Getting started with smart home stuff

March 10, 2023 10:37 AM

Help a rank newbie through rudimentary-for-now smart home stuff

Actual questions will have * in front of them! We moved to a new house last August. It's a 1950 ranch that had a big reno in 98 and IT. IS. AWESOME. But it's time to start smartening things up for various reasons.

The public parts of the house are lit with recessed lights on 90s no-LED dimmers, and the halogens from the previous owner are starting to burn out. So, it's time to swap out the dimmers for new LED-capable dimmers (or put in like 25 smart downlight bulbs if that somehow makes more sense). Some of the switches are in less convenient locations (probably from before the 98 reno) so we want to smarten the lights up so's we can put wireless controls in more convenient places.

* I am thinking right now about going with Diva/Caseta dimmers from lutron. Anyone pissed off by these?
* We seem to have neutral wires in at least the one electrical box I looked in. Caseta doesn't require neutral, but will other smart switches that do require a neutral spark additional joy in some way?
* For now I'm leaning towards philips warmglow or other gets-warmer-as-it-dims lights for the fambly room and dining room at least. Has anyone used these? They seem to get along with Lutron dimmers?

The next step is gonna hurt. The new house comes equipped with various whips, chains, and this awesome fambly room in the back (old realtor photo). It's lovely! It's grand! It's a floor wax and a dessert topping! But it's SO bright and airy that even the torch of a tv we put in the corner can't quite keep up sometimes. So we're gonna want motorized shades... but we need 12 of them, so price will matter a lot. Or 5 double-wide ones and two more if we can tolerate above-the-frame mounting.

*Any recommended brands of smart shades? If we go with inside-the-frame shades the ones behind the tv in the corner will need to be solar-charging because I will, with certainty, break the tv if I have to move it out of the way a few times a year. Right now to me it looks like Smartwings are the best combination of price and reviews?

Other stuff will surely come later. A smarter thermostat (ours just has a single temp setting). A garage door controller to automatically close the door if I drive away with it open, [stimpy] like an idiot[/stimpy].

*A good brand of either smart undercounter lights or smart lightstrips to put underneath the kitchen counters? Should be tunable to match the downlights and be able to be slaved to a fake switch someplace convenient in addition to app control.
*Are panopticon eyes that watch you and turn on the lights where you are worthwhile?
*Is it worth letting Bezos or the Googlelords spy on us to be able to yell at the air to turn the lights off or put the blinds down?
*Are smart locks nice or creepy?
*Does integrating robot vacuum autoschnorflers into a larger smarthome system do anything useful?
*When it comes time to start building the one ring to rule them all, go with Home Assistant / Google / Amazon / something else? We don't have any apple stuff. This will partly inform shade choices.

posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace to Home & Garden (25 answers total)

Best answer: We have Caseta/Lutron stuff in our new house. We didn't pick it out but I have no complaints. We're also using it at work as part of an upgrade to our lighting system there.
posted by notjustthefish at 10:43 AM on March 10, 2023

Best answer: Caseta/Lutron seem to be the ones that people complain about the least, so a solid choice.

I have a few of the Philips Hue motion sensors that I use to toggle or brighten/dim lights when I go in a particular room. As a bonus, they also include temperature and brightness sensors, though they don't promote that on the box for some reasons. So I have lights near the windows that go on when it's darker out, and off when it's brighter outside. (If you're technical at all, the Philips Hue hub has an API you can use to read data / send commands.)

For the shades, the Serena smart shades from Lutron seem to be the most beloved, but also the priciest? IKEA offers some, but just weakened the warranty on theirs.

For automation, people seem to like Home Assistant best. I had issues with HomeKit just... not running automations (and there's no log file you can inspect to try to figure out why!), and I've seen similar complaints about Google. I ended up writing my own automation tooling as a hobby project, but I also set the lights and switches up in HomeKit, so I can still ask my phone to turn a particular light on or off if I want to.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 11:05 AM on March 10, 2023

One minor point: if you choose smart bulbs you don't need to replace any switches, as long as the bulb has dimming built into itself (many do, but not all).
posted by aramaic at 11:08 AM on March 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Embarking on the same journey I've choosen a Hubitat controller which seems to talk to most things but doesn't much hand hold your setup. Advantages include no monthly fee if you don't need remote access and doesn't depend on any cloud service to operate.

