Tech worker here. My house is largely smart, but it’s all controlled by a local server.
Cybersecurity tech worker here, and same. Even with the local server though, the one smart thing that I absolutely don’t fucks with is exterior door locks. I got one that does PIN entry, but absolutely no wireless or Bluetooth or anything. Other than that let’s fucking go it’s 2024 I can’t be bothered to open my window shades with my hands like I’m living in the 1800s on a farm in the fucking prairie or some shit. They open on a schedule, synced at a slightly earlier offset to my wake up alarm.
Eh if they are savvy enough to unlock my door they are smart enough to break my window. Also if they can unlock my door I still have zwave open/close sensors that will trigger the alarm so I will take the convince of smart locks over non smart any day. I can keep the wandering bums out but remotely let family members in without having to give out my code or keys.
That’s fair. I can store like 20 codes or something, so I just keep one extra in there then rotate it after whoever I had to give it to is done with needing it.
I live on a really busy street in a city, so I’m really not worried about someone breaking a window to get inside. Sure there’s a nonzero chance a methie might smash a window, but around here it’s mostly just testing car door handles and maybe smashing the car window if there’s a visible wallet or pill bottle or something.
Walking up to my door and doing a replay attack, or sending a master password to the lock takes seconds and doesn’t look any more suspicious than a resident entering the house. This talk is from 2016, but I doubt things have gotten significantly better, and I don’t want to be replacing my door lock, or even worrying about updating firmware, whenever something like this is found (Picking BLE Locks - Anthony Rose & Ben Ramsey).
But yeah, I’m not saying anyone’s an idiot for using a smart lock or anything, odds are it will never matter either way.
Dream: I will slowly wake up to gently increasing morning sun
Reality: my alarm clock sound is now just the buzzing and whirring of a motor that is starting to open my blinds. Just as I fall back asleep the whirring noise starts again to increase the light level.
I wish someone made a smart door lock status indicator. I don’t want my doors to unlock for me; I just want to know if I remembered to lock them.
Like you want to have a dumb lock but a smart sensor that tells you if the deadbolt is locked or open?
I remember reading some blog somewhere about a person who rigged up a sensor to alert them if their mailbox had been opened or not, you could probably design something to do similar. Idk maybe a magnetic thing to detect the bolt itself, or something to detect on the position of the latch on the interior of the door?
Found this after a quick search, sorry for it being Reddit and the video of the working solution being uploaded to gfycat.
HomeAssistant can do this. Set an automation when you leave your home zone, if door is unlocked notify you.
If you have a smart lock, you can even close it. You should get cameras and an alarm system first, though.
Shades? A real tech enthusiast uses PDLC Film!
(Seriously, I wish I could afford some for all my windows.)
Build your own! All you need is an esp32 or pi pico, stepper motor, and driver.
That’s next on my list of projects after I finish my smart microchip keyed pet feeding stalls.
Yep fully agree on the exterior door locks. That is the one thing that should never be connected to anything even local servers. Also have to be careful with electronic locks in general. Some brands are terribly designed and can be bypassed in a stupidly easy way.
I’m more of a middle-ground person myself. I have Home Assistant fully self-hosted and using a secure cloudflare tunnel for external access. A few other self-hosted containers running other various things. Anything exposed to the internet requires a login. I always try to find stuff that integrates with HA, but I don’t go to the full length of finding stuff that doesn’t require the brand app to setup. I like the local control stuff if I can get it, because it usually works a lot better, but I won’t actively avoid every brand that connects to a cloud somewhere because that’s too much effort to avoid for me.
I really hate that the automated shades I needed (must be plug in because they’re 18’ off the floor) are so proprietary that it’s not even wifi.
Damn that sucks. I lived in an apartment and wound up rigging up an arduino to pull the chain on these three massive window shades in my apartment, they were seriously like 20 foot tall windows. This was back in 2015 or so, so I didn’t even bother trying to find anything off the shelf.
I love your username btw.
I would assume those would be zigbee or z-wave or something. What does it use?
There are Somfry blind controllers with small solar panels that face outwards on the motor housing. No plug required.
