Smart homes may be a bright idea, just not for the dim bulbs who live in 'em Smart homes aren't smart. Simultaneously sinister and stupid, maybe, but not smart. We have been sold a pup, a nice shiny pup hyped as both miraculous and inevitable. It is neither. From the simplest appliance to the most sophisticated, they steal what they want and deny what we need. Let's start with smart light bulbs. The …
It's also a bit misleading. I use Hue bulbs and they came with a hub that uses Zigbee and an app. I use them for security lights because the timer functions work without the system being connected to the internet; some other systems I've tried don't. Hue only needs web access if you want to monitor and control lights when your phone is not on your home network.
True, but as far as I can tell the Apple apps don't allow for the lifestyle and random settings which I use for my lights as security when I'm away. I also don't know if Homekit will work without my router or wirless turned on and some posts on various sites imply that I'd have to leave an iphone or ipad turned on at home while I'm away, which I wouldn't want. When I leave the house for a few days the only thing that remains turned on is the Hue bridge and the lights I want it to control and it all works fine. Happy to be educated differently.
Equally I can plug in a digital or heaven forbid, a mechanical timer that just works.
It does not need an app, connectivity or pairing.
People are their own worst enemy in wanting all the connected crap that in reality adds almost no additional functionality that actually does something useful.
People just keep buying into this smart crap because for some reason it is seen as cool. Then they are surprised when it stops working because a service is turned off.
Yep. You had me going until you said "Alexa."
Thanks but no thanks.
I have enough security worries running a home network and a system acting as a mail and web server.
I honestly don't need a lightbulb with an IP address or a tentacle from the Alexapus reaching into my private life.
Maybe not the lesson that you had in mind. I'm guessing that yours goes along the lines of "never have smart light bulbs". It's a lesson that I find very easy to use, because I still don't have a use for them and I have no difficulty getting to and operating a light switch.
However, if you are a person who needs (for example, not being able to easily get to or operate a switch due to a disability) or wants (for example, I don't know, but some people clearly do) smart bulbs, the lesson is not that you are wrong and need to change. The lesson is that a lot of the bulbs are bad and you probably want to research the options before buying them. I don't know which category Mr. Goodwins is in, but it sounds like he might be. Just because you aren't in either category doesn't mean that everyone is the same.
I used to have a dumb timed light switch to turn the lights on and off when away on holiday. It stopped working. No problem, I thought.
Turns out they're not made any more. Everyone's gone 'smart' involving downloading dodgy apps to control a light switch. Then, to use a timer, I'd have to buy an expensive hub.
Solution was to use a dumb socket timer.
I've got a box of them somewhere - removed cos they don't work with LED bulbs because they need current when the bulb is off. This was fine with incandescents - they could draw a few mA through the bulb without any effect. Timegaurd still sell them together with a module you need to wire in to the circuit to stop the LEDs glowing. MyDome sell an electro-mechanical one that you slip over an existing wall switch and has moving wheels that turn the switches on and off.
-- or example, not being able to easily get to or operate a switch due to a disability --
Then you need a remotely operated dimmer switch and compatible bulb. I assume they're still sold. I have one to save me getting out of a nice warm bed to turn the light off - no smarts at all.
All true, what the author writes. If anything, he is a little kind. He omitted to mention that many of these devices run on 2.4.GHz Wifi. Not all routers like that and my iPhone hotspot doesn't as it knocks speeds of internet back 15 years from 5 to 2.4.
Even AppleHome approved devices that costs 2 times as much use it. It is so slow. Try streaming 1080 over that. Forget continuous streams tiled on a separate display. The best solution for me is concealed wired controlled on a separate private internal network by headless Pi4/5 on the back of the tele.The CCTV network doesnt touch the internet - ever. None of my smart device do.
Also, many IOT devices use the Wifi and a background process app(!) on your phone to log data streams and perform activities, like Smart timers. Lose the Wifi, and the smart device is a plastic brick burning power. So you need Zigbee or something like that which runs without a network. But even in that area there are tons of Charlatans touting gear that hasn't implemented the newest verison so you are stuck with an old system that feels so outdated, clunky and unreliable. Never would you trust your ladies in the grow to this gear. We stick with long-tested gear like digital timers that have displays, sensors, controls onboard and costs a third the price and rarely fail.
It is a minefield and basically forget anything you can get from Argos or Curry's. The risk is way too high and the cost on network - even with a dual router - is such that have more than a few of them crashes many a network.
Zigbee doesn't run without a network, it just doesn't use your own wifi network. It also runs on 2.4Ghz though.....
For the record, I've got a smart home setup running on Home Assistant (i.e. open source) i have a Zigbee network (Sonoff, and Tradfri kit), a Z-wave network (Fibaro and Everspring kit) and some stuff (TP-Link Kasa smart plugs) attached to a conventional wifi network, along with a GivEnergy Invertor. Only the Givenergy invertor is connected directly to teh internet rather than just my local Home Assistant setup.
Using home assistant, i've got Zigbee buttons turning on a Z-wave light and a smart plug as well as a ZIgbee light, and I *could* I can't achieve that with *any* of the commercial apps...
In industry, a world that's been using automation of the "turn the thing on remotely" for many decades now, interconnection various bits of kit is relatively straightforward because it involves standards. Home stuff is not only a whole pile of DiY or various sorts but it all seems to be web based for some unaccountable reason on web protocols (my guess is that it was all the programmers who first cooked this stuff up could figure out how to do).
Not happy because while I can turn stuff on and off its really, really, difficult to actually program something more sophisticated in 'home automation'.
"...but it all seems to be web based for some unaccountable reason on web protocols (my guess is that it was all the programmers who first cooked this stuff up could figure out how to do)."
And there you have it. Being one if the first not-a-physicist guys to experience the web it has been a source of much head-shaking to watch it change. What it was designed for, to share and interconnect information and to serve media, it got better and better at, becoming the almost-infinite resource of data, both good and bad, that it is today. But along the way some lazy numpty who didn't want to be bothered coding a dedicated server daemon bolted some command and control functions into a web script, wrote some clunky-as-F html to masquerade as a client-side UI. And here we are on this bandwagon with "everything's done over the web" so much the norm that to 90% of folks now, "the internet" means nothing but http(s).
