The reason really is the extreme arrogance of every single manufacturer that wants you to install their app and use their ecosystem. That might have worked if one of them became super dominant and pushed everyone else out. But because that didn't happen, now I have to install 20 apps for 20 different manufacturers with no guarantees of interoperability.
Instead of that I'm choosing to vote with my wallet and mostly stay away until this is resolved. Skyrocketing inflation is not doing anything to change my mind either.
I think it’s also just that there’s not that much it makes sense to automate in the home. I run Home Assistant, and I do not have much of the typical home stuff on it. Why would I want to automate lights? My cat feeder has a timer already. I’m not about to get a smart lock and can’t imagine why I would want to automate one.
The useful things I do use it for are:
-heating control to take advantage of cheaper electric rates (I’m on 15 min spot pricing)
-automatically setting EV charging times to optimized cost
-a remote to start and stop a water pump to water plants in the garden, optionally with a timer
-a remote to consolidate a couple of lights that I want to turn on and off simultaneously to watch movies.
That’s it. Controlling my pool heater would be good but unfortunately it has a safety that trips if the power is interrupted. I’ve been using this system for years and simply cannot think of much else I want to automate.
Wait until you're disabled and there are days you can't get out of bed.
Having your bedroom lights fade in at low brightness a few minutes before your alarm goes off is also really nice.
If you live in an area that's not great time wise there are also a lot of arguments to be made for making it look like your home is occupied when you're away.
The smart home is a thousand small problems to solve and should never be one catch all.
The automatic cat feeder works well. So does the roomba. I like my automated blinds but will stick with manual light switches. I consolidated my home theatre remotes. Note how they’re all seperate problems.
The smart home is here. It’s just that it was never a use case for a singular smart home platform. It was always 1000 seperate problems to solve that in no way ever belonged together and the experience was always worse when trying to combine it.
They will possibly all converge when they expose a "tool interface" to some kind of model-on-prem(ish) device that you install in your home. Think of an OpenAI or Anthropic or Apple or Samsung-branded "cortex" or "brain" that controls everything to some degree using fast local models, but outsource more complex orchestration up to the cloud. Smart home products will integrate with these devices because its going to open up a whole new generation of the same devices they sell, just with AI model integration this time.
These devices already have a precedent, your apple tv or google/amazon speaker thing. I think we will see these probably become LLM/model/AI gateways in the future.
The smartest thing is having a light switch you walk over to. Doesn’t fail randomly, doesn’t need an internet connection to operate, doesn’t stop working when your internet is down.
My garage remote is in a PIN number lock box next to the garage. Open lock box, press remote, close lock box.
Perhaps it popped because of devices from Google, Amazon, Apple, Sonos, etc. that surveil everything you say in their presence. My houses are fairly automated, but I have excluded any device with a microphone.
I was going to say I feel like my smart home technology is working great.
Then I remembered that I have to make shortcuts to bridge two products, it fails half the time, my ikea bridge has to be restarted every 30 minutes, and my smart garage door opener takes 30 seconds to respond now.
I don’t know why you’d want to over pay on basic widgets that are really just glorified timers, not to mention are likely just full of security issues waiting to happen.
arguing with an AI that is intentionaly obtuse, is not what anyone wants when its time to try enjoying your home. noone needs to have a conversation with thier lightswitch, its for turning light on or off not pretending to be your pal and trying to exploit emotional reflexes.
i have a broken record for this, "stop wasting time and effort trying to pretend to be human, and get to work building something that does what its told to do."
The reason really is the extreme arrogance of every single manufacturer that wants you to install their app and use their ecosystem. That might have worked if one of them became super dominant and pushed everyone else out. But because that didn't happen, now I have to install 20 apps for 20 different manufacturers with no guarantees of interoperability.
Instead of that I'm choosing to vote with my wallet and mostly stay away until this is resolved. Skyrocketing inflation is not doing anything to change my mind either.
