A smart home that works for everyone
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- Опубліковано 31 бер 2023
- When you design a smart home you need to make sure it works for everyone who lives there. Your partner, your family, and anyone who might come to visit you or stay over. In this video I show you what I've done to make sure my smart home works for everyone.
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What I love about this channel is it talks about people/user aspects and doesn’t just talk about technology like so many others. Please continue. :)
He focuses more on User Experience side
Lots of good tips!
And thanks for disapproving of WAF. I'm the wife doing all the tech stuff in our home.
SPOUSE approval factor. It’s 2023.
And yeah I set up an identical hair straightener smart plug in exactly the same scenario, for peace of mind. My wife has also never actually left them on either 😂
"She even thanked me again for it a few days ago". Brill!!!! Great video
Great video. This is fast becoming one of my favourite smart home channels. I like the fact you consider how all this tech helps fit into and actually improve your life, and those who live with us, without getting too blinded by the shiny gadgets and cool features. I have way more smart home tech than the average smart home fan, but for me and my family (and guests), it’s about not forcing anyone to use anything, they can operate the house lights/heating/etc as if there is no smart tech. Everything should seem ‘normal’ Good smart home tech should not really be noticed, and I’m into the whole ‘ambient’ concept, with minimal clunky voice control. The WAF (also hate that term) if also why I chose to go down the apple HomeKit (with Homebridge, Sctrypted and node red) route, as it help them feel way more in control and one look at HA would put them off forever. Smarthome tech should help when needed, not take over and make simply everyday tasks appear complicated or unusual.
It is really an important to make sure it works if you are not at home but there is also how it is going to be maintained if you are not around , I am avoiding make shift automations if I sell the house or somehow come to end of my life earlier .
Excellent point - I very much agree! This is why I use smart switches that act totally normally when you press them or turn the dimmer knobs.
Brilliant video. Actually missed this video guess the algorithm was misbehaving.
“Robot house” is far better then “Smart home”. I’m going with that.
Until the robots turn against us 😔
@@HomeAutomationGuy when they add AI to Home Assistant, that’s when it’ll be time to find something else.
Awesome tip as always
Thanks for sharing
Mine was initially somewhat against the smart devices, however, being in her 50’s, when she realized she can turn the ceiling fan on and off without getting up during a hot flash, she has come over to the dark side totally now lol
You've never slept in the guest room? I guess you really know how to manage that WAF! :)
Good video, start the "WAF" to "OAF" movement, everyone loves a good automation.
cool showcase of some products, nice video!
The real Big Brain realization is that when "The Wife" can't use your Home Automation setup, it actually means that it's simply poorly designed. Great video.
The one other thing that you need to think about is, what happens if you are hit by a proverbial bus and your partner needs to sell the property.
Have you got the appropriate documentation such that the new owner will know what to do? Are you expecting them to watch these videos?
What will be left in the property if it is sold? Obviously the lights, buttons etc, but what about the important stuff that's in your laundry?
Ha!. Suspected that was an Australian accent! Great channel. 👍
Thanks! 😃
Great advice. I always make sure that every smart device has a physical switch and I make sure that guests knoiw about the automatic lights so they don't go hunting for the light switch thinking they have left them on. I also have a guests present switch on my HA dashboard that disables a number of routines when guests are present, like automatically opening the blinds at surise in the guest bedroom or activating the inside security camera when my wife and my phones have both left the house.
In our house the guests get told "If you didn't turn it on, you don't need to turn it off". I use a similar Guest Mode to you as well, otherwise the poor guests get plunged into darkness if we both leave 🤣
Thank you for discussing this VERY important topic. I should have done this from the start as my wife is now annoyed by what I have installed and she doesn't let me expand/improve on what we have. She even had me remove some of the automations/lights, etc. It's all my fault for not including her from the beginning and asking her what _SHE_ wanted and instead thinking that I could predict what she'd want and trying to hide what I was doing. Now, I'm waiting for her to calm down and then see if I can convince her that I can improve her life by doing these things with her.
My wife would say no to everything smart home, but once she uses it… she loves it.
