Tesla, believe it or not, is doing the ai thing right.
- There’s always a control: you may not like touch screen in your car but it’s always there so you’re not forced to use voice assistant.
- The standard voice assistant still works the same as it ever did
- AI voice assistant is separate that you can choose to use or not. When it was new, it was not allowed to control anything but that is gradually being phased in as it works.
When the ai first came out all it could do is hold a conversation, and was amusingly snarky. Now it can set a destination, but is still limited compared to standard voice assistant
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.
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.
I use my coffee machine as an alarm. Like a really pleasant morning alarm for the whole house. It’s nice. Works every time.
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’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.
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.
Home Depot used to have a bunch of z-wave switches and outlets - was actually the entire reason I started with z-wave.
But it’s been a few years now that it’s mostly WiFi dreck depending on vendor portals. Home Depot is also the reason I mostly order online and have a lot of Zigbee stuff.
I wonder what Home Depot’s next step will be, presumably to drive me to Matter/Thread. Perhaps that they seem to be getting a decent selection of smart locks?
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.
Of course it requires some tinkering and is not accessible to all users.
Yeah, that’s the point. None of that helps normies who just want to buy the first product they see and have it “just work.”
(And I say “first product they see” because, although Tasmota/ESPHome/WLED devices are available from e.g. Amazon, if not brick-and-mortar stores, if you look hard enough, they’re definitely not what Amazon pushes at you. Amazon wants you to fall for their marketing and infest your house with Alexa so they can exfiltrate even more personal data, up to and including the floor plan if you buy one of their affiliated smart vacuums.)
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.
There’s a lot of stuff that can work with Home Assistant, but it’s essentially never listed as a feature on the package, so normal people will never know it’s an option.
That’s the problem – the lack of marketing – not any lack of functionality on Home Assistant’s part.
Most people don’t find turning the lights off and on burdensome enough to justify a whole lot of effort to avoid.
That’s usually because that’s all they know. With a bit of smarts, lights can do more than just toggle on/off when you go over to the switch. They may appreciate that if they knew.
My most automated light is my dining room/office
- I may walk over and use the switch - but I adjusted the dimming speed so I can walk out of the room as it’s dimming to off
- I may use Alexa/siri/nabu, and that’s the most convenient way to get exact dimming, such as when I need to be up at odd hours for a video call
- on weekdays it also turns on at dusk, dims at 9pm and goes off at 9:30 to help me establish better sleeping habits and make the house look lived in when I’m away
- I’m considering ways to have it automatically turn on when I come home at night so I’m not entering a dark house
Do I need those? Of course not, but those are actions my house can take for me, to make things a little nicer
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!
French press is just for people too stupid to operate a moka pot.
Real ones just pour grounds and hot water in their mouth
i just approach life raw, straight water
Pre-Alexa-Plus it wasn’t AI, it was simple pattern matching with very constrained commands.
They’ve replaced these very limited sets of commands with bullshit interpretation that tries to not only understand “like a human” but respond in a similar manner. Those same commands can now be interpreted in a number of ways, and you have no guarantee how it will be taken.
If a home automation product isn’t self hosted, it can fuck right off
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.
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.
Don’t forget device profiles! It’s not enough for a device to be on the network but also that it must operate like expected and with the same calls.
Instead of making up what constitutes “on” for a light switch and require vendor specific drivers, the device profile defines “on” and all light switches must support that!
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.
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.”
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
airgapped
Yup, I just haven’t done enough PC stuff recently to remember shit because of work
I’m so glad my wife & I never got sucked into using things like Alexa.
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”
I just saw an ad for Alexa+ at a family member’s house and was a bit surprised initially. The last I had known about the personal home assistant market was that both Google and Amazon were growing bored with its lack of annually doubling revenue and were slow-walking their whole participation in it to the grave, slashing those departments and walking back forecasted products.
To the home automators like you and others, am I mistaken or has it seen a resurgence now that they realize they can take another crack at it with LLMs this time?
The holy grail (for amazon at least) is to up-sell (“would you like me to order that for you?”) but that fell flat. My guess is behavior data is being sold to ad agencies instead.
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.
Cool, you gonna hang out in my greenhouse and wake me up when the temp drops below a certain point? What about alert me to an increasing trend of the sump pump running more often?
Home automation isn’t just “Alexa I’m lazy turn off the light switch I’m next to” and presenting it as such is simply disingenuous.
It appears to just be aggressive ignorance.
You’re right, it’s impossible to grow plants without AI.
I’m actually astonished you missed my point so… completely.
A 100% fully automated smart home is a fucking bad idea. Might as well sign your death certificates. Our family had one such system (not Alexa) and it controlled the whole thing. Yes, we should have researched better but the sellers were really convincing. Anyway there was a malfunction and it trips multiple breakers in our house. Our rhought at the time was to get the fuck out and called the electricians. Guess what? The doors refuse to open properly, so we had to climb over…
If anyone really really really wants a smart home, please only assign the system for mundane tasks like music, lightings. Dont do it for security stuff like doors, cameras.
Or just dont install one, even better.
