This very beautiful piece made me think about the concept of smart home specifically, that a lot of people have.

[tuomas_h@mastodon.social]

RE: https://indieweb.social/@tg/116239388293932404

This very beautiful piece made me think about the concept of smart home specifically, that a lot of people have. That your home is smart when you can control lights or other appliances through an app, and they leave it at that.

Make your smart home work for you. If you’re stuck controlling lights through an app, your home is not smart, you simply moved your light switches elsewhere.

[octothorpe@mastodon.online]

@tuomas_h @tg ‘Smart devices are really just someone else’s server’

[apzpins@some.apz.fi]

@tuomas_h I feel a lot of the anti-technology mentality is coming from people to whom it was sold with a great fanfare, but they were left with half-working items when all the supposedly magical, zero knowledge needed -approach failed on them. To add to the insult, we're already seeing things getting deprecated as I had feared. I strongly detest the idea of the devices tied to a specific app or online service that can be taken away at a moment's notice, leaving you with paper weights.

Personally I instantly saw the benefits, but I didn't jump in until I found the platform independent stuff. Virtually everything I have is just standard Zigbee and nothing really vendor locks me. As an added bonus it's primarily locally controlled, with HomeKit integration being just secondary way to control everything remotely.

Consumer smart home stuff can work, but I feel a lot of it is sold with a lie and to people who would've been happier with a standard, "dumb" 4 buttons + 4 power plug remote controllable sockets kit.

I actually used to have those dumb ones back in the days, now I have over 60 Zigbee devices.