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What do you guys think of the idea of smart homes? I could make a basic setup using https://home-assistant.io to control my home temperature and lighting; the tools for doing this are everywhere nowadays and implementation doesn't seem too horrific anymore.
But setting aside what I "can" do, is this something that I "should" do? How can a person implement this without connecting any devices to the internet?
You can (mostly), but it involves more user input than the commonly advertised (google/alexa/etc.) integration.
You can choose sensors/actuators that run on protocols that don't touch the internet. Zigbee, Z-wave, rtl_433. The communication and data are local-only, from the device, to a transceiver on your automation host device. Home Assistant is a good place to start for the host, as others have said.
For some others that require networking of some kind, you can silo them. Put them on a VLAN with limited or no internet access, or just manually set the IP address without a valid gateway (not suitable for kit that is at all suspect).
For ones that must connect to some server owned by the company somewhere, the best bet is to just not buy them! Personally, I do everything I can to avoid kit like that. I absolutely loathe the idea of a device needing to phone home for basic functionality. It's just begging for the company to start charging, or even shut down the servers and leave you with a brick. Unfortunately, it means a lot of onus on researching kit before buying.
Best comment here. Smart home is lot of fun if you plan it out in advance. I jumped in with a few random purchases, but trying to cobble everything together can be difficult.
Oh and avoid Google at all costs. It's flashy and neat, but in 6 months they'll cut support and you'll have a brick. Even my Nest thermostat loses functionality fairly regularly just because reasons.
Thankfully I haven't run into issues with Nest, but if I wasn't a renter I wouldn't want them in my home.
They aren't issues, it's more things like poking holes in their walled garden. Like if you want to automate your thermostat outside of their app, or use home assistant, or anything else it's just 1) difficult and 2) brittle. They'll break apis randomly, make you jump through all kinds of crazy hoops.
I'll also toss out that if you privacy and non-annoyance are your goals with an out of the box voice assistant, the only real option these days is a HomePod. I built my smart home with combination of Echos throughout the house, and I pretty much regret it now. I wasn't as worried about privacy, but these things are so fucking annoying these days. "Start a timer for 5 minutes." "Okay, do you want to play some bullshit trivia game while you're timer is going?" No, never. Ever. I mean, at least she'll still turn the lights on without spouting back something dumb, but that's just about it. Probably what I'll be doing now is still using the Alexholes as a speaker target with the mute button on all of the time (better spotify integration) and start replacing with siri balls.
Yeah we went with google homes early on and from what I hear they aren't nearly as annoying - but Google is already starting to hint at dropping support for earlier models. I'll look into HomePod, if I did any new ones I'd use something self hosted. I bet at somepoint we'll be able to flash them.
Have you looked into what Home Assistant has been doing with voice lately? This is what I'll be using to finally turn my Echos into muted speaker targets:
https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/using_voice_assistants_overview/
You can even turn old analog phones into HA "microphones" - just pick up the BatPhone/hamburger/banana phone, say "It's movie time" and hang up, and HA will convert your voice to text and run your "movie time" automation.
It's not a jetpack, but it certainly FEELS like living in the future...
I have found luck with Ikea smart bulbs. They don’t need to be connected to the internet to operate.
Tp-link devices are notoriously bad about connecting to the internet. There is no way to operate them without an internet connection. On top of that, each device connects independently so even when you have a vLAN, there’s extra steps required each time a new device is set up.