Smart speakers with personal assistants like Amazon Echo etc. Not remotely useful enough to be worth placing spying Equipment all over my home.
Wireless headphones. So now I’m supposed to recharge my headphones and get worse sound quality for it? In a few years they become e-waste, while good wired headphones can last decades. No thanks.
I agree with everything you’ve said, but you have to admit that wireless headphones are convenient if you’re on the phone with someone and cooking dinner, or doing laundry, for example.
I persisted with my wired earbuds until only very recently picked up some wireless ones and can say they’re better in every way. Unless you only ever use them while sitting still. Exercising, gardening, mowing the lawn, working on the car or in the garage, anything where you’re moving about really. Not having the stupid wire getting caught on anything or accidentally pulling your phone out is a godsend.
Audio quality is fine for 99.9% of people. I think some people are stuck on views from 5 or 6 years ago. The tech has come a long way.
I find the audio quality to be pretty irrelevant when all I can hear is the bump bump bump of the wires bouncing against me with every step I take!
They certainly have their place but they can’t/don’t check all the boxes to replace wired headphones. It’s not like having a thin cord running from your ears to your pocket is a big enough issue that having to charge another device before eventually throwing it in the garbage after a couple years is a worth tradeoff.
Bluetooth and nfc audio codecs have gotten so good that unless you’re running high impedance headphones with an amp/dac, wireless is effectively indistinguishable from wired, at least for most applications, and especially if using a mobile device.
Got myself a fiio (IIRC) BT DAC and can’t go back. Sound quality sure differs from a phone DAC.
Still got an ass-long cable though lol!
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Audio quality wasn’t even on my radar since I’m not an audiophile, but them being at parity doesn’t sway the argument one way or the other. Good technology typically outpaces the thing it replaces in all aspects. In this case, BT is effectively neutral or worse in many cases which is why I don’t feel like it should replace the old method (headphone jack removal) but rather coexist alongside of it. I feel like we’re going backwards wheh dongles enter the picture. It gives me flashbacks to the very early days of mainstream cellphones/smartphones and all the proprietary connectors that came with it.
I love wireless headphones because I’m the specific flavor of clumsy that was catching my headphone cable on drawer pulls and doorknobs like 3x a week. I still have good wired headphones I use for serious music listening, but for most day to day stuff I went wireless and they honestly have lasted longer than a lot of my wired earbuds because I am such a shambling disaster.
I fucking oove my anc headphones!
I hate batteries though.
I could see that, though personally, I just put the phone on loudspeaker in those situations. I mostly use headphones for music and general media consumption.
Putting your stuff over speaker has to bother everyone in the house right?
I find that for calling someone the mic quality is unusably poor on Bluetooth, especially when you’re washing dishes or doing something else with background noise. I use my wired earbuds connected to my phone in my back pocket so I can still walk around. The built-in mic in the earbuds that came with my phone a few years ago is pretty great.
The only time the wireless ones are more useful than wired is when you’re changing your shirt or flipping your head upside down to do your hair or something.
So much this
No smart speakers
It’s a mic sitting there waiting for your commands and everything it does I can do myself easier
That’s true, smart speakers and wireless gadget are the waste of the century, things factories can’t even recicly and that fills the world of trash.
You mean, you don’t want a 1984-esque always-on listening device in your home?
I have good wired headphones (10 years old) and good earbuds (5 years old) and use both. There’s a place for each.
I use wireless headphones just for watching TV, cable doesn’t work well for this use case.
I can’t stand the wireless earbuds that you charge in a case or whatever but you’ll have to pry my Sony WI-C400 neckband headphones from my cold dead hands.
Yup. I begrudgingly began using wireless headphones beacuse I don’t want to have to carry around an adapter to not use them once they killed 3.5mm on phones… Granted I really only use headphones while working out or mowing the lawn or something so it’s whatever. Still hate having to worry about having charged headphones, turning on Bluetooth, figuring out if my headphones are off or ok because of the awkward button pushes to turn them off, on or get into connect mode. It’s just overly complicated.
