> It's far less kludgier than using a phone to turn your lights on and off.
Why can't you just stand up and, you know, flick the light switch?
This kind of nonsense puts me in mind of "Wall-E". Fat, inert humans being hauled around on hovercrafts, their every need tended to by a watchful panoply of machines.
If someone in my family gives me an Echo/Alexa/whatever, it's going in the trash.
> Why can't you just stand up and, you know, flick the light switch
I can, but I don't want to. Is that unreasonable?
I've quite enjoyed adding automation to my home. My outdoor lights slowly brighten as it gets dark outside - not by a timer, but by checking the actual times of sunrise / sunset as well as how cloudy it is, which might make it darker sooner. I can check my phone to ensure my doors are locked and my garage door is closed and my yard lights are off. I get a notification when the washer / dryer are finished. When I'm done working, I say a simple command and my office lights fade as my desktop locks.
I can set timers and check my laundry and then wait the extra 5 minutes it adjusted to finish. I can log out and hit the switch on the way out. I can get up every evening and turn on the outside lights and then turn them off in the morning. I can adjust my thermostat once I get up instead of 15 minutes before. But I don't really want to.
As a programmer, having an API for my home has been tons of fun. Controlling some of that API with my voice has been as well.
That said, I've made sure everything still works when my pi is down, because sometimes a light switch is, you know, simpler.
> My outdoor lights slowly brighten as it gets dark outside - not by a timer, but by checking the actual times of sunrise / sunset as well as how cloudy it is, which might make it darker sooner.
Sounds like a task best handled locally with a light sensor. Why mess with indirect inputs such as sunrise/sunset times and weather reports, which incidentally imply connectivity (and therefore more potential points of failure and vulnerabilities) when a simple, standalone solution exists?
I may use a light sensor as a backup or even the primary driver for how bright the lights are. I just haven't gotten there yet.
You're spot on about connectivity, although I could potentially keep a table of sunrise / sunset times to reference while offline.
These outside lights were my very first foray into home automation after I'd moved into our new house. It's been working so well, that I just kept going with other things. Until this thread, I'd practically forgotten about the automation.
Now you have to figure out where to put your light sensor so that it's not affected by the outdoor lights. And then get power / connectivity to it, keep it clean etc etc.
Sounds like a task that had better have a good software-only fallback, because not many people are going to have a light sensor. And if the software-only implementation works well enough, why would they buy one?
>I can, but I don't want to. Is that unreasonable?
Yes. Consider the amount of movement/exercise the average western person gets, it might even be life threatening.
It's based on the inability to distinguish between useful and marginal technology (especially when the latter also has tons of adverse side effects, such as security and privacy issues).
>As a programmer, having an API for my home has been tons of fun. Controlling some of that API with my voice has been as well.
As part of a hobby it can be OK (hobbies don't have to have utility, and we can even spend resources to have fun doing them). As it's sold (and bought for) to and by the masses, it's beyond useless.
>Yes. Consider the amount of movement/exercise the average western person gets, it might even be life threatening.
That seems like a massive stereotype there. I just don't see how changing the lighting in your house from a switch to audio could be "life threatening". You have zero idea what physical fitness the individual above does. I also don't understand how asking, "What is the weather like outside?" while tying your shoes is an issue. I don't think this is Asimov level of automation. It's just a mild convenience.
>That seems like a massive stereotype there. I just don't see how changing the lighting in your house from a switch to audio could be "life threatening". You have zero idea what physical fitness the individual above does.
Obviously it's the mindset that's killing us, so that's a moot point. Besides, the statistics support the "massive stereotype" very well.
I'm sorry, I don't see the connection between my health and whether or not I use light switches. That seems incredibly hyperbolic. I definitely don't exercise enough. Turning off my home automation is not a gym membership and a force of will.
I agree that Security and Privacy issues are always important to consider, and ideally we in the tech industry will find better ways to educate the masses about the issues at hand.
>I'm sorry, I don't see the connection between my health and whether or not I use light switches.
That's because this is only considering the direct first order effects, and at isolation on this or that particular person, and not second order effects and general consequences of such an attitude. My argument was more about the latter.