Generally cheaper to use a single dimmer to control multiple dumb lamps unless you need the individual control.
posted by Mitheral at 11:25 AM on March 10, 2023

We put in motorized shades last year (and yeah, ouch at the cost!) that use PowerView automation. It's a pretty solid setup, though occasionally when we try to open or close too many shades at once their local connections seem to get oversaturated and one or two will need to be adjusted independently.
posted by Inkslinger at 11:44 AM on March 10, 2023

Home Assistant is pretty cool, once you get into it. If you only dabble, it's just Work. (ObDisc: I only dabble.)

You should ask these questions both in r/HomeAssistant and in the official HA forum, https://community.home-assistant.io -- or at least search those for recent posts. Lots of people come to the subreddit when shopping, and you will get a bunch of replies (some of which are informed!).

You are asking for tons of integrations with different vendors, and HA is a good place for bringing together multiple solutions. Most of these are written by enthusiastic users, so they're under constant development and improvement...until they become abandonware. :7(

Beware that many installation instructions start with re-flashing the firmware on your gear with ESPHome or Tasmota open-source firmware. (One monitor for your main electrical panel is reportedly much more useful if you solder on some leads and re-program it. NFW, thankyouverymuch.) While this is true and ESPHome offers many cool features, I want my house to be set up once and then Just Work, and turning building management into a hobby seems like a dubious play, long-term.

The HA crew has commercialized their stuff into a web gateway service called Nabu Casa, and they also sell dedicated hardware devices to save you building a small home sever. These solutions have happy customer bases, aside from this week's announcement of a bug (CVSS score of a perfect 10!) that has existed since the product launched in 2017. *gulp* My HA server runs on a cheap, used thin client and I never connected to the Internet, so I didn't care much.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:48 AM on March 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: We have gradually replaced all of the dimmers in our house with Lutron Caseta and are tremendously happy with them.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:07 PM on March 10, 2023

Response by poster: You should ask these questions both in r/HomeAssistant

wilco
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:25 PM on March 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, there's a philosophical divide between the people who want their room lights to go on when they enter a room and off when they leave, versus folks who want to hit a button called "Movie Time" which turns off the hallway light, shuts the blinds, turns on the TV's backlights, and lowers the room lights to 5% brightness.

(I am neither of these: I work in IT so I don't trust computers.)
posted by wenestvedt at 12:51 PM on March 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: I have a hybrid setup with Caseta, Hubitat, and Hue (all mentioned above). The caseta switches are absolutely the gold standard. No neutral required, plus you can wall mount the remotes to add switches anywhere.

I have the lutron hub (which is optional) integrated with hubitat to do more complex things - nothing too fancy, basically a one-button "off" which in one shot turns off an entire floor of lights that for historical reasons have eleven million switches. I also have a few other small things hooked up like "press this button outside the bedroom door for a really dim light in the bathroom so you can walk in the bedroom after the other person goes to bed without breaking your neck".

If the hubitat stuff fails everything still works individually, but it's a really nice convenience and you can always add it after the fact.

We use the ikea smart shades, hubitat controlled so we can put all six up or down with one button. They're cheap and decent and blackout well.

The hue stuff is for outside lighting where I can't really install the caseta stuff; it's just sunset / sunrise controlled which is good enough.
posted by true at 1:02 PM on March 10, 2023

Response by poster: Just to say the tv corner of the room looks like this now, with the two windows that most need blindening being very obstructed. If I move the tv there's probably a 10% chance of. me dropping and killing it every time.

