Whenever I read any post about home automation, it might as well be talking about a completely different world from mine. I've automated a lot of my house using pretty much just FOSS solutions. The Sonoff series of switches/devices is fantastic and ESP8266-based, so you can flash it with any firmware you want[1]. I wrote a small ad-hoc server to orchestrate things like "when there's motion in that room and it's dark, turn on that lamp", but you can just use Home Assistant.<p>I have a WiFi network that has no internet access where all these go, with access to a local server running an autoupdater[2] so I can just put the new firmware in a specific directory and all my devices autoupdate.<p>All of my devices are FOSS so I know they aren't talking to a mothership, and even if they tried to, they can't get on the internet. I do have an Alexa, which I should get rid of, since it's pretty much barely only useful for playing music.<p>This way is much more secure, companies can't spy on your house, and you're supporting user freedom.<p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/xoseperez/espurna" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/xoseperez/espurna</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://gitlab.com/stavros/espota-server" rel="nofollow">https://gitlab.com/stavros/espota-server</a>
I just have my kids do stuff.<p>"Water the yard!"<p>"Turn off that light!"<p>"Change the channel!"<p>"Go get the mail!"<p>Simple. Fairly reliable. Best DIY project the wife and I have ever done.
I dunno, I find it pretty hard to get on board the home automation train. I feel like, working in tech, we know better than anyone else how incomplete or unreliable these systems can be, so why introduce it to your home? Why replace your plain old metal kettle with a fancy smart-kettle that you can turn on with your Alexa, but would easily crap out on you if your Internet goes down, or some circuit breaks, or Amazon's API starts being flaky, or you lose electricity in your home? Shouldn't we be a little more worried about introducing this kind of extra complexity into our lives?<p>(^ these aren't meant to be sassy rhetorical questions, I'm genuinely curious if everyone else just views this a different way than I do)
As a security-conscious professional, and home automation enthusiast, I'm profoundly disappointed that HA's ultimate commercial breakthrough was accompanied by proprietary vendor lock-in and insecure "cloud" strings attached (looking square at you, Alexa).
In the past year I have probably spent no more than a couple of minutes thinking about my light bulbs, my smoke alarms, my door locks, etc. They just work.<p>It seems like home automation has a lot of advantages but it would also require me to spend time on it (which products to buy, how to secure them, dealing with malfunctions, upgrades, batteries...), which probably amounts to an overall net loss of quality of life.
I really prefer using physical analog light switches that don't require internet access, and don't send my data to big tech cos. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
I don't think that ROI on home automation is positive, at least not for me. While the automations mentioned are nice for the author, it seems to be too much effort for too little gains.<p>For me, home automation suppose to free up your time for other activities.<p>Washing the dishes or clothes are great automation. I would look to other automation like changing the bed sheets, folding clothes, cooking the evening meals, grocery shopping etc. Let's talk again when these items become main stream.
Most of the auto-lighting cases can be handled with a motion sensor and/or a timer. I've got two internet capable sockets and I've yet to found a use case for them.<p>The only case I found useful is using an internet capable magnetic sensor on the garage door to notice me when it's opened or closed, so that I have a peace of mind after driving off.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Shelly smart switches since many people here are worried about manufacturer cloud dependency, obsolescence and security.<p>I installed a bunch of Shelly 1 smart switches (<a href="https://shelly.cloud/shelly1-open-source/" rel="nofollow">https://shelly.cloud/shelly1-open-source/</a>), they work via WiFi in LAN (even with the manufacturer's App) <i>or</i> Cloud (it's optional).<p>There is the possibility to manage them via REST APIs, all the smart switches serve a web page that can be reached via browser.<p>If you connect them to the Cloud you can optionally add Alexa or Google Home on top. They do not support HomeKit natively[1] nor IFTT.<p>I choose this solution because I wanted to automate part of my appliances and lights in my house <i>without losing</i> the possibility to use the analog wall switches that I already have installed: Philips Hue lights are nice but if you switch them off via the analog switch in the wall the App or your favorite voice assistant can't work anymore. Furthermore, they are very expensive; at lest 20€ for a single 8W bulb (no other size available), while a single Shelly 1 costs half the price.<p>[1] but from the original link of the thread I found this <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kacepe/homebridge-shelly" rel="nofollow">https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kacepe/homebridge-shelly</a>
If you are interested in DIY home automation, you should definitely follow Jon Oxer at <a href="https://www.superhouse.tv/" rel="nofollow">https://www.superhouse.tv/</a><p>One of his biggest guiding principles which I strongly share is not needing an Internet connection for your house to work - which rules out most commercial home automation stuff that needs to talk back to home base.<p>He uses a lot of arduino and sonoff more recently. Also runs a lot of stuff with power over ethernet. All interesting stuff.<p>Lately he has been working a lot on understanding assistive technology hardware (e.g. wheelchair controller joysticks) and creating additional open hardware and software that can interface with them.<p>Well worth going back through his many years of material if you want to get into this sort of thing.
This is pretty cool. After a year experimenting I found that turning things off/on in an if/then fashion doesn't add much value to me. The kind of automation I want is for chores that take time and are not much fun, like laundry. Turns out that doing that is much harder than turning things on/off remotely :).<p>I'm thinking of an assistant where I show (or tell it) what I want, and it just does it (it 'learns'), improving based on feedback from the users.<p>Hard-coding times in the day, for example, could be improved if the assistant knew what would be the ideal time to sleep to me, based on all the data collected for each profile of the people living in that home. It might ask me or suggest me things to do, having more flexibility than static rules.