I love my Bose wireless headphones (quiet comfort 45). They sound really great, but I also paid $200 (on sale) for them and regret nothing.
The battery is user replaceable with some care.
I have become so clumsy with the wires, it was less wasteful for me to buy wireless earbuds with wire only between them. The modern codecs are high quality and I only use them outside, so the nuance would be anyway lost.
Smart speakers I do not have. I feel weird talking to devices and I would have to do it in English because they support my native language poorly if at all. I’m not sure if they even are officially available here.
Everything unnecessarily connected to the Internet should have this on them, because they have very little security auditing and all support is dropped very early on the lifetime of the appliance. https://kissa.depili.fi/internet_asbestos_52x32_cmyk.pdf
I have a really nice pair of wired Sonys (MDR-7506) that I modded with a 3.5mm jack, and bought a small BT receiver that’s strapped to the headband. So I now have the best of both worlds.
I agree with all of that. Also, wireless headphones discharge when not in use, there’s no way to turn them OFF, in standby they deplete the batteries in a few days. If not used very frequently, like every day, they are never ready to use, they must be charged. There’s nothing like good wired headphones, in my case as I have an LG V20 which has a really good hi-fi dac that drives every wired headphones I plug in, going bluetooth is a huge downgrade in sound quality.
Wireless headphones. So now I’m supposed to recharge my headphones and get worse sound quality for it? In a few years they become e-waste, while good wired headphones can last decades. No thanks.
I tend to avoid any wireless peripherals, I still have a wired mouse because I don’t need to think about charging my mouse and whether it’s going to run out of charge.
Wireless mice are such a weird one to me. Like your mouse will never move more then a foot away from it’s normal spot so why do you need wireless?
Wires get in the way of the rest of the clutter on my desk.
Everything that need a pay subscription to work.
For me it’s anything I have to download an app to operate.
Except for public transport :-D
Virtual assistants, e.g. Alexa, Cortana, Siri
I don’t want to interact with the companies they represent basically at all, let alone give them nearly unfettered access to my electronics and their data.
I confess to having an iPhone and other apple products, but they will Always have that “finish setting up” message forever because I will NEVER turn Siri on. Ever.
I mean I’m
openly a hypocritenot a purist either when it comes to these companies, especially Google and Amazon. Like my phone is an Android and I posted an Amazon link the other day. But, I’m still trying to find ways to get them out of every possible aspect of my life. I’m just done with their particular brand of bullshit.
I’ve dabbled in the virtual assistants because I wanted to see what they can do. Siri (it’s been years so I don’t know if it improved), Alexa, Google, are all horse shit. Every time I try to use them it works like garbage. They either trigger incorrectly or try to implement something I don’t want. The few times they do work correctly I don’t trust them because of all the other garbage experiences so I have to double check what they did. That negates the entire point from a time and convenience standpoint.
Google really wants to refer me to a garage door company instead of closing the damn thing.
My dog is better at following basic commands, and she’s old, deaf, and dumb as a box of hammers.
I have never used Bixby, I’ve used the Google assistant a few times but other than that, no thanks
I use Google assistant to set timers and alarms, and check the weather. Besides that, nothing. The times I tried, I wrestled with it for a few minutes until I did it myself.
I use Google assistant in my car all the time. It came with android auto built into the head unit. So I can tell it to navigate to a location, play a specific song on Spotify, call my wife, read and respond to text messages… All using voice commands. I don’t have enough smart home devices to make it worth having an assistant constantly listening at home, though.
I know people who worked on Bixby and the one thing they have in common is they all hate Bixby and think it’s garbage.
I don’t use the apps on my smart TV because I have a separate streaming device and I don’t trust that the smart TV apps will be updated properly.
Same. I refused to connect it to the internet.
Just make sure you check the release notes for firmware updates for the TV, and install them if they fix any issues you’re encountering. Obviously it can’t auto update without an internet connection, so it’ll never tell you if there’s an update itself.
