Smart Home

[holmes168]

I have seen a few comments on this but no title dedicated to a smart house/living in 2018.
Wondering what others do with the new technology being developed to make life “easier” overall.

The past week the Holmes family has modernized a bit:
Cut the cord to cable- we got an Apple 4K tv box. We paired the box with- PlayStation Vue, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Spotify which meets our needs for entertainment. Oh- and changed internet providers. The change to Fronteir increased my Mbps by a factor of 4. All of this costs less than the horrid cable service we used to have by $30. Forgot to mention Vudu which is a good way to buy movies and be able to watch on different devices.

I installed an August Smart Lock which is cool and when paired with Apple TV- I can lock my door from work. Plus- I can see who is going in/out of the house. I’m also able to invite people for a certain amount of time to have access to the front door with a “key” on their phone instead of leaving one under a flower pot. Next upgrade will be a doorbell camera.

We also got Philips Vue lights which are a lot of fun. Easy to set up and use. I can control them thru my phone or iPad without leaving the couch. I’ve got the living room lights on a schedule that coincides with my getting up on the weekdays and working out times. A nice subdued soft white instead of the usual blinding light that comes on after fumbling for the switch.

So far- so good! No Alexa or anything like that. Still not sure I like microphones being on in the house.

[RJ]

Can’t see the inside of your fridge on your phone?

Pffft. Fail.

Kidding. Yeah the Internet of things is a bit too scary for me. I have decided, techie that I am, the fewer web-enabled devices I have the more comfortable I feel. I have nine known MAC addresses in my router table, and I’m fine with that.

But I agree with no Alexa or whatever that thing is. I turned Siri off as soon as I got an iPhone. Same in the truck; I intensely dislike talking to computers. In our ‘18 Honda Accord, I tried to get Apple CarPlay to recognize an address in Clearwater the other day; I gave up after 8 attempts and entered it manually.

[shiv]

We have a “smart home” per se from one of the major home security providers. While we were somewhat paranoid to allow a microphone into our house, the security system contains two and relies on web-services. There is a mic on the front doorbell and in the kitchen. Additionally, we can communicate from smartphones and iPads with those devices. It comes in handy for delivery services or letting friends and family in the home without going to the door. If a delivery is to be made, we can unlock the door, instruct them to leave the package in the foyer area, and re-lock the door when finished.

The system is also integrated to emergency services...simply tap what we need and they are dispatched.

We opted not to have temperature and lighting control to our system. The day I’m too lazy to tell my wife to get up and turn off the lights......


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[rob_s]

I expect to be in the minority here, given the relative paranoia and fear of government common in the firearms community as a whole.

I tried smart-homing 4-5 years ago and it was a nightmare. Things have come a long way. I'm no expert, and I'm sure some of what's below is "wrong", but it's how I wrap my brain around it. None of this happened overnight or all at once, but was a slow burn over time. One of the terms I hear thrown around with a lot of this stuff is "internet of things" or IOT.

My "hub" is a Samsung SmartThings. I bought a kit go get going more easily. It's the "brain" if you will that everything runs through. It receives wired internet signals and then broadcasts a different frequency than WiFi (called "z-wave"). There are other hubs and other devices that also have other "languages" like Zigbee and Apple Home, but these days most of your major devices like thermostats will work on all of them. In any case, the key for me was picking one and sticking with it. If you're not careful you'll pair your thermostat to your apple home and it will somehow kick it off of your SmartThings... It can still be a nightmare.

Along with this, I have a Eero mesh network so that I get internet all over my house and yard, and in my guest house, and in my workshop. I have a second SmartThings hub plugged in to one of the Eero devices in the guest house to get the z-wave signal to that building. All of this was added after the original SmartThings hub, almost entirely so that I could get some control in the second building. The Eero customer support is awesome for helping you work through setup.

The SmartThings in the main house was originally installed to get some timer control over some lights. I wanted the patio and pool lights to come on and off at certain times, different for work nights and weekends. I also wanted my daughter's reading light to turn off at 9 so she'll go to sleep and come on again at 6 to help me wake her up. Got all of that up and running pretty smoothly, with a combination of switches and outlet controllers. If you can, use the switches since then you get both normal control at the switch and smart control through the hub, and the work in conjunction. The outlet controllers are a bit of a pain since if you turn off the lamp there's nothing the outlet can do to turn it back on, and vice versa.

