Why I Regret Making My House a Smart-House (2013)

Dr Brooks, of MIT Robotics fame, came up with a really elegant solution for the complexity of robots, he called it subsumption. As an architecture it worked by allowing all of the small bits of a robot to be independently functional but merely &quot;influenced&quot; by a higher authority. That worked through a series of behaviors that were built in that could be overridden by external input.<p>Consider the case of a &#x27;leg&#x27;. A robot needs to lift its legs and move them forward in order to achieve forward locomotion. This means it needs a gait where it steps while keeping itself balanced. Brooks created a system where the highest ranked function that could run, would. So if the robot was stable, it unlocked the &#x27;lift function&#x27; and if the leg was lifted it unlocked the higher priority forward function, and if the leg was forward it unlocked the higher priority balance function. I really liked it a lot and have used it in other embedded systems since then.<p>As a result I see the &quot;smart&quot; house system similarly, which is that I would build systems that were self contained, and could see input from outside. Take a light for example, it would have &#x27;on&#x27;, &#x27;off&#x27;, &#x27;dim&#x27; and &#x27;i don&#x27;t care&#x27;. If you command it to any point, it goes there. Period. If it is in &#x27;i don&#x27;t care&#x27; the house controller is free to tell it to do something different.

I wouldn&#x27;t mind a smart home so long as e.g light switches have the response time (1ms?)! and reliability (1 million switchings without hiccup?) of a regular switch.<p>The acceptance level for &quot;problems&quot; switching lights on or off is pretty much zero.<p>If all the smart functions fail, it has to fall back to a functioning dumb home, like escalators become stairs when broken. Not a non-working home like a broken elevator...

Yes, it seems like Control 4 was the root of his problem. My architect aunt always builds homes with similar expensive and locked-in systems and although they do seem to last reliably for years they&#x27;re 10&#x27;s of thousands of dollars and locked into a certain set of functionality and hardware. But there are alternatives now.<p>My $50 Wink hub runs my apartment&#x27;s 5x $30 z-wave dimmers, 1x $25 front door sensor, and 1x $75 z-wave thermostat and 1x $15 cree xbee LED bulb I cannibalized to drive some low voltage LED fairy lights. That&#x27;s $315, ordered piecemeal and all delivered amazon prime. It&#x27;s been rock-solid reliable for about two years. I recently added Amazon Alexa voice control and used the open source &#x27;HomeBridge&#x27; node project to add Siri integration (which ROCKS).<p>There are inexpensive connected-home systems now. Spend an afternoon wiring one up!

They went for a closed solution instead of using a standard based solution. They also went for wireless dimmer&#x2F;light switches instead of wired.<p>If you build for 40 years, stop thinking like a young programmer jumping on the new trend, you need to go with robust solutions even if they cost 10% more. If you build a house, you can even wire it in a way to later add the smart features just where you effectively need them.

A futile but heartfelt plea: Stop putting computers in shit.

The title is a bit sensationalist.<p>I have &lt; $1,000 invested in home IoT (security sensors, a couple of light switches, garage door opener, thermostat, and the hub) and have been very happy with it.<p>Personally I see IoT as augmentation not total replacement. Don&#x27;t replace lights&#x2F;switches for the sake of it - wait until you have a valid use. Buy devices that use commonly used standards and you should avoid vendor lock in issues.<p>IoT threads always get the &quot;Why would you need a smart house&quot; answers...<p>Some of my use cases so far...<p>- Remotely control home heating - peace of mind when on vacation and being able to sit at DIA and come home to a warm house is awesome<p>- Used &quot;smart lighting&quot; when I had infants in the house during the frequent middle of the night trips to the kitchen&#x2F;laundry etc<p>- Remotely open the garage door - useful if a family member calls in to pick up something when no one is home. Useful when HomeLink in the car fails for some reason.<p>- Security system - we&#x27;ve had issues with neighbourhood kids trying to get into an external hot tub. The security system turns on external lights when there is motion and notifies me. If someone tries to open a door&#x2F;window is sets off an alarm and turns on a small lamp so I don&#x27;t wake up in pitch black conditions.<p>- Water sensors under sinks and by the sump pump - our house was destroyed by a leak several years ago. The peace of mind from having this monitored is worth it alone for my family.<p>- Lighting - external holiday lights. Also hooked up the security system to give anyone prowling around a festive surprise (my long term goal is to combine this with opensprinkler...)