Their firmware updates fix security holes I’ve exploited, so I can’t
Likewise
I still have an old dumb tv, but if this one breaks I’ll have to try and find another one to hook my roku up to.
Apple anything
Patiently waiting on Asahi Linux to get more and more features done – the stuff they’ve achieved to reverse-engineer so far already is frankly incredible.
The hardware is quite nice, after all…
Wow I’m surprised you didn’t get downvoted into oblivion. Personally I agree with you and I’m guessing most lemmy users are android users judging from this comment.
Same tbh. Maybe because the android crowd is more open to the idea of decentralization, where Apple users don’t mind walled gardens. Of course I’m stereotyping hardcore right now.
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Yeah, decentralization is the complete opposite of being a closed-garden. Also Apple has done zero contributions to open-source, or helped the greater good at all. I’m typing this from an AOSP rom which would not be possible if the base of Android was not open-source.
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Same. Don’t want to stuck in their ecosystem.
I’m forced to use an iphone and ipad for work and I fucking hate it. I honestly don’t understand how people find it “more intuitive”. So y’all hate the ability to go back or easily exit out of things?? And the inconsistency in swiping functions between models and versions is maddening!
Swipe from up on the iPad brings up menu A but on the iphone SE it brings up menu B but on the iphone ## it brings up menu fucking C.
Aaaahhhhh so frustrating!!
Note: I am also ND so… probably something to do with it.
And why?
Leaked emails indicate, they use iMessage to actively lock down users in their walled garden. This is area with literally zero innovation (or even regression) for past decade. At least.
Giving money to Apple basically equals to strangling innovation in exchange for getting (sometimes or even rarely) marginally better UX in boring, well explored areas.
Also once you are bought into their ecosystem you are stuck with some mediocre products like iPhone, because if you want alternative, you have to throw away watch, tv and speakers and then redo entire home automation due to lack of elementary interoperability.
Source?
OP is somewhat mistaken, it wasn’t a leaked email since it was revealed in the Epic v. Apple case, but here’s one of many sources you can find on the topic.
That’s interesting, but it’s hardly what I was imagining based on what the user I replied to was saying.
The source linked quoted an Apple exec explaining that the cost/benefit analysis of building a piece of free software on a platform that generates them no revenue doesn’t justify them spending the resources to build the software.
I get it, we all want corporations to be benevolent entities that give us free software out of the kindness of their hearts, but if we’re going to criticize one of them for not doing so, I think it’s more clear-minded to criticize the system as a whole.
Why in the world would anyone expect Apple to spend development resources building iMessage for Android (for free), especially if they’ve determined that it will hurt user retention? Because we want them to? It sucks, but not like “evil mega-corp manipulating users” sucks, more like “corporation making decision that literally every other for-profit corporation would make in that situation” sucks.
I’m not trying to morally justify it, I’m strictly speaking in the context of “use products from x instead of y because y did bad thing”. In that context, that’s a bad argument if it’s true that x is just as anti-user as y is.
And if we’re specifically talking about using Apple products vs using Google products here, you’d have to be taking crazy pills to think that Apple is more anti-user than a company who’s entire business model is the commoditization of vast amounts of personal data gathered for the purpose of more effectively manipulating literally everyone, including non-users of their products, into increasing their consumption.
That’s some real salt there buddy.
You are definitely entitled to your opinion, but ‘apple hardware and software is objectively inferior’ isn’t much of one.
It’s especially disingenuous to present those opinions like they’re established fact, when they definitely aren’t. You may not think that Apple is particularly innovative or that their UX is particularly good, but I think you’d definitely be in the minority there, especially outside of niche online communities filled with people with an axe to grind.
I’m pretty close to being as much of a power user as someone can be within the use case that I have for general purpose computing. I also feel like I probably know the mobile/desktop software space better than the average person on the street, I’m a SWE by trade.
