You must log in or # to comment.
No HA*, no Zigbee, no containerized service landscape but the routers run OpenWRT. Hmm, Okay.
*one of the OSS contenders is fine.
The more you understand tech, the more you trust the simplest version of it 😅
swap out those mechanicals windows for mechanical linux and then we’ll talk
I use Arch BTW.
Like just huge arches instead of windows or even doors, Arch is all you need.
I never thought about how a physical arch relates to physical windows. Interesting.
I thought Emacs is all you need?
Incorrect, you need
According to this documentary, you’re wrong!
Real programmers use memes to program the machines of the world.
Tfw you come to your first day of work in critical infrastructure to maintain drivers and highly critical network applications and they’re all written in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE
I am more of a hydraulic Linux person myself
You must feel compressed.
Likely not, the whole point of hydraulics is that the fluid is non-compressible!
That’s pneumatic Linux, though.
Actually it’s GNUmatic Linux.
I agree when it comes to most “smart” home devices. However, I wired an ESP32 to my heat pump for remote control and automation, which has been absolutely fantastic. Also, I use a ton of ZigBee and zwave, since those are not “smart” by themselves and are local-only.
It’s the cloud bullshit that always breaks and spies on users that I hate.
At first I read “heat pump” as “heart pump” and I thought “what is this crazy fucker doing?”
🔊Hyper-Spoiler.mp3
Home Assistant 💯
Yeah home built and programmed smart devices are the way to go. I’m addicted to the rush of making dumb appliances automated.
The smartphone controlled aircon for $150 extra? Slap a $4 Esp in that. $400 to get sleek control of your central heating? $4 Esp. Turn on the ice maker on the commute home? You guessed it, $4 Esp.
I wanted to do ESPify my fume hood for some time now, but I don’t really know where to start. Do you have some website/howto for me to get started? To be honest, I don’t really care about smarting up the actual extraction part. I just want to turn on and off the lights without finding the non-illuminated touch button on the black glass. Who designs crap like that?
You need electrical experience, I wouldn’t recommend anyone to work with high voltages unless they knew what they were doing. The method depends on the device, every one is different. For the aircon unit the esp is an internal remote, so I spent time decoding that model’s IR codes and building a platform for reliable control via home assistant. I have fans around the house that use mains voltage motors with 3 speeds, those got an interlocked 3 channel relay board. The ice maker used digital logic, so the esp sits between the control board and the rest and intercepts button presses to keep track of state and the injects its own commands for remote control(not my work). If you are lucky there will be a guide on the internet you can apply to your specific device, otherwise you’ll have to work the project out solo from smaller guides.
I just wanted to interfere with the button board, I’d guess this will run on 3.3 or 5 volts. Simulate the touch events so to speak.
Yeah so you’d probably just be grounding the positive side of the button momentarily. I’m pretty sure I did that with a ducted heater remote once, if it’s 3.3 you can just attach it to a pin from your board, then send the pin low to press. 5v you might want a level shifter in between. Have you used esphome before/do you have home assistant? Then you can automate the press to a motion sensor or widget on your phone.
Yes, and I’m tinkering all the time. I’d get in with my multimeter and check the voltage first anyways.
Where the hell are you getting 4 ESP. And no its not good for everything. I buy zwave switches and water sensors.
Not the previous poster.
A simple ESP8266 module from AliExpress is less than $4 (an ESP12F module - which is the FCC certified one with most I/O ports available - is $2), can be programmed with Arduino, has WiFi and that is more than enough for wireless home automation peripherals that are not supposed to do lots of processing (it will still easilly fit a REST interface for automated control and even a web interface for user control alongside it).
That said, in order to power it unless you can somehow draw 3.3v from the device it’s attached to, you actually need more parts and that’ll add up to more than $4 unless you’re doing it with batteries (and design and assemble your own voltage regulator circuit which is not that hard and is cheap, or maybe get a slightly more expensive ESP module that comes with voltage regulation) - this works fine if your device sleeps most of the time and just wakes up once in a while to check some data from a server holding instructions for it. For an always one device, best IMHO to use a 3.3V wall power adaptor, which will cost at least $6 from AliExpress.
The power considerations apply exactly the same for ESP32s.
$2 is a normal price on Aliexpress for an Esp32 C3 super mini, $4 is almost expensive
My house too. I don’t work in IT, I just can’t afford any of this.
I work in cyber security and I have lots of smart home things. I also assume my network’s being compromised at all times and keep anything really important on paper in a safe.
The fact these companies can release a $200 router or a $1000 smartphone and completely stop all security updates after only a few years is insane.
