I hate those automated systems.
The company i work for moved to a new building about a year ago, and all the curtains and lights are automated.
Not surprisingly, the lights are too bright, and there is no way to control the light levels manually.<p>I asked the maintanace crew to lower the light intensity. After a full day of fiddling with the system, they managed to somewhat dim the lights, which reverted back to full on blast aftet a few minutes.<p>Having anticipated that, I built a "complex" system of shades using papers and masking tape, which somehow survived to this day.<p>The best part? The desginers of the office come to show their creation to potenial customers every few weeks and show off thier marvelous design. A classic case of "You are not the customer".<p>And that without even going into the "automatic shading system" which opens the curtains at the worst possible moment, and can't be changed because "we need it that way for our green certfication".<p>Sorry, had to vent off...
"Any sufficiently complex home automation system is indistinguishable from being haunted"<p>This is just a plain digital radio one; I'm sure with the involvement of computers it could have been made much more intractable.<p>My own experience closest to this was an office meeting room that had dimmable lights ... with a standard "boolean" momentary switch. There were, of course, no instructions. We sort of figured out that holding the switch down would <i>sometimes</i> put it into a cycle of brightness from which releasing the switch would leave it at right level, but it wasn't reliable and we often sat in the dim light, defeated by the UX.
Entire text:<p>Short Thread: staying with some friends and last night after everyone went to bed I could not figure out how to turn off the large ceiling light in their living room. There is a wall controller that seemed fairly straightforward.<p>There is a large main light, a smaller light on top that faces up, several levels of brightness, and a fan. Each time I tried to turn off the upward facing light, something else would turn on. After ten minutes, I woke up my wife to ask her to help. It only got worse.<p>Each time we thought everything was off, a few seconds later something else (or everything else) would turn back on. Minute twenty, I started laughing out of sheer frustration at what felt like a Myst puzzle. Couldn’t wake our friends cause they have a small kid.<p>Suddenly, we solved it. Everything went off and stayed off and after waiting a full minute we realized it was gonna stay that way. This is circa 1am. I finally went to sleep.<p>This morning we asked about what the deal was with the light. The answer has broken me.<p>Our friends are in a newly built condo complex. The fan controls use a binary code to connect to the fans. Additionally the controls were only supposed to have a signal reach of 30 feet. They reach much, much further.<p>There are almost 40 units within reach. Based on the binary code limitation there’s only 16 possible code options. So everyone in this building controls the main light and fan of at least one other person; maybe more.<p>From 12:30 to 1am last night, I was engaged in a proxy war with up to three other apartments, as they in turn, set my fan to high and my lights to the brightest setting, until everyone gave up.<p>Our hosts have been here for six months and have found a way to live with it by imagining who in their building they might be interacting with. This one guy who they think particularly might be an asshole and they have suspicions about when he’s running the show.<p>I am staying here again tonight. I look forward to wrestling control of the lights from what is essentially angry ghosts in my own personal AITA post.<p>My inclination is to go Full Lawful Good and turn off everyone’s lights tonight at 10pm to make sure we all get a good night of sleep and wake up rested and ready for a productive Saturday.<p>The light is off. War is over.
I would love to do some sort of homeAssistant type automation, but I've been dithering for ages because everything I read up on all the various light and appliance control protocols make me feel my entire home would become a massive UI/UX nightmare for myself and visitors.
I want smarts, but I also never want to have to reboot a lightswitch.
TL;DR: he stayed over at a friend's place in a densely packed condo unit. Condo building has a home automation system with binary codes that has a limit of 16 combinations. With 40 units nearby, each unit controls at least 1 other automation system in a neighbor's apt, so one of his neighbors was accidentally toggling his light.<p>Even better are the replies from other Twitter users on the same thread on what they experienced with their home automation systems. Here's one that tickled me: "We had an Airbnb guest once who (probably accidentally) connected his Spotify Connect to my living room sound system. Months after he was gone, death metal would start without a warning, volume went up, silence after 5 seconds. It took weeks before I figured it out"<p>It's crazy how sometimes these automation systems that are supposed to make our lives easier, make it more complicated instead. I wonder when the issues that we see today with smart houses and smart TVs will show up in the upcoming generation of "smart" cars.
I stayed in an AirBnB that was like this recently, most frustrating experience I've had in a while. Thought i was losing my sanity when the lights turned on and fan spun up to high speed at 2:30 after I'd been out drinking... Left them a note in the private review. I don't know how I'd be able to interact with my neighbors if I was constantly in battle with them like this.
Had thr same thing happen in my parents house home from school one summer.<p>Fans were set to the same receivers channel from.the factory. So I'd get in at 1am, turn my light off, which would turn theirs on.<p>Took a few days to figure out what was going on.