I have two Ecobee thermostats, with remote sensors so that I can set it to have one room or another be the controlling temp, and have that control change throughout the day. For example, at night the master bedroom governs the temp of all the bedrooms. During the day, it's the kid's rooms, but only if there's motion. I can't say enough good about how great the Ecobee customer service has been helping me get these set up. You can control the Ecobee through it's own app or in the SmartThings app, but I find that if you go back and forth you can lose it on one or the other so I stick with the SmartThings app.

I don't currently have any smart locks. I do have electronic push-button locks on almost every exterior door, but at the time I didn't want to spend the extra for "smart". I now wish I had since I could set the entire house to lock down at a certain time each day.

We recently added an Alexa, and that's been a game changer. Telling her to turn on and off this light or that... I haven't gotten her hooked up to the thermostats yet but I'll be able to say "Alexa, make it warmer in the kid's bedrooms" once I do.

I realize that a lot of this stuff freaks people out, and at one time it would have freaked me out too, but frankly I'm sure that if some government spy somewhere wanted to hear me fart he could. And if someone wants to break into my house there's a dozen windows they can simply throw a coconut through.

I have different passwords for all of this stuff than anything financial related, since I'm not confident that someone somewhere making a smart plug is holding to the same security as a financial institution.

[ranger]

I got a new improved WIFI router for Christmas - I named it "NSA Surveillance Van 12". We got Echo Dots and Echo View for Christmas - still have not hooked up.

We use Control4 as the basis for our home automation - I am not a big fan although it works very well. Instead of me cobbling together the home automation per my usual practice when we bought current home 7 years ago, I hired a low voltage contractor to "automate" the alarm, home entertainment, and HVAC and he suggested Control4. Pro - works very well, wife can control everything from the iPad that is permanently embedded in one hand (Kindle PaperWhite semi-permanent in other hand often exchanged for a iPhone), I use a single remote. Con - we cannot make any changes our selves and need our low voltage guy to make updates and changes. Recently, the original COntrol4 "box" died and since our original style box was 7 years old, no longer supported, etc. - had to buy the new improved Control4 box = $$. Good news is the new Control4 box is closer to "internet of things" and changes can be done remotely.

[Peally]

I've avoided it. I spend all day every day fixing busted computers and networks, I have zero interest in doing that when I get home.

Hell, I hate wasting a minute updating Java. Manual switches for this man.

[RJ]

I've avoided it. I spend all day every day fixing busted computers and networks, I have zero interest in doing that when I get home.

Hell, I hate wasting a minute updating Java. Manual switches for this man.

It might be that for me also.

By the time I was done at work pushing out AIX distributions to 100+ networked simulator (this was a while ago, but we did end up in the Guinness Book of World Records ) I really wasn’t interested in fooling around with home networks.

[Tabasco]

It might be that for me also.

By the time I was done at work pushing out AIX distributions to 100+ networked simulator (this was a while ago, but we did end up in the Guinness Book of World Records ) I really wasn’t interested in fooling around with home networks.

AIX is still around? IBM Still? That was the first 'nix I learned back in 1993 or so. Had some cool features for data recovery I missed with other 'nixes. I like Linux these days if I have a choice. Don't get me started on Apple...

[gtae07]

We have a thermostat that we can access via phone app, and a lock on the front door with a keypad (which can supposedly communicate by z-wave but we don't have that).

I'd like to get some kind of camera system, but don't know if we want to go through the trouble of running wires given that we may not be in the house for a whole lot longer, and I don't want to be up on ladders. Other than that, I think all I'd want in the next house would be some kind of "panic" button that turns on all the lights at once.

The idea of an alexa or something creeps me out and would probably be a very bad idea once our son starts talking...

[RJ]

AIX is still around? IBM Still? That was the first 'nix I learned back in 1993 or so. Had some cool features for data recovery I missed with other 'nixes. I like Linux these days if I have a choice. Don't get me started on Apple...

Yeah I just checked itty bitty machines and apparently they’re at 7.2. Wow.

My limited experience dates to about 1998-2002, we ran a buncha boxes in the UK and Germany.

Like I said, we got mentioned.

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/...ield-simulator