Smart Homes

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/93465

[ sourced from The Verge ]

Aqara, today announced its participation in this year’s IFA show, where it introduces an array of new smart home devices. Among these innovations are the Smart Lock U200, Camera E1, Dual Relay Module T2, Ceiling Light T1M, and an EU-style wall outlet.

Yale has launched a new line of its home security products specifically for the European market. In addition to a new video doorbell, the company revealed the next-gen of its smart alarm system, plus new indoor and outdoor smart cameras — all of which integrate with its line of smart locks.

Using the Yale Smart Video Doorbell, you can keep tabs on your doorstep with 1080p footage and a 154-degree field of view. The device comes in wired and wireless options, offering two-way audio talk, live viewing, and night vision. You’ll receive a notification when the doorbell detects motion and when someone rings the doorbell. The Smart Video Doorbell itself costs £129.99 / €159.99.

Meanwhile, the Smart Indoor Camera offers 1080p footage, a 110-degree field of view, night vision, and motion-triggered recordings. You can program the camera to enter a privacy mode whenever your door is unlocked, stopping it from recording while you’re at home. The device also offers customizable coverage zones, AI-powered human detection, and motion scheduling “to exclude notification triggers from regular occurrences.” It’s priced at £59.99 / €59.99.

Additionally, Yale is releasing wired and wireless versions of a new Smart Outdoor Camera with 1080p footage and a 154-degree field of view. For a price of £119.99 / €129.99, the device comes with a spotlight that turns on when it detects movement, motion-triggered recordings, and “enhanced” color night vision.

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While companies such as Ring and Nest offer similar smart home security products — in Europe and the UK, Yale’s has the advantage of a tight integration with its line of door locks.

Anyone have any experience with Yale?

SamMobile had a SmartThings Week, so I thought I might as well use it to kick off a general SmartThings thread:

• Samsung’s home automation app has evolved
• All about managing your smart home
• Automating your smart home
• Doing house chores has never been easier
• Never lose your settings and Routines

I've never used it (back in the early days it didn't sound so great) but I also understand that using Home Assistant and its ilk are (or were) more for hobbyists who didn't mind tinkering and some people just want a system that is a little more user-friendly. I'm just not sure I'd recommend it to such a person over HomeKit but I've used neither, so...

I was thinking about getting a presence sensor for the living room (so I don't wake up in the dark because I fell asleep in there) and I stumbled across Smart Home Scenes articles covering a few of them, so I thought I might as well bundle them together.

In November last year, they did a comparison of three, then current, examples - Aqara's FP1 and Tuya's ZY-M100 and PS-HPS. It's a lengthy breakdown but they conclude:

As far as pricing goes, nothing can beat the ZY-M100 and the features it offers for half the price of the Aqara FP1. Considering the PS-HPS is around the same price, I would not regard it as a viable alternative as it falls short in so many categories.

Since then, Aqara have released the FP2 which they reviewed in April this year:

When it comes to price, naturally the Aqara FP1 is cheaper than it’s successor. The real question is, is the FP2 worth it’s price tag of $82.99? Obviously, that’s up to you to decide.

• Is multi-person detection something you need or want?
• Is native HomeKit and Matter support important for your setup?
• Is cloud dependency okay with you, perhaps until the FP2 is completely jailbroken?

I feel like the Aqara FP1 is still a capable mmWave presence sensor, if implemented correctly. Better yet, the Tuya ZY-M100 is an incredible alternative at a really low price. I may be biased, because I love local communication (Zigbee) and don’t really like to depend on Wi-Fi for these types of devices. The choice is yours.

They also compared the Everything Presence One to the FP2:

In comparing the EP1 to Aqara’s FP2, I could not decide for certain which one is the more capable static human presence sensor. In each test, they clocked in at the same second, making them almost identical as far as presence detection speed goes. The FP2 was faster by around 30 seconds in clearing presence though, so it might be able to save you a few bucks by turning the lights off earlier.

Regarding static human presence in a room, they both performed similarly with no clear winner. I suffered false positive triggers on both devices from my curtains, until I turned them to face the other direction. This is something that you will need to optimize yourself, as it’s largely dependent on your installation area/room.

It came up in the discussion about smart home set-ups but is important enough to flag up in its own post as this can be the key ingredient in your smart home network.

Before deep diving into the list, it’s important to differentiate between the types of Zigbee dongles available.

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The easiest of the lot are USB Zigbee sticks, you simply plug them in your server and you are good to go. LAN/PoE coordinator allow for a more versatile installation, you can attach the dongle anywhere on your network. Hybrids are a combination of the two with interchangeable operation/power modes.

The second important difference between current Zigbee dongles is the type of chip they carry. The EFR32MG21 [Datasheet] is newer, more powerful but is still labelled as experimental in many Zigbee applications, such as Zigbee2MQTT. The CC2652P [Datasheet] is a bit older, although still relevant and powerful enough to form a sizeable Zigbee network. It’s supported in all Zigbee applications.

The top 5 dongles;

1. Home Assistant SkyConnect
2. Sonoff ZBDongle-E
3. Sonoff ZBDongle-P
4. SMLIGHT SLZB-02 Coordinator
5. ZigStar Stick v4

There's a lot more information over on the Smart Home Scene page (where I was looking something else up when I stumbled on this).

A year ago at Berlin’s IFA tech trade show (think European CES), Verge reporter Jon Porter witnessed a Google Nest Hub control an Apple HomeKit smart plug. This “lightbulb moment for the smart home” was the first public demonstration of Matter. The new smart home standard is designed to fix the biggest issue facing tech in our homes: interoperability, and witnessing two fierce competitors in the space working together was exciting. Twelve months later, on the eve of IFA 2023, we’re still waiting for that lightbulb to turn on across the industry.