Having a particular (European) kind of mindset, I don't argue about what some unique snowflake might or might not do, not care about people's "personal responsibility" to balance things properly themselves. Instead I care about general trends and societal effects stemming from such an attitude. A person could have automated his lights and toiler flushing and whatever, and also be a multi-marathon runner. Perfectly possible, but obviously not statistically significant enough to base any argument upon.
> Yes. Consider the amount of movement/exercise the average western person gets, it might even be life threatening.
You need to remember that an individual is not the average person. Yes, maybe it's damaging for the "average" person (though who really _knows_). But you can't say it's unreasonable for this poster specifically, unless you know their life.
>You need to remember that an individual is not the average person.
Thanks, that's my point exactly, which I tried to explain in my response comments. I never talk about the individual in a general discussion -- and don't even care what one might or might not do.
> Why can't you just stand up and, you know, flick the light switch?
Why do you need a television remote? Why can't you just stand up and, you know, change the channel on your TV?
You're just drawing some arbitrary line in the sand and passing moral judgement on everyone on the other side. My guess is that in 30 years, having every light in your house controlled by a physical switch will be as quaint as TVs with rotary channel dials.
> My guess is that in 30 years, having every light in your house controlled by a physical switch will be as quaint as TVs with rotary channel dials.
Maybe, but it certainly won't be echo/home that results in that. Voice control for lights is fantastic in certain situations, like when you're in bed and want to turn the lights off. Or on the couch about to start a movie.
But it absolutely sucks to say "alexa, turn on the lights" when you walk in the room. It's slower and it's more frustrating than just flipping the switch right next to you (and the connectivity delay is readily apparent) Maybe motion detectors or some other form of tracking people in the house will augment this to relegate switches to the dustbin of history, but it's definitely not voice assistants and crappy phone controls that are going to do it.
OTOH - It's pretty damn cool to say "Alexa, turn on the room lights" _before_ you get to the room or "Alexa, turn off the room lights" _after_ you've walked upstairs and realized you're not going back to that room.
there is zero privacy concern regarding the average washing machine, not to mention the fact that a washing machine is actually saving you hours of time per week, whereas if you add up every single convenience offered by a home assistant compared to, say, the same exact thing you have on your phone, you're saving seconds in exchange for the normalization of always-listening microphones in your home.
The idea that the limit would happen to be just beyond where it was earlier in our lives reminds me of a Douglas Adams quote:
"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
"1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
"2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
"3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
>The idea that the limit would happen to be just beyond where it was earlier in our lives reminds me of a Douglas Adams quote:
If it's a technological limit, it will always be "just beyond where it was earlier in our lives", so that's a tautology.
One discovers such limits as you get to them -- you only get to be able to say "too much" after the ability you think is too-much has been invented. Heck, perhaps dead guys from centuries ago would have thought of it too much if we've described it to them, we just can't now.
For other limits, that don't arise as some technology just becomes available, what's too much is not necessarily "just beyond where it was earlier in our lives".
E.g. it took us 60+ years of merrily driving away before the LA smog became intolerable back in the 70s/80s. Pollution of the 50s levels was already beginning to be "too much" but we didn't know it yet. But even someone in the 80s would have easily agreed to that -- that a previous era had the optimum, and not just what they were used to.
Why aren't you just using torches or candles? Isn't that what tools are for?
My bedroom has a light switch by the door that turns on the fan light. I have canned lights as well but the switch is on the other side of the room in the bathroom (why God why?!). I have two lamps on their respective night stands plugged into always on outlets.
If I leave the room then chances are I'll first have to walk across the room to shut off one of the 3 lights not controlled by the switch at the door.
Instead I have two smart plugs on the lamps. I can operate simply by saying "Alexa turn on the lights".
If I enter the room with a load of laundry in my arms, I don't have to fiddle with a switch.
If I am leaving the room, I don't have to run around turning off lights.
If I wake up in the middle of the night I don't have to grope around the back of my night stand for the switch on my lamp cord.
I can also set a schedule when I am away to make it appear that I am home.
>Why can't you just stand up and, you know, flick the light switch?
Because it is more efficient to yell at Alexa "Turn off the bathroom lights" than stand up, walk to the bathroom and turn them off.
Or better yet, having all your lights and things turning on as you walk in the door. Or having Alexa wake you up by turning on your lights slowly.
