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by AnotherGoodName 21 days ago
The smart home is a thousand small problems to solve and should never be one catch all.

The automatic cat feeder works well. So does the roomba. I like my automated blinds but will stick with manual light switches. I consolidated my home theatre remotes. Note how they’re all seperate problems.

The smart home is here. It’s just that it was never a use case for a singular smart home platform. It was always 1000 seperate problems to solve that in no way ever belonged together and the experience was always worse when trying to combine it.
4 comments
throwaway20148 21 days ago
They will possibly all converge when they expose a "tool interface" to some kind of model-on-prem(ish) device that you install in your home. Think of an OpenAI or Anthropic or Apple or Samsung-branded "cortex" or "brain" that controls everything to some degree using fast local models, but outsource more complex orchestration up to the cloud. Smart home products will integrate with these devices because its going to open up a whole new generation of the same devices they sell, just with AI model integration this time.

These devices already have a precedent, your apple tv or google/amazon speaker thing. I think we will see these probably become LLM/model/AI gateways in the future.

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seanmcdirmid 21 days ago
We are basically already there, with HomeKit plus open bridge that can make any device visible on HomeKit (like nest cameras) and usable in automations (it works the other way also, it’s just a good way to get compatibility).

I would like to explore some open source solutions though, it would mean setting up a local system on a Mac mini for speech recognition and local processing. Bonus is you could use Anthony Daniels (KITT) as your assistant voice.

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weitendorf 21 days ago
Working on it, they all already expose a tool interface, you just have to know where to look for it and how to use it!
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patchymcnoodles 21 days ago
You can have manual light switches and home automation. I have exactly that, but given I built a new house with KNX integration. All light switches are physical switches and can on/off and dim the lights. The only difference is, they are not hardwired to the lamps, instead they go to the KNX machine. So if I want I can always decide what switch does what.

I have a singular smart home platform with one exception: my Dreame cleaning robot. Everything else is either integrated into KNX (lights, appliances, pool, window blinds, etc.) or Ubiquiti (cameras and doors).

But again, new building and I made the mission clear: everything has to fit into this system. Was an interesting work for the electrician ;).

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seanmcdirmid 21 days ago
Synchronizing lights is hard, so in the living room kitchen where we have 4 different lights, having a way to turn them on and off is useful. We don’t have automatic lights anywhere else, but I notice at least, where we don’t, the light switches don’t get dirty (and you don’t get dirty from using the light switch), so maybe we will make them all automatic eventually just for hygiene reasons.
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nfrankel 21 days ago
What I wrote above:

>I use Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/). It has an integration for lots of manufacturers. Single app, single entry point, cross manufacturer automations.

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