I plan to have a smart house but when I do it, it&#x27;ll be using an opensource solution running a software that I can debug myself, setup in a way that it can fallback to just being manual (so switches for the light would need to work normally if the system is not on) and I want things to be wired since I feel that most wireless solutions add too much complexity.<p>Basically any system like this should not be a liability and should not prevent reselling the house if I ever need to.<p>I&#x27;m not really sure smart house devices are ready yet for non programers to play with but as a dev, it&#x27;d be a huge amount of fun getting it to work :)

I&#x27;ve taken a very different path to a smart home - and I don&#x27;t have any regrets. First - the house was built as any dumb-house would be - 3 and 4 way switches really are, with copper in the walls. I wired for alarm, but didn&#x27;t bother to hook it up right away.<p>What is working now? The alarm is connected to a raspberry pi so I can hook into it. Now it arms&#x2F;disarms at a set time each day so I don&#x27;t have to remember to do it. It can text&#x2F;email me when states that I care about have changed - like when the power is out, or the alarm goes off.<p>Z-wave - for a few light switches that really matter to me, mostly outside lights. Most are on a cron job to do what I want, but a web UI lets you take control.<p>Wi-fi thermostat with an API - no 3rd part website needed. Why can&#x27;t they all be this way? I can turn the system off when I&#x27;m out of town and fire it up before I get home. I also wrote some stuff to log usage each day along with the weather. Adding the alarm system status with the HVAC status and it will text me if the A&#x2F;C is running and a window is open.<p>Garage door, custom GPIO hack to the opener. Now with the alarm status it can make sure it is shut each night. I can open&#x2F;close it from a web page, but that is rarely used.<p>Alexa skill - this is the latest piece and the only one that needs Internet to keep working (except sending email, of course). It ties into all the other pieces and gives voice control to the parts that make sense for me. I won&#x27;t let it disarm the alarm, I just don&#x27;t trust a 3rd party to do that.<p>I pieced this together so I could learn and have something to play with, but now it is just nice. The best part is if something quits working, I&#x27;m not left in the dark like the guy in the article - I just have to get off my butt and hit the light switch or walk out and open the garage door.<p>I have something against smart home stuff that requires the company to stay in business and keep their servers up and running, but that comes at a cost - I have to roll my own. At least I know who to complain to when it is broken.

I worked as a programmer working with one of biggest home automation hardware companies in the world. Unfortunately, based on my experience, I don&#x27;t think the products are yet at a point where anyone who doesn&#x27;t full understand the hardware and software that&#x27;s going into their homes should have a &quot;smart home&quot;.<p>People who spent <i>millions</i> on their systems were consistently disappointed and upset due to a combination of hardware and software failures with no fallbacks.

The author of the article should have titled the post, Why I regret going with Control 4. There are any number of more DIY style solutions that at this point blow the control 4 features out of the water at a 10th of the price.<p>SmartThings or wink hub, some ge z-wave switches, some chrome casts audio&#x27;s, a google home, and a nest or ecobee 3 thermostat, and this guy would have have been fine.

I&#x27;ve always felt like a smart house is a solution begging a problem and this really just confirms it. I&#x27;ll take my house dumb and functional. Two things I&#x27;d like that I don&#x27;t have:<p>- A master light switch by the front and back doors,<p>- A heating controller that I can control remotely, so I can turn it on when I&#x27;m on the train about an hour before I get home (my work routine is quite fluid), rather than have it on a regular schedule.<p>Both of these are fairly simply fixed but the fact that I&#x27;ve never bothered to do either probably says everything about how much I really value them.<p>I do not and never have liked locked in systems. If I have to call someone to figure out why the lights in my house aren&#x27;t working properly this is going to make me very miserable, very quickly.