Or baking something and telling Alexa to set a timer. No more having to type into Google "20 minute timer" then remembering to keep that tab open and your sound on.
Bunch of we-don't-like-options luddites in here. I'm surprised people aren't modding their cars with a hand crank b/c
> why can't you just get the crank, walk up front, and start it manually, instead of turning a key like a princess.
Yelling at my home is on my top 10 favorite things about this century so far. I tried for decades to utilize the force to get the lights on/off or grab the tv remote. Burst a blood vessel in my eye trying one night. Never worked.
No more having to glance at the clock on the wall (or the stove, or the microwave, or whatever) and mentally noting "in 20 minutes, it will be half-past".
If you're baking or cooking, your hands are often covered with things you don't want to smear all over your phone, and saying "Alexa, how many tablespoons are in a quarter of a cup?" starts to seem pretty practical.
Erm... I have a cooking timer. It's spring-operated, you turn it left to the
max and then turn right to set the time. I specifically bought it so I don't
need a battery in the kitchen, because I have a battery timer, too (I still
use it sometimes, because of how loud it is).
You don't really need a whole unwieldy computer to just call you after 20
minutes.
No one is saying that you need an amazon echo to do anything - obviously you could just use a physical timer, or pull out a calculator or a book to do conversions. The point is the echo makes it more convenient.
I have my hue lights synced so when my echo timer goes off, my living room lights flash. No more missing a timer because I was distracted in another room and didn't hear it.
How well does that work when you're working on three different things in the kitchen, and they each need timing?
Yes, a mechanical egg timer is still a timer, and still functional. But so were sand timers. A mechanical clock still works, but many people still use digital clocks now a days.
I like the hands-free nature of the Echo timers, so I can set a timer while I still have dough or raw meat on my hands. And like I said, I can have an oven timer going while I have a timer for my pasta on the stove, and any variety of things I care to time (my kid's 5 minute timeout for fighting with his brother, for example).
Yep. I have a friend whose house is almost exclusively using Hue bulbs and Google Home for voice control of them, and it's the worst experience I could ever imagine having in my house. Instead of a quick switch flick you have to say the command and pray that the device understood you correctly. It's borderline idiotic - we walked into a room and he had to repeat himself THREE times before google home understood and turned on the lights. He laughed about it and said "usually it works better". I don't give a damn. A switch has the exact same utility and works 100% of the time, always.
Sounds like he was just trying to show off his new gadgets? I've got Hue bulbs in every room, but if it's easier to flip a switch, I'll flip a switch (Hue bulbs still turn off/on with the regular wall switch...). What I think is useful is saying "turn off all the lights" when I'm about to go to bed, or if I'm out and about and want to make sure my lights are off.
The main reason I bought them was the ability to display multiple colors - I absolutely wear that out. I love having a red-colored room when I'm playing video games. Dimmed 'sunset' colors when watching a movie. Party colors when friends are over.
Whenever someone says voice control I think of the two Scots in an elevator skit from "Burnistoun" S1E1. It's a BBC Scotland show, but may be available through your favorite streaming services.
When I want to remotely control a light switch with my voice, I tell a kid to get up and flip it. It doesn't always work, but I at least know that they understand what I want. And it means that sometimes you have to be the one to flip the switch for someone else.
It is funny, but does a disservice to the major improvements in voice recognition. The one thing that most people don't complain about is the voice recognition of Alexa, Ok Google, Siri or Cortana.
We have fireTV which offers push button voice commands, my 2yo -- who is a little retarded in his speech -- launched Plex the other day (I said "launch" he said "Plex"). I was, inter alia, impressed it managed to decipher his speech, albeit a single word.
Time lost to light switches in a year is measured in, what, 10s of minutes and maybe $20 in wasted electricity and bulb-life a year? If you have a pretty big house and are kinda bad at turning off the lights when you should?
Even a perfect solution that never screwed up and wasted my time would have to also be very cheap ($100-200 for whole house—yeah, right) and take no time to install/maintain for that to be worth it to me.
To be fair to the Hue bulbs, we've got a bunch of them in the office since we have stand-up lamps. There's a physical switch controlling the Hue bulbs on the wall next to the door and it's way easier to get all the lights switched off if you're the last one leaving for the night with that one switch. But then, we've just embraced the common switch rather than replacing them all with voice commands.