My partner isn't quite the same. She doesn't really "get" why I needed a Home Assistant connected weather station....
@@HomeAutomationGuy I saw a video once where a weather system was used to indicate what to wear for the day. Rain called for appropriate footwear & an umbrella, chilly weather showed a hat, cold showed a coat & gloves, etc. Would she like something like that?
Good stuff. I have recently started the samething
I can't remember the last time April Fools was done. I am in Australia :).
I think a lot of people over-complicate the "smart home". Smart does not mean complex. Smart should add features, while not removing the original basic operations. The more transparent the smarts can be, the better.
I think I only partly agree with no need for a dashboard. If you have visitors or things run not to the usual schedule, then I feel a dashboard is needed, even if only to activate a "kill switch" for an automation that might be unhelpful at the time.
The qualifier on using a dashboard is basically: when today is not like a typical day. When today is the same as any other day, and you are reaching for the dashboard/voice assistant, that’s when things are suboptimal.
All great advice. You might consider having your bedroom and bathroom night lights be a warm white (2700K red like) to preserve the Circadian rhythm and help sleep.
hair straightener automation
trigger: numerical state: straightener_plug_power above 5 watts (for 30 min)
action: turn off straightener_plug
🤩
Nice tips, Alan.
Thanks Rick 👍
Thank you.
You're welcome!
Jokes on you, I don't have friends! :) Seriously, for a minute when I saw your thumbnail, I was scared and then I remembered it's April Fools :) You are my favorite Smart Home Tuber, because we have a similar philosophy about how things should work and how to involve the family in the design.
Glad to hear it!
Hi, great video. Agree with your concepts. In my case, my HA has the focus in security and some automation. The lights I control use traditional switches and zigbee controllers like tuya and sonoff. Greetings form Argentina
Thanks for sharing and welcome! 👋
1:05 You might find there are a few people in Asia who would be surprised to learn that you consider home automation a "white male dominated niche". I believe they make the gear there too.
Haha.. Good video and absolutely true. Especially when you are planning around older generations who have no concept about automation in general. Bottom line is, everyone should be planning for universality, so it is as intuitive to use as possible. It is the one limitation with voice assistants, in so much they only have a range of responses and not everyone can guess at what they will be.
FWIW. You can call is SPA as well, might be a little more 'acceptable' to those who get hung up about it.
I usually rather also call it „family acceptance factor“ and not WAF 👍🏻
This is a good video - thanks. I don't, however, agree with the comment regarding smart speaks. First, I do agree I want sensors and automations over app or voice control, but there are always exceptions. In our case, the lamps in the living room are behind the furniture and very inconvenient to operate. There exists no wall switch to control them. Plus, when you are sitting down and decide you want more light, the speaker is much easier than pulling a phone or getting up (oh the horrors).
That said, I will start looking at lux based automations for the space as Alexa reliability has degraded significantly over time
Thank for this.
That's a fair point, there are exceptions. Smart speakers are also good if you are less mobile and need to trigger routines and automations from a distance
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I use these two items to get past a similar problem. The wall outlets are used to control two lamps. I can assign each receptacle with its own name for voice commands. I also use a mini plug to control a small desk lamp. One of these items may be a solution for you. And, by the way, they are integrated into my Smart Things hub and Google Home as well.
Sounds very smart wife centric... Please send a link to wherever I can get one of those...🎉❤😂
It still surprises me that Home Assistant does not have climate control/scheduling at its core. Yes, there are many climate integrations and yes, we now have a scheduler but the scheduler cannot be amended from the climate interface and they have to be linked by a separate automation. Given that heating/cooling is the only automation that is already present in almost every home, the absence is 'interesting'.
As an aside, I investigated the Heatmiser integration - no support for WiFi versions - a video on how you've implemented it would definitely be of interest.
Thanks for a great video 👍🏻 Do you have a tip on how to get my wife like my smart home? She hates all my switches and automations 😂😂
If I may, I was in the same boat a bit; my wife didn't want any automations at first.