Exactly why WAPs, Switches, Firewalls, and Modems should all be separate devices
There’s also a big company called Ubiquiti that sells overly expensive trash.
Their switches don’t even mirror more than a single port.
It should be regulated similar to how cars are regulated - with mandatory service and spare parts for many years.
Cars aren’t exactly a good example on how to curb enshittification, as the car industry pioneered enshittification and found a way around regulations every time so far. Some regulations are even actively aiding further enshittification, as they require a truckload of electronics with software that is entirely under the manufacturer’s control.
While that might be so, I can still buy original spare parts for my 25 years old car and I could still service it at official repair shop if I wanted to.
The “official repair shop” isn’t the issue.
It would be third party repair shops. And amazingly you can.
Right to repair has done some good in this world
Yeah but, at least in my country, cars can’t be on the road (which would be the internet in this case), without passing the periodic inspection.
They have not found a way around it every time.
They all have seat belts
They all have ODB2 ports
The dev I know who’s most into home automation using cloud services has also fallen the hardest for “AI will build all systems and nothing will go wrong with that”. Honestly, I should become a cyber criminal in this climate.
Technology under capitalism becomes a hazard and a threat.
i’ve worked with highly competent programmes and sysadmins whose houses are entirely connected. they do exist.
I work in IT, been a software developer for decades.
I have a full on smart home, all the smart tech you can imagine. All connected and running locally via home assistant.
Smart tech isn’t bad, shitty tech is.
as a hardware iot security person, that is possible but too much attack surface to manage
ZigBee, Z-wave and Thread have virtually 0 attack surface from an IoT perspective, and even then what are they gonna do, do radio hacking to turn off and on my lights? It’s not like they can be used in a botnet.
Locks is a bit more risky as an endeavor, but again, it’s probably easier to pick the lock than hack it… Actually with the quality of many smart locks, smashing them is easier still.Smart TVs are way more problematic devices for example, as soon as they stop receiving updates, you have a bunch of high-speed internet connected devices with unresolved exploits just sitting there waiting for the right chance.
Hear hear.
I feel the meme in the post is created by someone pseudoilliterate in technology. But I can guaranty you they have a smart TV connected to the same WiFi as all their computers and maybe a nas or home server.
Setting up zwave or ZigBee networks is not an attack vector.
ive used smart light bulbs in a botnet before. and if you do a teardown on one of those locks you can probably get the firmware and uart to get the unlock function which you could use theoretically to unlock every single one
Ditto. A smart home that can operate even if the Internet is offline was one of my core goals setting this up. And save for a few exceptions, I accomplished it. It’s so jarring now to go on vacation and not have all this automation.
This is exactly the line of thought I think people aren’t seeing as the gap. Y’all are too comfortable expecting the internet to be on 24/7. Or the power, for that matter.
If Cloudflare shits the bed again, are your lights stuck on or off? Can you not turn up the heat? We’re in a period of history where things will bet worse, not better. The last thing I want is “error: can’t connect to internet” being why you can’t turn the things you can touch in your house on and off. I get it if you’ve managed to do the work to have it all locally hosted, but just as-is seems like a bet against one’s self.
When the power is off chances are that whatever is integrated is degraded anyway. And for actuators just choose some that fail gracefully and allow manual handling. For the rest use HA as much as possible, favour local integrations with no cloud dependencies… and when there are dependencies than make sure the override is available physically (looking at my vaillant HP). Then stack UPSes or even better home grade batteries (my next endeavour) and have backup connectivity to internet and you’re a peachy as can be.
I’m gonna guess that you put a decent amount of time into figuring out a good set of smart home products and maybe even put some effort into looking up which products play well together and what configurations are ideal.
And that’s great if you enjoy shopping for, setting up and maintaining all those toys. But we all know there is too much shitty tech out there to think that it’s a good idea to grab a bunch of smart home stuff at Best Buy one afternoon and just plug it all in and call it good.
I think the thing is, folks in tech are less likely to be cool with, for example, exposing their door locks on the internet without doing a decent amount of due diligence. You have to want it enough to put in the work to make sure you have something that you can feel is secure, smooth operating and meets your personal privacy expectations. It kinda has to be a minor hobby. Which is cool if you happen to enjoy it or get enough joy from the result to make it worthwhile.
For me, I have enough hobbies and pastimes. I’ll put in the effort when the payoff is high, like for a home media server. But there’s no way in hell I’m signing up for future chores and headaches just so I can control my window curtains from my phone.
