “Thread Border Router”, which you likely already own. If you’re tech inclined, Home Assistant is amazing, though it takes some tinkering.
Echo (4th Gen) Echo Show 8 (3rd Gen) Echo Hub Echo Studio Echo Studio (2nd Gen) Echo Plus (2nd Gen) Echo Show 10 (3rd Gen) Eero Beacon Eero Pro Eero 6 Eero 6+ Eero Pro 6 Eero Pro 6E Eero PoE 6 Eero PoE Gateway Eero Max 7 Apple TV 4K (2nd generation) Apple TV 4K Wi-Fi+Ethernet (3rd generation) HomePod (2nd generation) HomePod mini Nest Hub (2nd generation) Nest Hub Max Nest Wifi Pro Nest Wifi SmartThings Hub (v3) SmartThings Station Aeotec Smart Home HubAmazon…google…apple…yeah none of these routers are going in my house.
My concern is, those are microphones that listen if you criticize Our Great Leader.
Sad how far they’ve fallen. I used to think new tech was cool. Now it’s depressing.
You wont regret starting with HA. It’s awesome and the possibilities are endless.
The only smartbulb feature I need is dusk-to-dawn for my porch lights, and I found lightbulbs that actually have it builtin.
Good old electronics that don’t depend on the cloud.
Fancy. I just have a dumb switch that does it offline with any bulb. No dimming, though
I do this with a USB relay, it doesn’t use any radio communication but the downside is it requires some rewiring
I did this with a string lights, a smart plug, and a home assistant ‘sun’ integration
I just have my porch lights hooked up through The Clapper and my computer uses a local weather feed to trigger sundown mode and play a clap sample through my Bluetooth speaker array.
/S, but now I kinda want to do it.
If you ever need a smart bulb stick with one that supports Matter. Matter devices don’t need an internet connection.
Zigbee and Z-Wave, too!
Or go with WLED software on a suitable wifi connected controller (e.g. QuinLED).
Or go with a two-way switch in the wall and get off your lazy ass.
Only with smart lights can I laugh maniacally and have myself be silhouetted by flashing white-blue lights behind me. I didn’t become a mad scientist to do this stuff manually.
Never had a problem with password resets. e-mail-based 2FA and being unable to change the attached e-mail, OTOH…
