this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
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You got to love the author of that article. If you want the lights to turn off and on normally, maybe people should use light switches. Those aren't going to break due to software downgrades, those don't require Gemini or internet connections.
And I understand, there are rare situations when throwing the internet at your home appliances can make sense for solving niche problems. Those situations definitely exist, but for almost everyone almost all of the time, but it's pretty fucking easy to turn lights off and on.
Lights are one of the areas where I think automation is genuinely useful, but my rule with anything "Smart" is that it has to be able to run 100% locally.
It also needs to fail gracefully. A smart switch needs to fail to a dumb switch, not "no switch".
and retire gracefully, where the device becomes open source and available to the community of owners who have invested in it.
You're absolutely correct. I have few smart switches around the house and automations for yard lights and stuff like that are pretty nice to have but I still have the physical switch where the dumb switch was to interact with if the automations are down or I just want to override them. The ones I use even accept the same faceplate than traditional ones so there's no change on anything unless you want to automate things.
Exactly this. I use Shelly relays in the switch boxes and use the physical switch as an input to the Shelly relay. I have a couple AliExpress zigbee relays too that work well.
The trick is with three/four way switches where the smart relay needs continuous power and to be physically located at the end of the chain where power is actually switched to the light or outlet. Took me a while to figure that out but an SPDT relay with 120V coil solves that. The problem is space: fitting the relay to provide continuous power to the smart relay and the smart relay itself into a standard junction box with a physical switch and all the usual mess of wiring is not easy.
I have a fan plugged into a smart switch that I’ve set to turn off when I fade up my mic while doing my radio show. It’s the most glorious use of throwing the internet at a home appliance I’ve yet come up with.
We have smart switches set to turn off floor sitting electricals if the leak sensor picks up a flood in the basement brewery. It also alerts us through HA there's a beernami
My rule for home automation is that it has to work in a low-tech way. I get Zigbee switches for certain things, but they work as just a light switch if everything is down. This is not true of Phillips Hue bulbs.
Automated lighting based on day of week and weather is fun tho, then again I run it through home assistant lol
I have three lights that were wired to one switch. With smart bulbs, I can individually turn them on and off or dim them. No "dumb" solution exists for homes that were wired in a stupid way. This isn't a niche application, it's a common reality.
We have leak sensors in the basement brewery and sockets that help the hubs ADHD and anxiety (did i forget to turn X off? I shall check my phone), all running through a HA server. A mate has literally programmed in migraine protocols.
Automation ain't bad. Capitalism is what the haters are angry at. Wish they'd go shit on that instead of stupid commentary about laziness.
You can get socket extensions where the bulb goes into it and then each extension is connected to a wall mount remote switch. No wifi needed and then you have a wall switch for each bulb.
Doesn't fit into every light fixture though depends on the design.
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If Google assistant ends up dying this is the way I'll be going with. I've already got HA up, I'm just using stuff that predates my HA setup.
These just dont need to be online. 90% of the use I have seen is timers and lights, like a half step above hello world.
There is a market for voice assistants that are local.
Home assistant is capable of it. Unfortunately it's not yet overly user friendly about it, but it's getting better rapidly.
I did see something recently about local LLMs and voice input layers. The post made it seem very Jarvis like, think it may have been the voice used or the name.
Knowing nothing about tech other than I want my privacy I am hoping it is feasible for the common man
There's a mode for voice control that is even friendly to a Raspi 4 or 5, but it's very simplistic in control, basically a super lightweight speech to text trained only on device names and aliases. Think the speech to text in late 2000s through early 2010s non-smart phones.
Small models for faster-whisper will run on even my little Dell Micro i5-6500T that I have Home Assistant running on, it's just a little bit slow, but it absolutely works and is usable speed! I run a larger model currently offloaded to my server, which has an RTX 2070 Super in it, but that's to make it perform more like how Google used to a long time ago, and it's unused power most of the time.
They're trying to make it as accessible as possible for sure. There's even options to use cloud STT and TTS (they even include it in the Home Assistant Cloud optional feature), but it's definitely cool as hell to be able to talk to an open-source-design speaker and get a reply and control any switches or lights or even my thermostat and robo vacuum without needing the Internet to work. As long as my Wi-Fi and HA box are up, I've got options!
It has several modes. The most basic is speech to text, pattern match, then implement. It also has text to speak for feedback. No actual AI in the loop.
It's also capable of tying to AI models in various ways. It's mainly intended for question answering. Either general, or about your data.
I personally don't trust a non-deterministic AI having direct control of my house, so the split is useful.
Hell, win Vista used to support it. I built a very very stupid jarvis years ago on a bored weekend with win VR and some zigbees
I turn several lights on and off with a single command. The smart thermostat is the killer app for me though.