Looks like I was ahead of the curve. When building my house, I looked at all the smarthome stuff, and eventually decide "nope". It's all conventional wiring. Consider that the dimmer switches, over time, all failed, some I had to replace multiple times. I finally gave up and replaced them with simple on/off switches.
What I did do, which paid off handsomely, is run RG6 coax and Cat5 cables everywhere in a star configuration. I did all the work myself to make sure it was done right. Haven't had any trouble at all with it, despite lots of upgrading of the electronics.
BTW, another thing I did, which isn't exactly home automation. I bought a $10 microwave from the thrift store, and put it in the bathroom. I don't have to run the faucet anymore waiting for hot water for a wash cloth. Just wet the washcloth and throw it in the microwave. Aaaahhh, the luxury of hot washcloth on my face! If I was designing a house these days, I'd build in a special spot for the microwave in the bathroom.
P.S. the high end coax and ethernet cable costs very little money. What costs is the electrician, who charges (long ago) $50 just to attach the wires coming out of the wall to the socket.
Me, I watched the electrician at work, and the cable guy working at my previous house. I noted the tools they used, and bought them. A Milwaukee right angle drill puts the holes in the studs. I bought the Telewire Supply coax strippers and crimpers, and the ethernet socket tools. With that, you can do a pro job which will last and costs very little.
I learned back in college that using professional electrical/electronic tools, like a soldering iron, makes a huge difference.
I wish I was close enough with a electrican so I could hire them for an hour, show me how to do the quick things I need done then I'll do them my self. I want to replace a bunch of outlets and switches.
YouTube DIY seems to only cover the happy path. I opened a couple up and it wasn't quite like videos.
I learned a lot by watching electricians work on things I needed done. Same with plumbers and cable guys.
It really saves a ton of money, because then you can just do it yourself. Like replacing the dimmer switch with a regular switch - costs about $2 from the hardware store for the switch, and a few minutes.
Having a plumber show up costs $300 just for him to come to your house. It pays off big time to do what you can yourself.
P.S. I always ask for permission to watch them work. They appreciate the ask, and so don't think it's creepy.
What do you use the cat5 cables for? You mention it is all "dumb" (edit, actually the word used was 'conventional') but you also mention electronics, so it must not be that dumb?
As for the bathroom, another option would be a small on demand water heater under the bathroom sink.
I use the cat5 to distribute ethernet throughout. This was before wifi was any good, and I still use the cat5 all day every day. Gigabit is not supposed to work with cat5, but it does just fine.
I hadn't thought of the on demand heater. But it's hard to beat a $10 microwave that just plugs in.
Try it some time. You'll never go back to cold washcloths!
nobody has a clean enough microwave to give that a try. I don’t even have the courage to look at the roof of mine. i just wait for something to truly explode before i begrudgingly clean it. so yeah, the essence will permeate the purity of a clean moist cloth. anyway, I’ve often wondered if poe could take the place of 14 ga copper for doing primary lighting. also, my bro in law is building a new house with double cat to all locations just for a backup if one fails. doesn’t want to have to rerun wire. seems brilliant given its ease and low cost.
Smart home is less wiring with added benefit of automating few things in life. Wireless light switches can be placed at any location without intensive labour. Most smart bulbs can be dimmed and can shift temperature.
Overall it’s not some sort of game changer, but not super complex either. On par with Japanese toilet and induction cooking.
I feel there is some baby being thrown out with the bathwater here, but I'd blame the automation companies that are pushing complexity as a means to vendor lock-in. The Crestrons and Phillips Hues and Samsung SmartThings of the world refuse to make an app-free cloud-free commodity smart home system.
Matter is unfortunately not that vision. It is still locking you into a cloud-based system, but you can take your devices to a system of your choice.
The system just needs to be simple. You should be able to buy a smart switch from any company. It should power and dim attached dumb and smart bulbs the old fashioned way. Pairing directly connected bulbs should just be turning the switch on and off 5 times quickly. Wireless pairing shouldn't require an app or attestation or other cloud stuff, just sharing a secret one time in-band on some standard protocol over 802.15.4. If you want to have a wireless switch clone a wired one, turn them on and off together 5 times. If you want an all-on, all-off wireless switch, turn all your lights on, and flip the master breaker 5 times along with your new switch. If you want something complicated, get an 802.15.4 bridge/controller. If you want to control with an app, let the bridge controller be accessible via a TailScale-like tunneling VPN or the local WiFi, still no cloud.