This problem space was very different in 2013 vs now in 2016 going on 2017.<p>Today, all the things he&#x27;s talking about can be covered in a consumer system plus iOS or Android app.<p>My recommendation is to start with Lutron Caseta switches for lights which look and behave precisely like traditional switches with all the traditional benefits, but are also readily integrated into a smart home set up. You can use it all either way, and both ways are fine: Luddite friendly.<p>For the primary media room I&#x27;d use Logitech Harmony Smart Home Hub and remote[1]. After a decade of fooling with dynamic remotes, these days I prefer the one without a screen because visitors &quot;get&quot; the traditional icon buttons.<p>Then, depending on your choice of mobile device, I&#x27;d build out multi room audio and multi TV video using Airplay for an iOS household or Chromecast for an Android household. This way the playback point is visible to the mobile OS and available across apps.<p>I&#x27;d add Echo Dots for room by room voice control if interested, because Alexa pays attention all the time while Siri may need to be poked before listening, and it&#x27;s good at discovering all these smart home control systems.<p>The cost delta from good Lutron dimmer switches to the Caseta line is small. The cost delta from a good universal remote to the buttons-only Harmony is almost nil. The cost of Chromecast or Apple TVs per video or audio playback point is reasonable, as is the cost of Echo Dot per room.<p>None of this approach involves a lock in to a service contract with some home automation company where even their control panels cost more than iPad Pros, can&#x27;t do anything else, and are obsolete and unpatched a couple years later.<p>1. For primary media room: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B01JHQZSHW&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B01JHQZSHW&#x2F;</a><p>2. Lutron Caseta starter with the right smart home bridge&#x2F;hub: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B01LWX1PFW" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B01LWX1PFW</a>

It&#x27;s really important to eliminate single points of failures in home control systems. I&#x27;ve wired my apartment with Insteon controllers, which are capable of talking to each other without needing a central controller. I also have a server setup that can control all devices from my phone or Siri. When the centralized server fails to work, I can still control devices via the Insteon switches that talk directly to the devices.<p>If you&#x27;re interested in building out such a system check out the home-controller nodejs package, InsteonUSB PowerLinc modem, and of course any insteon devices.<p>In my opinion the best home automation systems are decentralized networks of devices that can work independently or cooperate with each other.

I just remodeled and used this - <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.insteon.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.insteon.com</a><p>Every plug, light switch, door sensors, HVAC, cameras. Simple iPhone application to control. Single hub controller everything talks to.<p>This does not have all the bells and whistles that the zwave, zigby, et.al. have but it just works. They do support HomeKit from Apple but not for all devices yet (door sensors).<p>Same company that did the original X10 stuff for automation in the 80s.<p>Not unhappy.

While I have avoided smart housing like the plague I think it is, I have my own peeve:<p>Hardwired 10 Gb Ethernet throughout the house.<p>Best ISP: 2.4 Mb to the house.

The lack of standardization, all the things that can go wrong, overzealous 3rd parties, uneeded &#x27;notifications&#x27; etc. etc..<p>A) Aside from possibly turning the lights off after you forgot. B) Surveillance if you live in a really bad hood C) Possible optimization of heating&#x2F;cooling to save$ ...<p>I just don&#x27;t see it.<p>I&#x27;m never worried about A. B ... well that&#x27;s another issue. A decent thermostat would solve C if it was a problem.<p>I just don&#x27;t see the grand utility in any of it, including Alexa or the Google in-home thing.<p>If I have a weird question I can ask my iPhone Siri - which I never do anyhow.<p>The opportunity for home automation is I think limited, and it&#x27;s inherently plagued with platform integration issues.<p>I have better things to do with my time.

&gt; The system will shut off if it reaches 104 degrees to protect itself. Every time I touch that thing its hot to begin with. I got it to cool down enough to go back on, and now its been suggested I install a hole and a fan in a closet packed with HVAC and A&#x2F;V equipment.<p>This is funny to me - of course a closet packed with HVAC and A&#x2F;V equipment should be cooled! It&#x27;s a server room!<p>As someone designing a smart building - the key is to find protocols and systems that 1) work with open protocols such as Z-wave, and 2) always have a hardware interface that works as a failsafe, so that even if the controller completely malfunctions or if the internet malfunctions, everything will still be fine as a &#x27;dumb house&#x27;. Or 3) Use specific technologies from companies whose entire business model depends on the technology working -- say, Sonos.<p>So. In the building I&#x27;m designing: Z-wave light switches are normal switches, yet wirelessly controllable and will report their status back to the controller. Z-wave thermostats can be controlled locally and globally. Sound systems are Sonos. Ethernet ports are mostly PoE as to allow for future 12V devices. An alarm system is installed by a dedicated alarm company. Everything is designed to work without internet or wifi or the z-wave base controller.<p>I&#x27;m coding a Slack-based interface, which has the added benefit of being interface + human-readable logging system in one.

