Smart-homes: The future, or harmful?

frogman [he/him]@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 120 points –

What do you guys think of the idea of smart homes? I could make a basic setup using https://home-assistant.io to control my home temperature and lighting; the tools for doing this are everywhere nowadays and implementation doesn't seem too horrific anymore.

But setting aside what I "can" do, is this something that I "should" do? How can a person implement this without connecting any devices to the internet?

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I've been using smarthome stuff for quite a while now, and my conclusion is this:

  • You absolutely have to stay local. Home Assistant is the only software I know that can pull that off at the moment, but never ever use commercial devices that have to talk to their servers. Once the servers are down or your internet connection is down, those devices are just bricks, and you don't want that at home.
  • The setup is only really usable by the person who set it up. If you're living alone that's fine, but anybody else will have a hard time tapping in your secret code to turn on the lights. All trained behavior like pushing a light switch to turn the lights on and off are violated in a smart home, even if it's just because the delay between pushing the button and the lights going on is increased by 100ms.
  • You have to monitor battery levels of sensors and replace them to keep the system working. There are dozens of coin cells in your home, they are going to run out eventually (after a few months).
  • Have a fallback mechanism when the network goes down. It's not great when you can't turn on the lights to check why the WiFi router isn't responding.

All trained behavior like pushing a light switch to turn the lights on and off are violated in a smart home, even if it’s just because the delay between pushing the button and the lights going on is increased by 100ms.

This is only true if you're controlling bulbs instead of switches. Virtually all of my lights are on z-wave switches that work almost exactly the same as regular switches, the only difference being that the switch paddle doesn't stick in an on or off position. Smart control is strictly in addition to the primary control.

Completely agreed on your other points, though. Absolutely no chance I'd use anything other that a local Home Assistant server that handles all processing locally.

I've installed an Aqara wall switch in a public room, and people are complaining that it doesn't feel as well as a regular light switch. It's really hard to get it right.

Yeah, unfortunately there's not much that can be done there, at least not without adding little motors to the switch so it can match state with whatever it's controlling. My experience has been that there's an adjustment period, but eventually it's not a big deal. Sort of like switching to paddle switches from toggle switches; at first it's different, and people don't like different when it comes to things they don't think about, like light switches. But eventually the new thing becomes normal, and it's not a problem anymore.

That said, the z-wave toggle switches are garbage, it's much easier to adjust to paddles.