This could all be simple and interoperable, but that won't let any company tell their shareholders that their cloud-based smarthome base is growing X% YoY or that their gross margin on smart bulbs is 80%.
> Matter is unfortunately not that vision. It is still locking you into a cloud-based system, but you can take your devices to a system of your choice.
I'm not sure what that means. I have quite a few Matter devices. None of them use cloud services. They exist but they're not required in any way.
Good question! I use Home Assistant OS with the Matter Server addon. Are you saying whatever operates the fabric has a cloud dependency? Home Assistant does have Internet access but even if I firewall that off, the devices keep working.
I wasn't aware that there are open source fabrics. It's not mandatory that it's cloud-based, that's just how the Apple/Google/Samsung etc. fabrics are all implemented.
I do think that Matter is designed with a commercial, cloud-based fabric in mind. Normal people don't want to have even a smart home router, let alone run a local fabric.
I’m fairly sure that if I pair them all to HomeKit, they still work without Internet. That’s the case for everything else with HomeKit, I don’t see why it would be different for Matter devices.
> Normal people don't want to have even a smart home router, let alone run a local fabric.
That’s fair, I guess, but _something_ has to coordinate things. I’m not aware of how Samsung, Google and others do it as I’m only familiar with Home Assistant and HomeKit, but the main difference between those 2 is that with Home Assistant that _something_ is whatever runs HA (I have it on a VM, but a lot of people run it on SBCs or one of the official appliances), and the Apple ecosystem relies on other devices people bought in are likely to already own (iPads, Apple TVs, HomePods, …).
In either case, the controller device is there and requires no Internet access to operate. Possibly during commissioning of a new device - I haven’t checked - but that’s it.
A long time ago when I envisioned a "smart home of the future" I imagined using lots of sensors to control vents, windows, blinds, and HVAC to more efficiently heat and cool the house and optimize comfort in it while using less energy. I still would like something like that but instead we got dishwashers you can turn on with your phone...
That would require smart home widget actually working together and to be designed with a common design in mind, and not just every widget phoning home to its vendor cloud...
Support Matter over Thread and we can get there. It's still a little rocky but man, it's so much better than wifi devices all calling home to wherever.
I've had a lot of difficulty over the years with consumer level hardware supporting the IPv6 features required to work over wifi. Thread has been entirely painless, plus the fact that the end node can't do anything sneaky and get direct access to the internet is a positive for me.
But YMMV, if wifi works better for you, I'm still happy that Matter is being used :)
I’ve had issues as well, especially since I have multiple VLANs and mDNS reflection. Once I found out that was the problem and how to solve it, things started working better.
I have nothing against Thread, other than the fact that it requires specialised hardware, whereas Matter over WiFi uses what I already have in place. It’s all trade offs in the end.
My IoT VLAN is firewalled off from the Internet. Sure a misconfiguration could still mean that protection is lost, but that’s probably also de case with Thread.
Interestingly about IPv6, I have a few Matter devices who despite having IPv6 addresses, are only accessible over IPv4. I’m not sure what that means but it surprised me.
I’ve built this with home assistant and esp32. At this point I’ve got environmental sensors in most areas where fans can ventilate and it automatically turns on fans to improve air quality. I’ve got my minisplits all controlled so I can keep temperatures good where we are. My blinds work to on the brightness of the room and time of the day. I have a single button I can press in my bedroom that ensures every light, door lock, minisplit, etc in the house is toggled appropriately for bedtime and the alarm system enabled. Likewise if I open a lock from inside when the alarm is enabled it disables the alarm system. I have mmWave sensors in hallways and rooms that illuminate them as you enter and darken them as you leave. My out door lighting turns on when I unlock a door to the backyard at night and turns off when I lock them. My hottub is connected to it all, as is my irrigation, etc. I’ve got wled lighting throughout the house including closets with no built in lighting that’s all motion / presence enabled to give working lighting that’s appropriate for the space. I’ve got decorative wled outdoor lighting attached to the house for holiday displays that enable at the right times of day and year. It’s all controllable via voice LLM as well using SoTA local models on a 4090 box in my basement.