A bloke walks into a swanky showcase for the latest in "smart" technology, the "Microsoft House"
The salesman explains to him that everything in the house is automated by voice command. More than just the lights and music etc. This house can do ANYTHING. If he wants a coffee, the house makes it. If he wants to sleep, it will make his bed for him.
So he asks
"Open a window" and the house duly opens one of the windows. "Play some music", the house obeys. The salesman suggests he try some more imaginative instructions. This house really can do anything.
"Cook me some dinner" the house acknowledges his instruction and a robot arrives a while later with a steaming dish. "how about some wine" - another robot butler pours him some wine.. Every instruction he gives, the house does it.
So he looks around, gobsmacked at this house that will do anything on command, and says
"Well, bugger me.."
It says everything it needs to say about all that "smart" malarky that I never did and never will trust.
I'm not handicapped. I can get my fucking ass off of the fucking couch and flick a switch. The rest of the world doesn't need to know about it, thank you.
I quite like the "smart" staircase lighting that I have because it dispenses with the need to wrestle an arm free to hit the light swtich if I'm trying to carry something upstairs. And it's quite cool - it glows as you approach and springs fully into life when you reach the first step up or down. But the only things the discrete electronics and microcontroller are connected to - apart from the lights and the mains - are pressure pads and a PIR sensor. Apart from twisty knobs to set the ambient light threshold at which it operates and its sensitivity to presence it has no controls and requires no attention.
There's no reason in principle why "smart" controls cannot be more unobtrusive and standalone, but a dependency on the manufacturer's walled garden gives you the opportunity of customer contact to sell more "compatible" devices - as well as the customer's data - and the opportunity to close the gates when you want to sell a new range of incompatible devices. Ease of use doesn't really come into it because they're devices made to be sold, obsoleted and sold again; they're not made to be used.
But it does not need to be smart, it just needs appropriate IR sensors to turn the bulbs on.
This is the lunacy, for some reason the most simple of functions now has to be "Smart".
One questions why and as far as I can see it is all about the data that is freely supplied to use the devices.
> t glows as you approach and springs fully into life when you reach the first step up or down
we have a stair light that does that, it has a sensor built into it that detects when your are near and switches on for a while. Other then that it is totally dumb and just plugs into a power socket
Back in the day I had one of those IP cameras. It was a nifty little thing. I logged into the web interface on the wired connection and set up the WiFi and network (or I could leave it wired). I then had it FTP pictures to another computer. Nice and easy with no internet required (no gateway or DNS configured which I know isn't fool proof). I'm pretty sure it had hard coded credentials I couldn't change but that didn't matter because it wasn't on the internet. Lasted me a good few years that. I tried to get a replacement with the same features and no connecting to some server somewhere and so on a few years back. I had more chance of finding a unicorn. The same goes for any smart home stuff now. It's all connect to this and connect to that, set an account up here and download this app. Some of the stuff you can't properly access or control from a PC.
Luckily, if you have a bit of electronics and basic programming knowledge you can create your own "smart" devices/home with something like a Raspberry Pi and have absolute control over them and it's a lot of fun tinkering about with stuff. The best part is that even if you don't have a clue a quick search will find you full instructions on how to build and program them plus it's cheap as chips (pre-2020).
and you completely ignored the fact I pointed out there are very good and easy to follow tutorials out there so anyone can do it. Why do you need to be a techie? Why does not being a techie exclude you from wanting control over your own devices and also not wanting them to be obsolete in 2 years?
I really am not sure what point it is you are trying to make.
Nah...I had been responding to this
Luckily, if you have a bit of electronics and basic programming knowledge
And then the number of people who think that it's sensible in teh context of the real world.
Yes lots of commentards can do that, I'm sure.
Some of us can do one or the other of those ( at least in theory- the me that could knock out a decent bit of assembler in the 1980s isn't the me that just about knows how to do a bit of Python in the 2020s).
But that's just not reality for almost everyone else on the planet. And even those of us who could in theory will probably, in most cases, have better things to do with our lives. Like looking after the kids, pursue other hobbies not digital, or even help look after the more every day things in the home.
So, if a comment were to say something to the effect "Aren't we lucky that we don't have to rely on that stuff", that's fine.
But to write as if no one should be using that stuff and all that the world and dog needs to do is hand craft a private control network run from some specialised kit using custom code, just no.
I know- and have even done so on one of my machines. It's those strange comments that think the Whole World (tm) can be free of proprietary software by a wave of the magic Linux wand ( or in this case Zigbee) that seems to be wildly free of a sense of reality, though..........
People who have no idea how the other 99% live*, let alone the digitally disadvantaged.
I'm now a "Digital Champion"- and the weekly volunteer session is helping folk learn how to turn a computer on and enter a secure password for an internet site. Which is the other end of the Bell Curve from commentards. In between are the 98% who just want to be be able to do stuff with the shiny new devices that the 21stC has given them.
*Percentages for illustrative purposes only, i.e. I haven't a Scooby how many there are really.
Can't upvote this enough.
Years ago a had a crappy 640x480 camera that I could set up to use No-IP rather than the manufacturer IP, block outgoing connections, and expose its port 80 so I could connect in with a browser and grab images from it (also useful as my Pi could wget them too). My newer camera does 2K but it needs an app. It exposes nothing at all, and the app is quite big on trying to push a cloud storage "solution". I wish I had enough round tuits to sit down with an old Pi and camera module and roll my own.
It's shit how everything needs to talk to the mothership these days.
Exactly. One of the more annoying trends is this push towards cloud services for basic services like you want to set up a sensor for something then there is a tutorial to set up the sensor and log the data in some "free" cloud service to get fancy stats or store data. You can do all that on the Pi. I don't need to subscribe to some web service for that. I see these money grabbing clowns posting on places like Reddit and I immediately point people to tutorials where you can do it yourself. Go above 20 connections a day or whatever and now you have to pay. Really grinds my gears.
I miss bagging copies of 'Hobby Electronics', 'Practical Electronics' and 'ETI' with projects like that in them. The Maplin catalogue was your Bible. I'm sure kids today have websites and influencers for that, but It was more fun on paper. Jumpers for goalposts etc.
