Smart devices were supposed to make life better, but constant updates have made them worse
HomeAssistant…this is the way!
Never in a million years would I buy always-online trash when I could just use Home Assistant and control my devices locally.
Also, ESPHome is crazy good. It’s honestly not that hard or experiensive to take a dumb device and splice in some non-cloud home assistant capacity w/ ESPHome
If I can’t run it with home assistant, I’m buying a dumb device instead.
Trying to buy an automated feeder for my cat was a nightmare. Why does everything have a camera and require an internet connection to China? Everything was on tuya! It’s fucking ridiculous. You don’t need cloud processing for this shit. Finding something that’s just a timer with a battery backup that wouldn’t fail to feed my cat if the power or internet briefly went out took way too much effort.
Trying to set up home assistant for my parents’ house, I started seeing the point of all the cloud stuff. My dad wants to have home automation but he completely lacks the technical skills to run and maintain a home assistant instance and he’s completely unwilling to learn. Even after I’ve done all the difficult parts for him, he always manages to have trouble. The majority of those troubles could be avoided with a cloud managed service. I’m guessing there are way more people like my dad than there are who could be assed with setting up a 100% local smart home. Because that does require more than a little bit of technical inclination.
hey, I understand what you are saying. and it may be difficult for the average user to maintain an operate homeassistant. is it the same for their cloud offering, i.e. nabu casa. in case you evaluated that, i would love to hear your take on it. (i have been with homeassistant for 3 years, and totally enjoy it, but i do share the concern that it is not well suited for the non technically inclined)
If anyone is still looking for one, I got myself this model (the one for 2 cats but it works the same): https://petlibro.com/collections/granary/products/petlibro-granary-automatic-pet-feeder?variant=39426616557615
The company has other models with wifi and cameras as well as an app but this particular model is just a dumb timer based machine.
Yeah, I ended up getting a cheaper shittier one to test out if it would work out well but that’s pretty much the one I settled on upgrading to eventually. It’s a bit harder to get cheaply in Australia.
Any chance you’d know the answer to this (or a better community to ask in) -
I need something I can hook into a projector’s HDMI port. All I need from it is mirroring my phone and occasionally playing Plex. I don’t really want to get a smart device if I don’t have to
Nowhere near an expert on the subject, but I wonder if a Raspberry Pi will suffice?
Not sure. I know you can run Plex, but idk about phone mirroring
Remote control is the fiddly bit with the Pi. You can use a wireless mouse but it’s a bit meh. I’m just waiting for the day for someone to solve that dilemma, then our “smart” TVs are being forcibly made “dumb”.
This may be a bit convoluted, but I think its the only way. You have to install 2 apps on the PC and phone. One for controlling the PC, and second for your phone to stream the display to PC. The first one, I don’t know any good one but maybe some simple SSH is suffice. The second is scrcpy. It is an app that lets you stream your phone to the desktop/PC
Edit: Forgot to mention, to SSH to your desktop from the phone, you can use JuiceSSH or tmux
I’ve been eyeing one of those Intel HDMI sticks for this. I have been using my steam deck for stuff lately and KDE connect is really good, or leverage something like Kodi.
you need a !sbcs@lemux.minnix.dev single board computer with a touch of linux to setup the image.
Just took a look there. Man they really seem to hate anything that isn’t 1000% open source or made in China.
This is probably what I’m gonna end up doing, but hopefully I can find a better community
Not sure what you were expecting. You’re not going to find much support for Windows or Mac which means you need both good tools and support so it’s open source or bust. The only time I ever run into problems is when Chinese developers like OrangePi require shitty windows flash utility for flashing rockchip IMG files.
To me a smart device was supposed to be a normal device that you could control ‘smartly’ over wifi.
Mini SoCs with their own apps and an optional subscription built in for some proprietary shit? That goes past smart straight into dumpster trash.
