Bought our home almost 20 years ago, and the former owner (apparently) owned a now-defunct home automation business. The upside was 100% X10/Insteon power and light controls, top alarm panel, environmental controls and so on running off of a wall-mounted "SmartLinc" touch panel. I expanded the system with Axis cameras and a Mac Server running Indigo and SecuritySpy (non-subscription), which enabled remote monitoring and control, but it all operates locally.
In a moment of weakness, I bought a D-Link wireless (wifi) water detector for the sump pit (it was on clearance for $30); it relied on a D-Link Home cloud service (free) that was closed down a few years ago.
Not wanting to toss it, I repurposed a spare Chromebook 14 that I was going to recycle and turned it into a Alpine monitor for the water detector, which I'm powering from the Chromebook's USB port (if power is lost in a rainstorm, I need to know about it before the sump pit fills up).
An immediate issue was that the D-Link firmware tried to "phone home" every 24 hours and would drop from the local network, since the server was kaput, and I had no clue what response it was expecting from the server to keep it alive. Solution; "reboot" the unit by interrupting USB power (with a Pico and MOSFET) every 23 hours. There's no question that home automation should work without the internet.
I only use "Local Polling" or better, and highly prefer "Local Push".
scosman
The new rules I have come to use are:
- buy the cheapest hardware that gets the job done
- ignore negative reviews that are software related
- upon receipt of devices, ask claude for local-first cfw
- have fun for a few hours acting as a meat proxy
- boom, cheap local-only smart home is done
Use a SBC or nas for home assistant. This process worked for me for switches, a thermostat, an air quality monitor, a thermometer, and a window fan.
Would’ve paid ~2.5x for hardware that had the appropriate local-first capability out of the box. Instead this all fit within an existing $20 subscription to an inference provider. DS 4.1 running locally was on track too just more slowly.
reasonabl_human
hola
probaaswfib
I have some simple but strict rules:
1. Commercial devices must use offline only protocols, Zigbee or Zwave. If it's WiFi only I will not buy it unless the firmware is open source or easily replaced with an open source, local only alternative.
2. Non-sensor devices must fully function without their IoT features. I must be able to control my thermostat, fridge, stove, etc without any external interface.
Never use a WiFi IoT device that isn't open source. Even if you can control it locally it could be a spy device that's exfiltrating your data. Yes, you could setup VLANs or a separate network but it's not worth it. Vote with your wallet.
driverdan
Please please please use your first draft or refine it yourself without LLMs.
I managed to get to:
The cloud is the weak link
- No internet, no problem. ...
---
If you are writing for other machines to ingest it, whatever. But if you are writing for people it for me at least signals that you don't really care about the message that you want to get across, and are fine with a watered down LLM average.
augment_me
If you're interested in this topic, Stacey Higginbotham at Consumer Reports has done a lot of great reporting on this subject:
The local only requirement has always been a very strong reason I've never gotten around to dabbling in home automation in any serious way. All the stuff at most department stores phone home as far as I can tell. The research investment or other frigging about (e.g.: some fiddly method to flash Tasmota) has left me reluctant.
But I was looking at a couple of spare RPis I had laying around and decided to whack Home Assistant on one, just to take a look. I've now decided to dip my toe a bit further and ordered a Zigbee USB adapter, some Zigbee based buttons and reed switches, plus a couple of Matter based power switches which I hope will all work happily.
I'll also need to setup an IOT VLAN in my Openwrt router. (Not a networking guy, so also fiddly!)
Until now, my home automation endeavours have consisted of:
- A red, flashing LED glued into the ceiling near the front door that is connected to a reed switch to tell when the garage door is open.
- A light switch¹ which I managed to flash Tasmota onto so I can switch the lounge room lights on or off from the TV remote.
- An ultrasonic distance sensor that sits on top of my monitor that can tell when I'm sitting in front of my computer². It pauses the music and resumes when I leave and come back. It also nags me if I've been in front of the computer too long.