The only smart things in my house are human. I only use a smartphone on holiday and don't subscribe to any streaming channels. Yeah, I'm almost Victor Meldrew, but the 21st century has turned out to be a breathtaking disappointment. I was hoping for the 1980s++. We got Covid, Brexit, 'AI', and apps.
I used to have this naive idea of what the smart home could be. You’d buy a server appliance, i.e. a home hub, and plug it into your router. And then all your “smart” devices would work with this home hub using open protocols. No need for third party services and subscriptions.
Hahaha, oh mercy.
Nasty. All the stuff I've got is locally controlled, and the house I'm building will be wired for KNX.
I have remotely controllable sockets, but they're ZigBee and I use Home Assistant to talk to them through my Hue Bridge. No sub, no internet connection required, and the wifi could even be down.
We have a bunch of TP-Link Tapo smart devices, mostly bulbs and plugs. We can still turn stuff on and off manually - and do. But when we're out and don't really want the house to appear empty they're rather useful. Lights will go on and off at various times. We don't have to go up to our front door in the dark, because the porch light will be turned on ready (rather than being left on during daylight).
And it's useful for other stuff too. The pump on my fish tank will turn on early in the morning, long before I'm awake, because a smart plug.And off again in the evening,so I don't forget to do it.
And we do have a little camera, too. When we're out we can still keep an eye on the house. And a video doorbell.
And frankly I don't think that we're sending the government of China anything that they'd want to see.
OTOH we don't have an Alexa listening in.Which strangely doesn't bother the writer, it appears.
That doesn't mean the Tapo bulbs aren't a pain in the arse sometimes, randomly losing connection with the network and needing to resync. Or simply that different devices in the Tapo range seem to need to connect in different ways to different hubs.
Tapo are one of the worst. Their gear stinks and is a piece of cake to hack.
"Lights will go on and off at various times."
Ptroviding the Wifi network is up. Else its dumber than dumb plugs. You can buy more reliable and without need to expose your home network to the Chinese quite so openly. Light timers are common and bluetooth only ones are best.
" The pump on my fish tank will turn on early in the morning, long before I'm awake, because a smart plug."
As it would with a standard digital timer without Wifi. Doesnt need Wifi either and has onboard processing and memory which can be streamed off when in Bluetooth range. Your plug is useless if the router freezes. Or the power dies and restarts and the plugs are 50/50 at reconnecting in that situation.
"And we do have a little camera, too. When we're out we can still keep an eye on the house. And a video doorbell."
This made me wonder if you are really a Reg-ger. If it is a Ring doorbell, then maybe Reddit's more popular threads would suit you. Ring are streaming on YOUR netowrk a live feed using AI to monitor it. LOL. And dont even start on those Tapo cameras. Have you any idea how poorly insulated those devices are against attacks? I could get into one of those outdoor Tapo cameras with my Android phone and Terminal.
If you are happy whoring your life out to the lowest bidder and not fully realising the future consquences of your present-day actions, then go go go gadget hands!
If you thought whoring your soul for crumbs on Social was a mistake (telling the world all about ur sad little glossed-up-for-the-camera life) then allowing this kind of external surveillance from a country with some of the worst human rights (what is that?) and paying for it, must surely rate as D U M B.
Maybe you can monetize your Orwellian life and bring some life back to utube. Maybe China is doing that to you already. To all of its customers. And instead of broadcasting it Truman Show-style they have their AI agents do pose detection, face scanning, and a host of other stuff they bought from the West (mostly UK and Israel) on you and compress those results into abstraction data. You are modelled in AI/SI then. Well done.
"Lights will go on and off at various times. "
I've been using plug-in electro-mechanical switches for over 50 years. Cheap as chips, and they last for decades. Remember; "state of the art" really means tried and tested, not brand new and flaky.
Smart? Bah! Humbug! (It's nearly that time of year)
Don't get me wrong. They are useful. I use one of my plugs for grow lamps (it's for chillies) and I used to use the other when I booted up my PC to turn on the lights or with a door sensor connected to Pi Zero. I say used to because they kept playing whack-a-mole with the server side authentication configuration and I really did not have the time or inclination to carry on working around it.
One of the points of the article and one that's valid here is that if TP-Link decide to sack off Tapo which is possible if the profit and growth aren't there but the server costs are then we are left with useless bricks. There is a next to zero chance they will unlock and open source them.
That's blatantly false. You need the Kasa app. If you are turning things on and off away from home then the only way you aren't using the servers is if you are connecting through your home network which is not the case. You also need the Kasa app to set them up. No app, no device. Server off, no app, no device. I see no difference. Even with SD-Card storage in the doorcam you still ain't setting it up without the app.
I dipped a toe into this swamp when I wanted some dimmable ceiling lights. Bought some top of the range ones and surrendered my wi-fi password to some random web site and lo I could dim the lights and select the colour. For about a week. Than had to go through the whole initialise program again.
Ditched these for some bottom of the line cheapos from the local Chinese* which came with Thier own remote control and worked as soon as they were plugged in, and, have been working ever since.
* Not a restaurant! Spain has numerous warehouse size stores where Chinese manufacturers unload excess stock. May as well buy your cheap Chinese stuff direct from the Chinese.
Use stuff that you control the data flow.
Almost all of the stuff on my HA is running tasmota or shelly, both of which are completely locally controlled.
But it's not "smart" it's just reacting to what it's been told to do - the lights are still switch operated, albeit that switch is now a little more complex than it used to be.
I've found them easy - and mostly reliable (I've had a couple of issues with one location where it's torn between using the primary and backup WiFi connections, I suspect that would be entirely solved by disabling the backup).
They have a cloud option - but also have a very easy "I'm using this with entirely local control" option on the UI.
I was browsing wi-fi thermostats once, and I looked behind sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard” and one turned out to have a documented open-source local-only protocol. I can't remember how I stumbled on it, but it was pure luck.
Of course the app for it didn't use this, but it was a day's work to knock one up, especially as I didn't care how good it looked.
Of course it also eventually died after several years and that company was nowhere to be seen.
Of course I bought another wi-fi thermostat, this time by Honeywell, and after 6 months the app was upgraded and started deciding it needed to delete all my schedules and re-set-up my device from scratch every morning. Now it's been reset to the point it no longer knows the wi-fi password and is just a dumb thermostat.
And of course, I'll never buy another Honeywell device again.