I honestly think that the gap between the UI/UX design on Apple software and the UI/UX design on windows in particular, but android to a lesser extent, is the most compelling reason to use apple. And I also think it’s ridiculously out of touch to claim that Apple’s innovation’s (especially in hardware) aren’t significantly better executed and consistent than the competition. Sure, they don’t throw every half-baked idea into every new product they release, only to abandon that idea in 18 months for a new batch of experiments. I think that’s one of the reasons Apple users like Apple products. Personally, I’m not buying a phone because I want to spend two weeks trying out a bunch of gimmicks and then never using them again unless I’m showing my friends the cool thing my phone can do.
But, of course those are my subjective opinions and I’m not faulting you for disagreeing. There are people out there who thing Outlook is good UX, and they’re entitled to that opinion lol. But I do think it’s a little silly to disagree in a way that makes it obvious that you think that anyone who disagrees with you has no idea what they’re talking about.
I never wrote they are objectively inferior. I even admitted they can be marginally better in some areas. My point is they’ll vendor lock the hell out of you and the trade off isn’t worth it.
Meanwhile you wrote two walls of text to defend company that uses your children and technology worse than ICQ (released in 1996) to make you buy their products. You’re free to do so, but I’m not sure which one of us is salty :-)
Probably my fault you didn’t see this because it was buried deep in the wall of text, but I clarified that I’m definitely not trying to morally exculpate Apple.
In the context of which of two companies you choose to do business with, you shouldn’t criticize one while ignoring the immoral actions of the other. If we’re just talking about the things apple does wrong, I’m right there with you. But if we’re talking about which mobile phone ecosystem is less predatory than the other… at least my relationship with apple is a voluntary business arrangement with exactly two parties. That’s actually the reason I moved all of my stuff out of the android ecosystem in ‘21 after >10 years. Seeing ads across a dozen websites related to a private medical diagnosis made me realize Google just knows too much about me, and I do care about my privacy after all.
That’s obviously just my personal opinion but my point is that if you’re looking for an ethical tech company, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
I don’t believe in ethical companies. Microsoft was cool once, then Google was cool, now some people seem to think that Apple is cool.
Best way to not get burnt is not to get vendor locked with one of them. Android allows me to install Firefox(real one, not Safari re-skin), replace launcher or even entire OS with Graphene. Google sucks in many ways, but if I’m not happy with them I just install software from another vendor. With ios I have to throw away half of the hardware I own.
I want to use my things how I want to use them. Apple does not let me do that. They actually get in the way of how I want to use my things.
The only thing I like about apple is their apple pen for making illustrations on procreate. For me, nothing is comparable.
Everything else is a nightmare though. Even if the apple pen is awesome, I just can’t recommend anyone to buy such an expensive device considering you can’t really repair it and cannot do anything apple doesn’t want you to.
Smart watches.
Couple of reasons:
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I like my mechanical watches. They aren’t the expensive flashy ones, but I like the way they look and especially like the mechanical engineering. It’s one of the (maybe only?) Item I can think of that I use daily and ‘does something’ without electricity. Smart watches are nothing like that.
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When I want to be offline I can just ignore my phone or flip it upside down. Having notifications on my wrist all day long wouldn’t be good for my mental health. It annoys me so much when I see people looking at and using their smartwatch mid conversation because they are so addicted to it. And I know I would be the same once I start using it.
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It’s expensive and e-waste after a few years.
Agreed on the watches. I had one smart watch (moto 360) and while cool was very gimmicky for actual functionality and I personally believe that was one of the best looking smart watches. Also the notification reason. My phone is on silent unless my spouse is out somewhere.
I loved my Moto 360 (also agree on best looking) for navigation though. It was great having turn by turn directions right there in my line of sight while driving. I have a Samsung watch now that I mainly just use to see text messages, check the time, or count my steps. Unfortunately, Samsung wanted to push their own crappy map service so GMaps doesn’t integrate very well with them.