I think it’s also just that there’s not that much it makes sense to automate in the home. I run Home Assistant, and I do not have much of the typical home stuff on it. Why would I want to automate lights? My cat feeder has a timer already. I’m not about to get a smart lock and can’t imagine why I would want to automate one.
The useful things I do use it for are:
-heating control to take advantage of cheaper electric rates (I’m on 15 min spot pricing)
-automatically setting EV charging times to optimized cost
-a remote to start and stop a water pump to water plants in the garden, optionally with a timer
-a remote to consolidate a couple of lights that I want to turn on and off simultaneously to watch movies.
That’s it. Controlling my pool heater would be good but unfortunately it has a safety that trips if the power is interrupted. I’ve been using this system for years and simply cannot think of much else I want to automate.
> Why would I want to automate lights?
Wait until you're disabled and there are days you can't get out of bed.
Having your bedroom lights fade in at low brightness a few minutes before your alarm goes off is also really nice.
If you live in an area that's not great time wise there are also a lot of arguments to be made for making it look like your home is occupied when you're away.
The smart home is a thousand small problems to solve and should never be one catch all.
The automatic cat feeder works well. So does the roomba. I like my automated blinds but will stick with manual light switches. I consolidated my home theatre remotes. Note how they’re all seperate problems.
The smart home is here. It’s just that it was never a use case for a singular smart home platform. It was always 1000 seperate problems to solve that in no way ever belonged together and the experience was always worse when trying to combine it.
They will possibly all converge when they expose a "tool interface" to some kind of model-on-prem(ish) device that you install in your home. Think of an OpenAI or Anthropic or Apple or Samsung-branded "cortex" or "brain" that controls everything to some degree using fast local models, but outsource more complex orchestration up to the cloud. Smart home products will integrate with these devices because its going to open up a whole new generation of the same devices they sell, just with AI model integration this time.
These devices already have a precedent, your apple tv or google/amazon speaker thing. I think we will see these probably become LLM/model/AI gateways in the future.
Working on it, they all already expose a tool interface, you just have to know where to look for it and how to use it!
The smartest thing is having a light switch you walk over to. Doesn’t fail randomly, doesn’t need an internet connection to operate, doesn’t stop working when your internet is down.
My garage remote is in a PIN number lock box next to the garage. Open lock box, press remote, close lock box.
That’s smart.
Perhaps it popped because of devices from Google, Amazon, Apple, Sonos, etc. that surveil everything you say in their presence. My houses are fairly automated, but I have excluded any device with a microphone.
Also the devices don't fucking work and all require their own dumb app most of the time.
Not my Sonos setup doesn't, have had it for close to a decade now. Would replace it with brand new Sonos gear if I could.
Also, wouldn't be hard to put in a solution to block that type of traffic over the mic.
Sonos updated its policies a.coupme years back to allow selling customer data.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/1desj5c/sonos_update...
I was going to say I feel like my smart home technology is working great.
Then I remembered that I have to make shortcuts to bridge two products, it fails half the time, my ikea bridge has to be restarted every 30 minutes, and my smart garage door opener takes 30 seconds to respond now.
So on second thought, yeah, this all sucks.
Maybe you should put a smart power socket in front of the Ikea bridge to power cycle it every 30 minutes?
(I'll see myself out then.)
I expect the more significant concern would be OpenClaw opening your front door for someone else.
I think it's just a joke/reference to HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey
I don’t know why you’d want to over pay on basic widgets that are really just glorified timers, not to mention are likely just full of security issues waiting to happen.
People tried to monetize it too early.
Was this whole article just a set-up for that punchline??
smart devices dont play well.
arguing with an AI that is intentionaly obtuse, is not what anyone wants when its time to try enjoying your home. noone needs to have a conversation with thier lightswitch, its for turning light on or off not pretending to be your pal and trying to exploit emotional reflexes.
i have a broken record for this, "stop wasting time and effort trying to pretend to be human, and get to work building something that does what its told to do."