It's more about hardware. Good luck getting your fire insurance cover damages when your Alibaba sourced board that you operate on the mains (via Alibaba source AC/DC converter) fries your living room.

The issues with DIY here are not hard issues in themselves (grounding, heat protection/ventilation), but they require a custom casing solution which is kind of hard if you don't want to end up with weird looking industrial cases on your wall and ceiling.

Home assistant also integrates well with openzwave so you can use most zwave devices including a variety of switches.

[0] https://github.com/sui77/rc-switch

A respectable 433MHz controlled plug, an arduino, 433MHz TX and a humidity sensor.

Interface configuration still requires writing some YAML (unless the editor got better since I last looked at it), but installation and configuration is now extremely simple.

You’re not going to convince your average homeowner to replace $100 of mechanical light switches that last forever with $3000 of IoT switches that have to be replaced every 10 years or so. You’re really not going to convince them to drop another $2000 on configuration.

By far the biggest use case is in home theaters, which is already a well-served market. Pro-level home theater installers have been putting in these systems for 20 years; they’ve just become cheaper. The pros definitely use this stuff too; open source is pure margin on an install versus a commercial solution.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14069975

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14077614

I have some hue bulbs right now, but if I ever need more I'd definitely consider a Tradfri hub too to away from the Hue's internet connected stuff.

I'm still looking for a solution that's inexpensive and gets out of my way (i.e., is aware of what's going on) without phoning home to some server ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And even with all that, I'm just not sure that a fully-automated home provides enough benefit to be worth the headache for the majority of folks. I'm in the top 1% of income, I set up my own system and it's nice; but even I don't think it's worth what I paid for it.

I worked in the CEDIA industry for a number of years, and was in direct competition with Logitech-- at one point we were even going to buy their remote division. My company was allergic to sustaining engineering. We would toss a buggy 1.0 iOS / Android app onto their respective stores and then forget about them. It felt dirty. I hated it.

When Apple's 64-bit transition happened, I dutifully warned my managers, was given no resources to get out ahead of the problem, and a year later all of our apps were kicked out of the App Store. It was hilarious, but not for our customers. :-/

Regarding humanity, the most important thing about any issue is what you're not considering. As humans we accumulate experience in proportion to our exposure to it. We are most vulnerable when life does not afford us an opportunity to accumulate that experience.

Things people get ripped of on? Home purchases, cars, funerals, weddings, etc. you won't have an opportunity to accumulate more than a few of these experiences in your lifetime. You cant extrapolate a larger pattern from your interactions.

As someone who has designed dozens of control surfaces-- let me you-- the problem is this: two dollar remote controls-- and believe me, tahts what we sold them to our OEMs for-- are "heads up" interfaces. Ipads, iphones, etc are "heads down" interfaces.

A single function, 2$ remote with no display at all is a tactile interface. You can in the complete dark control your TV more or less.

Our flagship, $1200 remote, wasn't as functional. People bought it anyways. I honestly don't know why.

We fuck up the things we only do once.

Scammers will gravitate to those events as they don't get punished by bad behavior. Ahhh, and this is why people use the big business, been around awhile car dealerships, funeral homes, etc. They get a solid dependable level of shafting instead of total shafting.

I have yet to find a wireless bluetooth headset where I can reliably (more than 100 button pressed) operate the device when it is on my head.

How do we fix capacitive touch buttons? Vibrator motor? Injection molded textures? Moar beeping?

Looks like I'll be buying parts and building my own equipment soon.

Getting home assistant setup is my xmas project. Kind of want to get rid of my Nest if I can.

If you have a temperature sensor and a relay getting rid of Nest can be pretty easy and cheap with Home Assistant (for the DIY-inclined) as well [1].

[1] https://partofthething.com/thoughts/enlighten-your-old-furna...

Now this just sounds like a project. sigh.