This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Alexa+ is a lobotomized version of the original. Since the "upgrade", a simple request for a wholesome sesame street clip results in playing the beezleblocks music video (which starts with a girl dead in a bathtub full of water holding a cinder block) - true story.
"Alexa, please find local pediatric therapists"
Or, you could just get up and flip the damn switch. And if you want it warmer turn up the thermostat. This is not hard.
I’m so glad my wife & I never got sucked into using things like Alexa.
Quote: "This morning, I asked my Alexa-enabled Bosch coffee machine to make me a coffee. Instead of running my routine, it told me it couldn’t do that. Ever since I upgraded to Alexa Plus, Amazon’s generative-AI-powered voice assistant, it has failed to reliably run my coffee routine, coming up with a different excuse almost every time I ask."
Why? Seriosly! The author spent XXX kWh energy running AI because is lazy to switch ON damn coffie machine?
Coffee machines are for the weak anyway, French press that shit and be smug about it!
We haven't gone whole-hog into home automation, except for a zone-heating and hot-water controller. In a part of the world with winter, that makes a big difference. The controller I use has a web-based but also offers a nice API. Another good thing about it is that it includes a way to know when we're in or out of the house, based on mobile phone detection. So I wrote some scripts to manage the system in a nicer way than having a big bunch of static profiles. One of the reasons it works well is that none of it's AI. Just some event detection and use of the output of one-time runs of optimization algorithms based on our utility provider's pricing. It's less flaky than I am about controlling the heating zones, so it's cut my gas bill by another 10% over the 30% savings we got from installing the controller and running it on a timer with occasional manual intervention.
So the API runs on the controller provider's website, but they don't sell our data (at least they claim not to), and the script that invokes the API lives on an otherwise retired netbook on our home LAN. Not 100% private, but not unduly intrusive either. The only downside is that, if the internet goes tits-up, the only option is manual override (which isn't too bad).
The approach I'm using is also what I'll do if I ever feel motivated to install solar (which is useful but not optimal in the country we live in, and the location of our house).
Check out home assistant sometime
AI sucks but a smart home can be actually nice if set up well
I just want my smart home fully or semi fully airlocked on my lan
HomeAssistant is the answer.
Or if you want a simple & cheap off the shelf solution, IKEA stuff has being online as an option, not a requirement, and all the devices are ZigBee or matter compatible and not locked to some proprietary WiFi cloud bullshit.
Home Assistant! I got a cheap refurbished mini PC for 60 bucks and a zigbee stick for 12 or so, been running HA for a year now, it works very well and pairs perfectly with the IKEA zigbee stuff. I have it read the alarm from my phone and turn on radio on a wifi speaker and smart lights at that time. Kitchen light is now automatic with a little motion sensor and ESP I got from AliExpress for a few bucks. Everything is completely local, no internet access. It's great!
airgapped
The real issue with smart home adoption has been proprietary formats all vying for dominance and fragmenting the market. I don't think AI has changed much.
Matter (and Thread) are a huge change to the SmartHome landscape because they're open protocols and have well-documented standards - and they've finally begun appearing in big manufacturer's line-ups such as IKEA.
Once their availability spreads I suspect a lot more people will get into running their own local (eg HomeAssistant) smart home because they won't have to do the 'ok do I need z-wave or ZigBee or HomeKit or IFTTT or Hue or Tuya or.... you know what, fuck this'. It'll all be the same protocol and communications and config & debug will be much easier.
It's why I live so much commercial stuff and things like bacnet.
Everything basically is just basic I/O with either analog or digital signal wires. Well documented. But it typically requires lots of actual wires running back to a controller.
I hate how consumer stuff is all different connections in so many different ways and they don't care if they deprecate a feature or something. What works today can be fucked up because they have unilateral control to change how their shit works in "updates."
When you know which xkcd it is before you click it...
There's an xkcd for everything, isn't there.