¹ I see no value in automated light bulbs. I want automated light switches. Unfortunately Australian electrical certification standards are something of a bear that make this difficult.
1. Buy zigbee/zwave
2. Prefer things you can flash tasmota if zigbee/zwave is not possible.
2. Maybe use eMudhra for mitm and flash the unsupported devices.
tehlike
> AI;DR: I wrote the first draft, AI helped me edit and rewrite it, and I made the final pass. The rules, setups, and talks are my own.
I like that disclaimer. Looks like a good way to declare AI content.
comments (10)
In a moment of weakness, I bought a D-Link wireless (wifi) water detector for the sump pit (it was on clearance for $30); it relied on a D-Link Home cloud service (free) that was closed down a few years ago.
Not wanting to toss it, I repurposed a spare Chromebook 14 that I was going to recycle and turned it into a Alpine monitor for the water detector, which I'm powering from the Chromebook's USB port (if power is lost in a rainstorm, I need to know about it before the sump pit fills up).
An immediate issue was that the D-Link firmware tried to "phone home" every 24 hours and would drop from the local network, since the server was kaput, and I had no clue what response it was expecting from the server to keep it alive. Solution; "reboot" the unit by interrupting USB power (with a Pico and MOSFET) every 23 hours. There's no question that home automation should work without the internet.
mountain_peak
I only use "Local Polling" or better, and highly prefer "Local Push".
scosman
- buy the cheapest hardware that gets the job done
- ignore negative reviews that are software related
- upon receipt of devices, ask claude for local-first cfw
- have fun for a few hours acting as a meat proxy
- boom, cheap local-only smart home is done
Use a SBC or nas for home assistant. This process worked for me for switches, a thermostat, an air quality monitor, a thermometer, and a window fan.
Would’ve paid ~2.5x for hardware that had the appropriate local-first capability out of the box. Instead this all fit within an existing $20 subscription to an inference provider. DS 4.1 running locally was on track too just more slowly.
reasonabl_human
probaaswfib
1. Commercial devices must use offline only protocols, Zigbee or Zwave. If it's WiFi only I will not buy it unless the firmware is open source or easily replaced with an open source, local only alternative.
2. Non-sensor devices must fully function without their IoT features. I must be able to control my thermostat, fridge, stove, etc without any external interface.
Never use a WiFi IoT device that isn't open source. Even if you can control it locally it could be a spy device that's exfiltrating your data. Yes, you could setup VLANs or a separate network but it's not worth it. Vote with your wallet.
driverdan
I managed to get to:
The cloud is the weak link
- No internet, no problem. ...
---
If you are writing for other machines to ingest it, whatever. But if you are writing for people it for me at least signals that you don't really care about the message that you want to get across, and are fine with a watered down LLM average.
augment_me
https://innovation.consumerreports.org/category/iot/
Disclaimer: I contributed to this report on the subject: https://innovation.stage.consumerreports.org/How-to-Build-Lo...
wiremine
But I was looking at a couple of spare RPis I had laying around and decided to whack Home Assistant on one, just to take a look. I've now decided to dip my toe a bit further and ordered a Zigbee USB adapter, some Zigbee based buttons and reed switches, plus a couple of Matter based power switches which I hope will all work happily.
I'll also need to setup an IOT VLAN in my Openwrt router. (Not a networking guy, so also fiddly!)
Until now, my home automation endeavours have consisted of:
- A red, flashing LED glued into the ceiling near the front door that is connected to a reed switch to tell when the garage door is open.
- A light switch¹ which I managed to flash Tasmota onto so I can switch the lounge room lights on or off from the TV remote.
- An ultrasonic distance sensor that sits on top of my monitor that can tell when I'm sitting in front of my computer². It pauses the music and resumes when I leave and come back. It also nags me if I've been in front of the computer too long.
¹ I see no value in automated light bulbs. I want automated light switches. Unfortunately Australian electrical certification standards are something of a bear that make this difficult.
² https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-there/
anotherevan
tehlike
I like that disclaimer. Looks like a good way to declare AI content.
ChrisMarshallNY