It’s a project I’ve built over years and it’s life changingly good and gets better as home assistant, esphome, wled, and LLMs improve. I spend little time futzing with it as it all generally works, but obviously some minor expertise is required to make your own esp32 projects which are mostly just wiring off the shelf wroom d1 mini boards to a project board on the uart/gpio, whatever on something else. My minisplits, jucuzzi, garage door, blinds, etc all have active esphome projects, and provisioning is simple for a technical person. Home assistant is really simple too, and if you know jinja templating, you can make masterpieces.
No one has boiled it down to a shrink wrap product and that is sad for the mass. But for someone with moderate technical skills you can achieve anything your creativity and bravery will afford, and with AI coding assistants it’s gotten even easier. I had to replace most the switches with zwave switches, and build a bunch of boards and attach them to control ports built into devices I own like the minisplits, hottub, etc. But these are all not hard things to do - they’re just more laborious and tedious one time activities, and once you’ve set it up home assistant and esphome are pretty good about not breaking you in the future.
My washing machine also has home assistant integrations, etc, and I am careful to only buy things that do. And most things do one way or another.
Yeah. I want a weather station, automated blinds and automated window openers. (We have European style 2 way tilt windows. They can tilt open a bit and still be secure against burglars).
The weather station would be for solar load, outdoor temperature, precipitation and (most importantly) wind.
They’d all be coordinated with a local docker container or something like that.
Anyway, if this existed when we built the house, I’d have paid at least $30K for the system, installed and configured. I doubt I’m the only one. It’d be nice if it could control the furnace / ac too.
Edit: also, skylight openers, which are surprisingly inexpensive, except the software integration sounded like a nightmare.
What is missing with current offerings? Between Matter and Zigbee devices, having Home Assistant as broker and coordinator, all of that is feasible today with nothing calling home if you're willing to put in some work.
Environment and lighting are the only smart things I have, and the last few additions were ZigBee wall switches-but everything needs to have a manual alternative, of course.
A lot of this tech is just half-baked. Competing standards jockeying for market share, stuff that doesn’t scale, most end user tech is still baffling to the demographics with the funds.
I stopped at Hue lights and some garage freezer thermometers. Eventually I realized I was going to have to rip the system out if I didn’t approach it from “how does my partner control these without having to think about it and without using tech skills”. I settled on a remote or two and a variety of battery-less mechanical switches at significant cost just to restore the basic functionality and reliability of a $5 light switch.
It was a reality check I needed before I plunged into a million sensors and integrations and hardware I was always going to fiddle with and only I would probably ever finesse into acting right. Even the chain of audio receiver to the TV over ARC to everything waking up when the Apple TV awakens occasionally breaks and leaves my partner unable to watch TV until I come cast the magic spells (rebooting things) and make it Just Work again. I can’t imagine how all the smart home junk ages - it probably doesn’t degrade well.
Interesting that most of the issues seem to be UI problems - or rather, the idea that we don't need physical switches anymore because the phone is just the universal remote for everything reveals itself as incredibly stupid.
If we're already struggling with phone addiction and an out-of-control attention economy, probably the last thing you'd want is to constantly be forced back to your phone if you just want to do basic household things.
Also, I don't understand how anyone could think that random passcodes in the place of what used to be a button would be good UX.
Tech-free homes are the new rich people flex? Crazy that in 2025, the super wealthy are spending millions on houses with no smart gadgets or Wi-Fi, like they’re living in the old days. It’s not just about hating tech maybe more about buying privacy. No Alexa listening, no data tracking. Is this just for billionaires, or are we all tired of being online all the time?
"It’s not just about hating tech maybe more about buying privacy."
For the ultra-rich, probably this.
Personally, I don't mind 'smart' tech. But only if used wisely, making life more comfortable, saving energy, etc.
I do mind the 'let random 3rd parties spy on your everyday life' part. 'Smart' could be just "automatic" and/or LAN only. Connected but not to anywhere outside the house.
Also I dislike making things more complicated than necessary. Light on/off? Physical switch does the job. Ok, add TV-style remote if you want. But doesn't need phone app/WAN networking or software updates.