Its not wrong, but the major attraction to Matter is it must allow devices to operate locally (not tying them to cloud services that die every internet outrage, or permanently when the service retires), and it's an application-layer protocol. Meaning it can operate over WiFi, Ethernet, or Thread.
Many existing smart home hubs have been able to program support for Matter and simply send out an OTA update to add certified Matter support.
I suspect the average smart home is not based on home assistant, but on an ikea hub with their app, or similar.
If you are willing to selfhost a home assistant, then it is not a barrier to add various antennas to it.
So this step to standardization might help mixing different manufacturer products easier. We will see how standard their implementations will be. We had zigbee as shared standard in theory what only worked properly with the manufacturers hub.
For sure. IKEA is a great place to start (or stay), as it's a cheap ecosystem and their app/implementation doesnt require permanent internet access - functions fine during an internet outrage, and quite privacy-respecting.
HomeAssistant is not anywhere near as hard to set up as it used to be. If you have an old mini-PC retired from work sitting around there are HA images for PCs now, and it's pretty simple to set up to use your IKEA hub (or whatever you have already), while adding a huge swath of optional features.
I agree it's still not something your average Joe will set up, but the continual lowering of barriers will get more people into running a self-hosted local config is a great thing for privacy and expanding the hobby.
Most smart homers i have assisted run a ikea hub or similar like Hue and really just want it to be plug and play, after that they find out what happens when the network shut down and can't access their home. Then they reach out to support people that can install Lan assist.
If anyone wants privacy while maintaing a smart home, then Home Assistant is the solution. Its not adopted widely because it has a learning curve and it needs a bit (or a lot) poking around to make it work. It also has a voice assistant that is not AI powered ( but it could be supplemented by a local LLM if you really want to). A big rabit hole if anyone is interested to go to.
It's not adopted widely because every single smart home device marketed to normies is infected with cloud bullshit. Go to Home Depot or whatever and look on the shelf: literally every single product will have "Works with Alexa," "Works with Google Home," and/or "Works with Apple HomeKit" badges stamped all over the package, but not a single one will mention a damn thing about Home Assistant even when the device actually is compatible. The closest you get is ones that mention "Matter" 'cause it's at least supposed to be a standard, but it feels like it's getting slow-walked harder than CableCard sometimes (and if you don't remember how that worked out, the answer is "not well").
I would almost call it a conspiracy against openness, but it's really just the banal result of no rent-seeking leading to no excess profit to plow back into marketing... which is even worse.
Once you get it setup, start looking for homeassistant compatible hardware instead. There is a lot. Even some big brands use protocols (zigbee, zwave, matter) that can connect to homeassistant without a need for their hub (granted you do have a HA hub) or cloud connection.
I try to stay away from WiFi if possible, but if home assistant compatible I’ll use it.
Few of them also could be open, but just don't advertise it.
IKEA stuff was all ZigBee, now upgrading to add matter support, so you could mix and match them with Philips Hue, Agara, Nedis and quite a few others. Main issue is always software support on the hub or app - Ikea has no smart thermostats, so even though it can connect to them, they don't show up properly. That's where Home Assistant shines, as it supports basically everything imaginable.
But you are right, most are proprietary because they want to lock you to their ecosystems. Exactly like cordless power tools and their batteries.
Tasmota can help getting rid of the cloud bullshit on most ESP based devices. Of course it requires some tinkering and is not accessible to all users.
The only one i can think about is Aqara there have a home assistant stampel.
Most people don't find turning the lights off and on burdensome enough to justify a whole lot of effort to avoid.
I'm not anti technology, but it sounds like the author's desire to use these fancy new toys made their life worse. Congratulations?
Like, if you wanna play music, click the tablet. If you wanna turn on the light, touch the button. It's so amazingly efficient. Really, three seconds, works every time.
So yeah, you could use voice commands, but those are slower and (obviously, the article explains) highly error prone. In other words, it's a worse solution than the traditional method.
