Smart Homes

We have a bunch of shutters in our living room that don't have any kind of remote control, nor a rod to operate them - you just move any of the individual slats and the rest follow suit.

Is there anything out there that could make these smart? I'm really struggling to find the right terms to search for.

Update: Turns out they are plantation blinds which has helped me to find the sort of thing I'm after. Cheers, Emperor!

Not mine, but this looks amazing.

I'm considering Inovelli Blue 2-1 switches for a new (to me) house. I'm pretty sure the electrical wiring in that place predates the American Civil War, so no neutral wires, and no plans to rip out the walls to rectify that. Would I be able to use the light switches for basic on/off/dimmer functions and have them in Home Assistant via the SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 Plus-E dongle?

I have HA up and running in my current place, but have way too many cloud enabled hubs (TP-Link Kasa, IKEA Tradfre, Lutron Caseta, just to name a few) that I want to replace with a fully self-hosted solution. Already bought and configured the Sonoff ZigBee dongle in anticipation. The only other hitch is that the gangboxes may be too small to fit larger switches and I may need to hire an electrician to replace around 20 of them.

Also it seems that Inovelli Aux switches for the multi-way setups are sold out everywhere. From what I understand, those are simply dumb switches with some extra bells and whistles. What alternatives are there for those?

How do you solve the problem of growing a popular smart home platform committed to open-source, open-standard ideals into something bigger that stays true to those ideals? You create a foundation. At least, that’s the approach Home Assistant founder Paulus Schoutsen has chosen.

This week, Home Assistant announced it is now part of the Open Home Foundation. The newly formed non-profit will own and govern all of Home Assistant and its related entities. Its creators and inaugural board members — Schoutsen, Guy Sie, Pascal Vizeli, and J. Nick Koston — all work on Home Assistant, and the foundation has no other members so far.

In a press release, the foundation stated its aim is “to fight against surveillance capitalism, and offer a counterbalance to Big Tech influence, in the smart home — by focusing on privacy, choice, and sustainability for smart home users.”

Especially in recent years, Google’s efforts in the smart home have received continued criticism, but looking at the current state of the Google Home app and Nest hardware, is that still deserved?

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That’s basically where I stand at this point. Google Nest is full of shortcomings, absolutely, but it’s also one of the only simple smart home camera offerings out there that isn’t bogged down by awful software, higher fees, or complicated setup/maintenence. I’ve been vocal about my issues with Nest over the past few years, but I’m overall reasonably satisfied, and I don’t hesitate to tell folks who ask about home cameras to give Nest their consideration.

Should Nest still work to improve? Absolutely.

There’s so much room to improve, as the very vocal community of users made clear during this week’s AMA. I, for one, hope Google’s team read each and every one of those comments and took them to heart. But, like many of those users, I’ve also been burned by Google on the smart home. I still hate that feature parity isn’t a thing in the Home app (without some ridiculously complex workarounds). I’m still frustrated at poorly thought through choices on newer Nest Cams. I’m still trying to find a good security system to replace my Nest Secure that’s dying for no good reason.

But every time I look elsewhere, I have the same thought: is it really so bad?

There may be bad news if you purchased one of Amazon’s “Overall Picks” for video doorbells in recent months. New tests from Consumer Reports find that popular doorbell cameras sold under names including Eken and Tuck are rife with security flaws that make it dead simple for anyone to watch your camera footage.

Consumer Reports looked at ten seemingly identical video doorbells sold under various names including Eken and Tuck that are widely available on websites including Amazon, Walmart, Shein, and Temu. All of them are manufactured by Eken Group Ltd., and all use the same companion app called Aiwit. Apparently, hijacking these devices is as easy as downloading Aiwit and putting the doorbell in pairing mode. This allows an attacker to take over the device, view footage, and lock out the owner.

In fact, the tests found you can gain remote access to the doorbells without a password. All you need to see photos from the video feeds is one of the doorbells’ serial numbers.

I've recently purchased my first few Apple Devices (second hand) and have been looking at changing my current un-smart, smart home of using Google Devices over to Homekit, Luckily I have only done smart bulbs at the moment and is probably a good time to restart.

Is the Apple Homekit system good in the UK? or are there not many devices that can connect easily to the smart home?