Now I have my own Raspberry Pi managing the garage door. When I leave, I break a beam and the Pi closes the door a minute later.
When I come home, my phone notices when I turn the last turn home, and asks the Pi to open the door. When I drive in, I break the beam and a minute later, the Pi closes the door. The phone then interrogates the bike's odometer via Bluetooth, figures out which one I'm riding by which bike answers[1], and sends this to my PC, which logs it in a maintenance spreadsheet. It then scans the spreadsheet for any items that are past due, and sends these back to the phone, which logs it in my to-do app.
This makes it a cinch to keep up with coolant/oil level checks, chain lubing, and oil changes.
[1] except for my 2007 FJR-1300, where I just type the number in the app
"And of course, I'll never buy another Honeywell device again."
I made that decision based on the one that came built-in 3 houses ago. It was supposed to have a miniscule power drain so that the battery would last for years. They lasted a few months and when they failed defaulted to ON, particularly when we were on holiday or in the middle of the night in a heatwave.
It's a tragedy the complete mess that makers have made of heating and hot water controls. Before they were smart, they were either phenomenally dumb, or the control interface was absolute shite (sometimes both objectives could be met at once). The advance of cheap technology could have been used to make them easy to programme and secure without spewing your data to the world, and providing an attack surface on your home network. But instead, they're now insecure, data spewing, and STILL a pain in the arse to programme (and often flimsy and hideous to install as well).
There must be a special place in hell for the people who design heating controls.
Back in the 80s, my mother had a mechanical controller that could be programmed by flipping little tabs (like those mechanical gizmos for Christmas lights), only it had three positions - off, heat only, or heat and hot water. The latter worked by sending power to a solenoid that would open a valve to the hot water tank and then break the current so it would effectively turn itself off. Only it was hideously unreliable, often getting part way and then buzzing loudly. As we always used the hot water option when the heating was on, mom decided the best solution was to unscrew the top of the solenoid, unscrew the power cable, wrap electrical tape around the ends, then use a wrench to turn the valve to the on position.
When the guy came to do the scheduled boiler servicing, he took one look at that and said "you're not the first".
I guess it's nice to know that generations of technology later, these things are still as useless as ever...
My thermostat is made by "Satchwell" (no, I'd never heard of them before, either), and it seems to work on a bi-metallic strip mechanism. The is a digital clock with separate settings fro weekdays and weekends. Neither is 'intelligent', bot work acceptably (provided I remember to change the clock twice a year to cope with transitions between GMT (UT) and BST). It is over 40 years old now. The only way to hack either is with physical access to the device, which at least gets me some exercise every now and then having to get out of my chair.
Can't argue with that. The controls for our old heating controller ( the time switch rather than the thermostat) were horrible to use. Endless pressing of tiny buttons to move to different parts of the tiny lcd window, then more pressing of the buttons to get to the right bit, then again to select day/date/hrs/minutes. And then to set.
But the new boiler's Hive based wall thermostat, while much simpler to navigate, with a dial to turn, is far more complicated.
Ironically the phone app was much better, so they changed it recently to make it less user friendly. It's funny how an app control that works fairly well, but not brilliantly, always seems to get "updated" to one that's even less intuitive.
Look for Opentherm compatible hardware.
My house already came with a Opentherm compatible heater, so I bought a simple compatible thermostat.
It doesn't have Wifi, because it's not necessary.
I bought a Opentherm gateway for thirty euros and stuck a ESP8266 on it for the Wifi.
This connects it to Domoticz running on a Raspberry Pi.
It has been working flawless for over six years now.
No account necessary, no third party server necessary and an open protocol.
I can set the temperature from my phone, my PC or on the thermostat itself, but mostly it just runs a schedule programmed in Domoticz.
If needed, I can VPN home and operate the thermostat from anywhere.
Apart from setting the temperature I can also monitor outgoing and returning water temperatures.
Some great setup there and the sort of level you would hope for from Commentards.
This whole thread has been enlightening and I have completely upgraded the model for my Home AI.
WiFi thermostats are bad and mostly pointless. They work great until they don't and you spend 30 minutes getting it to reconnect to the WiFi and give a reading when you have a thousand other more important stuff to do.
I am surprised by Honeywell. The only exception I know is their air-con which are the best outside of Japan in my humble - especially the portable ones.
The real key is to have a Pi with something like Home Assistant and go from there. It has taken a while for it to all come together for the Pi as a proper home hub. Cheap too.
My experience of IOT has come from the work we did for medical growers in California. A large company grower there with many huge indoor grows went through as many IOT devices to aid growing as they could get their hands on. Philips were the 'Apple pre-2020'. Almost all the others performed worst than existing systems and devices.
Some exceptions apart from the Philips ones were Tapo Smart Light Bulb £10. If you keep it off the network and just set it up the once on a throwaway Hotspot network from a Win11 machine, you can set the color to near infra-red and the bulb will turn purplish and the light blurs around the edges. For the price, that bulb is a true true bargain and is one of the reasons Argos is always sold out. I think it must be a manufacturing mistake where the light range is not limited properly, but the light meters registered it as so.
Back to IOT devices in industrial use. Not going to happen from the consumer market for a while. There are professional products which are much like a pi SMB that has a hardware controller box that runs a private LAN only accessible to devices with certain chips or something. Rock solid and secure as F.
The camera in the post above is great. Expensive but worth it. Time saved is easily worth the extra 100£. Do it properly or pay twice.
A lot of my lights are controlled by X10 modules. Various cron and at scripts schedule the lights to go on and off according to lighting up time with the actual communication done through heyu and a usb gateway. Neighbours once remarked that my lights go on at the same time every day -- not exactly.... The original home automation protocol, still going after how many decades? But now getting almost impossible to source modules so once my stash is exhausted I'll have quite the upgrade on my hands.
The problem with all of these Smart/IoT devices is the juxtaposition of something that ought to be highly durable -- a display screen, a light bulb (LED ones at least), a washing machine -- with something that is utterly ephemeral -- the app, the cloud service, the firmware updates. When the ephemeral bit croaks the whole device becomes e-waste despite the durable part having another 90% of its usable life left. This is what govts and regulators should be addressing. Products like Sky Glass or Freely simply should not be permitted to exist. Either make the two parts entirely discrete components with their own lifecycles or force the manufacturers to deposit a large proportion of their income from the product in escrow to fund keeping the device alive and fully functional. In other industries its called unbundling. You can't force a customer to buy multiple services/products in order to get access to just one. I don't live in hope...
