My Smart Home is Stupid

[nakquada]

@LinusTech Can I ask why you chose to use Tasmota and an MQTT broker (Mosquitto) instead of flashing your devices with ESPHome? This would have much easier configuration of the devices via its YAML and cut out the need for an MQTT broker. I could never go back to Tasmota after using ESPHome for a few years.

[Stahlmann]

All this Smart Home stuff seems like it takes more time and money to properly integrate than just walking over to a switch now and then. Plus you save all the headaches that come up when something suddenly decides to not work anymore. And it will happen because that's what tech does.

[Rusty Proto]

I would like to verify the phone he's using here. CAT S62 Pro?

 

I would love to see more devices that have interesting gimmicks like the FLIR camera, or the HiSense A5's e-ink screen, and similar. Essentially anything that deviates from the standard glass slab of a phone in a useful way.

[maplepants]

57 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

All this Smart Home stuff seems like it takes more time and money to properly integrate than just walking over to a switch now and then. Plus you save all the headaches that come up when something suddenly decides to not work anymore. And it will happen because that's what tech does.

Yeah, I posted in the last thread about Linus' smart home that these are basically anti-ads for this tech. But I see in this video that a big part of his headache is that he wants local only, but doesn't want to use an iPhone. Pretty wild that if his family was on iPhones and they had one Apple TV somewhere in the house they could do all of this just fine. 

 

Matter is basically just open source HomeKit, so hopefully the privacy landscape in smart home tech starts to improve for Android users. If Linus, with his full staff and extra manufacturer support, can't get a local only smart home to work on Android, most people should just avoid this tech entirely. 

[Isuck Assimov]

3 hours ago, nakquada said:

@LinusTech Can I ask why you chose to use Tasmota and an MQTT broker (Mosquitto) instead of flashing your devices with ESPHome? This would have much easier configuration of the devices via its YAML and cut out the need for an MQTT broker. I could never go back to Tasmota after using ESPHome for a few years.

Can confirm, lots of trial and error with MQTT and HASS.

ESPHome is really neat to work with and even makes on the fly YAML changes and OTA Updates super simple

[Rex Hite]

A hassle free home automation would not be an interesting video. Vendors can make those.

 

Complication for its own sake is a thing.

[LapsedMemory]

14 hours ago, JFClifford said:

Lotta smart home hate in this thread.  

I love good smarthome tech, and have quite a few in my house, but the way this smarthome is being built is painfully, needlessly complicated.  It was designed as something that CAN DO EVERYTHING without proper consideration as to if that's even a good idea.  If he doesn't regret it already, he will in the future.  

[Rex Hite]

[WeeemRCB]

4 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

All this Smart Home stuff seems like it takes more time and money to properly integrate than just walking over to a switch now and then. Plus you save all the headaches that come up when something suddenly decides to not work anymore. And it will happen because that's what tech does.

Here's a real world application

I've built a system that's almost ready to deploy into my elderly mum's house.
Motion sensors, door sensors, water leak sensors, thermostats, smart switches, a camera and a tidy wee dashboard interface for her mobile and tablet.

 

Why?

She's had a couple of falls this year, but hasn't called us because she didn't want us to worry 

She had an SOS dongle before, but didn't use it even though she was once down for over a day (covid related) 

I got her an early Crimbo present of an LTE smart watch which she loves. Complete with fall detection and SOS to replace the dongle, but we still don't completely trust her to use it.

 

So with the motion sensors I'm putting in, if she has another fall then, after a period of no motion all siblings will get an sms to let us know which room she was in last and how long she's not moved. That way we can call her to make sure she's ok or coordinate whoever's closest to stop by and make sure all is well.

Could be as simple as she's passed out on the sofa, but we can also account for false positives with logic.

Well worth the time and effort

[WeeemRCB]

Linus mentioned he likes to sleep cool and  Yvonne likes to sleep warm.

This could be a perfect solution

 

https://www.eightsleep.com/uk/

"Automatic cooling and heating. The Pod dynamically cools and heats each half of the bed based on your personal sleep data."

[Spindel]

2 hours ago, LapsedMemory said:

I love good smarthome tech, and have quite a few in my house, but the way this smarthome is being built is painfully, needlessly complicated.  It was designed as something that CAN DO EVERYTHING without proper consideration as to if that's even a good idea.  If he doesn't regret it already, he will in the future.  

The problem I see with Linus smart home videos is that he’s a consumer electronics guy but he does not have the knowlege about HVAC control systems (and in extension building physics). 
 

 

[LapsedMemory]

2 minutes ago, Spindel said:

The problem I see with Linus smart home videos is that he’s a consumer electronics guy but he does not have the knowlege about HVAC control systems (and in extension building physics). 
 

 

I've been getting the same impression watching these videos.  It's clear the team has tried to do their research, but there's a big difference between a few months of research, and years of experience you get from someone actually in the particular field.  I had the same impression with the HVAC duct shut-off valves they built.  Has anyone actually sat down and calculated how many of them can be shut before you start burning out the main HVAC blower motor from too much back-pressure?  