Aqara has launched its Smart Lock U200 on Kickstarter, where you can currently nab the device for $209, down from the $249.99 it’ll cost you when it goes on sale later this year. According to the Kickstarter page, it will ship to backers in April.

The company debuted its new retrofit lock at the IFA 2023 tech show last summer; showcasing its Matter-over-Thread connectivity and separate Bluetooth keypad with a fingerprint reader and NFC built in. This gives you the option to unlock with digital codes, Aqara NFC cards, the Aqara app on your phone, and voice control with compatible voice assistants. That’s in addition to still being able to use your existing key.

Uniquely for a retrofit lock (where you don't need to replace your existing door lock), the U200 can work with US-style deadbolts and European mortise locks. Most only work with one or the other. The lock also comes with a rechargeable battery that Aqara says can get a minimum of six months of battery life based on eight entries a day. That’s impressive. The wireless keypad uses four AAA batteries or can be wired to doorbell wiring.

I've got an IKEA hub connected to a few Trådfri lights which I've then added to Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi and set up a load of automations. I moved the hub and the RPi around my room and now Home Assistant can't control any of the lights, it's just reporting Failed setup, will retry. The IKEA hub can still control the lights fine.

Any idea if there's a quick fix or do I need to bite the bullet, delete the config and set everything up again from scratch?

Google's "Nest Aware" camera subscription is going through another round of price increases. This time it's for international users. There's no big announcement or anything, just a smattering of email screenshots from various countries on the Nest subreddit. 9to5Google was nice enough to hunt down a pile of the [screenshots].

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The "first-generation" Nest Aware subscription, which is tied to earlier cameras and isn't available for new customers anymore, is doubling in price in Canada. The basic tier of five days of 24/7 video is going from a yearly fee of CA$50 to CA$110 (the first-generation sub has 24/7 video on every tier). Ten days of video is jumping from CA$80 to CA$160, and 30 days is going from CA$110 to CA$220. These are the prices for a single camera; the first-generation subscription will have additional charges for additional cameras. The current Nest Aware subscription for modern cameras is getting jumps that look similar to the US, with Nest Aware Plus, the mid-tier, going from CA$16 to CA $20 per month, and presumably similar raises across the board.

Japan is seeing jumps, too, with annual Nest Aware for modern cameras going from 6,300 yen to 8,000 yen. Again, there's no full list of price increases anywhere for every country; at the moment, we're working from email screenshots, but it sounds like Google is rolling out similar price increases everywhere. The bill increases are happening in about a month, on March 25, 2024. The US already saw a 25–33 percent price increase in September, and it looks like, for the modern Nest Aware plan, the prices internationally are being brought in line with those increases. Users don't seem too happy about the price increases, naturally.

When I started at Ars in the summer of 2022, the next generation of smart home standards was on the way. Matter, an interoperable device setup and management system, and Thread, a radio network that would provide secure, far-reaching connectivity optimized for tiny batteries. Together, they would offer a home that, while well-connected, could also work entirely inside a home network and switch between controlling ecosystems with ease. I knew this tech wouldn't show up immediately, but I thought it was a good time to start looking to the future, to leave behind the old standards and coalesce into something new.

Instead, Matter and Thread are a big mess, and I am now writing to tell you that I was wrong, or at least ignorant, to have ignored the good things that already existed: Zigbee and Z-Wave. I've put in my time with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and various brittle combinations of the two. They're useful for data-rich devices and for things that can stay plugged in. Zigbee and Z-Wave have been around, but they always seemed fidgety, obscure, and vaguely European at a glance. But here, in the year 2024, I am now an admirer of both, and I think they still have a place in our homes.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/7616207

"Starting 11 March 2024, the price of Ring Protect Basic will change from £34.99/year to £49.99/year per device. If you would like to keep your current plan, no further action is required. Your plan will renew at the new price, unless you cancel your subscription before your next renewal on or after 11 March 2024."

Arse clowns.

Not sure where best to post this on Lemmy but here goes...

I've got a single Google calendar enabled on my Alexa. I've set 'announcement count' to 1.

Every single time I have a calendar reminder on my Echo, it says it twice in a row, which is very annoying.

