Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

iforgotpassword

For me the number one priority is to make the "smartness" additional, and not change how I interact with my home in general. This is mostly to satisfy the SO-acceptance factor and also not to confuse visitors, especially elderly like my parents.

In particular:

1) there are light switches that work as expected

2) you can adjust the temp on the TRVs

3) if the HA instance blows up, shit should still work

What this means in practice:

1) I have motion sensors in some rooms that might turn on the main lights or some smaller lamp in a corner if it's past midnight (eg in kitchen), but the light switch will always turn on/off the main lights. If no motion is detected for X minutes all lights turn off.

2) if my mom comes to visit and feels cold in the evening, she can just turn a dial like she did her entire life. No app, no touch buttons on the TRV, no "hey Google... Or was it sori? Siri? Son, help me out!" The smartness lies in having a general schedule, and then again motion detectors that reset the TRVs back to that schedule if they were adjusted manually and no motion was detected for 15 minutes.

3) This means I don't have smart bulbs, but relays in the light switches that do not run in detached mode. For TRVs this obviously works since they have dials.

Personally I consider the fact that my DIY thermostat has no buttons to change the temperature a feature, but lots of people have varying feelings on who's allowed to be adjusting the thermostat and it's good to have options :)

At least in the guest room I think you might want that, people have widely varying preferences for sleep temp, but I feel similar about the other rooms. This is why the "reset on no motion" was important to me, so my mom won't turn up the heat in the living room at 10pm and then the next morning I discover my living room has turned into a sauna. ;)

I might have to add that our house is really old and has shitty insulation, so having a schedule that lowers the temp at night or when at work is also important. Keeping the temp up at acceptable levels 24/7 would be rather expensive. So when you unexpectedly are at home during those down times it's nice to be able to adjust directly at the TRV. I'm still thinking about whether I want to automate this more via motion, but since heating is not instant like turning on or off lights, you don't want to toggle the trv all the time as you enter or leave rooms...

It doesn't help that half of the population seemingly doesn't understand how to use a thermostat. More than one person in my family treats it like an on-off switch. When they feel hot, they turn it down to the lowest temperature, and when they feel cold, they turn it up to the hottest temperature, and basically repeat this all day. No amount of explanation helps, about how you're just supposed to pick a comfortable temperature and it will maintain it.

Isn't the problem that "comfortable temperature" is personal and circumstantial?

Sure, but then you should still try to set you current (estimated) comfortable temperature as the target. If it's 23°C and you feel warm, you should set it to 20°C for example and not do 0°C just to get the heating to turn off.

Set it few degrees lower than average preference. Put on socks or hoodie when cold, take them off when hot. Instant regulation, efficient energy usage.

Generally the problem in this situation is that the person wants a different temperature now, and they think that setting a higher number will make it get there faster.

It can make it get there faster depending on how many stages of heating/cooling you have.

Problem we have at work is people that are cold temporarily adjusting the heating setpoint too high (above the cooling setpoint), now when it goes back to normal operation after the override expires, the temp of the space is above the cooling setpoint, so the cooling turns on. And now people are wondering why it's in cooling in the winter.

But I agree that's not the desired operation.

Perhaps we humans are not seeking corporeal warmth but spiritual warmth through a dialogue with the machine.

One of the nice things you can actually solve with a thermostat on your LAN! I have a button for "Just run the heat/ac for 30 minutes because I'm hot/cold in the moment", without changing the actual set point.

Un-wire it and hide a second actual thermostat, then they can change it all they like since they'll never be content anyway

You're assuming that they all work the same. I've been living in an apartment for the last 15 years where it is indeed mostly on/off. 0-2 = nothing, 3 = in some rooms the radiator will be warm to the touch but not radiate, 4-5 = warm.

It's not the end of the world, we generally have them off until we need to turn them on, and then it's not too warm, and after the winter they're off again for 9 months.

An ultra-smart thermostat could have buttons and temperature display but have a setting so it doesn't actually do anything. So people can feel like they are doing something and feel good, while still not messing up anything.

Haha, good idea for my next revision

> This means I don't have smart bulbs, but relays in the light switches

In my experience, many good smart bulbs have the option to act like dumb bulbs on regular light switches. Some just return to the state they were last in when power returns, others to a "default boring light". It's one of the things that keeps me buying the more expensive smart bulbs because they are easier to configure between such options (and the third option: stay off when power returns; avoid the "bright flash wakeup" in overnight power outages in bedroom lights, for instance).

You can also emulate that somewhat easily enough in software, even if the bulb doesn't support it right, if your hub notices a light disappeared from the network and then came back, it can default the light to some useful state.

The trouble with the bulbs is that if you turn off the switch, now your automations can't control the bulb.

I've got one bulb that occasionally loses connection. Then I have to turn it off on the switch, and the next time I go to turn it on with the automation I've got to turn the switch on again and let it connect first. This is not a seamless system.

I got around this by replacing my light switches with a mixture of toggle switches (ones that spring back when pressed) combined with Zigbee relays that support them, and smart switches that can be set to coupled or uncoupled.

My home office for example I set the Aqara switch to uncoupled and toggling it switches on/off the desk lamp, ceiling, bookshelf LEDs, Uplight and wall-strips behind my SKADIS, all of which are smart lights. Since it's _my_ home office, if HA is down and I can't toggle any of them using that switch, I'm probably not worried.

Areas of the house which are used by the rest of the family, have the spring-toggle switches and operate non-smart bulbs so they will function just like a normal switch/light if HA happened to be down and I'm not home to fix it.

Definitely an experience that varies with model of bulb and type of network/hub. As I mentioned, I know I bought into one of the more expensive sorts for reasons like knowing that automation starts working again just about as soon as the dumb switch is flipped back on, between a tiny bit of "memory" in the bulb firmware and a reasonably reliable/quick reconnection.

It's not always a seamless system, and it varies so much in actual practice on hardware. I definitely understand why so many prefer smart switches over smart bulbs.

I also know that the silly things I want to do with colors across a day/week push me to wanting fun smart bulbs more than smart switches.

The one thing I really want is covers for some of my dumb switches, and I've seen them for cheap on places like Amazon, but haven't actually bought any or installed them, because I'm also in a situation where I don't really need SO/friend/guest buy-in/confusion-saving having people over so rarely in the last few years.

I have Inovelli switches that have a "smart bulb" mode that lets them send commands instead of physically switching the build. I use that to make my smart bulbs respond like dumb ones to a switch, but means I also make them do smart things based on holding the switch down, double tapping, etc.

TRV = Thermostatic Radiator Valve

(I had to look that up)

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