Nope ZigBee or zwave cool. Not that hard. Next work offline with home assistant OK.
The key thing is you have exclusive root access to all of it and spend time on admin.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“AWS is down 😞”
Same for me. I don’t really like to expose my home and I don’t understand how people are so eager to plug in shady WiFi stuff into their network. I’ve got one “smart” device with WiFi connectivity I’ve allowed to connect to my network, but I’ve disallowed going online and I’ve put it into a different vlan.
Friend of mine: “let’s set up a camera in our bedroom to check on on the dog when we’re away.”
The one thing I will never use a smart device for is my door lock. I don’t understand how tech literate people really trust that.
I was considering a smart lock for my (armored) front door, but just because there are some locks manufactured here in Italy that can be set to be controlled by external contacts.
Which means I could use and ESP or similar with esphome, now they also support wired, ethernet ones.
That’s way more secure than the shitty lock I have now, I’ve seen videos of people picking that with a decoder device in 30 seconds.Locks are not secure anyway and even if it is the most secure lock ever built may I present a window. Most break ins at least when I did home alarms where smash window right beside door and unlock it.
True as well, but a broken window or a lockpick my neighbors might be interested in.
I have a couple WiFi devices for smart home like some TVs and thermostat. All blocked from WAN access and used for local control.
Good, solid state tech should last basically forever unless something wild happens.
This isn’t humor, and most tech people have some of this shit. 3/10.
Ive been gifted a few IoT things over the years. They stay on their own network / VLAN or are unplugged entierly when not in use. The meme about keeping the firearm near the one thing I cant reasonably make myself is not innacurate. Tech workers are aware of the vulnerabilities and issues with cheap insecure IoT nonsense. As part of one of my nerds cyber security learning we hacked a smart cat feeder to snoop on wireless networks and allow a back door (we had their permission, it was a gift that was unneeded so they let us take it apart).
Edit: also a ton of that junk phones back to AWS, and usually pretty lazilly, if your learning pen testing or cyber security its a fun exercise to get this cheap crap and find out how it works.
Cool but you’re not even close to ‘most tech people’.
Guys, gals, non binary pals; I can’t emphasize this enough. The average tech worker Isn’t some Linux guru working for a VC sending pics of their thigh highs. It’s a middle aged millennial with kids who just wants his shit to work.
Well, you shouldn’t keep a gun next to it, unless you want the printer to take ahold of it and rob you.
Why On Earth would you keep a gun NEXT to it!? That’s just asking for problems. That printer knows if it gets a hold of that gun, it’ll look like a suicide, not a murder.
“no smart home crap” except smart home “crap” can be quite secure today… but please go on.
(80% of my smart home “crap” runs firmware I compiled, communicates only with a local server and have no internet access)
I already do that crap all day at work. The last thing I want to do is do it to my coffee maker or something.
That’s exactly what I want to do! I saw a post some years ago, someone had connected a ~ESP32 (or the like) to their coffee maker, connected it to the WiFi and made an app to remote controll it.
I want to do something similar. Prepp the coffee in the evening, set a time for the machine to start and then have fresh coffee when I wake up. I realise that I could just do all of this and just press the button when I wake up instead, but the idea of this makes me happy.
If I want coffee in the morning I just fill my French press the night before with cold water.
And they’ve made drip coffee makers with timers for decades. No WiFi needed.
The whole point is to make it because I want to. As I said, I can just prepare my MoccaMaster the day before and the coffee will be one button press away in the morning.
Homeassistant is cool though. Also most pf my stuff would work without it, it just works better with it.
None of the devices I bought for it talk to the internet!
As it should be
Remember Home assistant =/= smart home nonsense
I dont need some AI assistant to automatically manage my thermostat, I just want to be able to control it all using my own local server.
There are people who tie gemini into their HA instance
These people are insane.
Any suggestions for someone tech savvy enough to run a proxmox server for a handful of services, to get started with home assistant?
Can you replicate something like a Google home with voice commands?
I may or may not be getting a new house soon. I’m good with electrical to replace switches with wireless ones. But what do you get? Where do you start and where do you end? What about the WAF?
I saw LTT did smart switches in his house and it was a mess of incompatibilities.
Any good resources? I don’t even know what I don’t know haha
This video is a good starting point. If you’re already running proxmox you’re definitely ready. 👍
I’d recommend using matter over thread, as I’ve had issues with ZigBee, although that might just be incompetence. I use smth by aqara for a thread bridge, and it all works great with home assistant.