Damn, I need my smartwatch at work because the extra notification on my wrist helps me pay attention to my phone. But that is a symptom of me being in IT at a place that doesn’t have support tickets 😕
I got a smartwatch early in the pandemic because time stopped having any meaning and I started missing meetings all the time because I’d go do something not at my desk and then forget I had a meeting until I was super late. Also I had to set up reminders to do normal shit (eat lunch, walk dog, feed dog) because otherwise I’d forget. I tried doing it with reminders on my phone but then I’d set my phone down five feet away and forget.
Basically I have a smartwatch because my brain is broken and I need an electronic device strapped to me to nag me to behave like a human being. :(
Kind of similar situation, I am [sole] IT for a 24/7 business so I am never fully off-duty. Getting Teams notifications routed to my watch saves me from having to look at my phone as much as I otherwise probably would be. It actually reduces my overall phone time, which is a honestly a plus.
We do have a ticketing system, but execs like to ping me directly to look at the ticket they just submitted.
When smart watches came about I thought it would be cool to be able to look at your watch when a notification comes in. Never ended up buying one and when I see how some people behave, I’m glad I never did. Some people will just glance mid conversation at their smart watch, which imo is just as bad as grabbing your phone mid conversation.
I’m happy with my cheap Casio. Looks heaps better too.
Totally agree with you. I’ve had a couple times where I’m tempted to get one but always talk myself out of it. I’m already addicted to my phone enough as it is. A smart watch would just totally mess me up.
I actually find that I use my phone less when I’m wearing my smartwatch than when I’m not. When notifications come in, I need to make sure it’s not work related or something else that requires my immediate attention. If I check a notification on my phone, I’m much more likely to end up doing something else at the same time. Whereas if I check my watch, I don’t have any incentive to do anything else.
I’m the same way, I have only a few apps allowed to push to my Garmin, and it’s helpful to be able to archive or delete a useless email or know there’s something worth taking my phone out for. I find myself leaving my phone in other parts of the house is more focus-friendly since I’m not getting distracted while able to keep my eyes out for work-related items.
Most smart watches go too far but I love my Garmin Instinct. It feels like a modern digital. Just enough cool tools and features but still black and white. With the o2 sensor on it lasts nearly two weeks, a month with it off, before it needs charging. I can track hikes and bikes. Gives me exact coordinates with a push of a button and no subscription or additional monthly fees to use it. If I could afford a mechanical watch for the price I paid for my Garmin ($130 used) maybe I’d own one.
I love my Instinct Solar. I have never connected it to my phone though — I don’t want notifications or anything. I can manually take the workout results and plug them into my phone.
The solar part is really nice. I did a three hour hike in Colorado a few weeks ago (GPS off) and added like eight days of estimated battery.
Solar sounds great. I have a Garmin FR55 and linked it to an old phone with no sim and a throw away email account, so it just syncs each time I get back from a run. Lasts a week even with gps during runs. Also turned off all notifications as I hate that. I stopped wearing a watch about 20 years ago but this (after a bit of getting used to) is actually quite useful.
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Any smart home stuff. The story with Amazon shutting down someone’s account and all their devices is terrifying. Frankly I should probably unplug my smart speakers.
The Apple Watch is neat for health stuff but I don’t see a need for another device to charge.
OLED and Mini/MicroLED screens for PWM sensitivity. Even LED lights are starting to hurt my head.
VR/AR is just Ready Player One stuff.
If you are willing to put in a fair amount of effort, you can have a smart home without accounts anywhere.
Most of the account based stuff is based upon open specs.
But you have to be somewhat technical and patient.
To expand a bit, search “home assistant” or “hubitat.”
Both are great, but home assistant is open source, and has the bigger community who support more devices. It is a bit more DIY than hubitat, but they have released their own hardware to go with the software, so its getting easier all the time. You can also run it on your own hardware if youre handy.
Hubitats advantages are an all in one hardware/software package and a philosophy that aims to emulate the cloudless Smartthings of yore (the old lead player in stand alone home automation until they lost their damn minds). It is still a ways DIY, but is not FOSS. Still, active community and tons of supported devices.