The Freely comment resonates with me; we have a satellite dish and are after a Freesat receiver/recorder. Looking about, the only real option are the £200+ Freesat branded ones, since the others all seem to not get any firmware updates any longer. Some research I did implies Freesat is dying and won't really exist after a few years, maybe 2030 if we're lucky, so I figured spending lots on a box with a known short lifetime was pointless and then saw Freely was a thing. I get good internet so streaming it would be fine, but wait, you have to buy a whole new TV, no set top boxes are available. I have a perfectly good LG 4k TV, no need to change it yet, why bin it for a new one made by TCL or Hisense (seem to be the only options for Freely TVs at present, no idea on their longevity)?
Since it's just streaming, why not release an app for Android TV boxes, I have an Nvidia Shield that is more than capable of doing the job, I suspect it's far more powerful than whatever ARM/Android gubbins is inside the low cost Freely TVs anyway.
Sorry. Rant over. It's fresh in my mind, I went too far down the free to air TV rabbit hole this weekend!
That's why I specifically mentioned Freely. It transpires that the people who are pushing Freely also own the FreeSat and FreeView platforms. Not the entire shebang, just the bit that sends the program guide out to the receivers and the associated branding.
They are obviously acutely aware of the impending EOL of the Astra 2 constellation as well as mobile internet nibbling away at the spectrum available for terrestrial. so expect them to run down FreeSat/View in favour of Freely.
They already took a step towards that by turning off the FreeSat ID service that allowed you to pair your recording box with an app on your phone and remotely schedule recordings anytime, anywhere. A super convenient function that I used a *lot*. Now you have to start up the box and use its built-in search screen. I thought the user experience of driving a cursor around the screen to peck on individual letters (and swearing profusely when you overshoot...) was consigned to the dust bin of history but not to these people. Now, I record significantly less FreeSat than I did a few months ago. So, in a way, they are getting what they want, I consume much less broadcast TV, its just that I'm using the ATV for catchup or streaming services instead.
Sky are facing a similar existential challenge, hence Sky Glass for those too challenged to hook up a STB..
Whatever the future of TV in the home, expecting us to buy a whole new screen rather than a 20 quid dongle is just hopelessly batshit crazy.
I'm not sure it's down to Astra - I believe Sky has been pushing VoD for some years and Astra has basically read the runes and realised that Sky is going to ditch satellite broadcasting as soon as practical. Hence no launches for - what - ten years now? An ageing fleet which will begin going EoL well within the next ten years. Freesat probably doesn't want to go VoD if it can avoid it, but with Sky gone there won't be any satellites up there from which to broadcast - and don't they sorta share some channels with Sky anyway?
Really annoying as I really don't want to clog up my net connection with video. I can sling as many TVs as I like off an old-fashioned UHF aerial and cheap amplifier and (with a somewhat more expensive amplifier) ditto satellite. Just need to prune that tree that's grown six feet this year...
M.
SES are still launching into the Astra 1 constellation at 19.2' to serve mainland Europe, so there must still be a business case for satellite broadcasting to those markets.
With many remote locations in the UK the only way to get any sort of TV service is satellite. Terrestrial transmitters and fast broadband tend not to reach those locations.
My money is on some sort of crappy lifeline service being offered post 2030. Which will probably involve re-pointing your dish to 19.2. Think of the thousands of highly skilled jobs that will create...
Good points, ilovesaabaeros.
Another show stopper problem I have with current "smart home" tech is that it all has to be connected to the internet, and worse, to someone else servers.
There is absolutely no need for that. My home PC should be more than enough to control everything and the software, dirt simple. Same with the control modules. Add battery backup to the system, and Bob's yer uncle. If I want remote control, I just log on to my PC remotely.
Why on earth would I EVER give the keys to my house to a complete stranger? Ever?
My solution would be a second-hand Humax FoxSat satellite receiver with Raydon's firmware upgrade applied. That gives you a full featured web server for admin and programme guide plus other goodies like an FTP server, quick bit of port forwarding on the router and setting recordings from outside home is a doddle.
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Bears repeating, but my experience is that LED bulbs fail not because of the LEDs themselves (usually) but because of dire power supply design. This applies equally to cheap "Diall" bulbs from Screwfix or B&Q and the ever-so-slightly more expensive fittings I have the misfortune to have to maintain at work. It amounts to the same thing I suppose, but since SMPSU technology is a long-established art form, you'd think there would be some decent designs out there. LED flexible strips are interesting (use quite a lot of them at work) as again, it's the PSUs which go, but they are external bricks, so a few quid from RS or wherever and light is restored. Apart from the silicone-covered ones where the silicone has gone all orange for some unknown reason.
M.
"LED bulbs fail not because of the LEDs themselves (usually) but because of dire power supply design"
Then buy LED filament bulbs, there's no PSU to go wrong. Can't comment on the longevity as none of mine have died, but it won't be the non-existent PSU that gets them.
That one time I thought I'll connect my door bell to the internet so when I am too far or listening to music I could get notified on my phone that someone is at the door.
Used one of the well known APIs for notifications. It worked great, except sometimes notifications would come minute or so late (which means the courier would already by in the different borough) or not come at all.
"connect my door bell to the internet"
Assuming the courier can be bothered to ring the doorbell. Lately I've had issues with Amazon couriers just dumping parcels on the front doorstep in full view of people walking past and not even bothering to ring the doorbell, so I don't even know the parcel is sitting there.
Ha! You need an IP camera and a small PC with Amazon parcel recognition software.
Though even better would be to also have a speaker and LLM/TTS wired up to tell the courier "What do you think you are doing young person? Didn't they teach you to ring a bell?" and then play Blood Sisters - Ring My Bell
> Lately I've had issues with Amazon couriers just dumping parcels on the front doorstep i
You are lucky, I recently had a "courier could not locate your address" delivery failure along with lots of steps on how to solve it. Having been here for over 30 years and we were sat in the room by the front door at the attempted time of delivery clearly the courier had not even made an attempt to deliver.
Strangely it arrived at 9pm that night
This is why I spent more for Hue.
