Absolutely can’t live happily with dumb lights only. It’s not just aesthetics - I believe it has a major impact on my sleep health.
Between flaky software/firmware, fear of network security, device incompatibilities, and the slow but steady enshitification of all the things, the industry has been a real let down.
I have a Smartthings hub, 4 z-wave switches, 2 z-wave wall warts, a handful of Sonos speaker (pre-voice assistant models), 2 HomePod Minis, one old Echo mini, and an Apple TV.
The Sonos and Echo pre-date HomeKit. The Echo only exists to add voice control to Smartthings and Sonos. "Alexa, play music in the living room" "Alexa, turn on the outside lights". Sadly, Sonos's software has been on a downward spiral for a few years now. The latest iOS app is less intuitive and reliable than the previous. And my wife's iPhone 16 Pro wouldn't connect to the network for months - I eventually had to shut it all down, hard reset everything, and rebuild the Sonos network. I'm done with them.
The Apple TV was bought for TV (duh), but serves as the Homekit base station. The HomePod Minis replaced a couple of Sonos in our bedroom (see above). But, Spotify doesn't play natively on the HomePod because Spotify and Apple seem to be in a state of corporate Cold War. So, that kinda sucks.
I'd love to add a few more light switches, but I'm reluctant to add any more Z-wave since it doesn't talk to Homekit (without rolling some sort of 3rd party bridge, which means adding another device to my network and managing it manually myself). So, I'm kind of stuck with what I have until I find the gumption to replace it all with Caseta or similar.
It's all a big old mess. But at least the shitty ecosystem has kept the house relatively uncomplicated. My wife manages to use all the things without much trouble. So I guess that's a plus.
I do have an RPi camera that I now have to figure out why I can't connect to and a thermometer that is supposed to alert me below a certain range that I also need to debug. But that's about it.
Give me SmartHome that can load and unload the dishwasher and I'd be happier.
Am I just so old to know that tying a permanent house control to a platform that can go away like say palm or blackberry or windows xp (vista driver signing) or support for the current wifi standard is slightly ridiculous? Especially for a 30 yr+ purchase?
If I want to be positive about smart home stuff I just share my confusion that the industry didn't standardize on PoE(power over Ethernet) and just give the end customer an Ethernet switch or switches that most novices can figure out and is trivial to transfer to the next homeowner.
Just look at my TV, for example. The way TV used to work was that you turned it on and the TV was on. Now, even though I've got a relatively friendly setup with an Nvidia Shield, a "user" still has to navigate through some menus to get what they want to watch on the TV.
And of course, every so often, one of the various streaming services will log out, which will take some manual intervention to get back up and running. There are three TVs in my home, so between them all I'm playing tech support on a TV at least once or twice a month.
And don't even get me started on the rigamarole involved with getting my kids set up with Minecraft. Servers, Realms subs, linking Nintendo and Microsoft accounts... I don't know how anyone without some tech in their background can even navigate that mess.
I'm annoyed, though, that streaming app hide "purchased" and rented content in favor of their recommendation lists. If I just rented a movie from Amazon Prime, and immediately open the Amazon Prime app on the streaming box, I don't need recommendations. If anything, I need to be nudged to watch the thing I just bought!
I have less and less patience for needy tech.
I'm going through a home reno and walk to document everything but dunno where how to start. [1]
It's only getting worse in terms of volume of 'smart' items, planned obsolescence of these items, trying to reduce reliance on BigTech.
[1] Related HN discussion -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38444577
I have a lot of smart devices. What's more important is that I have way more automations you'd expect from that number of devices. I even have smart tv switch to and autoplay a youtube playlist with new movie trailers that it makes automatically for me. I just click on the movie that I want to watch as usual, but it shows trailers and then plays the movie. This is magic and it is reliable. The only problem is to set this up of course, but it became so much easier with home assistant, I can't express how much I am amazed by an opensource software.
A lot of devices are pivoting to being "smart" but they aren't viewed as appliances. They need to just work, not be fancy. I have a lot of appliances that have some sort of wifi connection ability, but i don't need a notification on my phone when my laundry is done it already sings a song, or I've set a timer.
The items in my house that actually are helpful to have on our wifi, and be "smart" are the ones that I fret about being off or closed in the case of our garage door, or outside lights.
The ubiquitous private “anonymous” surveillance built into everything is the main dystopia here. People lack the imagination to see how it will inevitably be misused.
These houses with smart locks etc scare me.
More Work For Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave
By Ruth Schwartz Cowan