I tried home assistant a while ago and I couldn’t wrap my head around yaml that it uses and I couldn’t seem to get conditionals to work like I wanted them too. I’m not a great coder but it was not nearly as easy as I wanted it to be.
Id recommend giving hubitat a try then. Its more gui focused, with tasks being “if this, then that, except if…”
They support a wide range of apps/devices out of the box, but also have direct to import community code/addons. A lot of the smartthings devs moved over to hubitat, so the community is solid.
Unless youre in a rush, they often have $100/hub sales around major holidays too.
+1 look for devices that support Zigbee or Z-wave (or Matter now, I guess) as these are all guaranteed to have fully local control with no internet connection required. Install Home Assistant and connect via a VPN to access it while you’re away from home.
I unplugged my Alexa speaker last week because I needed the outlet for something else and haven’t plugged it back in. Never use the thing. I have a Google home mini that I really only keep around because I enjoy being able to turn my window AC on by saying “reroute power to life support”.
The health stuff is a bit overblown anyway. On a day to day level it’s just junk data.
There’s so much variation between both between people and also for one person just depending on how they feel that you can’t tell what a particular number means.
There’s some argument that heart rate is useful for high-end cardio, where you want to keep track of exactly which heart rate band you’re in to be sure that you’re at capacity but still clearing all the lactate from your system. However, given how much these numbers can vary if you haven’t slept fully or you have a bit of a cold, or you overate, you’re probably better off learning to pace yourself.
The health stuff on the Apple Watch is basically just for entertainment at this point. Which isn’t to say it can’t be useful, I definitely know people who have gotten more active because of the “gamification” of things like the activity rings.
If your watch reports say, a single atrial fibrillation event in any otherwise healthy individual, it doesn’t do a whole lot for you. Even if you bring that information to your doctor, they can’t be expected to do much with it. They could strap some additional monitors on you, but if it is a very rare event there isn’t much chance of it recurring when they are actively looking at it. In some cases, the anxiety caused by worrying about it can actually cause more issues than just not knowing.
I actually like my watch a lot, but more for just a notification device/convenient payment interface rather than a health tracker.
Ok but elite:dangerous on VR with a HOTAS is pretty cool. As is the sculpting software that’s out there.
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Smart watches.
I do not need an additional notification screen. I see 0 benefits
As somebody with adhd those shit is helpful as fuck…
Smartphone rings
i Check it
After checkin (and not replying) i doomscroll…
Smartwatch gooes on
checkin the notification
decides that its (mostly) not important and keep Doing whatever i am doing right now
I sent my bother a text the other day. I got upset that he didn’t immediately respond, because I knew he had a smart watch.
I realized that I was getting upset for a condition neither of us set. I eventually heard from him and his watch didn’t really matter.
I also think the health monitoring is kinda creepy.
I love my smart watch for checking a notification that I can’t pull my phone out to check as my hands are usually wet and gross from my profession so it only makes sense to me.
Also, they work great as fitness trackers these days too, if you’re into that kind of thing otherwise a mechanical watch will work perfectly fine.
I needed to keep track of the time and I don’t always have my phone on me so I got a mechanical watch instead. It’s great! No having to charge it, no chance of it tracking me and I got a new hobby/interest out of it.
overpriced. limited utility. inferior to smartphones.
One solid benefit is heart rate and blood oxygen monitoring
Any of the camera doorbells or security systems that ship all the footage to their own cloud. It’s unsettling to have devices with cameras semi controlled by a third party like that.
I’m lazy but opted for POE cameras in a system that I just hooked up because of this. It took a couple days of crawling around the attic and drilling holes in the wall, but now I don’t have to worry about Amazon or Google selling/giving my personal camera feeds to whomever requests it/cuts them a check.