They default 'on', so work as a bulb if you just want to turn the light on.
They use their own (zigbee) hub, so don't stop working when my internet dies.
They're reliable and you can be sure if you buy another one it'll be the same colour.
In sort, unless you're going to the much more expensive wired in options from someone like Rako they're pretty good.
It's a good job they're not currently trying to ruin it all by forcing people to register a hue account on their app...
..oh... wait....
To be fair, the bit they spun off was the lighting division, which is kind of where Philips started.
The hue stuff (in only my own experience) seems fairly good. It's not the cheapest, but I've slowly replaced most of the lights in the house with it. Having the kitchen lights on PIRs is lovely.
I could get cheaper stuff, but having a system that's decoupled from the internet is worth the extra for me.
My only current issue is the upcoming requirement to have an account with them to use their app. That seems like an unnecessary data grab. (They're tying it in to their upcoming 'security camera' stuff, but I have no interest in that, I just want to be able to control my lights).
Light switches are fine-ish if all you want your lights to do is on or off. But if you're feeling "ok, gimme a creepy Halloween scene" you're not gonna get it out of switches.
And I'm notorious for NOT turning lights off anyway. As in, I might go back in that room soon, better leave the lights on. So a few years ago I went pretty much all in with the Hue Zigbee bulbs, found them used on ebay because they're stupid expensive if you don't, and now it's almost all my lights. I don't use voice control, because I'd rather push a button (or click a button, I'm usually in front of a computer anyway) and I don't allow always-listening systems in my house. So I've got some repurposed old phones stuck to the wall, and a few Zigbee buttons, and I can have my lights any color I want anywhere in the house. Which honestly didn't sound like something that useful before I started doing it, but turns out it's something I absolutely love and use all the time.
It's got one hub that sits on ethernet, the wireless isn't WiFi, it doesn't have a huge attack surface, and my disabled girlfriend gets lighting control without having to struggle (or call me to flip a switch). And I don't have to remember to turn lights off at night, the automation handles that for some and turns the rest into pretty-color nightlights.
...and I can have my lights any color I want anywhere in the house. Which honestly didn't sound like something that useful before I started doing it, but turns out it's something I absolutely love and use all the time.
This is the biggest thing with modern LEDs for me.
I bought a Hue lightstrip a couple of years ago as it was on offer, and whilst deciding what to do with it I ran it up the underside of the handrail up the stairs. (It was christmas).
2 years later it's still there, as when it was removed the stairs seemed so dingey. Middle of winter a nice bit of colourful lighting can be a real help.
A lot of this is down to the fact that this IoT stuff started to be produced and hyped at the same time that the Gartnerverse was pushing the "big data" hype, and companies believed that every speck of data you could gather on somebody was like gold dust.
I'm sure the smart light bulb manufacturers are now swimming in money from the knowledge they've collected that told them that people generally switch on lights when it goes dark and then switch them off late in the evening when they go to bed.
Used to work for a big energy supplier, and at that time they too got suckered into the belief that the customer data they sat was worth an absolute mint, and they had the upper hand on people like Google. Of course, that didn't help the industry when most of them went bust in the past few years.
A friend of mine is very much into the smart home stuff. Here are two tidbits:
He has once helped a colleague of his, installing electrical fixtures (light switches, wall plugs, etc.) at his construction site. His colleague was building a house, and he was there to help. At the end of the day, the colleague asked all the helpers, how much value in terms of money they have installed that day. The answer was a five digit number: for light switches, wall plugs et al.
The colleague was using a system, which is based on every component being "smart", thus even light switches and wall plugs are expensive.
At his own house, my friend used a different system, one which is based on bog-standard "dumb" components, which are in turn connected to a programmable logic controller (PLC). Thus, his light switches and wall plugs are the standard variety, but they are all connected to relay switches, which are in turn controlled by the PLC.
if not sooner when the company that runs the server goes TITSUP and the smart bulb will not work any longer.
All this smart shite is for the dumb mother********s who are to lazy to manually control the device.
IT also spies on your lifestyle. Put enough of that data together and Big Brother will know to the second how long you spend in the shitter every morning.
"Would you like a nice heated shitter seat?"
Smart crap. The sooner it dies a death the better. The same goes for all this AI Hype.
How long will it be before the country stars having blackouts/brownouts due to the power consumption of these AI Datacentres? And for what benefit to mankind?
None, zilch, nada.
Unfortunately I do sometimes use it to stream videos from my own server and occasionally screencast to it. I suppose in that sense I am using some of its smart features just not any of the apps. Hmm. I wonder if I could configure my router to block it from the internet. That ought to be possible as long as I can persuade the TV to use a static IP address.
Thanks.
Lights - we have a couple in the outbuilding which work and are needed due to the way it was wired when built (previous owners) and subsequent splitting of the room, but changing the wiring is a lot of unnecessary work. 2 x bulbs work well. The hallway and landing have them, but people forget and seems that some in this house can forget which switch controls what light and frequently the lights are "reset" as the on/off sequence has been performed
Smart TV's - soon stop being smart
Heating - Hive - which the plumber installed, is a nice gimmick for me, but all I want is a simple schedule and they constantly try to ram more down your throat and now charge more for what I deem basic features (away from home).
...but exactly what problem are "smart homes" solving?
In my <number> years on this planet, I cannot remember thinking of any fixture of fitting in my house of which I have ever thought, "if only I could turn on/turn off/adjust $X without getting up from the sofa."
The only possible exception from that is the "oh, shit, did I close the garage door?" moment when leaving on a long trip, and even that only requires remote control of that one piece of equipment, not synchronized color-changing light bulbs.
Straw Man argument. Smart light bulbs aren't for the most part sold so that people don't need to "get off the sofa". Because the smart aspects aren't much needed for that. For most of the year at least people will be switiching lights on when entering a room, and off when leaving, with the switch, just like in the Olden Days.
The Smart controls are for stuff like changing colours (you may not want to but lots of people like the idea) or setting lights when they are out, to give greater security.
Do we have smrt bulbs in our living room? No. Don't need them, but I have a side light with a smart plug, so it comes on when we're out, at some point in the evening. We do have smart bulbs in hallways/porch and a couple of other rooms, which turn on and off at various times, to make the house look occupied.
Though I admit that I do have one that turns off when I really should get off the computer and got to bed.
