You might not like this news from earlier today…
Today’s Smart Home Fiasco…
At the kitchen sink, wearing gloves, scrubbing…my timer went off at the HomePod
While wearing my AirPods listening to a Podcast, telling Siri to turn off timer…nothing…it’s still going off…2nd time…nothing…take off AirPod, say ‘Siri, turn off timer’ and HomePod turns it off
Put AirPod back in ear, resume podcast, another alarm goes off…this time in my ear, from my AirPods. “Siri, turn off alarm”…instead Siri interjects and replies with…turned on heater in house
Siri, Smart Home, etc…when they work, it’s great. However more often they fail at a time that I don’t want it to.
I have the Schlage…can’t tell you how many times Apple Home says the door is unlocked, until for me to see it locked. Or the random notifications of it ‘locking’ and ‘unlocking’ on its own
I don’t like it of course, but this was expected.
Given the significant expense of HomeKit certified devices, I don’t see much value in keeping Apple as the gatekeeper for my home if I’m subject to these type of changes: Do I need to change the automated hardware? What happens with the older iOS devices in my home? Do I need to upgrade them too?
I use the Google Assistant for timers and Internet searches, etc. I launch it from the action button on my phone, or one of the two Google nest minis I purchased on sale a couple of years ago. It keeps up with multiple timers and all you have to say is “stop” when they go off.
Put us in the “happy with our smart home” bucket.
Smart lights/dimmers in most rooms. Smart blinds in our sunroom. Sonos everywhere. A few smart plugs for key items (white noise machine). It did require “enthusiast” level interest to get set up, but maintenance has been minimal. Maybe I’ve power cycled the hue or smart blinds hub twice in the last year?
You’re correct that I’m a hobbyist/power user, but I think my expectations are high and the products meet them. Having to plug/unplug a hub or device twice a year does seem worth it to me when the device does or enables a significant time savings or quality of life opportunity every day.
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I think you are actually confirming my point, not disagreeing with it! (“Power users” have lowered level of expectations for smart home product reliability and performance).
Smart home products encompass fairly important things such as water leak detectors, window/door security sensors, camera security systems, etc.
Having to reset hubs and/or devices once in a while makes them unreliable. Away on vacation but the water sensor didn’t trigger? “Oh, sorry you have extensive water damage - just a coincidence your hub needed it’s semi-annual reset just before your water leak happened”.
Granted, most “power users” will have the ability to explicitly decide whether a particular system or sensor is worth trusting, but this stuff is sold in big box stores and online to indiscriminate consumers without the expertise to handle with kid gloves and tech baby sitting.
When I buy a light switch (dumb), toaster, microwave oven, or slew of other products I don’t have to wonder if every time I want to use it there is a 10% chance of it not working.
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I’m pushing back on the combination your of points and what I see as a category issue. Yes, my toaster works 100% of the time, but none of my computing devices do. Not my laptop, desktop, iPad, router, phone, individual applications, networking gear, e-bike, etc., etc. Everything needs an occasional update, reboot, or bug fix.
You’re correct that there is a different standard for smart home devices than dumb home devices. That’s because all of us have long accepted the trade offs of computing devices. Dumb blinds work 100% of the time unless I want them to close automatically based on sunset times. They do that zero percent of the time. Smart Home (product) users aren’t creating a lower standard, we’re putting these devices in (IMO) the correct category.
That’s quite a jump to 10% fail rate. I said (as much as) 2/365 and you went to 2/20. I think if I had to fiddle with these devices 3x/month I’d throw them in the garbage. 2x/year is much less than I have to fiddle with my MacBook, iPad, or CarPlay setup because something isn’t working as expected. That number is much closer to 10% I suspect. No one gives me a hard time for continuing to use those devices,
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Apologies, I meant to say that the feedback I have seen, summed over a wide user base, not just your own or my experience, is that 1 in 10 failure rate is quite common for smart home unreliability.
(Defining failure as inability to perform the intended function or performance on a highly degraded response time-frame equivalent to non-performance.)
When I was with the Army, the “internet of things” kept a lot of security people up all night, not only from the perspective of an almost infinite number of internet connected but not at all secure devices but also the information they provide back out that could be scooped up by bad actors — e.g., the Kremlin’s “pizza index” of activity in the Pentagon.
While I am not worried about the CCP hacking my living room lights—hello, Uncle Winnie! — the lack of clear standardization and interoperability has made the whole thing less attractive. Also, the simpler a device is, the less there is to break. I’d rather invest my limited household budget on improvements to energy efficiency.
That’s just me.
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I agree there are still many, many problems in the smart device world, but I do think there are reliable smart devices that can increase convenience and accessibility and are worth investing in. These would be device categories where things fail gracefully, so that you can always still use the device should Siri, the Home app, or even WiFi or internet service fail. This includes smart switches and plugs, like TP-Link’s cheap but rock-solid basic Kasa plugs, or Lutron Caseta wall dimmers or switches. I can, and do, recommend those to my non-techie friends and family. I’ve never had any of them fail or go offline either, so if the problem is Siri or the Home app, Google or Alexa works as a backup because they’re ecosystem-agnostic and their basic smart services are still available. The best example of accessibility with this was the switch I installed for my parents’ furnace. My mom needed to access it when she broke her leg, and the switch was located downstairs when she couldn’t use stairs. A Kasa switch meant it was accessible at all times to her, since she didn’t have (nor did she want) someone else around 24/7.
Siri and the Home app are pretty solid, but never 100%, so while I enjoy and rely on my various scheduled and sensor-activated automations, I can’t recommend them to non-techies without many disclaimers or being willing to be their support when something inevitably fails. My most recent failure was the Home app wiping out all my automations one day. Why? Who knows?
And other device categories? Also never, ever 100% reliable. Smart bulbs are fantastic for dimming for lamps or lights where you may not want to or cannot replace a switch, but I’ve found them to be less reliable in general, like Hue bulbs being unreachable anywhere, even in the Hue app. And while they still work if you just plug/unplug a lamp or flip the wall switch, they come back on at 100% brightness and there’s no fallback dimming available. Cameras are even worse. Maybe PoE cameras would be different, but that’s less of a hobby or easy recommendation and more of a commitment that I’m not willing to make.