I bought something small (a smart outlet) & used it to show off some cool things. The first was turning lights on around sunset & off at a specific time at night. She's not a huge automation fan yet, but I have some fun things going on. For instance, I just setup a voice command to turn off all the lights at bedtime.
“She pressed every button I tested”. Next you’ll be telling us you talk to her in the evening.
I talk to her all day, she's my favourite human!
@@HomeAutomationGuy Lol, good to hear! :)
I've found another reason to be wary of voice controlss - some of the "roll your own" won't recognize my wife's voice. I tried Mycroft years ago & it wouldn't sense her voice saying the wake word. I think it was her female voice vs the male voices that had been used to train it.
What are the automated blinds shown in the video?
'Likely' have people visiting me. HA!
Can you please help me? I am trying to get into garden lighting with HA. I just wonder what is the best protocol to start with : thread or zigbee 3.0 based ? Thank you for your guidance !
If you have other thread or Zigbee devices then stick with the same platform you already use. Otherwise go with Zigbee and you'll have more choice
Thank you for the fast reply, I have not decided yet as i do not know many thread based garden lightning options..I guess zigbee @@HomeAutomationGuy
Has anyone heard of the LifeSmart mmWave sensors that apparently don't need the PIR sensor because it's just as fast? It seems odd to me that mmwave is sensitive enough to pick up breathing but is not responsive. Why is that? Low power mode? Efficiency?
For the "Hair Straightener" could you set up a geofence automation that if her phone left the house AND the "Hair Straightener" was still in it just automatically turns off? But only tie it to hers so that if you leave it does not effect it.
Yeah, I similar to this.
What I do is detect when the straighteners are using power for the first time that day, I.e. they are using them, and then automatically turn the plug off after 15 minutes. (As they are rarely used more than once per day)
And then as a fail-safe the plug turns off whenever she leaves the house.
There is also a nearby button and a Google to talk to for the rare occasion that she needs to turn them on for a second time that day.
@John Smith I agree. However setting up these suggestions with the wife's input may help her to let goes of that mind worm alleviating that nagging fear from spoiling her moment as frequently and the smart plugs already there so from a safety standpoint it seems silly not to simply set an auto off for whatever the longest she's used them plus a minute and maybe even block out whole chunks of day they've never been used.
Just seen the Texecom control panel... Have you integrated that into HA?
Yup. I use the Texexom2MQTT HACS integration for it
@@HomeAutomationGuy It would be amazing if you could do a video on that, I understand it's a little more niche, but I've not found a guide online which shows what is required to actually do it. Thanks for the reply!
@@JoshWillcock Thanks for the suggestion, I'll see what I can do
I see you have a heatmiser stat, do you have instructions or a video on how you got this working in home assistant?
I don't have a video about it. But it integrates perfectly with Home Assistant if you use the Heatmiser hub and the HomeKit HA integration.
Maybe I'll do a video about it in future though!
@@HomeAutomationGuy Thank you, I have the neo hub, but I don't have any homekit stuff
@@leona_devonyou don't actually need any HomeKit stuff, you can use the HomeKit Home Assistant integration to make HomeKit devices work with HA
www.home-assistant.io/integrations/homekit_controller/
@@HomeAutomationGuy ok that is interesting Thank you, I have seen this but I don't know where to get the pairing code from, I'll do some more research
What kind of smart blinds you have and link to it
Make sure you're subscribed to the channel and you'll find out in my video next week 😉
My 80 year old mother has no problem using smart speaker to turn lights on and off or raise or lower the temperature in her room. I see no reason to use wall mounted switches in a well designed smart home unless you are having to cater for people who just want to do things the way we have since the late 1920's. Use sensible names and grouping and its not hard to guess that the lights in the Kitchen are called Kitchen lights and that is what you ask Alexa or google to operate should people feel the need to switch them off and override automations.
Haven't watched yet but... 1st April right?
(PS: ok that was given away so soon I wasn't even able to submit this comment!)