I have to wonder if the irony is lost on the author with how ad ridden and barely usable website they posted this article on. Replace Smart Devices with Websites and the article mainly remains the same.
I had the same thought. I’m viewing on mobile Firefox with UBO, but I couldn’t get the comments to load. So I loaded the url in another browser and now I have cancer.
I can’t buy into Smart Devices unless paying for the smartness lets me actually use it how I see fit.
So often there is little benefit except companies extract data from you, or to enforce some licensing or rent-seeking scheme. You’re just paying to get screwed over.
Yeah. Usually “smart” means it does what the average person wants. Not that it’s customizable at all. Things trying to be smart is what a major portion of my frustrations lie. The other major portion is companies stealing my data.
Home assistant is what you are looking for
Home assistant sounds cool, but I just want to be as manual as possible outside my computer at this point.
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Yes.
We replaced ours with a refurbished business desktop, installed Linux and Jellyfin then use with a wireless keyboard with built-in track pad
Plays media great, emulates up to Wii and can use for general web browsing too
I do something similar. I have full control over everything. Use Firefox with UBlock. NEVER see an ad. I was super close to buying an Nvidia Shield because the box looks nice, and I’m glad I didn’t.
Yep! I have a Pi 4 running Pihole blocking ads on network and often get thanks from the teens when they’re away from home and they realize just how many ads they would otherwise be exposed to
Oh no, if only those people that kept shouting at every opportunity how terrible these “smart” devices were had
been listened toshouted louder, maybe people would be aware. But alas,everyonenobody could’ve seen that coming, it’s truly a surprise.we are left with the remains of a dream unfulfilled and electronics that respond to the whims, fancies, and ever-changing business decisions of corporations
Reads straight out of !aboringdystopia
[insert shocked pikachu meme]
What?! Nooooo
Enshittification. Naming your enemy is the first step and we already have a name, use it.
Use home assistant. Its not very difficult to setup on an old laptop or pi or whatever you have. Its agnostic to whatever system you have. Talks between networks.
Come join us at /homeassistant
The thing I’ve never understood is even just looking at Google, they’ve killed so many products when they could have monetised them better with a little thought.
Instead, we have a phone thats useless for music unless you subscribe, photo storage is headed the same way and its whole ‘smart’ eco system has been ruined because of shareholder greed!
Except if Google pulled there head out there arse and built a platform people wanted to use, they’d likely make more money than they’re making now. Yet they clearly don’t get it and think ‘cloud’ solves everything!
Sadly Apple knows it has no competition so they’re just screwing with anything that they can and claim it’s ‘revolutionary’ so they can re-sell the same devices and while home assistant works ok for those of us who like tinkering, it’s a long way from being user friendly. Never mind the lack of anything smart, like speakers, displays, that work out the box.
It’s just sad to see so much potential being ruined because of seemingly clueless companies!
Google has this culture that you need to make something to be something, usually someone will have an idea to make a product, then the product is quite successful and they get promoted away from managing that product.
Then someone gets assigned to manage that product, since that someone new also wants to make “something” to be something, they put their own spin on that product.
Since they’re not the one who made the product in the first place, they missed what made the product great.
This causes the product to lose quality, and therefore the user base. With a reduced user base, there’s no justification to keep the product alive, so Google pulled the plug on the product.
It’s a vicious cycle that results in a lot of things made and killed by Google.
Water is wet.
You bought a device that grants corporations back door access and control over your leisure and now they’ve used that access to make the experience worse? Why is anyone surprised? I learned my lesson with the Kindle over a decade ago. Never made that mistake again.
Technology generally is not a good investment
Sorry but this is such a broad statement that it loses all value
Tbf it depends on the technology. I don’t think anyone would argue that trains are a poor investment.
… And it’s not like every kitchen has a microwave or every household multiple phones or computers or cara in driveways or slimmer glasses to correct vision or etc etc etc
In regards to buying consumer electronics.
