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It would be fun to motorize the window blinds and the window slide to automatically adjust to temperature, draft and humidity variations to save with passive cooling…but that’s not what is meant by “smart home”, is it?
No that’s totally smart home and easily doable with full local control using something like Home Assistant.
That’s what enthusiasts might mean by “smart home” But businesses are thinking more like “put a wiretap in your living room that we can play ads through”
Yeah; you really have to figure out what products are worth your time.
Look up what’s integrated with HomeAssistant locally and that’s a good start.
“IoT via app linked with the manufacturer cloud” is bullshit bullshit bullshit, and there are fewer and fewer choices, especially in America. Try find ing a ZWave door lock, for example.
For me, if I can’t control it with Home Assistant, it does not go in my house. I have smart plugs and I’m getting a smart thermometer and they are all badged for the Works with Home Assistant program so that they can be used even if the company goes out of business. I will buy nothing else.
Be careful with that. Home Assistant also has plenty of integrations that just talk to a company’s cloud service.
Yup. All my IoT devices are on a network that doesn’t have access to the internet. To control remotely, I use a VPN. Even though I don’t think it’s technically necessary, I take the precaution of blocking connections to the big company’s APIs/websites for all my IoT devices, just in case.
I wish this were easier for the layman to do. Some companies like Unifi make it pretty painless, but they are expensive and it’s really hard for the non-networking-savvy folks to know exactly which devices you need from them to have a working setup.
Yeah, if it’s not Zigbee or Z-Wave, I’m not touching it. Because I won’t use anything that has a cloud account attached to it.
And then you have Lock-picking Lawyer bypassing the smart lock in seconds.
I think a lot of the smart home stuff total worthless fluff, but there are parts that have use.
I can control my HVAC remotely, so I have shut it down in response to brown outs and an effort to not waste power.
Yeah, remote HVAC is great. I also like the smart door lock that auto-unlocks as I walk up to it so I don’t need to deal with keys… though that doesn’t always great and I end up having to use the fingerprint reader to unlock it. It is still nice to be able to unlock the door remotely to let my neighbor bring in our packages while we’re gone or to feed the dog if I’m working late.
I keep thinking about getting a fob system. I installed a keypad for myself and that is awesome.
The fingerprint reader works well. I don’t like using keypads much, but they do work well.
The smart doorbell hasn’t done much yet (and hopefully won’t ever be needed to do anything), but it is nice to be able to set my doorbell ring to be a fart sound. It is both funny and doesn’t make my dog bark at the doorbell.