Yeah, I like having cameras but don’t want that video being sent elsewhere. I ended up getting Tapo cams which are cheap cloud cameras but they also have RTSP streams and local username / password settings. That means I can send the footage to a locally hosted NVR and lock the cameras behind a parental option in my router that blocks all external in and out communication to them.
Most social media.
I used to use reddit, I have moved all my presence over here. That’s about it.
I have a FB Messenger account because that is how a lot of my family keeps in touch with me, and I have this. I had a proper FB account back when I was in uni and Facebook was still only for uni students, but I think I dropped it shortly after that.It’s not some grand principled stance, I just don’t get most of them because I am apparently an old man. Like Instagram, why do I want to share pictures with just random people? How am I networking with anybody by doing so? I honestly don’t get why it is so popular.
Same. Except I still occasionally use reddit, just not as much as I used to.
I only use FB messenger as it’s big here for communication and FB to post photos of my kids for my family to see which has only been recently, since I had kids. Before that I didn’t even touch FB.
Other than that, social media doesn’t interest me at all.
Does Facebook count because I was once in trouble with the police here for something completely unrelated to the Internet and they asked me several times for my Facebook account which didn’t exist anyway
Made me think they were fishing for anything and anything they read on there would have likely ended up twisted against me.
So yeah I refuse to use it.
They probably wanted to check if you have a social media account for whatever reason, and Facebook is by far the largest social media site.
They were definitely hoping to try and find you posting something illegal on Facebook. People do it all the time for some damn reason
Voice commands on anything. It just feels silly.
Voice typing long messages is IMO faster than using a phone keyboard, even with gesture typing.
Voice typing is a game changer if you break a hand. I did a semester of college writing several essays a week with 99% voice typing.
I have only very recently come around on that. When voice commands first came out, they were absolute garbage. I am still conditioned to never expect them to work, and am always pleasantly surprised when they do.
To be fair, I largely only use them for things like setting my alarm, because I still have an engrained expectation that they won’t work otherwise.
Genuine question, so they actually work better now?
I mostly use it to set timers and alarms, but once in a while i set reminders but they often come out like i need to buy “dead foot”, when I’m out of cat food for example
Things I use it for with almost 100% accuracy: Timers, Alarms, Lights, Pausing/Playing TV.
Things I use it for with like 70% accuracy: Weather and anything interfacing with maps. To be entirely fair to it though, I live in a non-English speaking country and use voice assistants in English usually, so city/place names REALLY throw it. If I change the voice assistant to my local language and use it, it works a lot better.
I have honestly never tried setting a reminder because my brain is still rooted in early voice control tech where something like that would never conceivably work.
I’m fine with voice command if it can be done locally. The only pipe dream is that some day, maybe some of them will support my near extinct native language. So I don’t have to speak foreign languages at home.
Depends…
Patent of a Baby?
Voice command is ya friend
Having a smart home?
Voice command is awesome for being lazy (unfrotunatally i love my privacy so i cannot use Stuff like that right now…)
Cooking something and both Hands are gross as f***?
Hell Yeah Voice command to Set a Timer :D
I think it’s the one area I’m a Luddite. I really should use voice commands on my smart home stuff because the apps are trash. But it still feels weird. Silly mental block.
As far as possible I try to avoid:
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All things from big tech because privacy, see Schrems II and their terms on use of personal information for own purposes
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Non Open Source tech because privacy or other malicious functions
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Tech that are prone to planned obsolescence because of special batteries etc. and can’t be fixed with for example a custom ROM on Android
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I go out of my way to avoid cloud-based products. Which- is funny, because I do a LOT of home automation, and many of the cheap products, are cloud-interconnected shit, which will go obsolete in a few years.
Need… a list of reasons? I got you covered. https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2022/reasons-to-avoid-cloud-based-automation-products/
It’s there a list somewhere of good non-cloud home automation devices… I don’t want to install custom app per brand of lightbulbs ffs
A good start-
Zwave and zigbee are 100% local by design.
Anything running an esp chip is usually flash able.
Check home assistants integration list for things you are considering buying.
