While I've never had issues with turning on and off lights via Alexa -> Smart Plugs, I have had my Echo Dot unable to play my wakeup alarm due to internet blips. Really? That particular function couldn't store some data in some sort of local storage? Like, I don't want the thing to be able to tell me Rick Springfield's biggest hits in order of Billboard chart performance while offline... I simply want my alarm sound to play at 6am.

You need an offline smart assistant: https://medevel.com/10-open-source-voice-assistants/

I think in this case it would be called an alarm clock.

Yes, while one could make the case that I should purchase and plug one more thing into my wall. Would it be impossible to place a small amount of memory on the board that remembers alarm settings? If this thing is built as a convenience, I don't want to have a bunch of other devices for convenience (a radio, a noise generator, an intercom....)

And it should be a wind-up mechanical one so that power failures don't affect it.

Mental failures affect those. I would never remember to wind it.

You don’t want a remote-controlled smart (actually: dumb) home. You want a fully local solution, then you can add remote, internet-dependent functionality like alexa to it. That way your primary mode of control will always work.

Agreed. I'll add to that a healthy application of the Principle of Least Astonishment. If you have a light, there should be an obvious light switch nearby that turns the light on and off, and does so even if your home automation system is offline for whatever reason.

"Smart" devices should, wherever possible, function as dumb devices if for whatever reason they can't be smart. There are a whole lot of devices that simply become bricks.

"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."

I know it’s a joke but if the failure mode is “brakes don’t work” on an escalator full of people, it is much worse than stairs

Very true— I would definitely imagine that escalator brakes are a thing that fail closed in the absence of power, but clearly there are failure modes (probably a rare confluence of multiple concurrent failures) where this kind of thing can happen, such as that incident in Rome in 2018:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1SjQfwLieU

Another in China in 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADb57ysvCbU

https://coconuts.co/hongkong/news/engineer-gets-2-months-in-... (misleading URL, actually suspended sentence)

Rather that than an falling elevator, but it still doesn't look fun

Rhasspy is an easy to use open source, fully offline, suite for this with wake word detection and integration with home assistant.

I've never understood the desire to control systems by speaking to them in code words. Speaking monopolizes a shared channel, requires diverting your conversation, and is really slow.

For practically anything that involves using code words to tell the computer what to do there are better input methods, like physical switches, or purely automated.

This is slightly off-topic, but in your opinion what are some of the reasons people prefer to use voice input with code words over the other options ?

Physical switches rely on light as a handshaking method.

When the light is off, the switch is invisible and you have to guess at where it is, or where you need to be walking (hitting your shins on things, or stepping on lego)

Using a non-light based interface means it works just as well when the light is on and off, vs being a broken experience for half of the usecases

Cooking. My hands might be occupied or dirty etc, but I need to set or change a timer.

Yep. Cooking is what I use Alexa for. The main control is homeassistant, but it forwards some lights to Alexa for me to control ober voice.

Or washing dishes; pretty much anything in the kitchen.

Thanks for helping me to understand this better.

1. Hands are dirty/unavailable (like other mentioned cooking) 2. The physical controls are physically across the room 3. The physical controls can't be located easily (lost remote, dark room)

Another point, the cognitive load of speaking a command is different than pecking through menus on a phone or finding the right button on the remote/device. It may be easier to just speak out load depending on your state if mind.

If I'm curled up comfortably with my SO, and don't want to take ten minutes of unwinding, doing whatever, then tucking back up together...

It seems like in that case a remote control could be placed nearby -- are you also using voice activated code words to control the television ?

> are you also using voice activated code words to control the television ?

I happen to have backed a Kickstarter that will hopefully enable me to do just that ;)

If you're interested in getting more quickly and WANT to write software, you can have the Raspberry Pi control most televisions over HDMI-CEC using libcec [0], and then you just need the voice recognition stuff mentioned above (Rhasspy [1]).

I had to do something similar (minus voice controls) to keep my existing remote's volume controls working with an analog volume device [2].

[0] https://github.com/Pulse-Eight/libcec [1] https://github.com/rhasspy/rhasspy [2] https://rkeene.org/viewer/tmp/cec-volume.cc.htm

Unless your SO is sitting on the remote

Agreed. I've been really happy with Ikea's Tradfri line. It's all on Zigbee, works without internet and doesn't need an "Ikea account". However lights and blinds only for now, plus they have perpetual shortages.

And get some motion detectors. Your lights should come on when someone enters the room and the light is below a threshold. I usually hit the off switch by the door when I leave, otherwise if no one is present the lack of movement will dim and then turn the lights off. It's 2021 people!

Motion detection is not presence detection. I still want the light even if I'm sitting still, such as reading a book or using a computer.

We use the motion detection to turn on lights and usually turn off manually. I've set up ours to remain on until a fair amount of inactivity. In two years it's only turned off once whilst we were watching a movie.

Do you not move when you're asleep?

Don't use the motion detection/automatic in bedrooms.

This is how the Honeywell stuff seems to work, at least for my thermostat. As long as there is some local wifi, thermostat and controlling unit will work, even if you cannot contact them from the internet.

What happens if power goes out, the units stop working if WiFi isn't on a UPS?

This would definitely be a problem in cold climates where a dead furnace could lead to frozen and burst pipes.

The unit is event-driven, so no, you would just lose the ability to change its current programming. Regardless, it can be bypassed on the actual boiler heater, it's just a thermostat. It's a decent set of compromises, definitely better than anything going "no internet, no service".

In my case: No power would mean I have nothing to control anyway. The only reason my local network is down would be my power down. That happened twice in the last 16 years.