I'm curious what the state of the home automation installation/service market is these days; I do home renovation professionally and have a programming hobby so this seems like a fun area to get into.
Love seeing this for HomeKit.<p>// Enjoy when we see HN thought leadership supporting use of security-minded or privacy-minded mass market products, rather than endless bashing of consumer products aimed at trust.
Turning lights off and on and adjusting speaker volume in most homes are such simple things, it's hard to get excited about automating them. The home automation tasks I'd like to see:
- cleaning gutters
- putting dishes away
- sorting mail
- taking garbage cans down to the street
- unboxing packages and breaking down boxes
- folding laundry<p>These drudgeries take time. They're obviously not as amenable to automation as simple controls on existing electronics, but, in contrast to automated lighting, they'd be worth the investment to solve.
That's a pretty nice writeup, but I suspect some of the use-cases could be solved more easily with off-the-shelf parts.<p>For example I bought a couple of small LED-light boxes, they're about the size of a match-box and contain 5 LED lights and a motion sensor.<p>I've stuck a couple inside cupboards, and low down on the walls of our bathroom.<p>When it is dark and you walk past they come on for 30-seconds or so. Additional movement keeps them on.<p>Getting up to use the toilet in the night is much nicer with these low-level lights than turning on the proper lights and killing your night vision. (No lights would be fine 90% of the time, but children's toys get everywhere!)
How to automate a home over a 100 years -<p>Electricity (fire automation)<p>Washing machine<p>Vacuum<p>Microwave/Rice cooker<p>Dishwasher<p>-----------------------------------------<p>Turing lights on and off with a super computer?<p>[Edit: The OPs post is interesting and cool as a hacker, it's just the actual next big thing in automation that will change lives will be something boring like an electric mop or duster. And if you want to automate your life, only having dishwasher safe plates is a good first step]
With the wardrobe light I'd prefer something simple like a relay that closes the circuit when the door is closed. Invert that signal with a transistor and buddabing buddaboom. Seems like more can go wrong once you start adding programming and iPhone apps and all this sort of stuff.
For the author: home assistant has had a native homekit plugin for a while, so you could move to a %100 home assistant setup if your devices are not homekit native.
I'm curious why not use home assistant, and all the integrations that come with it, and then just expose them as homekit devices if you need/want to use homekit? Seems like it would save you a lot of time and custom code.
My home automation efforts are pretty modest so far, but address definite pain points in my house.<p>Not really automated at all, but there is a LED in the ceiling near the front door that flashes when the garage door is open[1]. Seeing that light when coming down the hall has saved us heaps of times from leaving the garage door open all night.<p>I also have laser pointers hanging from the ceiling in the garage that are positioned so when the laser dot reaches the dash you know the car is in far enough.<p>Another not quite automated addition is using a Sonoff wifi touch light switch[2] in the lounge room[3]. Reflashed with Tasmota it allows us to easily turn the overhead lights on and off from the same remote control for the TV, Amp and Kodi media player. (Works via a script in Kodi.)<p>Probably the handiest is using an ultrasonic distance sensor as a presence sensor to tell the computer when I’m in front of it or not[5]. If music is playing when I walk away from the computer, it pauses then resumes when I come back. Also wakes sleeping screens when I return.<p>Just recently I wrote a little script that displays the number of minutes I've been sitting at the computer in the corner of the screen. At thirty minutes it turns from green to red and plays, "Move it! Move it!" sound, which it'll keep doing every five minutes until I get up and leave the computer for a little bit. (Although I think I'm going to have to change the sound to something that doesn't startle the hell out of me every time.)<p>Also have an analogue modem on the phone line that lets me initiate calls from my command line by just typing something like, "call dad" and it looks up contact information in my centralised contacts list. It also cross-references incoming caller ID info with the contact list and displays caller info on my computer screen and the Kodi media player[6].<p>If I were to really get into more home automation in earnest, I think being able to control the curtains in the house would be ahead of controlling lights. Hate wandering around the house opening and closing them all.<p>Two things I dislike about current trends in home automation are:<p>1) The requirement for an active Internet connection for a lot of your stuff to work. I want it self contained to the house and not sending information out into the world.<p>2) The need to have your phone near to you to use half the stuff. E.g., with the lounge room light switch mentioned above I can turn the light on or off at the switch (as well as the remote). I don't have to go find my phone and swipe back and forth five times just to toggle it.<p>One concept I find very interesting from the late 90's was the adaptive house[7]. It would learn things like your hot water usage, preferred room temperature and ambient light levels and used neural network reinforcement learning to optimise. I wonder how far this could be taken now with advances in machine learning.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/garage-door-sensor/" rel="nofollow">https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/garage-door-sensor/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-touch.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-touch.html</a><p>[3] Aside: To my mind, in most cases it seems to make more sense to automate the switch, than automate the light bulb itself. Changing a light bulb doesn't need an electrician though, I guess.<p>[4] <a href="https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota</a><p>[5] <a href="https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-there/" rel="nofollow">https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-there/</a><p>[6] <a href="http://ncid.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow">http://ncid.sourceforge.net/</a><p>[7] <a href="https://www.cs.colorado.edu/~mozer/index.php?dir=/Research/Projects/Adaptive%20house/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cs.colorado.edu/~mozer/index.php?dir=/Research/P...</a>
Is anyone else conflicted by the desire for something better than a light switch in the home and the idea of bringing more tech into home. The negative of tech in the home being compromising privacy?