Smart devices were supposed to make life better, but constant updates have made them worse

    • kakes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      271·
      9 months ago

      Never in a million years would I buy always-online trash when I could just use Home Assistant and control my devices locally.

      • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        9 months ago

        Also, ESPHome is crazy good. It’s honestly not that hard or experiensive to take a dumb device and splice in some non-cloud home assistant capacity w/ ESPHome

    • Starayo@lemm.eeEnglish
      131·
      9 months ago

      If I can’t run it with home assistant, I’m buying a dumb device instead.

      Trying to buy an automated feeder for my cat was a nightmare. Why does everything have a camera and require an internet connection to China? Everything was on tuya! It’s fucking ridiculous. You don’t need cloud processing for this shit. Finding something that’s just a timer with a battery backup that wouldn’t fail to feed my cat if the power or internet briefly went out took way too much effort.

      • herrvogel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        9 months ago

        Trying to set up home assistant for my parents’ house, I started seeing the point of all the cloud stuff. My dad wants to have home automation but he completely lacks the technical skills to run and maintain a home assistant instance and he’s completely unwilling to learn. Even after I’ve done all the difficult parts for him, he always manages to have trouble. The majority of those troubles could be avoided with a cloud managed service. I’m guessing there are way more people like my dad than there are who could be assed with setting up a 100% local smart home. Because that does require more than a little bit of technical inclination.

        • aromacruncher@feddit.rocksEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          hey, I understand what you are saying. and it may be difficult for the average user to maintain an operate homeassistant. is it the same for their cloud offering, i.e. nabu casa. in case you evaluated that, i would love to hear your take on it. (i have been with homeassistant for 3 years, and totally enjoy it, but i do share the concern that it is not well suited for the non technically inclined)

        • Starayo@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Yeah, I ended up getting a cheaper shittier one to test out if it would work out well but that’s pretty much the one I settled on upgrading to eventually. It’s a bit harder to get cheaply in Australia.

    • kboy101222@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      Any chance you’d know the answer to this (or a better community to ask in) -

      I need something I can hook into a projector’s HDMI port. All I need from it is mirroring my phone and occasionally playing Plex. I don’t really want to get a smart device if I don’t have to

        • Spuddlesv2@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          Remote control is the fiddly bit with the Pi. You can use a wireless mouse but it’s a bit meh. I’m just waiting for the day for someone to solve that dilemma, then our “smart” TVs are being forcibly made “dumb”.

      • bitfucker@programming.devEnglish
        21·
        9 months ago

        This may be a bit convoluted, but I think its the only way. You have to install 2 apps on the PC and phone. One for controlling the PC, and second for your phone to stream the display to PC. The first one, I don’t know any good one but maybe some simple SSH is suffice. The second is scrcpy. It is an app that lets you stream your phone to the desktop/PC

        Edit: Forgot to mention, to SSH to your desktop from the phone, you can use JuiceSSH or tmux

      • epyon22@programming.devEnglish
        11·
        9 months ago

        I’ve been eyeing one of those Intel HDMI sticks for this. I have been using my steam deck for stuff lately and KDE connect is really good, or leverage something like Kodi.

        • kboy101222@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Just took a look there. Man they really seem to hate anything that isn’t 1000% open source or made in China.

          This is probably what I’m gonna end up doing, but hopefully I can find a better community

          • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            Not sure what you were expecting. You’re not going to find much support for Windows or Mac which means you need both good tools and support so it’s open source or bust. The only time I ever run into problems is when Chinese developers like OrangePi require shitty windows flash utility for flashing rockchip IMG files.

  • Simon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    60·
    9 months ago

    To me a smart device was supposed to be a normal device that you could control ‘smartly’ over wifi.

    Mini SoCs with their own apps and an optional subscription built in for some proprietary shit? That goes past smart straight into dumpster trash.

  • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    331·
    9 months ago

    I have to wonder if the irony is lost on the author with how ad ridden and barely usable website they posted this article on. Replace Smart Devices with Websites and the article mainly remains the same.

