Home Security and Smart Home

LMSC A good friend of forwarded this today! It could happen to any of us as hackers could hit us hard in any shape and form. This underscores the importance of protecting the personal emails.

It’s really any stored data about an individual, which is why I store the minimum. There are all sorts of happy birthday add-ons to things and I hate those, can you imagine it announces on an open forum that it’s your Birthday…you post somewhere forgetfully your true age on the forum and bingo, they got your exact date of birth. Assuming you input your birthday correctly in the first place.

https://coffeetime.freeflarum.com/d/179-what-information-do-we-hold-about-you

LMSC It scary how much some platforms collect; some of them collect every thing, which they could lay their hands on.

Information is money, the more they have the more they can make from you. e.g. On many sites they use tracking cookies, so they can present adverts of more “interest” to you….

LMSC while there is some risk here, I think you’re probably worrying a bit too much. While they could fail, they’re specified to last a long time. The most likely failure is a relay failure, so if you keep a relay free you could switch over in a few minutes (plus a bit of programming). Another option is you could buy a spare miniserver so you could switch in case of failure.

The final worst case is that you open up the cabinet, and instead of the wires going through relays you wire them into some switches as a temporary measure.

It’s easy to worry as we base our perception on cheap consumer electronics that is designed to fail after a year or two, but items like modern cars very rarely have electrical issues, as they’re designed to last. Loxone is in that camp.

As I get older, I am considering reverting to switches

You just need to get it setup with assisted living in mind 😀. Motion sensors in each room and it’ll turn the lights on and off for you, plus call for help if you don’t move for a certain period.

hornbyben plus call for help if you don’t move for a certain period.

Crikey if I do that, they will be round every hour…

LMSC sorry to hear about your losses. This has definitely been a fluid time.

My wife can use the system no problem, but if anything ever happened to me then I’m sure she’d need to take out the support option from Rob. Currently I tend to do all my own maintenance and updates.

If you want the benefits of a smart home then I don’t think you can get away from the centralised model really, and this is certainly the approach of choice for the professional systems. The distributed model still tends to communicate back a single source (usually cloud), and I think is really because it makes selling them easier (think Hue light bulbs etc). I’m not sure which approach ends up cheaper in the long term though. I seem to recall Loxone saying they designed for an 80 year life. I’d be surprised if the consumer stuff is designed for more than a couple of years average failure rate.

My wife has told me if I ever die then she’s getting an electrician in to rip it all out 😂

However we can at least use the light switches for manual control. and if one ever dies and doesn’t allow control, it’s a 5 min job for me to remove it.

This has been interesting to follow, and I’m pretty much of a mind with LMSC, certainly in terms of single point of failure, etc. .

I might go back a stage further than that, though, in terms of Dave’s “revert to switches” comment.

For me, any “smart” capabiliies are a function of what convenience they offer, versus what they cost. If they either offe too little benefot, or cost too much, they aren’t worth it. Obviously, I mean worth it to me. Others mileage may vary.

That ends up meaning simple add-on devices, like smart bulbs, with or without either motion sensors (got a couple, where relevant) or additional remote switch/faders, are fine, but a whole home integrated system, to me, just isn’t wrth either the hassle or the cost. At the end of the day, we managed with simple light switches and thermostatic radiator valves for years and could easily do so again.

Getting ‘radio’ through the internet is also fine …. while it works. But a pain in the rear when it doesn’t, which for me is far too often. Relying on smart switches that cannot be over-ridden simoly by flicking an actual normal on/off switch is not acceptable.

Which brings me to single point of failure. Quite a few times I’ve lost audio services becaue my net connection goes down for anything from minutes to a couple of days, so a system with a remote element (like Amazon/Google) is not acceptable except as an add-on. Anything that requires on-going service visits is also,for me, an uuter non-starter, as is anything that requires any form of coding to set up, or to maintain. To be clear, I can do that, having been coding since the ’70s, but the wife can’t, and I don’t know how long I’ll be here. Could be many years, but might not. I’m not saddling the wife with that, for any reason.

So …. smart add-on services, like lights or radio, are viable providing there’s a manual system lying behind it that can be a fall-back for someone with zero technical expertise, and even less than zero inclination.

And because the utility of such add-ons is inherently limited, so is what I’m prepared to pay for them. A full “smart” home mght be the way of the future but not, in my opinion, until the cost comes way, WAY down, and setting up. tweaking and twiddling gets to be no more complicated than adjusting a dial on a thermostatic valve, or pushing a button on a dimmer switch. Do I want those kinds of household functions reliant on either broadband or cellular data? Hell, no. Definitely not. Nor will I accept anything fundamental, like control of lighting and heating depending on a remote “smart” company. It’s bad enough depending on gas and electricity (and water) companies, which is why I’m much more interested in home insulation, personal micro-generation (and storage) etc. It’s not (for me) viable to rely 100% on that, at least not yet, but if I could, and could be sure not be be saddled with expensive but proprietary solutions, I would, providing it was financially viable.. It’ll come, I beleive, but not any time soon. It’s all too nascent, too early-adopter, and I’m not interested in beta-testing, (or currently (excuse pun) more like alpha-testing) it.

LMSC We are talking about convenience, ease of access and so on than significant gains. It would be perfect if these systems addressed the potential single point of failure, which is like buying an insurance. I think is a fair ask. It is also fair if the recommendations are spare servers and relays! 😊

Absolutely. The target, for me at least and you too by the sound of it, is convenience. It’s not like the supposed benefit (a different debate) of smart meters, but about convenience. For instance, my mobibility is a bit impaired, and on a bad day, getting out of bed is a pain, literaly, so lights, radio, etc is a pain-reduction technique. Mostly, that’s not an issue ut it’s a deteriorating situation and that is largely why I’ve automated anything. It’s what, for me, is the real value. All I need now is a way to automate dealing with needing a pee at silly-o’clock, in the middle of the night. And yeah, there probably is a way but I’m not there yet- I’ll put up with the pain. :D

Yeah, I too think a lot of this will be standard in future, just like electric lights and mains was the future when thebestwe had was gas wall-lights. And,for that matter, outside loos. Oh hell, thank goodness we got past that, but I just about remember them.

As for the spare servers, relays, etc yeah, fair point. That’s party what I was getting at when I mentioned the degree of convenience gained versus the cost. I have much of my media collection on a NAS, and that represents a LOT of time stting it up. I have a backup server, and a couple of other backups, because the effort involved in doing it all again …. well, I probably wouldn’t bother. I’d just hook the CD deck and turntable back up. So, it’s worth a fair bit of money to me to ensure that, along with other data, I don’t lose it all.

But there’s a limit to what level of cost I’m prepared to indulge in to cover spare server, relays, etc for home automation and, essentially, I’m not. Any system that requires that level of system ‘infrstucture’ is too fancy for my needs or wants. Hence, the same approach as Dave …. the old finger-controlled switch is my backup.

This is very definitely one of those things, though, where how far to go and how much to spend is a personal choice. Some of my friends think I’m a nut for sending what I have on coffee and camera gear, despite one of them having spent similar (or, thinking about it, a lot more) on fancy fish, and even fancier watches. Whatever floats your boat. Though, I gather floating fish aren’t so good.