this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 42 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Hehe. Imagine managing your house in the cloud, and suddenly there is no heating, no light, all the "smart" appliances don't work anymore, and the shower only produces cold water, because the shower thermostat got a "0" as return value when asking for the preferred temperature...

[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is why Home Assistant exists.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Of course. But 99% of the population is either too lazy or to dumb for that, or such problems would not exist.

[–] Miaou@jlai.lu 4 points 1 day ago

99% of the population doesn't have IOT in their houses

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

99% of the population is either too lazy…

Nudges an unopened box of Zigbee door sensors ordered 2 years ago to the back of the shelf.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Resist the temptation, hundreds of hours will be lost down that rabbithole after you start.

Though, it is kinda cool stuff, when it's working.

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Don't listen to him. Sure it may take a few hours a day over the course of a month or so to get right, but with the time you'll save from all that automation you'll break even in a few hundred years - and then it's all gravy!

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (3 children)

what's a door sensor good for?

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 2 points 1 day ago

When you're not home it becomes part of the alarm system. When you are home it can turn on the lights or heating (or extractor fan in the bathroom) and you can aggregate it with other sensors to measure occupancy to turn those things off again. If you use Home Assistant (or something like it) you can use it to go anything that can be inferred from a door being used.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Peace of mind. We have a light that lights up red when a door is open. At the end of the night we get an announcement "all doors closed" - last night I got an announcement telling me one door was open - I went there and sure enough: the magnet side of the sensor had fallen off, door was closed.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

so you use it for security? wouldn't it make more sense to detect if the locks are locked?

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 points 8 hours ago

Depends on your level of trust. I trust the sensor to tell me the door is open/closed (which is a concern to know if people are actually coming in or out - can't do that with the door closed)... I don't trust a smart lock to always lock or unlock when I want it to, and those are the things that will give you a locked/unlocked status report. If anybody really wants to get in/out of our house it doesn't matter if the doors are locked or not, they can always break a window.

[–] Texas_Hangover@lemmy.radio 2 points 2 days ago

Sensing doors.

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

There's a good reason why I refuse to use cloud connected or Internet required "smart" devices.

It's essentially an excuse for shitty engineering.

If you really need a device to be cloud connected then it can also maintain local data when the remote server is down. Even better, it uses an open spec and you can standup your own server.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Dream on, meanwhile the world will be buying $8 cloud connected "smart switches" because they're the cheapest, easiest to install things out there and even grandma is able to say "hey Alexa, turn on the coffee maker" and make it work.

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Joke's on them. My coffee maker has a physical button!

[–] Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (4 children)

It's not that far off. I woke up to an Internet outage and none of my home lighting routines fired off and I couldn't control my lights via wifi. I got it under control shifting to Bluetooth but for a second it was infuriating.

[–] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

the fact that your home network setup for this relies on an internet connection is baffling

[–] ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Games that require persistent internet are baffling to me... I mean the hitman games cannot store your mission achievements offline...

But games are games... if my stove and fridge and showers (fucking showers with wifi?) Need internet connectivity then that is bullshit. They are being too fucking optimistic about everything.

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Knowing a game is spying on me ruins the fun. My Steam Deck is blocked from the internet for that reason, but a fair number of games on Steam won’t work without connectivity. I seem to remember hearing about some girl who shares a huge collection of games that don’t require connectivity, though.

Well it ultimately just keeps score snd achievements... but why the fuck do the achievements need to be cloud based? None of the other games I have are like that.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 2 points 2 days ago

some girl who shares a huge collection of games that don’t require connectivity

Dunno her, https://www.mensxp.com/technology/gaming/171080-best-offline-games-without-internet.html

[–] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Games like that are also baffling to me, thankfully I've not purchased one but I would return it as soon as I discovered the limitation if that were to happen

I bought just the hitman game because I am a completionist and I just want that one. I don't care for many other games.

[–] Pacattack57@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Was getting up and turning on the light switch not an option?

[–] cevn@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sounds like someone needs HomeAssistant..

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Mostly they need to move to Zigbee/Matter or similar.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 3 points 2 days ago

I had about a dozen WeMo devices controlling various stuff around the house, they just accumulated over the years. About a year ago, I "got serious" and ripped out all the cloud connected stuff and setup a Zigbee based Home Assistant system. It's about 5x more capable than the old hodge podge of cloud devices, much lower lag, much better management capabilities, and when the internet connection goes down, it still works. The cloud devices would take long coffee breaks about twice a year.

[–] thatonecoder@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

God, so many things gone wrong there. At least they could use “30” as the default value, right???

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That would break physics (assuming you're using Celsius)

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

well considering it controls a heat exchanger device it can only break you

[–] CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

NM, I had it in my head that absolute zero is -253.15, but it's -273.15

[–] nevemsenki@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Hey, I could at least observe superconductors at home!

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

at least its not -254