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Smart home devices have been a godsend for accessibility though. My dad’s got Parkinson’s disease. He couldn’t adjust our lamps without knocking them over and he couldn’t use the pullcords on the ceiling fan lights without losing his balance. Smart bulbs + Google Assistant are the only reason why he doesn’t need someone to turn the lights on/off for him.
Not everyone has the same needs, and unfortunately if these things weren’t mass market products they probably wouldn’t exist, or only exist at a price point that nobody living on disability payments could afford.
I’m looking into moving him over to a locally hosted setup, but this tech is still critical for a subset of people and definitely needs to exist at an affordable price.
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Absolutely! I’m disabled and it can take me some time to get to the front door at times, especially in our old 3 story house (mistakes were made). Being able to see who was at the door, and tell them I was on my way down saved me so many missed deliveries.
We should stop calling cloud-connected iot devices “smart”. How is it “smart” to connect to the internet just to check if you can use your internet-connected doorbell?
Actual smart home devices are AWESOME. If your iot devices use standard, open protocols, don’t connect to the internet, except for your local network and can be controlled from anywhere in your house by using tools like Home Assistant, then they’re ACTUALLY smart devices.
We should start calling cloud iot devices “dependent” devices.
The term “dependent” more accurately represents the nature of these devices: they are reliant on internet connectivity and proprietary protocols, limiting user control and adding unnecessary complexity to simple tasks. Unlike truly “smart” devices, these “dependent” devices are less functional and flexible, due to their need to always be tethered to the cloud.
Think about it: if your internet goes down, your “smart” doorbell becomes nothing more than an ordinary doorbell. If the company’s servers have an outage, your “smart” security system can’t alert you of potential dangers. You’re left completely in the dark, with supposedly advanced technology that’s completely useless when it’s most needed.
With truly smart devices that use standard, open protocols and can function independently of the internet, you maintain control and can adapt your system to meet your needs. Even without internet, these systems can continue to monitor your home, control your lights, and more. That’s the real power of smart technology.
So let’s change the language we use and the expectations we set for this technology. Let’s demand independence from the cloud, security, and reliability from our devices. It’s time to transition from “dependent” devices to truly smart home technology.
I like your suggestion that devices of that sort should be called dependent instead of smart.
Exactly! We need more information about this. Unfortunately the majority of the people are IT security/privacy ignorant and they just buy all the shit that are on Amazon that costs a few bucks just to be able to turn on the lights asking Alexa (I find that to be really dum, except for people with ability problem and such).
Exactly! A “dumb” home is just a liittle bit more inconvenient, but at least I don’t need to worry about being policed by a megacorp
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Wish I had the skill to set that stuff up and how to use raspberry pi. Any good tutorials that I can learn from?
It’s a bit more inconvenient on average, but it’s a heck of a lot more convenient when the power is out, the internet is down, or some giant company is just being dicks.
Yeah, the only megacorp I can tolerate being policed by is my ISP. /s obviously
There are ways to have a fully smart home that doesn’t rely on internet access at all.
Right, but what percent of “smart home” users actually do this?
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I have smart home devices, luke a doorbell, but I limit all traffic on them to be local network traffic only. No random requests or connections to outside servers and if I need to access it away from home I jump on a VPN. Not a solution for everyone, but it gives you a lot more control over your devices.
Oh yeah, for sure. Don’t trust Amazon for shit.
It’s completely amazing to me that people pay Amazon to put Amazon’s data-gathering devices in their homes.
Selfhost everything
A normal fucking doorbell doesn’t need any hosting
Yup. Mine is a button that connects to a bell on my wall. It’s not rocket surgery.
And it won’t snitch on you to the fuzz either
do you have a good place to start? I’m getting a house next month and would like to self host but it seems daunting.
Home assistant, and some zigbee solution (i use a conbee usb stick)
Zigbee and Zwave. Get both sticks.
Also recommend Home Assistant. Their integration page is a great resource when looking to buy products as they’ll tell you exactly how your device will connect to it, whether it’s local control, cloud control, etc.
awesome-selfhosted on github is a nice place to start :)
appreciate this tyvm!
Subscribe to @selfhosted and read the links on the sidebar. Any doubts, post a question and we’ll do our best to help you.
Seems the main focus there is on hosting Lemmy instances. I subbed hoping to see stuff about hosting your own domain, media server, storage server, etc but didn’t see any posts that weren’t about Lemmy.
Be the change you want to see? Lemmy is still a baby and someone’s going to have to make those posts or ask those questions if that content is going to show up there.
That will die down. There has been a massive influx due to what’s going on with reddit.
Subscribe to https://lemmy.world/c/homeassistant
You can’t self-host Amazon’s shopping, and sometimes they’re the only ones who carry certain items since they’ve fucked local retailers for the last 20 years.
But regardless, people should be allowed to use cloud services without fear of being banned whole-hog for pissing off some suit in Seattle.
Write-up about the incident: here. (The account was unbanned after a week.)
So the doorbell was programmed to say “Excuse me, can I help you?” and the driver thought that was racist somehow?
So someone at Amazon decides to take the word of a gig worker delivery driver with no verification or investigation, and shut down all of the customer’s Amazon devices? Wow, that’s not a bad precedent at all.
The delivery person thought the very AUDACITY to ask them why they’re there was racist. It happens all the time.
“Hi, can I help you”
“What, you don’t think I belong here? It’s because I’m black, isn’t it you RACIST!”
To be fair, it happens quite often that people of color are asked if they need help and what they’re looking for when they have the audacity to enter white neighborhoods
That question is essentially asking “are you important enough for me to answer the door or can I just tell you to go away?”
The only plausible situation I can see is that he or one of his employees was purchasing consumables used as part of the repair business using the affiliate accounts. More likely is that at some point in the past 7 years someone Amazon associates with his account made a purchase using an affiliate link and they used that as the excuse.
This didn’t happen to louis, or anyone in the rossmann group, this was a news story, he just happens to retell it.
EDIT: I was thinking of another video, ignore what I said.
You should watch the video - the title is misleading, his amazon affiliate account was deactivated (not his whole amazon account).
Oh you’re right I’m sorry, this is not the video I thought it was. I thought it was the video from a few days ago when he was talking about what happened to Brandon Jackson!
man, this is rich
