Real talk: nobody should use these things. Not Google’s, not Amazon’s, not Apple’s… They are all capable of spying on you, and also being compromised by hackers.
HomeAssistant is FOSS and apparently capable.
And also a pita to actually become a useful gadget. Sadly.
Yeah, there was a lot of pain and learning involved but you know what: I can do that, and not having Megacorp listening devices at home was the hill I decided to spend some time on.
And it works fine for me now, so I’m happy.
Happy to hear that matey. I died on that hill trying to achieve the same thing. Either way I simply don’t use any assistance so no need to go for tradeoffs
It definitely has a learning curve but as someone who is much more hands on with very little programming experience, I actually found it pretty intuitive. And frankly for the things that aren’t super intuitive, there’s a community support thread for basically anything you could want to do.
Never thought I would have one, but homeassistant made it easy enough for me to program my own wall mounted control panel, that it just made sense.
Happy to hear that matey. I died on that hill trying to achieve the same thing. Either way I simply don’t use any assistance so no need to go for tradeoffs
Yeah, I had a financial incentive to be honest, because HA optimizes my energy usage by regulating the heat pump, the car chargers, sun heat influx with the shutters etc. to get the most out of my solar electric panels, solar thermal panels, home batteries and dynamic energy pricing. Everything I did regarding it pays off, the rest, like, lights folliwing me across the garden etc. are just a neat thing that fell out of the entire project basically for free.
Every time I see this comment I make the point that, from a privacy perspective, they are likely better than average consumer, non-rooted, non-linux* phones, laptops, desktops.
They give back one geographic position - your house, and you don’t give them credit card, social security, Healthcare or other personal information like you frequently use your phone and computer for.
You don’t even use them to search for porn (cue one guy saying he does)
- please feel free to bicker about what counts as a “Linux phone” but I won’t join in.
Apple says that all your data is private. So I extra don’t trust them.
At least Google and Amazon are up front about the fact they spy on you
I used to be one of those uneducated tech enthusiasts that wanted IOT for everything. Now that has been unplugged for about a year and I find no discernible difference in ease of daily tasks.
That did happen from time to time though. Ghosts can communicate with me in the inconsistent and short videos I record like all the others.
The smartest device in my house is the cat.
3:33AM
It’s ok; it’s only a half-evil entity. Now, if it happened at 6:66AM, that’s when you’ve really gotta worry!
No, that is the only time it shouldn’t be quiet - that’s when I set my alarm for.
“It’s okay. You just talked in your sleep, when I entered.”
My sleep paralysis demon wanted to know how much two and a half cups was in liters, but whispered it too quietly.