Ikea shades and the allen&roth shades from lowes are out because they're all left-battery/charge so I'd have to scramble up behind the tv 2-6 times a year and we can't afford that many tvs. Brands where you can select battery/charger side are probably good but I'd really prefer one with weensy solar panelses so I just have to replace batteries that have gone bad.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:29 PM on March 10, 2023

I hope you find what you need, but would recommend you also take a good look on how to configure all your eventual wifi connections to stay private and safe.

Like wenestvedt I work in IT, and have no “smart” anythings in our house by deliberate choice.

“Tech enthusiasts: My entire house is smart.

Tech workers: The only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize.”
posted by alchemist at 3:23 PM on March 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

A loaded gun, not just for idle threats.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:56 PM on March 10, 2023

My Caseta works okay. The initial setup is painful. Integration with other services (HomeKit, Alexa) is kind of mediocre. But the switches themselves are solid, as most Lutron hardware is.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:21 PM on March 10, 2023

Best answer: We have in our home: Hue bulbs, Lutron Caseta switches, Honeywell connected thermostats, a Roomba, various Amazon products, Ring cameras/doorbell/motion detection, myQ garage door controls and a Eero network. Home Assistant is running to tie everything together.

nth-ing the agreement that Lutron Caseta is the way to go for smart switches. Most of my house is converted and the rest will be with the next project.

We were already deep into the Amazon ecosystem before getting deep into the smarthome, so... it's nice to be able to yell into the air "turn on the kitchen island lights 50%" and have it come up right. We also use it for music and shopping lists.

We have a Yale smart lock. I have not connected it to Alexa because I cannot imagine a scenario where I would need to be able to unlock the door by voice. I like it because
(a) I can confirm that I locked the door from down the street when I usually remember that I should
(b) the door will unlock when I get near the house
(c) I can allow pet sitters/cleaning service/contractors to have access while we're away. I have not connected the lock to Alexa.
(d) it still has a key-lock in case the battery dies. It also can be powered by holding a 9V up to some contacts on the bottom of the lock.
Similar arguments for the garage door controller. I don't plan to use the Amazon Key service to allow delivery folks access to the garage. It's nice to know that I can close the door from anywhere if my kids left it open.

We recently added a Roomba to the house. I haven't had time to integrate it into the Home Assistant setup. When I do, it'll largely be so I can have it run while no one is home. Similar control for the thermostat is planned. Integrating presence detection can be tricky but it's rapidly getting better.

Oh, and a couple of smart plugs which mainly get used to control holiday decorations.
posted by neilbert at 8:55 PM on March 10, 2023

Best answer: * I am thinking right now about going with Diva/Caseta dimmers from lutron. Anyone pissed off by these?

These work very well and are reliable, even if your network connection to them goes down.

* For now I'm leaning towards philips warmglow or other gets-warmer-as-it-dims lights for the fambly room and dining room at least. Has anyone used these? They seem to get along with Lutron dimmers?

We use the Philips warmglow bulbs and they work well with the Lutron dimmers. The LED bulbs themselves don’t seem to dim below 50%. For the, uh, bedroom, we have regular incandescent bulbs which do dim nicely down to 1% for when the mood strikes.

*Are smart locks nice or creepy?

For the front door, I have a spouse, 3 kids, parents, cleaners, and a dog walker, all with their own codes, of which I can activate or deactivate or change in a minute. Our back door is limited to inhabitants of the house only and is thumbprint activated. It’s nice to not have to worry about physical keys. I also have a routine that ensures they are locked at the end of the night.

One set of locks did go kaput a few times but luckily not at any critical times - we just walked around to the other door.

*Does integrating robot vacuum autoschnorflers into a larger smarthome system do anything useful?

I had a routine in which after I left the house geofence, the roomba turned on and then when I came home it docked itself.

*When it comes time to start building the one ring to rule them all, go with Home Assistant / Google / Amazon / something else? We don't have any apple stuff. This will inform shade choices.

*Is it worth letting Bezos or the Googlelords spy on us to be able to yell at the air to turn the lights off or put the blinds down?

