Never had a problem with password resets. e-mail-based 2FA and being unable to change the attached e-mail, OTOH…
I will never use smart technology. I prefer analogue technology. Imagine using a subscription in your home for lights and TV and AC and heat and appliances and then boom, they decide to terminate your subscription and now your home is inaccessible for habitat.
There are ways you can set up a smart home without subscriptions, for instance using Home Assistant. But most people somehow chose to be stuck in these cloud apps with subscriptions. Ring, with a subscription for a doorbell, is wild to me.
Honestly I’m fine with smart technology. As long as I can homebrew it or something ;3
You already have a subscription for water, electricity and heating. Your parents had and your grandparents too.
yeah, because those are necessary for survival? like, fundamental components of a comfortable modern life? being forced to subscribe to things that used to be one-and-done purchases is ridiculous attempt to make us rent our pleasures. have fun with that
They are not necessary. They are convenient. You pay for convenience.
Water?
Water what?
And they’re two different services that can’t be comparer… One for energy and other utilities, and the other a subscription to use software to turn on the lights lol
I added my heated socks to Home Assistant so I can have them turn on when getting out of bed because I have a pressure pad under my mattress to track when I get up.
Frivolous automations is the way! I have a WLED strip go on 5 pm when a wheely bin needs to go out, with colour matching next day’s bin collection.
“Does the pole count as part of the traffic light…?”
Do the bulbs that are off in the picture count?
The only “smart” light fixture I have has its own separate remote for switching between modes and adjusting light. I will never buy a device that either needs Bluetooth of Wi-Fi.
Most of the best globes run on ZigBee or equivalent!
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.
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.Thanks for the info. I’ll be looking into that.
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
In the future my negative self-talk will come in handy - just think harder, you lazy fuck
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.
Sonos is about the only smart home thing I like. It makes setting up a whole home sound system with discrete zones significantly easier than trying to wire it all up.
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.
I do. Had mine for 10+ years and can’t live without it now. It’s amazing to not have to remember to turn on your outside lights, or to set your lights for a movie… or if you forgot to turn off the lights or…
If it has to be smart, instead of every single bulb, wouldn’t you better have the light switch in smart?
A bulb is easy to replace by anyone. The switch isn’t.
Your point is?
If someone wants some “smart” lights but can’t do mains wiring they are going to buy the bulbs. Easy as that. Most people don’t know/care about the issues those bulbs have.
Ah, ok. Doing it easy vs. doing it right.
(Different commenter here) Except that not only does your solution not really add much benefit to the average consumer, but if there’s an issue like this with the switch, which would be using the same technology, then you can’t just change it unlike slapping in some regular lightbulbs temporarily. Sure for a cluster of 6 pot lights the switch would be great but for lamps(which may be sharing their plug with something else) or single ceiling fixtures it’s one or two bulbs vs. paying someone to install a [likely more expensive] smart switch to turn on one light. And this is a friend reporting on tech they don’t have themselves so it literally could be that the dude had a smart switch!
If you redirected the energy you used on being smug into being smart you may have gotten there on your own, but here we are.
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.
Two options is plenty, especially without apps. Who is getting rid of switches?
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.
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
The first thought into my head was that you’re somehow doing PWM by directly switching mains electricity.
Fancy. I just have a dumb switch that does it offline with any bulb. No dimming, though
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.
Is this real?
It shouldn’t be. Usual smart bulbs let you use the light switch. Unless you somehow removed the analog switch, though, maybe?
But the switch needs to be in the on position all the time for the smart bulb to work. I’m pretty sure I tried turning them on like normal bulbs at my sister’s and it did not work. You need to do the “Alexa turn on x”
That’s correct, although I do like that my IKEA ones have programmable remote switches. I don’t tend to use them anyway, but my whole thinking is to Home Assistant them whenever I have time. The real dream, though, is have my house setup up detect exact location so they can fade in and out as I approach like a freaking video game, though, which is apparently possible.
But no, I just flip a switch like a person who doesn’t have time for this lol
I mean they might need to log in to reconfigure their settings, not just turn them on and off. It’s the meme made after the fact that assumes he doesn’t have a switch lol
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.
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.
It also supports Beken bk72xx chips which are often found in cheap Tuya devices. I have them all reflashed with ESPhome which eliminates the cloud middleman https://esphome.io/components/libretiny
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.
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 see you’re a person of culture. I too get flashbanged every morning by all my lights.
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.
Oh I can control my stuff remotely. After connecting to my VPN that is.
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.
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.
Speak for yourself my main server is explicitly firewalled from the modem
This isn’t true.
It’s a meme that achieved urban legend status.
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.
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
Building a home assistant at the mo…our main impetus was a Flood Event in the basement brewery lol
But can your normal lightbulbs ddos a Minecraft server?
You underestimate the electromagnetic emissions of cheap knock-off led bulbs!
okay fine i’ll get some
!lemmysilver
!lemmysilver
!lemmysilver