These "smart" devices are all controlled through the internet... which is insane. I don't want my home to become unusable when wi-fi is down. I want local switches that can be controlled... locally, offline.
The local government here pushes "smart thermostats" which I've had fail twice because the app on the phone couldn't reach the server that day. If I must have digital controls, connect them to a physical network that's isolated from the internet, and a local panel to interact. I don't need an app on my phone.
We can't use the broil feature of our oven, because it is an on-line feature only and we won't connect it to wi-fi... bastards.
Looks like I was ahead of the curve. When building my house, I looked at all the smarthome stuff, and eventually decide "nope". It's all conventional wiring. Consider that the dimmer switches, over time, all failed, some I had to replace multiple times. I finally gave up and replaced them with simple on/off switches.
What I did do, which paid off handsomely, is run RG6 coax and Cat5 cables everywhere in a star configuration. I did all the work myself to make sure it was done right. Haven't had any trouble at all with it, despite lots of upgrading of the electronics.
BTW, another thing I did, which isn't exactly home automation. I bought a $10 microwave from the thrift store, and put it in the bathroom. I don't have to run the faucet anymore waiting for hot water for a wash cloth. Just wet the washcloth and throw it in the microwave. Aaaahhh, the luxury of hot washcloth on my face! If I was designing a house these days, I'd build in a special spot for the microwave in the bathroom.
P.S. the high end coax and ethernet cable costs very little money. What costs is the electrician, who charges (long ago) $50 just to attach the wires coming out of the wall to the socket.
Me, I watched the electrician at work, and the cable guy working at my previous house. I noted the tools they used, and bought them. A Milwaukee right angle drill puts the holes in the studs. I bought the Telewire Supply coax strippers and crimpers, and the ethernet socket tools. With that, you can do a pro job which will last and costs very little.
I learned back in college that using professional electrical/electronic tools, like a soldering iron, makes a huge difference.
Ethernet cable is low voltage. You don't need an electrician to install it in most building codes.
Sure, but electricians still install it. I let the electricians install all the high voltage wires. I just did the low voltage.
I wish I was close enough with a electrican so I could hire them for an hour, show me how to do the quick things I need done then I'll do them my self. I want to replace a bunch of outlets and switches.
YouTube DIY seems to only cover the happy path. I opened a couple up and it wasn't quite like videos.
I learned a lot by watching electricians work on things I needed done. Same with plumbers and cable guys.
It really saves a ton of money, because then you can just do it yourself. Like replacing the dimmer switch with a regular switch - costs about $2 from the hardware store for the switch, and a few minutes.
Having a plumber show up costs $300 just for him to come to your house. It pays off big time to do what you can yourself.
P.S. I always ask for permission to watch them work. They appreciate the ask, and so don't think it's creepy.
You ask for permission to watch them work on YOUR house?!
I find it offputting if a mechanic doesn't want me watching him fix my car.
I want to be sure everything is done correctly!
If you want it done right do it yourself, or double check others are doing it properly!
> You ask for permission to watch them work on YOUR house?!
Yes. They've never said no. I ask about their tools, their technique, etc., and they seem happy that someone is interested.
> I find it offputting if a mechanic doesn't want me watching him fix my car.
You hang out in their shop and watch them? They allow this?
What do you use the cat5 cables for? You mention it is all "dumb" (edit, actually the word used was 'conventional') but you also mention electronics, so it must not be that dumb?
As for the bathroom, another option would be a small on demand water heater under the bathroom sink.
What do you use the cat5 cables for? You mention it is all "dumb" but you also mention electronics, so it must not be that dumb?
As for the bathroom, another option would be a small on demand water heater under the bathroom sink.
I use the cat5 to distribute ethernet throughout. This was before wifi was any good, and I still use the cat5 all day every day. Gigabit is not supposed to work with cat5, but it does just fine.
I hadn't thought of the on demand heater. But it's hard to beat a $10 microwave that just plugs in.
Try it some time. You'll never go back to cold washcloths!
nobody has a clean enough microwave to give that a try. I don’t even have the courage to look at the roof of mine. i just wait for something to truly explode before i begrudgingly clean it. so yeah, the essence will permeate the purity of a clean moist cloth. anyway, I’ve often wondered if poe could take the place of 14 ga copper for doing primary lighting. also, my bro in law is building a new house with double cat to all locations just for a backup if one fails. doesn’t want to have to rerun wire. seems brilliant given its ease and low cost.