My parents bought a house with a similar system installed, albeit from Crestron. It has been a constant source of frustration and disappointment. The AV control that they installed which cost a pretty penny is totally inferior to my harmony hub &#x2F; chrome cast &#x2F; fire stick &#x2F; echo setup which cost me a fraction of the price.<p>The biggest problem is once you install these systems you&#x27;re effectively locked in forever. Abandoning the system requires so much new hardware.

&gt; What I would like, is to come in from a long day in my shop and have a house that works. I have grown weary and no longer care how smart it is.<p>Here, I think we find the problem.<p>The author doesn&#x27;t know the system, he didn&#x27;t build it, and has little use for it.<p>I don&#x27;t think a smart house ever made sense for him.<p>The only places it does make sense, to me are:<p>* Health. Monitoring health, or enabling someone to better care for themselves.<p>* A project, by someone who wants to control and automate parts of their house, but will never truly be satisfied.

How resilient are smart systems to voltage surges? Do you risk blowing out all of your smart switches and outlets during surges? There is the possibility of installing whole-house surge protection, but that only protects against external surges, and their clamping voltages are probably too high (so that it lasts a long time, since the MOVs sacrifice themselves) to protect the smart circuits.

Back in the 90&#x27;s, I considered going all smarthome. In the end, I didn&#x27;t and am glad.<p>But I did run RG6&#x2F;cat5 to every room in a star configuration. I had little use for it at the time, but have grown into it, and that turned out to be a worthwhile investment.<p>Wifi has gotten much better over the years, but wired connections still work better. For example, my Grace Digital media player is incredibly flaky with wifi, but works like a champ when wired (read the Amazon reviews on it). I bought it knowing it needed to be wired, and it was no problem for my setup.<p>The lights are all conventional, and just work. The dimmer switches regularly fail, but they&#x27;re cheap to replace with units from any hardware store.

Aren&#x27;t these things going to break and you end up doing maintenance every couple of months in a useless turns-your-lights-off-for-you system?

Because &quot;please wait while your lightbulbs perform a firmware update&quot; Because you can&#x27;t secure that shi... stuff? Because why? Because when I need an internet connected toaster I will give up on tech, on life, on humanity. Because the last thing we all need in our homes is more technological annoyance.

Horrible scrolling experience, zoom on mobile devices is also disabled

The real regret here seems to be overpaying for technology in the home when it&#x27;s evolving quickly and the price is coming down, and not knowing it was preventable.<p>There are fantastic ways to have a flexible, affordable, and manageable automated home. Fittingly, it&#x27;s not guaranteed because of a brand name.<p>The evolution of the smart home is never going to end, and single platform smart home owners are only starting to realize they are screwed. Any investment is relatively outdated quickly and the strategy to manage the tech through the life of their home is a pain compared to say a furnace, hot water, etc.<p>I got Insteon 6 years ago when it was the most capable &amp; economical, and now want to mix and match components. It&#x27;s totally possible as long as you have a vision of how you want your life to improve from the tech, and not installing home automation for its&#x27; own sake. Often I&#x27;ll add a few pieces at a time after thinking it over. Maybe not for everyone.<p>Where home automation is headed is who can mix and match old and new generation equipment together into one cohesive experience.<p>Apple Home, Google, etc can keep trying to add to the mess of adding more platforms instead of connecting them. There is no one platform that can, or will hit every need, type of living and price point, so this mess will keep getting worse.<p>On the other hand, tech will keep getting cheaper, more capable and simpler to use, and more importantly, configure.<p>The reality I&#x27;m arriving at is homes will need one (truly) universal hub&#x2F;appliance that is platform and equipment agnostic, like a furnace, or water tank, except to run anything you may want in the home. Add to that one universal software that works on any platform that comes out, and can tie to any standard. There&#x27;s some good in-roads being made on this front and it&#x27;s exciting to finally see. Even things like Harmony Hub are very encouraging.<p>The kicker? It needs to get orders of magnitude easier than what&#x27;s out there for the average person. Since I&#x27;m not about mass adoption of premature technology a gap (and opportunity) will remain for a few years yet. Some of the latest entry level home tech is getting better, but it simply does not do the type of integration that true home automation allows, and in my estimation, is the benefit.<p>Now that we&#x27;ve had a taste of how tech could make our homes easier and more enjoyable to live in, our needs and desires may be outgrowing what&#x27;s available. Hope someone comes along and pushes the industry forward quickly instead of iterating through products slowly.

Yah I figured this out quickly. The only things I use are a dumb but Wi-Fi thermostat and wemos for a couple automated lights.