    • teejay@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      I had the same thought. I’m viewing on mobile Firefox with UBO, but I couldn’t get the comments to load. So I loaded the url in another browser and now I have cancer.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.caEnglish
    251·
    9 months ago

    I can’t buy into Smart Devices unless paying for the smartness lets me actually use it how I see fit.

    So often there is little benefit except companies extract data from you, or to enforce some licensing or rent-seeking scheme. You’re just paying to get screwed over.

    • Piemanding@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      122·
      9 months ago

      Yeah. Usually “smart” means it does what the average person wants. Not that it’s customizable at all. Things trying to be smart is what a major portion of my frustrations lie. The other major portion is companies stealing my data.

  • s3rvant@lemmy.mlEnglish
    131·
    9 months ago

    We replaced ours with a refurbished business desktop, installed Linux and Jellyfin then use with a wireless keyboard with built-in track pad

    Plays media great, emulates up to Wii and can use for general web browsing too

    • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      21·
      9 months ago

      I do something similar. I have full control over everything. Use Firefox with UBlock. NEVER see an ad. I was super close to buying an Nvidia Shield because the box looks nice, and I’m glad I didn’t.

      • s3rvant@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Yep! I have a Pi 4 running Pihole blocking ads on network and often get thanks from the teens when they’re away from home and they realize just how many ads they would otherwise be exposed to

  • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
    131·
    9 months ago

    Oh no, if only those people that kept shouting at every opportunity how terrible these “smart” devices were had been listened to shouted louder, maybe people would be aware. But alas, everyone nobody could’ve seen that coming, it’s truly a surprise.

    we are left with the remains of a dream unfulfilled and electronics that respond to the whims, fancies, and ever-changing business decisions of corporations

    Reads straight out of !aboringdystopia

  • jaschen@lemm.eeEnglish
    5·
    9 months ago

    Use home assistant. Its not very difficult to setup on an old laptop or pi or whatever you have. Its agnostic to whatever system you have. Talks between networks.

    Come join us at /homeassistant

  • paulcdb@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    51·
    9 months ago

    The thing I’ve never understood is even just looking at Google, they’ve killed so many products when they could have monetised them better with a little thought.

    Instead, we have a phone thats useless for music unless you subscribe, photo storage is headed the same way and its whole ‘smart’ eco system has been ruined because of shareholder greed!

    Except if Google pulled there head out there arse and built a platform people wanted to use, they’d likely make more money than they’re making now. Yet they clearly don’t get it and think ‘cloud’ solves everything!

    Sadly Apple knows it has no competition so they’re just screwing with anything that they can and claim it’s ‘revolutionary’ so they can re-sell the same devices and while home assistant works ok for those of us who like tinkering, it’s a long way from being user friendly. Never mind the lack of anything smart, like speakers, displays, that work out the box.

    It’s just sad to see so much potential being ruined because of seemingly clueless companies!

    • sheogorath@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Google has this culture that you need to make something to be something, usually someone will have an idea to make a product, then the product is quite successful and they get promoted away from managing that product.

      Then someone gets assigned to manage that product, since that someone new also wants to make “something” to be something, they put their own spin on that product.

      Since they’re not the one who made the product in the first place, they missed what made the product great.

      This causes the product to lose quality, and therefore the user base. With a reduced user base, there’s no justification to keep the product alive, so Google pulled the plug on the product.

      It’s a vicious cycle that results in a lot of things made and killed by Google.

  • 01011@monero.townEnglish
    52·
    9 months ago

    You bought a device that grants corporations back door access and control over your leisure and now they’ve used that access to make the experience worse? Why is anyone surprised? I learned my lesson with the Kindle over a decade ago. Never made that mistake again.

    • trslim@pawb.socialEnglish
      11·
      9 months ago

      Tbf it depends on the technology. I don’t think anyone would argue that trains are a poor investment.

      • exanime@lemmy.todayEnglish
        31·
        9 months ago

        … And it’s not like every kitchen has a microwave or every household multiple phones or computers or cara in driveways or slimmer glasses to correct vision or etc etc etc