Agreed, but mostly imo because the light switch works fine as it is. I believe smart lights solve a problem that doesn't really exist. Of course this stuff could be really helpful for people with disabilities, however.
Home automation is a life changer for the disabled, frail, and the chronically ill. For that reason alone they are worthy of development. If lazy people are the driver and primary market for these technologies, so be it, as far as I am concerned.
This. I'm quadriplegic and the Amazon Echo has revolutionised my life for the better, I made a big full comment on the other thread on this topic on the front page right now so I won't repeat myself. But I'm a pretty good reason for these devices to exist.
Obviously they need more privacy controls, but so far they have been a unalloyed good for me.
> Why can't you just stand up and, you know, flick the light switch?
Fine if you have a standard home with one switch and one light on the ceiling.
I live in a loft style appartment and have about six lamps in the main area. I would much rather tell an app "set dining table light to dim" than walk around the room across the two floors to turn lamps on and off.
Much better, you can tell the app "set a sexy mood" and have all half my lamps turn off, dim some of them and put the few color hue bulbs to pink. All of this with one word.
Right now, I do all of that with my phone. Problem is that when I am at home my phone is often on the kitchen table or charging next to the bed. I have to go and pick it up to interact with my smart(ish) home.
Investing in a vocal interface such as the Echo or Google thingy sounds very interesting to me. If buying all those smart lights didn't kill my budget, I would have one already.
Some of us already get at least an hour daily exercise and it's debatable whether you need more when combined with a healthy diet. Modern conveniences and automation are not about being lazy but efficient and productive. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised so many here seem against these things as I often see people here spend a vast amount of time over-engineering and over-thinking automation and productivity tools/solutions/hacks otherwise, even celebrating such.
Is it solely privacy concerns that make you pull the health card? I'm pretty sure the overall positive effect on your health from getting up to manually switch lights and change the channel on the TV would be negligible; there are far better ways to get your daily exercise.
Walking across a cramped room in the pitch dark can be dangerous, particularly if you're living in a dinky apartment and have osteoporosis. Consider also that a lot of people use wheelchairs to get around.
Long story short, there are many lives very different from yours. There are ways beyond Wall-E (that are also far more useful and connected with reality) to broaden one's horizons.
That's what I do, even though I have remote control switches. The nice thing for me is when you're leaving the house and you can just turn off all the lights. Or you're laying down in bed and you can shutdown the whole house (turn off lights, lock doors, etc).
What's ridiculous about the home automation part is how users automate their homes by buying these absurdly expensive light bulbs, wifi enabled smart home bulbs $30-$100+, just to turn on an individual light. Not to mention, the more wifi devices you have in your house, the worse the coverage gets. Also, people don't seem to care about their privacy, all of these devices are always recording, in some cases even when muted.
You're letting your biases show a bit harshly here.
You know what one of my primary use cases is? Changing the song that's playing while working out without going and finding my phone. I can control my house from my stationary bike.
Ultimately, devices like these allow me to be a more active contributor to my household by freeing up my hands of the endless trivial tasks that would otherwise occupy me. My productivity in the kitchen alone has doubled since introducing a Google Home to my counter.
I live in a studio with 8 lights, 2 over my desk, 4 over my living room, 2 over my bed (how I setup the place). The two light switches are wired to 4 and 4. Alexa + light control lets me group them into desk, living room, common area (desk + living room), bedroom, all lights. It's more convenient than light switches which give me absolutes of all on or too many on depending on what I'm doing. The alternative is to rewire the place, which I do not own.
Just to do a thought experiment and ignoring your existing biases, imagine if you had two options always in every room in your house -- one is to ask Alexa and the other is to flick the switch, over time what do you think you will gravitate towards?
Some of my lights aren't controlled by a switch on the wall but on the neck of the lamp or a cable behind a table.
So I have the option of opening an app. using a wireless remote. or simply uttering a sentence...or breaking my back to switch them all on. Including being able to easily control the overall lighting scheme of my living room.
Why can't you just stand up and, you know, flick the light switch? This kind of nonsense puts me in mind of "Wall-E". Fat, inert humans being hauled around on hovercrafts, their every need tended to by a watchful panoply of machines. If someone in my family gives me an Echo/Alexa/whatever, it's going in the trash.