Cloudfree.shop has a lot of local only devices
Oh nice thank you. I have zwave switches with openHAB… I should look into home assistant
I’d highly recommend at least giving it a try. Every single month, they keep making it better and better.
Can you list some of the devices you do use? I’m getting into Home Automation and could use some recommendations.
For plugs- Its hard to beat the sonoff S31s
https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2023/sonoff-s31-low-cost-energy-monitoring/
For thermostat, honeywell T6 Pro. https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2021/full-local-z-wave-hvac-control/
For just about anything I found cool enough to blog about- https://static.xtremeownage.com/pages/tags/#home-assistant
Also, have not had this one long enough to make a write-up yet- but, regarding presence sensors, this one has blown my mind… Its incredibly accurate AND tunable!
https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/human-presence-sensor
If you have a specific type of device you are looking for, let me know, and I can prob give some better suggestions.
Great list - thank you. The one thing I’ve been unable to find a fully self-hosted solution for is security cameras (indoor/outdoor). Any reccs on that hardware?
Regarding the NVR solution, I personally use both Frigate (Opensource, Free. Fantastic object detection, Really QUICK and accurate detections too), and Blue Iris (Closed source, requires 45$ license. But- amazingly powerful NVR software).
For cameras, I recommend POE cams. I Personally use reolink RLC-520s, and the likes. They support RTMP, RTSP, ONVIF, and will work with any NVR solution worth its salt. They are also quite cheap, and so far, have been pretty reliable. Of the 20 or so I have deployed, I have only had one die- which was due to it catching all of the rain coming off of the roof… in a storm. Warranty was honored on it.
Otherwise- as long as the camera supports one OF… RTSP, RTMP, ONVIF, you should be gold. For doorbell camera, Amcrest has a few options. I have an older AD110. They have newer offerings now. I do believe either reolink or amcrest also makes a POE powered doorbell camera, which would be good, if you have the ability to run POE to your doorbell.
In my experience, Blue Iris’ AI detection (via the free CodeProject AI) works better than Frigate, as it ships with more usable models /whereas you’ll have to pay a monthly fee to get models of the same quality for use with Frigate). There’s a beta version of Code Project AI with support for Google Coral, too.
I recently gave it a try for a month or so- and switched back to frigate.
At the time, coral support was only in beta, for running on a raspberry pi- so, code project tended to consume quite a bit of resources on my NVR box.
The other factor- Frigate integrates into home assistant effortlessly, Blue Iris is a lot more manual.
But, I can confirm the quality of code project.ai was pretty good. Although, there aren’t as many tools to “tune” it with.
I’ll prob give it another try in the future.
What’s the advantage of integrating Frigate into Home Assistant? For showing cameras on dashboards, I just use Blue Iris’ UI3 in an iframe. Way less delay compared to Home Assistant’s native video support.
EmpireTech T5442T-ZE (rebranded Dahua) is a fantastic outdoor camera. Significantly better image quality than any Reolink, especially at night. Any camera that supports ONVIF will work well. Avoid any that don’t use ONVIF and require you to use their app.
I use Blue Iris as my NVR, but Frigate is decent too. Frigate has way fewer features though, and to get good AI detection models you have to pay a monthly fee, so you may as well pay for Blue Iris and get a significantly better software package.
I want a non z-wave/ZigBee scene controller. Anything other than topgreener out there?
You… want a what?
If you want to just control scenes, hardware-agnostic, just try home assistant.
I want several (4 to 8) buttons home assistant can get events from, with indicator lights that home assistant can control. Insteon keypad linc is one (dead end) example. The zooz zen32 is a zwave example.
It can do it.
- Google/Apple/Samsung pay. They’ve had enough data over the years without knowing my banking habits.
- Alexa/smart speakers. Always listening device in the house? No thanks
- Smart doorbell. I don’t want to send data directly to whoever Amazon wants to share it with yet I can’t avoid being recorded whilst walking the dogs round the neighbourhood
- AI. Nervous about where this is heading