I did spend a fair amount of time cleaning the microwave.
Yes, I double catted it all, too.
regarding poe doing lighting, my early search after posting my first message suggests i don’t know squat about poe or ethernet.
I'm a big fan of cat(whatever number they are on now...) and PoE for low power devices. I wish more devices supported it.
Wow you get it so wrong.
Smart home is less wiring with added benefit of automating few things in life. Wireless light switches can be placed at any location without intensive labour. Most smart bulbs can be dimmed and can shift temperature.
Overall it’s not some sort of game changer, but not super complex either. On par with Japanese toilet and induction cooking.
> Wireless light switches can be placed at any location without intensive labour.
Until the battery dies :-/
Ya know, I prefer to get up and walk over to the switch, as long as I am able to.
I feel there is some baby being thrown out with the bathwater here, but I'd blame the automation companies that are pushing complexity as a means to vendor lock-in. The Crestrons and Phillips Hues and Samsung SmartThings of the world refuse to make an app-free cloud-free commodity smart home system.
Matter is unfortunately not that vision. It is still locking you into a cloud-based system, but you can take your devices to a system of your choice.
The system just needs to be simple. You should be able to buy a smart switch from any company. It should power and dim attached dumb and smart bulbs the old fashioned way. Pairing directly connected bulbs should just be turning the switch on and off 5 times quickly. Wireless pairing shouldn't require an app or attestation or other cloud stuff, just sharing a secret one time in-band on some standard protocol over 802.15.4. If you want to have a wireless switch clone a wired one, turn them on and off together 5 times. If you want an all-on, all-off wireless switch, turn all your lights on, and flip the master breaker 5 times along with your new switch. If you want something complicated, get an 802.15.4 bridge/controller. If you want to control with an app, let the bridge controller be accessible via a TailScale-like tunneling VPN or the local WiFi, still no cloud.
This could all be simple and interoperable, but that won't let any company tell their shareholders that their cloud-based smarthome base is growing X% YoY or that their gross margin on smart bulbs is 80%.
> Matter is unfortunately not that vision. It is still locking you into a cloud-based system, but you can take your devices to a system of your choice.
I'm not sure what that means. I have quite a few Matter devices. None of them use cloud services. They exist but they're not required in any way.
Which fabric are you using?
https://handbook.buildwithmatter.com/howitworks/fabric/
Good question! I use Home Assistant OS with the Matter Server addon. Are you saying whatever operates the fabric has a cloud dependency? Home Assistant does have Internet access but even if I firewall that off, the devices keep working.
I wasn't aware that there are open source fabrics. It's not mandatory that it's cloud-based, that's just how the Apple/Google/Samsung etc. fabrics are all implemented.
I do think that Matter is designed with a commercial, cloud-based fabric in mind. Normal people don't want to have even a smart home router, let alone run a local fabric.
I’m fairly sure that if I pair them all to HomeKit, they still work without Internet. That’s the case for everything else with HomeKit, I don’t see why it would be different for Matter devices.
> Normal people don't want to have even a smart home router, let alone run a local fabric.
That’s fair, I guess, but _something_ has to coordinate things. I’m not aware of how Samsung, Google and others do it as I’m only familiar with Home Assistant and HomeKit, but the main difference between those 2 is that with Home Assistant that _something_ is whatever runs HA (I have it on a VM, but a lot of people run it on SBCs or one of the official appliances), and the Apple ecosystem relies on other devices people bought in are likely to already own (iPads, Apple TVs, HomePods, …).
In either case, the controller device is there and requires no Internet access to operate. Possibly during commissioning of a new device - I haven’t checked - but that’s it.
People have been saying that for 30 years now.
We actually had this kind of thing 30 years ago or so with X10 and the like.
I always hear it was crappy and unreliable and insecure, but it seems like it's pretty much the kind of experience people want.
A long time ago when I envisioned a "smart home of the future" I imagined using lots of sensors to control vents, windows, blinds, and HVAC to more efficiently heat and cool the house and optimize comfort in it while using less energy. I still would like something like that but instead we got dishwashers you can turn on with your phone...