Of course that's not always true. Some people can't walk easily, for example. And some use cases are complicated enough where a single button push doesn't work. But most of us aren't in these special situations.
So, you can buy the new toy, but don't pretend you're making life better. Be honest: you are either tinkering or bragging. And that's OK, no worries either way.
You missing theoint of the "real" smart home what would be an automated solution based on environment and not a fancy remote controller to your lights.
Human presence sensors combo with light sensors, and you never have to think about turning lights on or off, and leave the voice assistant for overrides. Temperature sensor aligned with your callendar and weather data make your home warm or cool before you arrive and save on your heating without adjusting.
Walk into a room and the lights are on, why? Just why?
Every room has a different need depending on what I am doing, so even that makes no sense.
If I had to set a timer to adjust when the house is at various temperature I could, but the savings is negligible, just let it be comfortable all the time. If anything the best addition to the house is solar power instead of trying to squeeze 20 euros a month out of some automation system.
Call me old fashioned. But when I press the brew button on my coffee machine, it works every time. No internet, apps, or 'smarts' required. Just consistent quality.
Coffee machine??? I hand-grind my coffee every morning in a mortar and pestle and then use my Rok to manually press the perfect espresso.
But I also let a self-hosted AI model control the lights and HVAC in my house, cause it does it way better than I ever could manually.
I hand-grind my coffee every morning in a mortar and pestle and then use my Rok to manually press the perfect espresso.
What? You don't have people to do that for you??
I'm also old fashioned and it was always faster for me to reach to light switch than to unlock my phone, find the app and toggle it from there.
Mumbling "Hey google, turn the lights off" from bed and the entire house going dark is pretty nice though.
Yeah, me too. But home automation has its usercase: just think about an holiday home where you want to turn on the heating and the boiler the day before you arrive.
Sure, you can ask a local friend to do it for you but being able to do it remotely is nice.
or even better yet get a non-electronic coffe maker, just the carafe or a french press.
I use my coffee machine as an alarm. Like a really pleasant morning alarm for the whole house. It's nice. Works every time.
I don't even need a timer for the microwave oven. I just rig that shit up where when you close the door, it cooks, and when you open it, well it stops cooking.
Don't ask why, had to temporarily fix things for my mom. At least we didn't have kids around the place...
Edit: AI can suck my nugz.....
So you just leave it open when you’re not cooking?
Does it not have a light in it?
Remove the light, obviously. Bypass the control circuit..
Geez, didn't Electroboom teach you anything?
Don't do these things at home, obviously...
I can’t stand cupboard drawers or microwaves hanging open it would drive me nuts.
We gotta go test these things in the back yard..
Honestly not as dangerous as you might think. Just keep the kids and pets away, and watch your own timer for your frozen pizza....
No, they are still dangerous (if you don't know what you are doing), because there can still be residual voltage in the capacitors, even when not plugged in. (I am no expert)
You're not wrong there, the capacitor can indeed be dangerous!
I happen to be quite well experienced in repairing and rebuilding microwave ovens though, and it's not like I leave the thing disassembled for random people to come along and stick their fingers in the wiring.
The modification I mentioned is fairly simple though, just take out the light bulb so that doesn't stay on when the door is open, and bypass whatever timer circutry they have, whether it be analog, digital, or even subscription based digital bullshit these days.
Underneath the hood of every microwave oven is a sequence of 3 safety switches all activated by the mechanics of the door latch, required by law, to make damn sure it can't emit radiation when the door is open. Take proper advantage of that knowledge and knowing the internals of a microwave oven, and it's pretty easy to bypass the timer.
The only true danger with such modification is if you fuck up and forget your popcorn or frozen pizza or whatever, as the microwave will end up running indefinitely until you open the door. Used responsibly though, it's just fine, but you gotta keep an eye on your own food and an eye on your own watch/clock.
Kids in the house though? Nah, I wouldn't trust that sort of mod near kids for even 5 seconds.