The Smart controls are for stuff like changing colours (you may not want to but lots of people like the idea) or setting lights when they are out, to give greater security.
Nah, they're for interior designers who seem to think that people want 'accents' and 'highlights' rather than something they can actually e.g. see to read[1] with. Perhaps they're in league with the makers of spectacles?
[1] Y'know, those unpowered tablets with multi-folding leaves. I think they call 'em 'books'.
...was "smart" in as much as it had an IR sensor in it that would turn it on if it picked up the heat signature of a human sized warm spot moving around near it.
The reason I bought it was that for some stupid reason the flat I lived in at the time had a long hall from the front door to the living room, and a light switch for the hall down at the living room end, but not at the front door end. So if I got home in the dark, I'd come in, close the door, and be plunged into total darkness until I walked the 15 feet or so down the corridor to turn the light on - during which time I would almost inevitably fall over something that someone else had left there since I went out and I wasn't expecting to find. Oftentimes "find" with an unprotected toe since I left my shoes in the porch so as not to track mud up the carpet.
The IR lightbulb solved this problem perfectly because if I walked into the hall, the light came on. The light would stay on as long as I was in the hall, and then about 10 seconds later, it turned itself off. The amount of "Smarts" required for this are damn close to none, but it was never the less extremely useful.
Compare and contrast with the flat upstairs who clearly had the same problem but took a higher tech solution than I, and could regularly be heard through the floor shouting obscenities at their phone when for reasons best known to itself their smart lightbulb had decided that it didn't want to be switched on - or often the sound of many things being dropped as someone tried to manage the front door, bags of shopping, controlling a small child, and getting out a phone to turn the light on with what was a clearly inadequate number of hands for the job - presumably anything less than 4.
"and could regularly be heard through the floor shouting obscenities at their phone when for reasons best known to itself their smart lightbulb had decided that it didn't want to be switched on"
I'm going to fit a public address speaker to my car, and drive around of a winter's evening with the speaker blasting out "Alexa, turn all the lights off" and see what happens.
If we had more smart people, we'd have less need for smart IoT that actually aren't.
Smart TV's with RF remotes that work anywhere in the neighborhood? No key pad on the TV remote? WTF! You have to bring up a screen on the TV, so you can hunt and peck on the on screen keyboard to change channels. But the TV is defaulted to be programed ahead of time for what you want to watch? Works great when the football game runs long. How is this "smart"?
Smart light bulbs and plug in switches for lights, fans, heaters, etc., that need a remote server and your WiFi password and an apt to work?
You are normally right there anyway to experience the effects of whatever said device. Deal with it directly using the switch on, or near the device. Why let a server, who knows where, know about it. Especially if you are paying someone for this server to know.
I am not really a Luddite, but I prefer to control my own stuff I bought and paid for myself, without any input from any unnecessary third party.
Apart from actual computing devices, the only smart devices I own are a smart garage door opener, which is actually quite handy insofar as I can use my phone to open and close the garage door and to see whether the garage door has been left open, and an HP printer. I recently discovered that the printer sends a gigabyte of data each day and downloads 800 MB, so I set up a rule to block it at the firewall. Of course, HP Instant Ink then complains to me about not getting usage information and threatens to cut me off.
Yeah, I know . . . cool story, bro.
These are all IP based problems.
Home automation needs connectivity, which doesnt require IPs. Use zigbee, zwave, KNX. They have their own networks, don't use IPs, can't talk to the internet and don't need custom apps.
Next, accept that these things are not smart, but connected. There is a controller running the logic. If you can't touch the controller, it can be taken away by the faceless company that can.
So buy a hub. You can change it later and keep all your toys online.
For cameras look for ONVIF/RTSP. Those are common standards not tied to a vendor platform. Will it cost more? Well, its less likely to be hot garbage, so yeah, it probably will.
Odds are that hub you bought will support ONVIF and/or RTSP so it can also centralize your video.
Yes, I bought a Dyson air purifier - basically a Dyson fan with an air filter around the base air intake (the first generation Hot and Cold one). And there is an app that allows me to control the fan and the temperature and see what it thinks of the air quality in the room.
Or rather there was. Until there was an electrical storm which fried my BT 'Home Hub', so I needed a new one with a new WiFi password. Woe is me! I cannot for the life of me get the app to connect to the fan and tell it the new WiFi network name and password. "Simple!" I hear you cry, "download the latest app version from the Apple Store and you'll be fine." Oh, but I have an old iPhone 7 Plus which cannot use the latest app as it runs on a later iOS than available for my phone.
Like I said, probably my own fault (although I totally deny any and all responsibility for the electrical storm).
just change the wifi details on the new hub to the old ones ... sorted :)
i never actually use the wifi on any home routers, they are always under powered and lack memory
internet will be a lot better if its not doing wifi duties as well as routing
just switch off the wifi on new router and use the old/spare router as a ap only by....
.... wiring it into your new routeri after giving it a ip address not dished out by your new router and switching off its dhcp server and upnp
as for IOT... get the ready made home assistant yellow and any devices which are now certified by the home assistant foundation!
just change the wifi details on the new hub to the old ones ... sorted
Excellent suggestion, but - I've got everything else set up with the new WiFi network and password, and now I don't seem able to find the old details any more.
I am a silly old Hector*.
And the old router died during an electrical storm, so is, as it were 'no more. Bereft of life it rests in peace. It has gone to join the bleeding Choir Invisibule. It is pushing up the daisies, it has shuffled off this mortal coil, it is and ex-parrot.'**
*Cultural reference to 1960's BBC Children's TV character.
**Most famous Monty Python Sketch ever - do try to keep up you youngsters.
A couple of years ago I bought a Linksys WiFi/wired router (Model EA 7500).
The "easy" way to set the thing up required that I create an account on the Linksys mothership.
....so Linksys have direct access to the LAN in my home....
Really??
I pushed the "reset to factory settings" button, boxed the router up, and took it to the local charity shop. Dropping a hundred dollars was the most acceptable solution!!!
The replacement router came from TP-Link.....no internet connection needed, no phoning the mothership, no "cloud" account.......perfect!!
