Smart Homes

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/84177

[ sourced from The Verge ]

Under data protection laws there is a responsibility to take precautions when processing the personal data of other living individuals, including when using video and audio recording devices.

These rules do not apply if your security camera or doorbell films solely within the boundaries of your private property.

If you have a camera that just points at your private driveway, for example, or covers solely your back garden, then you do not need to worry as you won't be capturing any other private individuals (although, it is worth considering invited visitors and guests when using these devices).

If the camera records outside that boundary, such as the street or neighbouring homes or gardens, then you do have responsibilities under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). This is because you could be capturing audio and video containing other people's private data.

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/80931

[ sourced from The Verge ]

The articles summary

THE GOOD

• Easy to install
• Responsive touchscreen
• Intuitive interface
• Built-in motion sensor
• Alexa voice control
• Works with Ring, Google Nest, Sonos, Hue, Ecobee, and SmartThings

THE BAD

• Expensive
• Lacking some integrations
• No Siri or Google Assistant
• Some devices can be sluggish to respond
• No Matter support

Devices the Discord Crew and I have found to be compatible with Home Assistant and ESPHome Bluetooth Proxies

Most of these devices are plug and play auto discovery right into Home Assistant utilizing the Bluetooth or Bluetooth Proxy integration with ESPHome. Need to turn your ESP32 into a BT Proxy? ESP32, ESP32-C3, ESP32 Solo, or use the prebuilt flasher on ESPHome.

Even the most experienced hardware hacker would have trouble building something like the Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC. For as little as $4 USD each, you’ve got a slick energy efficient sensor with an integrated LCD that broadcasts the current temperature and humidity over Bluetooth Low Energy.

It’s pretty much the ideal platform for setting up a whole-house environmental monitoring system except for one detail: it’s designed to work as part of Xiaomi’s home automation system, and not necessarily the hacked-together setups that folks like us have going on at home. But that was before Aaron Christophel got on the case.

We first brought news of his ambitious project to create an open source firmware for these low-cost sensors last month, and unsurprisingly it generated quite a bit of interest. After all, folks taking existing pieces of hardware, making them better, and sharing how they did it with the world is a core tenet of this community.

...

Certainly one of the most appealing aspects of Aaron’s “ATC” firmware is how easy it is to install. You’d expect something like this would require cracking the case and attaching a USB to UART adapter, and while you actually can go that route if you need to, 99% of users will be using the extremely clever “Web Bluetooth” flashing tool.

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/72418

[ comments | sourced from HackerNews ]

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/72242

[ sourced from The Verge ]

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/314403

The fight for who will own your Thread mesh network is creating an even more fractured smart home.

The massive growth of the smart home market has led to problems with competing standards and protocols. The World Economic Forum estimates that more than 130 million households owned a smart home device in 2022. These issues have grown exponentially. Matter solves these problems by establishing a new smart home standard that allows smart home devices to be controlled by one app, improves security, and creates more reliable connections. Today, the best smart home devices that support Matter include devices from Google, Apple, and Amazon.

But what exactly is Matter, and how does it work? This article covers everything you need to know about Matter, including how it could help you build a security system with smart home devices.

While my home is admittedly a lot smarter now, it was a hard-fought battle. With dozens of standards, brands, and even communication protocols, getting a cohesive experience is hard — even for a tech enthusiast.

While I can’t distill all of my journeys, I can save you from having to go down some particularly treacherous rabbit holes. To that end, here are five lessons I learned from building my own smart home that might help you build your own automated paradise.

Found this while looking for something else, but thought I'd throw it in. What words of wisdom can you home automation veterans offer to help those just starting out?

If you have Hive products, as far as I can tell, when they stop working they cannot be hacked or repurposed, so they are just landfill.

So this is a general thread for people to seek alternatives for their soon to be defunct kit and offer suggestions. There will likely be more general threads about Home Assistant and other more general matters which will also be relevant.

So what do you need replacing?

But between December 2022 and August 2025 Hive will switch off the functionality for the following devices:

• Boiler IQ wifi - this will stop working on 1 August 2025.
• Hive camera - this will stop working on 1 August 2023.
• Hive HomeShield - this will stop working on 1 August 2025.
• Hive View indoor camera - this will stop functioning on 1 August 2025.
• Hive View outdoor camera - this will cease to work on 1 August 2025.
• Hub 360 sound detection - this will stop working on 31 December 2022.
• Leak sensor - this will stop working on 1 September 2023.
• Nano 1 Hub - This will stop working on 1 August 2023.

...

Hive told us it WILL provide refunds on devices for those on subscription plans, but only if the item is faulty. Hive said it will refund these customers any time before 2025.

Those without app-subscriptions can also get a refund on their device cost - but only if it is faulty and was purchased in the past year.

The post that inspired this community.