I have a few of these. They came with the house.

1) The power cuts out frequently and the autogate can't be manually opened. There's a battery and a switch that opens it but if the power is out for a few hours, I can't go home.

2) We have lights that trigger when the alarm rings. We can't turn off the button or it won't work. There's some glitch with many of them where the neighbor's lights burn out faster. Some of the neighbors just removed them as there's little benefit.

3) Smart lights are a little burden on the router, especially without a hub. Tàoo many and things start glitching. The best ones end up being a kind of mesh, which is why they're so expensive.

4) Our smart door isn't properly waterproof. Rain and humidity makes the fingerprint sensor glitch out. While we can open it with a key or card, the whole purpose is not bringing one. One alternative is using the free app that unlocks the door, but it means I have to watch an ad if I go home.

> it means I have to watch an ad if I go home.

These companies deserve to go out of business. Just hearing this makes me so angry. I’d be ripping that thing out and installing a traditional lock.

I like ereaders, but I installed koreader on mine and use the wifi only when I transfer new books (when I’m too lazy to get the laptop and a usb cable).

Dont forget about the IoT botnets too.

Of course this had to come up heh.

Having outdoor and indoor lights turn on when I come back home feels like I'm a millionaire. Cost me like $50 to setup.

Side effect of smart home is you get pretty good monitoring (power use per room/appliance, unusual power use when you away - something left on).

Other nice things:

1. Garage door opener on your phone - long press iPhone lock button. Already got car key and contactless payments are ubiquitous here. Haven't had to carry anything else but my phone with me for years now.

2. Temperature changing light bulbs - one part of my house is lacking natural light so I got LED's that change temperature - blue-ish by day, amber after sunset.

3. Dedicated wireless buttons to turn on/off lights across halway without running wiring.

4. Long-press/double-press tricks with wireless buttons - turn on/off all lights, etc. Can customize to whatever you wish.

5. Per-bedroom heating using $20 smart plug, $10 tiny wireless temperature sensor and simple resistive heaters. Shuts on/off based on presence of course, but nicest feature is changing temperature by time of day (i.e. cooler for sleep). Precise control also means it's cheap to run (I've calculated heatpump payback would be 20 yrs).

6. Water leak sensors, smoke alarm notifications - cheapest form of insurance.

7. Hot water control - utilize TOU/excess solar and shut off when you leave / preheat after coming back from holidays.

8. Preheat home before coming back (probably easiest hack of all via infrared blaster).

9. Excess solar battery / EV charging - not strictly smart home feature, but using Home Assistant for this.

10. Crank up ERV speed when sensor in bathroom reaches humidity threshold.

11. On shoulder season, we start shutting windows during night and turn on ERV (helps keep heat in, but also avoids mosquitoes, neighbor wood burner smoke, noise, etc). I've added automation to check forecast night time temperature, turn on ERV automatically and send notification to close windows.

12. Lowkey, but HomePod plays news over radio every morning 8AM.

13. Home Assistant doubles as NAS for backups and NVR for cameras (thingino) with local AI object detection.

1. I do have a smart garage door (came with the house). That said, I bought traditional remotes and use those 98% of the time. The app is nice to give me assurance that the door is closed. This has been pretty stable.

2. I feel like after the novelty of being able to changes colors/temps wears off, they’d be the same almost all the time, at which point buying the correct temperature bulb for the fixture would have the same net effect without any setup.

3. I got a wireless light switch for a lamp across the room in a place I lived over 15 years ago. No internet or accounts required. Getting smart bulbs just for adding switches seems like over-engineering.

5. I bought a smart plug as a way to dip my toe in the water (I was going to try it on the Christmas tree a few years back). I waited for Matter so I didn’t have to deal with a bunch of apps. I needed the vendor app anyway (and an account) just to set it up. Strike 1. When my phone upgraded it stopped working in Apple Home. Strike 2. I’ve tried to reset it up several times now and it doesn’t work, it only works in the vendor app. Strike 3. The vendor app is slower and uglier than Apple Home. Strike 4. It has not been a pleasant dip. My dad has a lot of smart home stuff and had a lot of stuff like this happen, and dismisses it because he thinks it’s cool. To me, seamless operation and stability is cool. Smart home stuff just isn’t there.

6. Water leak sensors are something I’ve thought about and looked at. Every one I saw had a loud siren on it. I don’t think I want that. I just want a notification.

8. I’ve actually been looking at going the other way on my thermostat. I have to replace the batteries in my basic programmable thermostat every year. It’s a minor annoyance. I have been debating getting an old school mechanical thermostat so I never have to change the battery again, since I don’t use the programmable stuff anyway. I’m always home and always want it the same temp. With the smart ones, I’ve been seeing articles about companies going out of business and killing access. I don’t want to have to buy a new thermostat because the company that made it decided to shut down some servers. The mechanical one will work for decades with no fuss.

10. I stayed in an AirBnB that had a bathroom fan tied to a humidity sensor. I can’t remember the exact issues we had, but I remember it driving everyone nuts, where it was the topic of several dinner conversations.

Some stuff can be neat, if it works, but from what I’ve seen that’s a big IF. And it seems to require constant vigilance and maintenance to keep it going. Every OS or firmware update is a risk. Are the use cases worth the hassle? For me, the answer is mostly no. Especially if it also has the potential to shorten the usable life of a product. A refrigerator might last 20 years. I bet a refrigerator with a big display will not last 20 years. Maybe the actual refrigerator part will, but how long before that screen on the front is useless?

The doorbell that came with my house is probably 40 years old and it works fine. All it has to do is make 2 wires touch briefly. For people who bought smart doorbells, how often will they need to upgrade them? The Diderot effect is in play, and then on top of that, the lifespan of all these things shortens to tech lifecycles instead of appliance or hardware lifecycles.

All of this doesn’t even touch on the privacy nightmare that a lot of these things introduce. The aforementioned smart refrigerator takes pictures inside the fridge, sometimes of the people opening it. I saw an article as well where there was talk of displaying digital ads in the kitchen via these screens. Smart TVs track what you watch and who knows what else, so they can display ads. I believe I read Vizio is losing money selling TVs, but more than makes up for it with all the ads they push to those TVs. These devices are turning the customers into the product. My home should be a sanctuary away from all of that. With my TV I don’t connect it to the network, but when buying smart home stuff, they don’t work at all without the internet, so they have you.

Using Home Assistant helps with some stuff, but the average consumer isn’t doing that. That’s also one more thing to add to the overall project that needs maintenance. Having a smart home is a hobby, and I’m not looking for my door locks and lightbulbs to become a hobby.