I've seen posts from 5 years ago complaining of the same issue, has anyone found a fix? Seems bonkers it's not been fixed.

Three new Ikea sensors are being added to the company’s smart home product line-up, each set to cost less than $10.

None of them natively support HomeKit, but the company says that all support the $69 Dirigera hub, and has promised that will be upgraded to Matter at some point …

Ikea announced the trio of sensors today.

PARASOLL Door and Window Sensor is designed for discreet mounting on windows and doors. This sensor notifies users when these access points are opened or closed, making them aware of any unexpected entries.

VALLHORN Wireless Motion Sensor can be placed both indoors and outdoors. It activates lights upon detecting movement and offers personalised lighting with adjustable color and intensity settings.

BADRING Water Leakage Sensor is to be placed near areas of water usage and notifies users upon detecting water leaks, through sending mobile notifications or activation of its built-in alarm. It minimizes the impact of water-related incidents through immediate notification so you can act right away.

By connecting the sensors to the DIRIGERA hub, they trigger other smart devices, receive notifications in your mobile, or adjust lights to their preferences – all managed through the IKEA Home smart app, even remotely from outside the home.

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All three products will offer both alerts and the ability to directly trigger Ikea light bulbs. Other connectivity requires the Dirigera Zigbee hub, which can interface with a wider range of smart home products. They are not compatible with Ikea’s older Trafdi bridge, which is effectively now obsolete.

However, HomeKit compatibility won’t be available until the hub is upgraded to support Matter. This was supposed to have happened almost a year ago, and Ikea still hasn’t provided a date.

On past performance, we can expect it to arrive at some point, but don’t hold your breath.

Ikea launched the Ormanäs, its first smart RGB LED light strip, in the Netherlands. The news comes by way of Dutch tech site Tweakers, which notes that the Ormanäs is a four-meter, or roughly 13-foot, dimmable Zigbee affair for €29.99 (about $32) that works with the company’s Dirigera smart hub. The light strip is only available in the Netherlands for now, but Ikea typically starts its rollouts there before bringing products to the US and beyond.

The strip is simple and, judging from the images on Ikea’s site, won’t have individually addressable LEDs like some of the fancier strips on the market — which means the whole strip will show only a single color at a time. Still, it supports multiple control methods like the Ikea Home app and the Ikea Styrbar remote as well as Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa smart home platforms (through the Dirigera hub). It also supports Google Home and Amazon Alexa. And being a fairly standard LED strip, you can cut it to length in designated places.

The Ormanäs has a nice balance of features — it’s affordable, long, dimmable, and with Zigbee control, is likely to be very responsive. It’s rare to see a smart LED strip that ticks all of those boxes and also supports HomeKit and out-of-home control via the maker’s app — something the Dirigera hub improves on over Ikea’s now-defunct Trådfri Gateway.

In September 2023, Home Assistant support for integrated Android device controls rolled out with little fanfare (via GitHub). Nonetheless, this update is crucial to using the smart home management tool, giving Android users seamless access to these frequently used controls. If you have Android 11 or newer, the location of these features depends on your device — the controls may be in your quick settings panel, power menu, or notification drawer.

Matter — the IOT connectivity standard with ambitions to fix the smart home and make all of our gadgets talk to each other — has hit version 1.2, adding support for nine new types of connected devices. Robot vacuums, refrigerators, washing machines, and dishwashers are coming to Matter, as are smoke and CO alarms, air quality sensors, air purifiers, room air conditioners, and fans. It’s a crucial moment for the success of the industry-backed coalition that counts 675 companies among its members. This is where it moves from the relatively small categories of door locks and light bulbs to the real moneymakers: large appliances.

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While it’s possible today to get your lights to flash when your laundry is done, turn a light red when your fridge’s temperature rises, or shut off the HVAC system if the smoke alarm goes off, it can be complicated to set up and often wholly unreliable. You need to download multiple apps, maybe buy a sensor or two, deal with laggy cloud integrations, and worry about whether your washer is even compatible with your smart home app in the first place. With Matter support, this type of simple command and control should be much easier to implement in any ecosystem.