Hi, talking about the WAF. We happen to have a samsung smart washer upstairs. I connected once out of curiosity, but because I is not my cup of tea I never looked at the washing machine app again. My wife never connected, the thing beeps loudly calling her upstairs. Now our dishwasher broke down and needs replacement and I wonder if should buy a smart device again, with the experience of the washer. Everywhere I see other appliances becoming smart, fridges, cofeemakers you name it. But the with the majority I feel they only cheaped out and replaced the buttons and screen with my own user interface; my phone or tablet. But do I need to wash my woolen coat or ovenpan whilst in a bus? I still need to go to these machines to put stuff in or take it out. How do you see your home with these smart appliances, do you have any how does your family put these in use?
I have had the same thoughts. I don't need a smart oven, stove, washing machine etc - especially not one that requires access to some 3rd party cloud system. This just makes them more expensive and more likely that something will break.
I use locally controlled smart plugs and Shelly Energy Monitoring devices to determine if these appliances are running or finished and then send HA notifications and do a few other things to let people know that the task is finished and the machine needs emptying. I've made some videos about this on my channel if you are interested. Other than that I don't need to control them remotely, like you say on a bus etc.
I make an exception for some devices which I WILL control remotely - mostly Heating and Cooling/AC systems. It's nice to be able to turn on the heating or air conditioning when we are coming home from a few days away if the house is too cold or hot, so it's at the perfect temp when we get home.
@@HomeAutomationGuy thanks, my thoughts are not that oldfashioned then. I indeed get the energie use, light, climate, car-gate and security part of "smartening" but Washing up just didn't feel right. Thanks again, will search your channel
This is all well and good but the MOST common theme I've found with HA users is you'll talk about the automations you've got in your home but not HOW to set it up or a walkthrough creating the automations. Just talking about it doesn't help people create a smart home, us noobs struggling to get the simplest of automations working will learn and understand a lot better if you show us what you've done to get each of your automations working and functioning.
Did you see my motion activated lights video? Is that more what you're looking for?
That is human hubris, alas. No one really wants to watch someone try and fail half a dozen times before they get it working, which is pretty much how all Home automation projects go. Better to just show how wonderful it is when it works. Certainly will get more clicks.
If your using Home Assistant, I suggest you look at blueprints for the things you’re after. At least half of my automations are simple blueprints, and for motion activated lights (say) you just have to pick the sensor from the list, then pick the light and then (maybe) set whether you don’t want it to trigger in the day time. This kind of thing got me most of the way through.
There are loads of channels that go over this stuff in excruciating detail, if you want it. And HAG (hmm) has some vids on this too, as he says.
Don't trust Google
1 second ago
The worst thing I’ve ever done is create a smart home. Unstable internet and poorly supported products are a major pain. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone unless you want to spent your waking hours chasing problems.
This is a classic rookie mistake to go all in with apps and voice assistants.. Every time I discuss smart home related things with friends and coworkers they always have the most outlandish ideas about super niche overly automated things that are very cool but fall apart after the slightest system/logic inconvenience.
Bruh, if people need to take a 2 hour presentation/course on how to use your smart home.... you're doing it so wrong it's not even funny.
Putting out the idea of “I’m going through a separation from my partner”-one of the worst experiences that a human being can go through-as a ha-ha joke just isn’t cool.
I’m not opposed to April fools jokes, but they should at least be funny. Separation or divorce is a harrowing thing, and I’m not at all seeing where the punch line is here.
I’ve been subscribed to your channel for a couple of years now, and I think this is maybe the only time that I’ve had to give a thumbs down.
My apologies Ashley, I didn't mean to cause any offence or bring up any painful feelings. The video was designed so that I could trim the opening "April Fools" part and change the thumbnail and title in a week or so to remove that reference, whilst still trying convey some useful information about designing a smart home.
I appreciate you calling me out on it though.
@@HomeAutomationGuy I appreciate your saying-that means a lot.
"white male dominated niche".... sadly you are misinformed about populations of the world. Eastern and Southeast Asia (which includes the most technological advanced city of Tokyo and the number 1 country - Japan) holds 29% of the world population and where North America and Europe only contains 14%.... so... yeah. I won't get into the usage of "wife" in cultures or religions....