That would require smart home widget actually working together and to be designed with a common design in mind, and not just every widget phoning home to its vendor cloud...
Support Matter over Thread and we can get there. It's still a little rocky but man, it's so much better than wifi devices all calling home to wherever.
There's no need for Thread. Matter over WiFi does the same job.
I've had a lot of difficulty over the years with consumer level hardware supporting the IPv6 features required to work over wifi. Thread has been entirely painless, plus the fact that the end node can't do anything sneaky and get direct access to the internet is a positive for me.
But YMMV, if wifi works better for you, I'm still happy that Matter is being used :)
I’ve had issues as well, especially since I have multiple VLANs and mDNS reflection. Once I found out that was the problem and how to solve it, things started working better.
I have nothing against Thread, other than the fact that it requires specialised hardware, whereas Matter over WiFi uses what I already have in place. It’s all trade offs in the end.
My IoT VLAN is firewalled off from the Internet. Sure a misconfiguration could still mean that protection is lost, but that’s probably also de case with Thread.
Interestingly about IPv6, I have a few Matter devices who despite having IPv6 addresses, are only accessible over IPv4. I’m not sure what that means but it surprised me.
I’ve built this with home assistant and esp32. At this point I’ve got environmental sensors in most areas where fans can ventilate and it automatically turns on fans to improve air quality. I’ve got my minisplits all controlled so I can keep temperatures good where we are. My blinds work to on the brightness of the room and time of the day. I have a single button I can press in my bedroom that ensures every light, door lock, minisplit, etc in the house is toggled appropriately for bedtime and the alarm system enabled. Likewise if I open a lock from inside when the alarm is enabled it disables the alarm system. I have mmWave sensors in hallways and rooms that illuminate them as you enter and darken them as you leave. My out door lighting turns on when I unlock a door to the backyard at night and turns off when I lock them. My hottub is connected to it all, as is my irrigation, etc. I’ve got wled lighting throughout the house including closets with no built in lighting that’s all motion / presence enabled to give working lighting that’s appropriate for the space. I’ve got decorative wled outdoor lighting attached to the house for holiday displays that enable at the right times of day and year. It’s all controllable via voice LLM as well using SoTA local models on a 4090 box in my basement.
It’s a project I’ve built over years and it’s life changingly good and gets better as home assistant, esphome, wled, and LLMs improve. I spend little time futzing with it as it all generally works, but obviously some minor expertise is required to make your own esp32 projects which are mostly just wiring off the shelf wroom d1 mini boards to a project board on the uart/gpio, whatever on something else. My minisplits, jucuzzi, garage door, blinds, etc all have active esphome projects, and provisioning is simple for a technical person. Home assistant is really simple too, and if you know jinja templating, you can make masterpieces.
No one has boiled it down to a shrink wrap product and that is sad for the mass. But for someone with moderate technical skills you can achieve anything your creativity and bravery will afford, and with AI coding assistants it’s gotten even easier. I had to replace most the switches with zwave switches, and build a bunch of boards and attach them to control ports built into devices I own like the minisplits, hottub, etc. But these are all not hard things to do - they’re just more laborious and tedious one time activities, and once you’ve set it up home assistant and esphome are pretty good about not breaking you in the future.
My washing machine also has home assistant integrations, etc, and I am careful to only buy things that do. And most things do one way or another.
Yeah. I want a weather station, automated blinds and automated window openers. (We have European style 2 way tilt windows. They can tilt open a bit and still be secure against burglars).
The weather station would be for solar load, outdoor temperature, precipitation and (most importantly) wind.
They’d all be coordinated with a local docker container or something like that.
Anyway, if this existed when we built the house, I’d have paid at least $30K for the system, installed and configured. I doubt I’m the only one. It’d be nice if it could control the furnace / ac too.
Edit: also, skylight openers, which are surprisingly inexpensive, except the software integration sounded like a nightmare.
What is missing with current offerings? Between Matter and Zigbee devices, having Home Assistant as broker and coordinator, all of that is feasible today with nothing calling home if you're willing to put in some work.
Or this https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Microwave-Small-Works-Al...
Environment and lighting are the only smart things I have, and the last few additions were ZigBee wall switches-but everything needs to have a manual alternative, of course.