The future potential is also interesting, bringing into play the ambient smart home many companies are pursuing, where devices can talk to each other to take action on our behalf without us really having to get involved.

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The launch of Matter 1.2 isn’t coming with a slew of device announcements. I reached out to several companies that are members of the CSA and make products in these categories to see if they were announcing any new integrations. iRobot (makers of Roomba robot vacuums) and Resideo (owners of First Alert smoke alarms) said they had nothing to share, and Dyson (vacuums and fans), Google Nest (Nest Protect smoke alarm), and Samsung didn’t respond before publication.

Even the ever-eager Eve, which has been at the forefront of Matter adoption, told me it had nothing to announce. All this means we’ll probably not get new devices until 2024. While it’s possible that over-the-air updates to existing gadgets could be implemented sooner, it’s not likely. Many of those updates promised with 1.0 took a long time to arrive, and some never did.

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New device types should bring much-needed momentum to Matter and address the complaints of some existing smart home users that it has yet to add much to the experience other than headaches. But this hinges on manufacturers adding it to their products.

The resistance to adopting Matter seems to be growing. We’re a year in, and companies that initially said they would keep an eye on Matter with a view to adopting it still haven’t (Lutron being a notable one here). Some that seemed fully on board from the outset have slowed down or even completely stopped their development, pulling a Wemo.

One issue is the inherent tension between Matter’s role in creating an even playing field — it’s removed interoperability as a hindrance but also a selling point. Companies now need to create enough differentiation to compel the customer to pick them.

Matter also has competition. Resideo is very active with the Home Connectivity Alliance (HCA), a rival / potentially symbiotic organization to Matter working to have large appliance manufacturers connect and control each other’s devices through their own apps. It has wide adoption among the big appliance manufacturers, including LG, Haier, Samsung, and Electrolux. (Whirlpool is not a member; Bean told me they are watching it closely.)

The HCA’s approach is more appealing to these companies, as it keeps everything in the manufacturer’s proprietary ecosystems and maintains the cloud connection, a valuable funnel for data.

Those who follow smarthomescene.com, already know the dominant communication protocol mentioned here is Zigbee. Almost every device I review tends to be Zigbee or open-source Wi-Fi (ESP Boards).

My networks are based on the Sonoff ZBDongles, especially the EZSP version working with Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA. Even though it’s marked as experimental in Z2M, they have performed well in my testing and development setup.

The ZigStar UZG-01 I am testing in this article is a hybrid Zigbee coordinator, which can work over USB, Wi-Fi or LAN. You can also choose to power it over USB-C or Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). This was sent to me by Radu from the ZigStar open source and DIY project. You can get it on Tindie or Elecrow.

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After deploying the ZigStar UZG-01 as a coordinator in a development Zigbee2MQTT network, I started to pair devices that I had on hand. My previous network centered around the ZBDongle-E was very robust and performed without hiccups.

The UZG-01 performed as I expected too and pairing devices was very responsive. This is largely dependent on the device itself though, usually end devices are more difficult to pair. Aqara devices are also known as difficult to pair, although by now I learned how to handle them properly.

If you are looking to replace your coordinator, consider the ZigStar UZG-01 as a top tier device. The flexibility it offers in terms of installation options is enough to chose it over other coordinators. Further, the CC2652P7 module it ships with is very powerful and officially supported in both Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA.

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/133703

[ sourced from The Verge ]

In the decade or so since the two companies launched overpowered thermostats that held so much promise for the smart home, they have gone down drastically different paths. Where Ecobee’s original product has matured into a fine vintage, Google (which bought Nest in 2014) has let the excellent Nest Learning Thermostat wither on the vine, ostensibly replacing it with a watered-down version with half the smarts and none of the visual appeal.

By contrast, Ecobee’s latest flagship thermostat, the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium, has a slew of new capabilities. In addition to being a very good smart thermostat that adapts your heating and cooling based on whether you’re home or away and even which room you are in, it is also a smart speaker (Alexa or Siri), an indoor air quality monitor, a smoke and CO alarm listener, a temperature and humidity sensor, and a radar-powered motion sensor. While Nest was the first to add radar-powered motion sensing to its thermostat, the other notable recent hardware upgrade was… a mirrored face.