The smart home remains fragmented. Despite being developed by the biggest names in the industry — Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and more — Matter has yet to deliver on its main promise. You still can’t just buy a smart light bulb, screw it in, and have it work with every other smart light you have (no matter who made it) and with any ecosystem you want.

Today, if you want the full benefits of home automation, you still need to pick a smart home platform and largely stay within its walled gardens unless you want to tinker with more hardcore DIY options involving Raspberry Pis.

But trade shows like IFA, which kicks off this week, are about tomorrow. And I’m hoping the future that’s on display at this year’s show is more connected and less fragmented than what we’ve seen from the smart home so far.

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Or what about SwitchBot’s new robot vacuum and mop, which will not only refill itself with water directly from your water lines but can take that water to a humidifier to fill it up, removing another boring chore from your To-do list? The company also tells me it has plans to use the robot’s battery as a roaming charger for different household products.

If this works, it could make for a device that you can delegate chores to entirely, rather than needing to supervise, and it’s not hard to imagine a future where this charging functionality could even take over chores relating to other gadgets like charging smartphones or wireless air purifiers.

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/84177

[ sourced from The Verge ]

Under data protection laws there is a responsibility to take precautions when processing the personal data of other living individuals, including when using video and audio recording devices.

These rules do not apply if your security camera or doorbell films solely within the boundaries of your private property.

If you have a camera that just points at your private driveway, for example, or covers solely your back garden, then you do not need to worry as you won't be capturing any other private individuals (although, it is worth considering invited visitors and guests when using these devices).

If the camera records outside that boundary, such as the street or neighbouring homes or gardens, then you do have responsibilities under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). This is because you could be capturing audio and video containing other people's private data.

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/80931

[ sourced from The Verge ]

The articles summary

THE GOOD

• Easy to install
• Responsive touchscreen
• Intuitive interface
• Built-in motion sensor
• Alexa voice control
• Works with Ring, Google Nest, Sonos, Hue, Ecobee, and SmartThings

THE BAD

• Expensive
• Lacking some integrations
• No Siri or Google Assistant
• Some devices can be sluggish to respond
• No Matter support

Devices the Discord Crew and I have found to be compatible with Home Assistant and ESPHome Bluetooth Proxies

Most of these devices are plug and play auto discovery right into Home Assistant utilizing the Bluetooth or Bluetooth Proxy integration with ESPHome. Need to turn your ESP32 into a BT Proxy? ESP32, ESP32-C3, ESP32 Solo, or use the prebuilt flasher on ESPHome.

Even the most experienced hardware hacker would have trouble building something like the Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC. For as little as $4 USD each, you’ve got a slick energy efficient sensor with an integrated LCD that broadcasts the current temperature and humidity over Bluetooth Low Energy.

It’s pretty much the ideal platform for setting up a whole-house environmental monitoring system except for one detail: it’s designed to work as part of Xiaomi’s home automation system, and not necessarily the hacked-together setups that folks like us have going on at home. But that was before Aaron Christophel got on the case.

We first brought news of his ambitious project to create an open source firmware for these low-cost sensors last month, and unsurprisingly it generated quite a bit of interest. After all, folks taking existing pieces of hardware, making them better, and sharing how they did it with the world is a core tenet of this community.

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Certainly one of the most appealing aspects of Aaron’s “ATC” firmware is how easy it is to install. You’d expect something like this would require cracking the case and attaching a USB to UART adapter, and while you actually can go that route if you need to, 99% of users will be using the extremely clever “Web Bluetooth” flashing tool.

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/72418

[ comments | sourced from HackerNews ]

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/72242

[ sourced from The Verge ]

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/technology@lemmy.world/t/314403

The fight for who will own your Thread mesh network is creating an even more fractured smart home.

The massive growth of the smart home market has led to problems with competing standards and protocols. The World Economic Forum estimates that more than 130 million households owned a smart home device in 2022. These issues have grown exponentially. Matter solves these problems by establishing a new smart home standard that allows smart home devices to be controlled by one app, improves security, and creates more reliable connections. Today, the best smart home devices that support Matter include devices from Google, Apple, and Amazon.

But what exactly is Matter, and how does it work? This article covers everything you need to know about Matter, including how it could help you build a security system with smart home devices.

While my home is admittedly a lot smarter now, it was a hard-fought battle. With dozens of standards, brands, and even communication protocols, getting a cohesive experience is hard — even for a tech enthusiast.

While I can’t distill all of my journeys, I can save you from having to go down some particularly treacherous rabbit holes. To that end, here are five lessons I learned from building my own smart home that might help you build your own automated paradise.

Found this while looking for something else, but thought I'd throw it in. What words of wisdom can you home automation veterans offer to help those just starting out?

But between December 2022 and August 2025 Hive will switch off the functionality for the following devices:

• Boiler IQ wifi - this will stop working on 1 August 2025.
• Hive camera - this will stop working on 1 August 2023.
• Hive HomeShield - this will stop working on 1 August 2025.
• Hive View indoor camera - this will stop functioning on 1 August 2025.
• Hive View outdoor camera - this will cease to work on 1 August 2025.
• Hub 360 sound detection - this will stop working on 31 December 2022.
• Leak sensor - this will stop working on 1 September 2023.
• Nano 1 Hub - This will stop working on 1 August 2023.

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Hive told us it WILL provide refunds on devices for those on subscription plans, but only if the item is faulty. Hive said it will refund these customers any time before 2025.

Those without app-subscriptions can also get a refund on their device cost - but only if it is faulty and was purchased in the past year.

The post that inspired this community.