Home Automation

Tech
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Have dumb passive automation, and have hardware back ups.

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I am very leery of a lot of the automation products on the market. They are riddled with poor security stacks, not maintained very long. In certain cases have state mandated backdoors and spyware. I don’t want my data leaving my home or being stuck in the cloud out of my cloud.

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[quote=“tomato, post:2, topic:5751, full:true”]
Have dumb passive automation, and have hardware back ups.

Then just go for dumb…

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Gosh, they have Chop Suey in Norway??? :scream:

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Hence the passive automation.

The ideal set up i have in mind is:

  • Door / motion sensors (passive, mostly)
  • Smoke/co sensor (also passive).
  • Temperature sensor in rooms (less helpful if you have one zone heating, but still useful).

Useful, but still not sure:

  • Smart locks. These sound a bit dangerous knowing what i know about computer security.

Couple musts for savings:

  • If you have a large yard, you can use something like rainmachine or rachio to smart-water the lawn. It’ll skip automatically if it’s going to rain that day, or if it has rained previous ttwo days depending on the soil type, plant etc. Will safe significant water, based on people’s anectodal data.

  • Nest - this is nice if you want to heat the home in a smart way. but this probably also phones home.

  • You can put your smart devices on a separate isolated network, put them on HA (https://www.home-assistant.io/, opensource) stack, and use a vpn.

  • With things like HA you can set up rules (if you detect motion in living room, and it’s after 1am, just turn on the led strips on the ground, otherwise turn the lights on etc).

  • Also with HA, you can get a zigbee/zwave siren to use it as an alarm when you arm the security system.

One thing i don’t know is if DIY home security qualifies for insurance discounts.

Never ever use a smart hub (besides what you have like google home, alexa etc), especially not chinese brands like xiaomi. they are good for sensors, but should not be used for any more than dumb sensors.

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Nope. Automation is useful. I can imagine where you have a leak and you don’t know it while you are on vacation. Install sensor on the main water pipe, and a shut off valve, and if leak is detected just shut it off all remotely.

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More likely this is bound to happen…

This manages to turn on by itself an voila when you return you come back to a soaked home and ten thousand dollar water bill. No thanks!

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Avoid faucets with an Ethernet jack.

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Come on, if I plan to be gone to Malaysia for 4 months, how hard is it to turn this off and be completely secure to know that the water is literally shut off?

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what if you have a yard that you need to keep green?

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i am telling - get the passive stuff :slight_smile: use a dumb faucet, get a smart sensor to detect leak.

I don’t know why it is so hard to see - you sound like an old guy now :slight_smile:

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if you are gonna get something of smarter faucet, get a leak sensor while at it.

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Again, if I am old, I ain’t got a yard to worry about…

Always go with the following universal principals:

  1. Location, location, location AND

  2. K.I.S.S. - KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID

There, if you honestly go with these two from an early age, the enormous riches one will accumulate will be astonding…

(Avoid all fancy German cars too if passed warranty phase, would be another wise suggestion…)

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what does this have anything to do with smart stuff? :slight_smile:

do you use netflix?

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Uh oh, it’s going to turn into another Yelp rant. Be prepared. :smile:

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Touch faucet with Alexa integration.

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alexa please flush the toilet twice.
or have a smell sensor to do it automatically.

lol.

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This guy is funny.

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Write up on the Alexa faucet in case anyone is interested.