I've actually had a really positive experience using a smart thermostat. The main benefit is having a temperature schedule, which my previous dumb thermostat didn't have. It's also handy being able to adjust the temperature from my phone whenever I'd like to. I find controlling it by voice kind of pointless. On the phone, you can easily see what it's currently at, then adjust it for the next e.g. hour, after which it'll switch back to the default schedule.

I agree being able to change the temperature settings from a phone would be convenient, but they've had "smartish" thermostats capable of relatively complex temperature schedules for at least 20 years.

No need for an internet connection or mega corp data collections.

can smartish ones detect when you leave home and turn down the heat until you get back? My nest can. This is great because my schedule is not the same every day.

Most dumb thermostats also have next-hour-override functionality, though I will say I had a Nest at a previous house and also thought it was pretty decent. In particular, it was nice being able to turn it way down when going away, but then crank it back up when heading home but still 30 mins away.

You don’t really need anything “smart” for this. This is basically simple remote with timer. My $50 thermostat has adjustable schedule with override capability. No machine learning needed. The only thing that’s missing is the phone capability but I think that would be easy to add.

Totally agree. I still don’t get the appeal of “smart” whatevers.

> No machine learning needed

Now this reminded me of the windows 10 update announcement proudly declaring that they were going to start using ‘machine learning’ to figure out if you were using your computer to minimise the disruption from their automatic updating. I’m still baffled by it. Why not solve the actual problem at hand - updates being really slow, risky/buggy, settings altering, and very disruptive even when scheduled, and users not having enough control over updating? I’m pretty sure ‘machine learning’ isn’t needed to determine whether a computer is being used.

I have smart thermostats, specifically the AVM Fritz! ones. They only require their own router (which, where I live, is a common thing to have) and use DECT to talk to the router (you can find DECT usb sticks that work on Linux, the protocol they talk isn't super complex). They run about 2-10 years on a single battery, depending on use.

And they're fully offline, the router has an API I can control them from (HomeAssistant instantly picked up both thermostats and lets me control them), pretty much everything I want.

AVM's smarthome story is miles ahead of Google/Apple/etc. Same for IKEA's smarthome stuff. If you need offline capable things, use those.

Check out Home Assistant. Not sure how well voice controls work with it but my automation is flawless so far. Really seems to help using local only open source firmware where I can and Zigbee for any sensors that aren't hard wired in (mostly for battery efficiency.)

I just read yesterday that Home Assistant is now automatically included in Raspian (Raspberry Pi targeted OS). I run my home and shop automation on Pi's but ultimately a NUC is probably a better long term solution.

I have openhab in place for issues like this. Enjoy the smart home with a local connect-to-everything controller/bridge. Runs on a Pi, as a VM, ... Works great!

I never bought in to the premise of the "smart home."

It sounds like endless minor annoyances and aggravation more than anything.

In my experience it brings minor conveniences: yelling at Google or Alexa to turn on the kitchen lights when your hands are greasy, or dimming the lights with your phone when you're sitting on the couch with a cat on your lap. None of these are huge selling points, but once in place they're nice.

If done right, though, the system just degrades gracefully to a normal set of switches.

Yep, that's pretty much been my experience.

I'm in a rental, so instead of smart switches I just use smart bulbs. For like <$10/bulb, I've got full RGB/colour temperature adjustable.

Most are configured so turning them on turns them on full brightness and pleasantly warm. The one in the bedroom and the baby's room are configured to turn on dim and warm, and if you do another quick off-on flick of the switch they'll come on at full brightness.

So they... work like normal light bulbs. Except they're all remote controllable from your phone. So if the baby falls asleep on top of you and the light's on you can turn it off without getting up and waking her up.

From there, I added some basic z-wave sensors in a few spots in the house. If you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, as soon as you step in the hall the motion sensor picks up that (1) someone is moving in the hallway and (2) the hallway is currently really dark; and it turns the hall light on a really dim red. Enough you can see where you're going without killing your night vision. Then a minute after it stops sensing motion it turns off.

If you walk into the one end of the basement where the washer/dryer/workshop/storage/etc are, all of the lights will come on for you, and a couple minutes after it stops sensing motion they all turn back off. If you want them to stay on you can just flip the switch off-on to turn them all on and keep them on. So now if you just wander over to let the dog out, grab a tool from the shop, throw a load of laundry in, etc, the lights are just automatic. No need to try and balance a laundry basket while you screw around with light switches.

The room my office is in does the same thing except uses my computer's lock state for presence detection. So when I walk in the lights come on, when my computer unlocks it keeps them on. When I lock my computer it goes back to the regular program. At any point I can pull my phone out and flip them over to the super bright, super harsh light when I need it for doing fine work instead of working at my computer.

Just a lot of little, basic conveniences. And it's amazing how futuristic it feels to just wander around the house and have lights turn on and off for you as you do.

It all runs locally in a VM on my server, with all the smart devices entirely isolated from the internet. If the internet's out... nothing changes. If my server/WAP/whatever dies, then my house just goes back to working like a normal house.

> I mean, yeah, I can toggle the light switch to get it to turn on, but then it gets screwed up and I need to go into the app to reset it when the internet comes back on.

That doesn't sound right. All the Zigbee/Z-Wave switches I use maintain proper state through HA, even if they lose connectivity for a period of time.

I added a bunch of Shelly Wi-Fi relays to my house and I can see temperatures of every room, tell the heater to turn on etc, from anywhere in the world, with full self-hosting if I want it.

I have been presently surprised with Google Assistant in this regard, the integration with my TV (with new Google TV Chromecast) is amazing and a lot of time I don't bother to pick up the remote. (Saying things like "Play xyz on TV", switches on the TV, figures out the right app and starts playing the show saving me 4-5 actions on the remote)

We put Etekcity remote controlled sockets in a few places and stopped there. That being said, apparently you can buy a radio module to control them from a raspi, but we haven't gone there yet.