I have given over my life to Lord Bezos because I do not like to futz with stuff. If it says “works with Alexa” on the box, then you’re guaranteed at least rudimentary compatibility with Alexa and interoperability with everything else that is under Alexa’s control.
posted by photovox at 9:20 PM on March 10, 2023

Best answer: *Does integrating robot vacuum autoschnorflers into a larger smarthome system do anything useful?

My Roomba, at least, navigates by camera and will not run if it's dark. It does not require integration, necessarily, only that you turn on lights with a schedule before you autoschnorfle(*) (which you could set up independently) but it does help to coordinate them, especially if you want it to run in the evening or night.

I like Kasa - they're relatively inexpensive and capable and even have three way dimmers, and Home Assistant and Alexa like them - but they require a neutral in most places (though notably not at the remote end of a three way circuit).

*I am stealing this word. It is mine now.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 11:21 PM on March 10, 2023

And for garage door openers I and friends have MyQ and it's fine. I would strongly recommend not having that integrated with Alexa and her friends, because I know from experience that voice assistants respond to commands I shout from outside my closed, locked front door.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 11:26 PM on March 10, 2023

Best answer: Nthing the value of something like Alexa or Google combined with a few smart lights if you have physical issues. Between bad night vision and worse joints, the fact I can yell at Google to turn a few lights on versus having to turn on lights to get to where I'm going then penguin waddle my painful carcass back to turn no longer needed navigation lights off is great on my worse days.
posted by mochi_cat at 6:00 AM on March 11, 2023

One thing to investigate is getting an SDR dongle and then capturing your utility meters' wireless signals.

Tracking these over time helps identify when you use more water/power/gas, and can help make plans to control this. Integrating it with HA can also be slick.

The feasibility depends on your utility companies and your meters, and it was a bit fiddly when I set it up last year, but it has gotten easier. I can even watch my lawn sprinklers and water consumption in sync.

And it really is cool. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 7:16 AM on March 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

There is an alternative to smart shades, but it's not nearly as neat. Basically, there are curtain "robots". You have heavy curtains, and the curtain robot DRAG the curtains open/close on command. They run on batteries, but some have solar panels that will self-recharge.

The lights on/off thing can be done with Wyze Lab's sensor kits. Basically, put a motion sensor in each room, and add some door sensors to detect when something has opened the door. So by combining the two you can sort of track movement and decide what lights to turn on/off. Like "front-door open + motion sensor living = living room lights on" or something like that.
posted by kschang at 11:52 AM on March 11, 2023

I'm going to take a weird middle on the smart everything/what about your privacy debate and say that the line where you could say "Maybe they're listening to me but voice control helps my family" is moving. Alexa and Google Home are not making money. They're selling us out more and more, even as the functionality degrades. Two years ago, you could control Spotify, your lights, your thermostat, and maybe they'd only listen in on you if you were a suspect.

Now, they're listening all the time to entrap you, sure, but also to sell you shit. And Alexa might, on your third try, turn your lights off, but she's likely to follow that up with "Did you know [dumb bullshit feature that costs money]? Yadda yadda yadda, talking until you wish you were dead."

The math isn't what it was, even if you came down on the side of eh, it's fine.

We're looking at home brewing a system that van only do lights, temp, etc.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:57 PM on March 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. "Best answers" marked so that anyone in the future can see what we actually did, but all the answers were very helpful.

Some caseta/diva switches installed. It turns out the no-led dimmer controlling the family room was actually controlling leds just fine this whole time, which is a little embarrassing but hey. We really would like to functionally move the switches in the kitchen tho.

Blinds/shades next.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:03 AM on March 16, 2023

Response by poster: Oh -- I ordered some assorted wago connectors and recommend this especially for people like me who don't do electrical work very often at all. It's really nice to be able just see that the connection is made. Also they seem to take up less space in the box.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:17 PM on March 16, 2023

Wagos are excellent. The pushin style can be tough to use with small gauge stranded wire as found on a lot of small control devices however the lever style work well.
posted by Mitheral at 5:03 AM on March 17, 2023