The Ecobee Smart Doorbell Camera is a wired video doorbell that costs $159.99. Image: Ecobee The new Ecobee Smart Doorbell Camera, launching today for $159.99, has a headline-worthy trick of displaying a live feed from the camera onto your thermostat (not just the top-of-the-line model, but the Ecobee Enhanced and Ecobee with Voice Control models, too). This is something I always thought Nest might do. Instead, they have stand-alone smart displays for viewing your doorbell feed, but those haven’t been refreshed in a while.

Ecobee also announced today that all its thermostats going back to the Ecobee 3 will act as a keypad for Ecobee’s smart home security system, and those with speakers can also be a siren. Nest’s security system has been discontinued, and its doorbells don’t talk to its thermostats.

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/118334

[ comments | sourced from HackerNews ]

Welcome to the Internet of Stings, an occasional series in which we report on connected devices that are abruptly bricked or rendered considerably more costly due to the actions of their vendors.

Today's tale concerns the Miku Baby Monitor, a $400 device aimed at parents who want to check up on their precious poppet from the comfort of their smartphone.

Spend the cash and you'll get a camera that will also monitor breathing, room temperature, humidity, and provide some two-way communication to reassure the baby that its parent or guardian has taken a break from YouTube or Candy Crush to check that all is well.

The upfront cost was steep, but what price can one put on the reassurance of a breathing waveform and being able to bring up some live video while you're out and about? Apparently, $9.99 a month.

eufy is best known for its range of smart home security, including security cameras and video doorbells, as well as smart cleaning products like the best robot vacuum cleaners. Its new Dual Camera series is the world’s first home surveillance mesh powered by local AI, and is featured packed with enhanced surveillance capabilities. Oh, and it’s incredibly affordable, too.

The main advancements to the Dual Camera series is its AI detection. All four devices in the line-up (the SoloCam, the IndoorCam, the Floodlight Cam and the Video Doorbell) have cross-camera tracking, meaning if you have multiple cameras, the devices use AI facial recognition to identify the same person or animal across multiple cameras.

This new feature means the cameras can seamlessly track people and events across all devices, so there’s no interruptions or confusion with what each camera is tracking. For people who hate being bothered by app notifications, the new eufy Dual Camera series will only send you one notification rather than multiple and deliver a single auto-edited video, making your update more condensed, convenient and easier to view.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2904988

Automated post: UNRAID related video posted on YouTube 'DIY Smart Home: Home Assistant auf Unraid installieren - Tutorial | Easy Tec'

We live in an age where just about everything can be "smart." Your TV, lights, refrigerator and even your pet's food dispenser can all be controlled wirelessly via an app on your phone.

But how exactly can energy be smart? With a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection, new products allow you to monitor and control the circuits of your electrical panel from your phone.

You can switch circuits on or off, monitor each circuit's energy usage and set automations. This might not seem all that valuable at first glance. But add some solar panels or a solar battery to the mix, and things get even more interesting.

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What are the benefits of a smart energy system?

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Avoid peak time of use rates

Most smart energy systems are designed to help you be as energy efficient as possible. This includes accounting for peak time of use rates, when some utilities charge more for electricity during hours of high demand. Smart energy can help you find the cheapest times to charge your EV, run the dishwasher or even make dinner.

Optimize your solar

If you have solar panels with a solar battery, a smart energy system can help you get the most out of your electricity production. A solar battery essentially gives you a reservoir of energy that can be used to store and remove energy as necessary. Smart energy systems work with the battery by pulling energy from storage and pushing it to wherever it's needed the most, whenever it's most cost-effective to do so. Things like charging your EV or running your AC off solar might be be much cheaper than buying energy from the grid. It's all about correctly allocating your energy to get the most bang for your buck.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6041456

With the release of Tapo version 3.0, TP-Link integrates their two lines of smart home devices into a single application, reducing the number of apps needed to control their devices.

Additionally, the update claims improvements to the user interface, optimized camera features, a sleeker status page, and faster responses and startups.

The blow post also suggest that improvements to lighting effects, smart actions, geofencing, and a dark mode will be coming in the future.

I think the best takeaway is that I can have one less app on my phone!

TP-Link Blog - Brand-New Tapo Version 3.0