Smart Homes Are Terrible
My folks are visiting me in Southern California for a couple of months, so I rented them a house down the street. The place is new construction, modern and sleek. Rentals tend to be shabby and worn-out, so choosing a home with the latest and greatest felt like a way to make the experience hassle-free.All of the appliances and systems are brand-new: the HVAC, the lighting, the entertainment. Touch screens of various shapes and sizes control this, that, and the other. Rows of programmable buttons sit where traditional light switches would normally be. The kitchen even has outlets designed to rise up from the countertop when you need them, and slide away when you don’t.
It’s all state-of-the-art. And it’s terrible.
I’m no Luddite. I run a software company! I see the allure of high-tech gadgets and have fallen for their promises before. When my wife and I built a house more than a decade ago, we opted for all kinds of automated systems: low-voltage controls, mechanized blinds, irrigation systems that measure rain so the sprinklers come on only when you need them. We regretted it almost immediately. What we discovered is that this stuff requires setup, which can take more time than just doing things manually, and is maddeningly glitchy, forcing you to pay someone handsomely by the visit or the hour to fix your appliances for you.Tech makes many things better, but you shouldn’t have to learn how to use a house. You shouldn’t need a tech tour and an app (or five) to turn the heat down or clean the dishes. You shouldn’t have to worry that pressing the wrong button will set off a chain of events you don’t know how to undo. All these powerful processors and thousands of lines of code have succeeded in making everyday things slower, harder to use, and less reliable than they used to be.
Smart Homes Are Terrible
You shouldn’t need a tech tour and app to turn the lights on.Jason Fried (The Atlantic)
psx_crab
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •Kinda really sound like a skill issue? Seems like the author went in over-zealously without research and then regret it. There's tons of useless smart device that have no busness being smart device, but there's also tons of IOT device(specifically those simple one) that made my life easier.
pimento64
in reply to psx_crab • • •https://adultswim.fan/u/village604
in reply to pimento64 • • •You realize you can make your own smart devices, right?
And most smart devices are as easy to use as analog. All of my smart light switches function as light switches even without network connectivity. Same with my smart bulbs and thermostat. Plus, many of them can be flashed with Tasmota or ESPHome.
The effectiveness of a smart home is largely dependent on knowing what to get/avoid and having a solid plan of what you want to achieve and how to implement it. That's the skill issue.
pimento64
in reply to • • •OK bro
psx_crab
in reply to pimento64 • • •Honytawk
in reply to pimento64 • • •There are plenty of IoT devices that can function exactly like analog devices. Like smart switches that still have an analog switch on them, but can also be driven by motion sensors or a button on your phone.
Since those exist, your statement of "100% of them being trash" is just plainly wrong.
Or in your logic: "Your opinion is invalid"
littleomid
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •Smart home shouldn’t be prebuilt. One has to build it themselves so it matches their use case. One should optimally also not need 10 apps to run a home. I do everything using Home Assistant App.
I am also a firm believer that every smart device should have a physical override. If it doesn’t, then I am personally not interested. If it only works via app, then it has an expiry date.
masterspace
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •First of all, the author states part of the issue, then bets against it at the end:
The technology is literally in its primitive infancy. Matter is the open smart home standard, and the first version only just launched a couple years ago.
They've been continuously working on it and adding to it, but we are literally still in the 1.X era of the first smart home standard of any kind.
And that's just the backbone. That's like the Edison/Tesla/Westinghouse era, where North America just established that we're all going to use 120V, 60Hz AC electricity. It took a genuinely long time (decades) for light switches and receptacles to get as good and standardized and s
... Show more...First of all, the author states part of the issue, then bets against it at the end:
The technology is literally in its primitive infancy. Matter is the open smart home standard, and the first version only just launched a couple years ago.
They've been continuously working on it and adding to it, but we are literally still in the 1.X era of the first smart home standard of any kind.
And that's just the backbone. That's like the Edison/Tesla/Westinghouse era, where North America just established that we're all going to use 120V, 60Hz AC electricity. It took a genuinely long time (decades) for light switches and receptacles to get as good and standardized and seamless as they are now.
The forces of corporate walled gardens do tend towards a fragmented experience, but interoperable standards have prevailed before, and Home Assistant is the single most actively developed open source project and is a driving force for true consumer focused home automation.
Secondly, a bunch of the author's complaints are nonsense / just badly designed versions of smart home products:
Honestly, my takeaway from this piece is:
elkell
in reply to masterspace • • •caseyweederman
in reply to elkell • • •Smart Home technology is going to remain in its infancy because nobody is trying to improve it.
They know they don't make money off of selling light bulbs that just work. They make money off of holding your eyesight hostage until you sign all your personal data over to their datacenters.
stealth_cookies
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •Smart Homes arent terrible, but it is easy to end up with a terrible smart home if you don't take care in designing it.
Consider who is using it. Are they tech saavy enough to use an app? Is every user only within your household? If not, make sure everything can be controlled without an app, smart buttons are a great solution. What automation actually benefits your lifestyle? Keep it simple where possible, start with just lights and maybe some sensors.
I think it is best to have an overall plan to make sure your devices work together, but start small. Choose devices that run on stable platforms and locally. Make sure everything can connect to Home Assistant, even of you don't plan on using it, having the option may benefit you in the future.
like this
TVA likes this.
t3rmit3
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •realitista
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •bl4kers
in reply to realitista • • •realitista
in reply to bl4kers • • •1) Don't install anything that relies on a cloud subscription
2) Don't install anything that won't continue to function as a "dumb" home if the smarhome functionality breaks.
ClassifiedPancake
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •Stepos Venzny
in reply to ClassifiedPancake • • •timsjel
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •I had a similar thought recently when I moved into a new appartement. The main Doors are automated, so you only need to push a button to open them from the inside. From the outside you use your keycard. To make the door stay open you need to press a button at the top of the door, it has three "states": auto, manual, stay open (labeled 0, 1 and 2). Incorrect use of the doors breaks them, you can still open them manually but its very heavy compared to a old school normal door. When the doors breaks a Repair man needs to go out and... Do something.
Alot of people in the house are annoyed about this and complaints that people are "using the doors incorrectly" and hearing this set me off. IT'S A DOOR!! You should not need to think even a second about "how it works". We that lives there can of course get used to this (even if its a bit annoying) but what about our guests, delivery people etc. How are they supposed to know about this? Is it up to me to inform them? Is that reasonable just in the slightest? Its simply a crappy product.
megopie
in reply to alyaza [they/she] • • •So many extra moving parts, so many additional points of failure. But for what benefit? So I can turn on various washing machines on remotely… after loading them manually anyways? Why not have a washing machine that doubles as a cabinet so I don’t need to load it and unload it?
So I can have a lawn watering system that automatically waters when the soil moisture gets too low? To have a lawn mower roomba that automatically deploys when some sensor sees the grass get a bit to long? I’d rather not have a lawn, or at least some sort of native plant lawn that doesn’t need watering and constant mowing.
I don’t hate clever gadgets, I hate brain dead gadgets, automation of pointless systems. Why automate something that could be avoided entirely with better design. You have perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.