Many think they're not going to have information gathered from them if they don't have a smart home. I wish that were true. A colleague at work just recently got an electric bill with a profile of what was using the power "based upon electrical signature." That's right, a modern power meter knows more about you than you thought. And it reports this information to the power company. And who does the power company share this with? Why, all the regulators and government. And who do THEY share this with? Who knows?
So if you have a local environmental activist visiting your home because you have the temperature set warmer than typical in the winter (perhaps your 80+ year old grandmother is visiting and she's somewhat anemic), well, it might pay to ask where they get their data. Knowing that information, you can properly tell the correct people to attempt some anatomically and socially disgusting acts.
There are plenty of appliances where I don't think being "smart" really adds any value, but there are some compelling products out there and, as always, you'll get only what you pay for. I can't help but feel like the author bought some cheap tat and then discovered, unsurprisingly, that it's cheap tat.
Smart lighting is something I do believe in. I have mostly Hue smart lighting around the house, which is nice in particular due to using ZigBee instead of Wi-Fi and having the automations run on the hub locally in the house regardless of internet connectivity. It's more expensive, yes, but again, you get what you pay for.
The bedroom lighting simulating sunrise on a morning is far better for gentle wake-up than any alarm clock. Deeper warmer colours later into the night are far better for winding down and sleep quality. Motion-activated hallway lights that light up only dimly are great if I get up during the night, and the sunrise-sunset-controlled porch light is better for my sense of security. The outdoor motion sensor will light up the garden if I step out when it's dark, and since it doubles as a light level sensor, also triggers my office desk lamp to come on automatically during the daytime on an especially gloomy day.
The "smartness" comes from how the automations fit into my routine. The app control vs the light switch argument barely even factors into it at all. If your belief is that the only value-add of a smart product is that you can control it from the sofa, then it feels like you're missing the point entirely — they're ultimately only as "smart" as you set them up to be.
John Scalzi explains all this in his book, "Starter Villain". His best fictional example was the pitch that proclaimed, "Your testicles as a service!" The pitch was for a type of contraceptive that involved testicular surgery and a phone app to turn your fertility on and off. That's too unrealistic you say? I expect to see it announced any day.
Anyway, the book is a fun read about this common complaint.
Yes.
People died of easily preventable diseases, had intestinal parasites like tapeworms, Giardia. They died in their mid 30's if they were lucky enough to live that long. The strongest enslaved, raped and murdered the weak, and stole their belongings. People froze to death in the winters, and were killed and eaten by large predators (lions, tigers, bears, snakes). There were few ways to treat even simple things like toothache, let alone cancers, or infections in wounds or burns or traumatic amputations. Babies with congenital diseases or which were just not wanted were 'exposed on a hillside' - aka dropped on the town rubbish heap. Childbirth was very dangerous for women (less so for men) - when people in the c19 promised 'til death us do part' there was a strong chance that the woman would die in childbirth, so much so that even with the advent of relatively easy divorce, marriages lasted longer in the late c20 than in Victorian times as women died.
So, yeah, people are probably a lot happier in 21st century than they were in 30,000 BCE.
(Sorry)
Or even just a couple of thousand years ago your posh Roman family would dump unwanted babies on the town tip to die or be taken for slaves, if they were lucky(?) enough to survive that long.
And as late as the 18th C villagers could be driven off the land to starve, so that the local Lord could use it himself.
Anaesthetics came in the 1840s
X-rays weren't used for medical diagnosis until the end of the 19th C
Penicillin was only discovered in the 1920s
I can't remember when surgical sterilisation of equipment and hand washing started, but that was also comparatively recent. It was common for a surgeon to go from patient to patient, sawing limb off after limb.
I can't remember when surgical sterilisation of equipment and hand washing started
Maybe you cannot remember because it was a bit before your time:
"Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor working in Vienna General Hospital, is known as the father of hand hygiene. In 1846, he noticed that the women giving birth in the medical student/doctor-run maternity ward in his hospital were much more likely to develop a fever and die compared to the women giving birth in the adjacent midwife-run maternity ward. He decided to investigate, seeking differences between the two wards. He noticed that doctors and medical students often visited the maternity ward directly after performing an autopsy. Based on this observation, he developed a theory that those performing autopsies got ‘cadaverous particles’ on their hands, which they then carried from the autopsy room into the maternity ward. Midwives did not conduct surgery or autopsies, so they were not exposed to these particles." (My emphasis)
https://globalhandwashing.org/about-handwashing/history-of-handwashing/#:~:text=Ignaz%20Semmelweis%2C%20a%20Hungarian%20doctor,the%20father%20of%20hand%20hygiene.
BTW, Semmelweis was hated by surgeons who would not accept that they had been killing their own patients, and he was later tricked into entering a mental asylum as a doctor and then imprisoned there.
Over here in WestPondLand ('Mer'ca) I use X-10 which is nearly plug-n-play (set one rotary switch), available with wired or wireless controllers and uses no apps or other outside actors. I've never even had to change the house code because I'm probably the only one for a hundred miles (26399 Giraffes) that uses it.
I'd like to think some one makes a version for 208/220 volts seeing as it was invented in Scotland.
P.S. Big Brother isn't watching MY lightbulbs
You don't need to share you WiFi key if you use a cellular ZigBee system; see IoT-Portal Hub
Why is that a problem anyway? I don't think your WiFi signal stretches to China. I think your biggest problem will be it stretching to all the rooms in your house.
I also don't think your £2 smart light bulb really has the processing capacity to create a sophisticated router which can hack into your Windows 11 PC. Maybe if you're still on Windows 98 you might get the Chernobyl virus but I'm not really seeing the issue.
Who is listening to your data? Think you have nothing to hide your an open book? What happens when your kids are being profiled by organizations not just corporations that need to live within laws. What could happen, its all good right?
Never give your wifi password out to these services, Alexa and siri are data gathering and social engineering apps. Dont feed that beast.
Your right to be anonymous is thwarted by you if you dont think things through.
Think about your fitness app communicating with your scale and that handy smart (!) refeer program that lets you know whats in the box. You gain a few pounds and try to buy more ice cream and get annoying alerts from your refrigerator, scale, fitness device and probably the device that does the hoovering all make with nasty reminders., The worry about AI is late; the real worry should be be about HI and learning from mistakes. Well CP/M and MS/DOS taught some to think logically maybe getting the ubiquitous 'smart' stuff will teach also!
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