Nothing else is really needed, IMHO.
Yeah, I’ve fantasized about the same thing with windows, blinds, and hvac. It would be so nice.
“Technology has gone too far man. My roommate is logged out of his lightbulbs because he forgot his password”
https://x.com/fakekenty/status/1904364284823400748?s=46&t=Eu...
A lot of this tech is just half-baked. Competing standards jockeying for market share, stuff that doesn’t scale, most end user tech is still baffling to the demographics with the funds.
I stopped at Hue lights and some garage freezer thermometers. Eventually I realized I was going to have to rip the system out if I didn’t approach it from “how does my partner control these without having to think about it and without using tech skills”. I settled on a remote or two and a variety of battery-less mechanical switches at significant cost just to restore the basic functionality and reliability of a $5 light switch.
It was a reality check I needed before I plunged into a million sensors and integrations and hardware I was always going to fiddle with and only I would probably ever finesse into acting right. Even the chain of audio receiver to the TV over ARC to everything waking up when the Apple TV awakens occasionally breaks and leaves my partner unable to watch TV until I come cast the magic spells (rebooting things) and make it Just Work again. I can’t imagine how all the smart home junk ages - it probably doesn’t degrade well.
I’ve had nothing but 100% uptime with a complete installation of Zwave switches at my house.
They act like normal switches but can be controlled with anything that can talk Zwave; in this case home assistant.
Runs off the grid, works great!
Interesting that most of the issues seem to be UI problems - or rather, the idea that we don't need physical switches anymore because the phone is just the universal remote for everything reveals itself as incredibly stupid.
If we're already struggling with phone addiction and an out-of-control attention economy, probably the last thing you'd want is to constantly be forced back to your phone if you just want to do basic household things.
Also, I don't understand how anyone could think that random passcodes in the place of what used to be a button would be good UX.
> the idea that we don't need physical switches
Even when the power goes out for 2 weeks, I still reflexively hit the wall switch every time entering a room.
Home automation only makes sense for people with very limited mobility.
I use "The Clapper" to turn lights on and off :-)
No joke I got my kid a little power dongle and it just does one thing: you just announce “Turn the power on/off” and it does the thing. Loves it
I'm reminded of the Mr Robot episode where they hacked into the Lawyers home and messed with all the smart appliances.
Well savvy people simply do want to own not being owned and spied, especially if they are wealthy, it's simple.
I prefer simple tech. It can still be automated, and 'smart', but using HomeAssistant, its smart for ME.
No passwords, no stupid. Doesn't even need internet, just the local network.
I can even share access creds to pur garage doors remotely.
Again, I focus on simple and effective 'smart', not throwing enshittifying internet garbage everywhere.
Yeah but that is smart tech, it's just not what people experience as the consumer branding of it.
Tech-free homes are the new rich people flex? Crazy that in 2025, the super wealthy are spending millions on houses with no smart gadgets or Wi-Fi, like they’re living in the old days. It’s not just about hating tech maybe more about buying privacy. No Alexa listening, no data tracking. Is this just for billionaires, or are we all tired of being online all the time?
"It’s not just about hating tech maybe more about buying privacy."
For the ultra-rich, probably this.
Personally, I don't mind 'smart' tech. But only if used wisely, making life more comfortable, saving energy, etc.
I do mind the 'let random 3rd parties spy on your everyday life' part. 'Smart' could be just "automatic" and/or LAN only. Connected but not to anywhere outside the house.
Also I dislike making things more complicated than necessary. Light on/off? Physical switch does the job. Ok, add TV-style remote if you want. But doesn't need phone app/WAN networking or software updates.
These "smart" devices are all controlled through the internet... which is insane. I don't want my home to become unusable when wi-fi is down. I want local switches that can be controlled... locally, offline.
The local government here pushes "smart thermostats" which I've had fail twice because the app on the phone couldn't reach the server that day. If I must have digital controls, connect them to a physical network that's isolated from the internet, and a local panel to interact. I don't need an app on my phone.
We can't use the broil feature of our oven, because it is an on-line feature only and we won't connect it to wi-fi... bastards.
i take the battlestar galactica approach. has been working exceptionally well.
“Why the people that can afford smart homes are unplugging from smart homes”