[Spindel]

1 hour ago, LapsedMemory said:

I've been getting the same impression watching these videos.  It's clear the team has tried to do their research, but there's a big difference between a few months of research, and years of experience you get from someone actually in the particular field.  I had the same impression with the HVAC duct shut-off valves they built.  Has anyone actually sat down and calculated how many of them can be shut before you start burning out the main HVAC blower motor from too much back-pressure?  

He might have a pressure controlled motor so it spins down to keep a constant duct pressure. The thing is when you go below 30 % of the rated RPM you usually get almost no flow and only build pressure. 

[Ultraforce]

On 12/7/2022 at 1:33 PM, LapsedMemory said:

I've been getting the same impression watching these videos.  It's clear the team has tried to do their research, but there's a big difference between a few months of research, and years of experience you get from someone actually in the particular field.  I had the same impression with the HVAC duct shut-off valves they built.  Has anyone actually sat down and calculated how many of them can be shut before you start burning out the main HVAC blower motor from too much back-pressure?  

Probably also doesn't help that Jake apparently has taken over as pretty much the main person responsible for the IT in terms of servers and networking at the business but also is in charge of doing all the researching for the smart home stuff and I think he's not even 25 yet so some of the experience stuff I can't imagine he's had the time to develop the experience that someone whose been working on HVAC for years would have.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

The one thing I agree with Linus on the Smart Home project, is that no data should be sent to someone else's computer (cloud) to turn on a light.

 

The one thing I disagree with Linus on the Smart Home project, is that to achieve the point above, you could use a centralized thermostat and regular light switches.

 

Adding so many complex (unneded) pieces to the chain just significantly increase the chance that when you need it, the system will be down or behaving incorrectly. So many wireless links, transcievers, translation layers, stacks upon stacks of OS upon OS, etc...

[Zarkex]

What I really don't get is why they chose these ecobee things which really aren't made for underfloor heating (hence they don't support it) but then poll the temperature control from it to flip on the valves via a Home Assistant automation (iirc).

You could've just gotten thermostats that support underfloor heating (for example, Tado: https://www.tado.com/all-en/products) and then skip the whole mess imo, the relay board would've been unnecessary as well then cause Tado has a wireless option too where you only need to supply power to the thermostats.
 

What if Apple completely locks down this HomeKit hacky connection thing that HomeAssistant has going (which wouldn't surprise me) or ecobee shuts off this manual wiring override.
It all seems very jank to me and not like a professional solution that will work seamlessly for years.

 

But that's just my opinion, no hate.

[AbsoluteWoo]

I just use Nest and Hue stuff across my house and never have any issues.

[XWAUForceflow]

Man... I mean Linus is no tech dummy (maybe not a genius either, but he does know his way around tech) has a crap-ton of capable workers who actually where paid to investigate and help him plan all this stuff and yet it seems like it's still a disaster. All this smart stuff just seems to be there to solve problems that never really existed.

I means I have some 'smart' technology at home as well and honestly it's just so annoying, unreliable and impractical in many occasions. I am just glad that my main lights in the living room will default to 'on' when a power cycle occurs. That way I do have a way to make sure they actually turn on. Sure there's an app, but that one is so damn unreliable it's really unbelievable. I also had a friend how had his whole lighting setup connected to his phone so that when he left everything turned off. Great in theory, but when he had some guests over and quickly went to grab something from the store things turned very dark very quickly...

Seeing the issues Linus is having just shows that none of that stuff is really ready for the average Joe. Especially when you don't want to be reliant on your internet, don't want any of your data be available in the cloud or even want to be able to combine stuff from different vendors... What a mess...
 

[Mr.Nelf]

On 12/7/2022 at 5:44 AM, Rusty Proto said:

I would like to verify the phone he's using here. CAT S62 Pro?

 

I would love to see more devices that have interesting gimmicks like the FLIR camera, or the HiSense A5's e-ink screen, and similar. Essentially anything that deviates from the standard glass slab of a phone in a useful way.

Yes, that's it.  It's also in the YouTube description & looks like it matches.  I came to this thread for the same reason.  I saw that & my jaw dropped cuz I've wanted something that can do that that doesn't cost $1K+ & doesn't have a Sh-y resolution so I can use it around the house in a number of ways similar to how he uses it in the vid.  Not sure I can justify the purchase any time soon, but it's AMAZING to see the tech becoming available! ^_^

 

To those experienced with multiple thermal cameras, any tips or suggestions for those of us looking for a fairly priced, non-bank-breaking thermal imaging solution like this? I'm not really looking for another phone(as phones go, I'm guessing this'd be quite a downgrade from my Note9) but I'd consider buying a used one of these perhaps if it's worth the money for just the thermal imager.  Thx in advance!

[PedroQ]

Can anyone explain how they had those 24V power cables at each Ecobee, did they run them all from the furnace?  Or are they able to tap it from a local electrical outlet?