this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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iiiiiiitttttttttttt
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you know the computer thing is it plugged in?
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Pfft, most of my home is smart, but because I'm actually an IT professional none of my smart devices are allowed to call home unless I explicitly allow them to (for firmware updates). The only thing they're allowed to talk to is my homeassistant server.
I never understood why you would want anything connected to the cloud. Like if the central server goes down, you just can't turn on the lights or open your garage door? Why do people install that garbage? It's not even really automated, you're just using your voice or your phone to turn it off and on.
Like others in the thread my smart devices only talk to locally hosted home assistant. I use a few automations to make things easier. My favourite is being able to run open garage door while approaching my house. It opens the garage door and unlocks the door from the garage to the house. I could manually do these steps but it is nice to be able to carry whatever directly from the car to the house without needing to unlock the door.
The other nice one is automating the holiday lights. I would forget to turn them on or off regularly. Since adding the automation they turned on every evening and off around bedtime every night. I have used one of those light sensor units in the past, but it would often get covered in snow and stop working until I remembered to brush it off.
I have a detached garage. One of my favorite automations is when the garage door opens after sundown it turns on my back porch lights for 15 minutes. So simple, but so nice.