Yet another Hacker News

The smart home graveyard is getting crowded

27 points CrypticShift 1 hour ago 16 comments

pkthunder 51 minutes ago | parent

I was (naively, looking back) pretty bullish on smart home devices. Automating schedules, presence detection, etc. Every time I looked to invest more into it, the marketplace felt like a minefield of e(ventual)-waste and headache.

I still struggle with it. It feels like a missed opportunity these days, but I just don’t trust companies to treat me or my devices with respect. I’ve ultimately boomeranged back to “no (cloud) smart devices.”

cassianoleal 29 minutes ago | parent

Yep I have 4 different presence detectors. A few units of each. None of them work in a way that satisfies my requirements.

Smart light bulbs are another minefield of low-CRI, bad connectivity, worse firmwares, nerfed local featureset, etc.

24t 14 minutes ago | parent

>None of them work in a way that satisfies my requirements

care to expand on which areas the units are lacking in? I've thought about getting presence sensors recently

ToucanLoucan 18 minutes ago | parent

I still have a lot of the same stuff I bought, which falls into two main categories:

* Hue bulbs, which get active updates and are still maintained by Philips, and honestly are pretty good, if insanely overpriced, especially the HomeKit bridge

* "iHome" smart outlets which I belieeeeeeeve were once upon a time made by Belkin? They've ended support but the outlets themselves are very reliable, and pairable/managable entirely within the Home app so I barely noticed when they were discontinued. Picked up a 4-pack of them on fleabay recently for $20 and they work great still.

Mind you I'm not saying I'm great at this, if anything I'm lucky in that I really haven't had any smart home tech go poorly for me, apart from some other outlets that were some no-name brand. They're still kicking around my house but they need power cycles far more often than the iHome ones.

Simulacra 44 minutes ago | parent

https://archive.is/YTIq4

scoot 38 minutes ago | parent

It took me a moment to parse that it's the "smart-home graveyard", not the "smart home-graveyard" that's getting crowded!

Apparently hyphens seem to have gone out of fashion. Please can we bring them back?

cassianoleal 31 minutes ago | parent

I don't think "smart-home" is a word. I've always seen it written "smart home".

etskinner 27 minutes ago | parent

I think they're just using the hyphen for emphasis here, not spelling

jameshart 17 minutes ago | parent

When you use a compound word like that as an attributive (before-the-noun) adjective it’s common to hyphenate it. Precisely to clarify this kind of situation.

So the defunct smart-home devices from your smart home end up in the smart-home graveyard.

Same goes for man-eating lions and high-net-worth individuals.

fg137 11 minutes ago | parent

Don't expect to see a Verge article written with something like a New Yorker style handbook in mind. It's hard enough for them to get all the facts correct.

masfuerte 23 minutes ago | parent

"The smart home graveyard", aka Bot Hill

fg137 14 minutes ago | parent

Recently sold a "Google (Nest) Home Audio" device after it failed to accomplish very basic tasks like "turn on the light". I wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible before it's completely useless. Like, it would succeed about 20% of the time on a good day. That number used to be 80%-90%.

I wonder if I live in an alternate universe because I am only seeing good news about Gemini coming out of Google.

redhale 10 minutes ago | parent

Same experience here -- Google Home has turned into absolute garbage, virtually unusable. It was never perfect but holy shit have they poured gasoline on the dumpster fire with whatever they have done with Gemini.

intothemild 10 minutes ago | parent

The only device I will connect to my home network, is anything that works with Home Assistant.