Look into ZWave and ZigBee mesh networks. I run Home Assistant with a couple hundred devices and integrations. ZWave tends to be my hardwired switches, and ZigBee tends to be my battery operated motion sensors, remotes, etc.
Personally, I run Home Assistant on its native HAOS on a raspberry Pi. In addition to Home Assistant, I have lots of automations running in Node Red, a no/low code orchestration addon.
For voice control, I’m playing with the Atom Echo.
Couple hundred?! Are most of those lights or something? Forgive me I’m totally ignorant about home automation.
Is it a hobby to you or have you found significant time/energy savings? Or both?
Part hobby, part time and energy savings. One thing I love about Home Assistant is the integrations with so many devices and services. I have smart switches., remotes, smart plugs, energy monitors, RGB bulbs, thermometers, etc.
It’s a slippery slope of wanting to integrate absolutely everything! My doorbell, alarm system, thermostats, garage door, door locks, and so on.
Many are local “smart devices” using ZWave and ZigBee, and others are cloud integrations with other services.
I’ve gotten to a point where the Home Automation routines I rely on are so useful that I get annoyed if I ever have to do things “manually”.
Couple examples:
-
I have a remote by my bed that, when the goodnight button is pressed, turns off all the lights, sets the HVAC back to programmed mode, puts our computers to sleep, arms the alarm, locks the doors, and closes curtains.
-
I have a button by my garage door that sets an “auto arm” toggle that opens the garage door, unlocks the door to the garage and the waits for me to close the garage, at which point it arms the alarm, turns off the lights, locks my computers, turns off the HVAC, closes curtains, locks doors, etc.
-
Community scripts has home assistant, both lxc and VM options. Use the VM version and you can get HA up and running super quick.
https://community-scripts.org/
Also shout out to community scripts! If you run proxmox and aren’t using community scripts then you’re about to hate yourself for all the manual builds you’ve done.
I have not been using community scripts, and I feel an amount of silly. Thanks!
Fuck. I almost wish I didn’t read this.
HAOS literally has a proxmox iso for home assistant. Slap that baby on.
There are homebrew voice units, but you’ll need a beefier system than normal to process in house. If you have apple devices you can expose certain elements from HA to apple home (and keep others obscured) to use your watch / voice etc.
There are a lot of home assistant communities and they are all very very friendly. It’s a massive learning curve and we’re all working together
Define beefy? Like 8 to 12gb vram? Or will an old 970 do the trick?
I really only skimmed over it before deciding IDGAF at this point (i’ll probably revisit later, but in the middle of renovations and kittens right now) but https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/voice_remote_local_assistant/ should set you right
The parent page that covers both local and remote is https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/
I’ve been looking for some smart outlets, and it seems impossible to discover which ones can be used with normal well-known protocols and which can only be used through a phone app locked into a cloud service.
Zigbee.
You will need an antenna /hub though. I use a sky connect antennae, it’s all locked into my house.
If you have to go wifi, tplink /tapo literally have a “local only” mode when you firewall them out. The only issue is they warn you you can’t operate them unless you’re connected to your home wifi. Which is rather the point.
So, if I’m reading things right, anything that runs on Z-Wave or Zigbee will necessarily run locally, because those are mesh protocols?
Anyway, thanks a lot. Those are really simple keywords to check.
The Hook Up had a great video on this. He compared a lot of different options and ranks them based on functionality with and without internet.
Yep.
My favorite smart outlet switch though was recently sold out and it’s an Aeotec smart switch 7.
I’ve got it set up on Home Assistant so that whenever certain devices in my home are detected on or off via watt usage minimum changes I monitor on those smart switches, it toggles the Lutron Caseta (best smart light control there is) lights via commands for different rooms in my house.
I also have things like waterproof outdoor gate sensors made by Zooz that are smaller than a single stick of gum where the small flat watch battery in it lasts for almost a year and it will alert me when the gate opens or closes, but only when I’m a certain distance away from the house’s geofence I’ve set up.
Check out the new IKEA Matter over Thread stuff. They have two smart plugs (an indoor single plug and an outdoor double plug). You can flash one of the esp-idf example images to an ESP32-C6 and plug it into your HA server to turn it into a Thread Border Router for under $10. Everything on Thread uses a fully local encrypted mesh network that by default has no Internet access (leave NAT64 turned off in the HA border router add-on).
P.S.: Make sure to update the firmware on the devices (which HA can do), as several don’t act as routing end devices until after the first upgrade.
I have several US V2 plugs from athom.tech and they work great via home assistant. They just sit on WiFi don’t call home and are reliable through hoke assistant
