How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by autoexec on Thursday February 02, 2023 @07:09AM (#34625458)

The smartest house doesn't hand out the details of your life to 3rd parties or let contractors hear you having sex. We need more options for privacy respecting self-hosted systems that people don't have to design/create themselves. Some home automation tech is pretty nice, but its not worth paying for it forever with the data/privacy being given up, and in the inevitable consequences of having that data used against you for the rest of your life.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by ontarionick on Thursday February 02, 2023 @07:31AM (#34625648)

Setup Home Assistant, and only get devices that are 100% local control! There are fairly reasonable options for this.

I have a couple devices/services where I haven't been able to find good local only or where I find utility in the cloud connectedness, but that's very much the exception than the rule.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by wil421 on Thursday February 02, 2023 @07:57AM (#34625890)

Homebridge plus Apple Home in my opinion is much better than home assistant. If you’re android based or have really complicated automations I could see why home assistant would be better. Home assistant’s lack of compatibility with quite a few brands made me run Homebridge and home assistant together which defeats the purpose of HA.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by noodlesUK on Thursday February 02, 2023 @08:02AM (#34625939)

I'm curious which devices you have that are supported by home bridge but not home assistant. I've had nothing but success using home assistant.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by wil421 on Thursday February 02, 2023 @09:28AM (#34626909)

This was over a year ago. Wyze and HA were having spats over API access. Unifi did not have a plug-in and I ended up having to install Homebridge.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by bmurphy1976 on Thursday February 02, 2023 @12:52PM (#34630387)

Can't speak for Unifi but the Wyze support is pretty dreadful. That's entirely on Wyze though and the price you pay for buying the cheapest option. Personally I'm going to replace all my Wyze hardware over time and kick them to the curb.

I'm starting with my Garage Door opener: I built one myself and connected it to Home Assistant which is connected to Google. Now I can open the door using Google Assistant, something I can't do with Wyze. I also don't have to open up their stupid app and wait for it to establish a video connection before I can tell it to open up the door.

Wyze is cheap and easy, but it's also hot garbage.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by wil421 on Thursday February 02, 2023 @07:20PM (#34635356)

Wyze refused to reconnect to my new WiFi access points with the same SSID but a different password. All kinds of resets did nothing and I ate the costs and switched my smart plugs to Kasa from TP Link. It’s been better but not without faults.

Philips hue has very rarely caused me troubles except the adhesive on their cabinet lights was garbage.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by kragen on Thursday February 02, 2023 @08:12AM (#34626041)

100% local control rules out any android or especially apple devices

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by count on Thursday February 02, 2023 @09:10AM (#34626670)

One of the requirements for HomeKit branding is that you work without internet connectivity.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by kragen on Thursday February 02, 2023 @09:42AM (#34627125)

that's a good start, but if you have 100% local control over a device that is refusing to work (because it doesn't have internet connectivity or for any other reason), you can fix the bug (or apply someone else's fix you downloaded from gitlab)

that doesn't work if you've ceded that control to apple, because they are not local

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by wil421 on Thursday February 02, 2023 @07:15PM (#34635297)

I can put HomeKit devices on a VLAN and not have them phone home. My Apple TV or HomePod will act as a bridge and will carry out my automations while I’m gone. Apple devices don’t bother me they aren’t an Ad company and have products I’ll buy into.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by count on Friday February 03, 2023 @11:36AM (#34643465)

You..you do have control over the devices without internet access. That's the point.

You don't have '100% control' over things like code because they're embedded, certified devices, generally.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by autoexec on Thursday February 02, 2023 @09:52AM (#34627254)

That looks really interesting, for me at least, but that leans pretty far into the design/create yourself category. I have family who are realistically never going to pick up a pi and flash the OS to get that set up. I see there are a few devices you can buy though, and while I don't think they'd make it past something like this: https://yellow.home-assistant.io/nvme-selection-power-supply... (if they even got that far) something more like this: https://ameridroid.com/collections/kits/products/odroid-n2-h... might work alright...

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by Steltek on Thursday February 02, 2023 @10:52AM (#34628260)

I want a cheap home smart camera that offer good local control. It seems like the premium jump from Wyze is like $100 per camera.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by epistemer on Thursday February 02, 2023 @09:59AM (#34627358)

All this to me is pure technological kitsch and bullshit.

My coffee maker has had automation built in for years, it makes a ton of sense for it to automatically make coffee in the morning yet even for free I have never used it even once.

The light switch? Give me a break.

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Re:How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb ... by azinman2 on Thursday February 02, 2023 @04:50PM (#34633674)

I love being able to hit one button at night and have every light turn off and set the alarm.

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