Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

OK. I like the idea of blinds being automatic. Would be great for the kitchen.

Don't really want a blind for the bedroom. Much prefer to 'swosh' a curtain.

Although the tech to automate a curtain rather than a blind is going to be expensive. Automating Vertical Blinds is going to be nuts!

No referral benefit that I know of, we found them good.

It was somewhere between an extra £100-£140 per blind to make them electric (it's a battery pack and motor in the body of the blind rather than just something attached to the cord).

We balked a bit at this and only did 4 (they were quoting for 14 in total) but in hindsight we regret not doing a few more.

One issue I do have is that the blinds can be set an intermediate point and you set the blinds to this by holding down the stop button on the remote. I haven't yet worked out how to automate this, I can only set to fully up or fully down. (Although I haven't tried very hard, I may well be able to do it by timing how long it takes and sending a stop command when it should be in the right place.)

Switchbot good for curtains allegedly - particularly if you have some you already like.

Just updating the robot lawnmower firmware. This is the most ‘we live in the future’ I’ve felt for a while.

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How arcane, ours just sends a status update to tell you its updated its firmware.

Made by VW?

Struggling with smart (or even not that smart) camera and floodlight options.

We're end of terrace and I want a floodlight, and preferably camera at the side of my house next to the street.

From what I can tell, even the smart camera/floodlights have the floodlight controlled by a PIR and this can't be set with a selective zone. As a result the floodlight turns on when people walk past in the street or a car goes past. Does anyone know of a camera where the floodlight is controlled by a camera where you can select activity zones?

Also a secondary problem that the obvious place to mount a camera/light is near the boiler flue so the camera is being triggered by steam from the flue. Something with some type of image recognition or a much more tunable detection field would be good.

If you could manage to get the Home Assistant integration of Nest working (I haven't, but lots of people online say they have), then you may be able to use the zones set up in the Nest app to be a Home Assistant trigger for turning on a light.

It depends on the PIR, but a bunch of them have a shield that you pull over some of the sensor to exclude areas. It is obviously not possible to do complicated areas.

Other (possibly more homebrew) cameras can use an image mask (that you can knock up in photoshop / paint). You could also train your own image recognition model...

indeed. Knocking something together with (say) motioneye on a pi and a relay would not be terribly difficult, but it is more fiddly than would be ideal.

The PIR shield sounds like a possibility, it's just a straight street to the side that needs blocking.

Motioneyeos sending a command to one of these https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07S61FPMN/ would be the more involved plan. I've just discovered that washing drying on the line also triggers it though so I'm starting to suspect a camera just may not be practical for that area.

Ring floodlight cam allows you to set which bit of the pir is active and at what range. It is independent of the camera though. The camera sensitivity can be turned down to try and avoid being triggered by cats and the like, not sure if that would also desensitise it to steam.

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Get a self contained PIR. Adjust the sensitivity and mount it so it isn't triggered by the wrong things. Run a cable to where you need the light to be.

Cheers, that's the kind of thing I'm looking for. I had a Ring camera before though and wasn't too keen on how it worked.

@jellybaby that's something I'm pondering (albeit a wireless one triggering a connected switch) but the mounting options are pretty limited as there are patio doors, so it would either have to be floor level or right in a corner and I'm not sure how well those would work.

A standalone PIR is a tenner. Build something temporary (but not actually dangerous...) and test it. I feel anything with computer vision or wireless is over complicated and will suck in the long run.

I have a Hue PIR that I'll test it out with first. There's nothing smart about the PIR part so should hopefully give me a decent idea of whether any of the positions would be viable.

"Hey Google, how should I store a melon?"

"To store ammo..."

"FFS Google!"

These kinds of comic hearings happen too often. I'm probably on a list.

Feels like this:

The answer is room temp until ripe then fridge to preserve ripeness.

I was reading a book to my daughter last night, and out of the blue, the google home said something like "haha, yeah good one", or "yeah, I'm listening!". Shut up google.

Was it the kids book about the Goggly monster that everyone says 'hello' to?

Hah no, I don't know that one. It was one of Oliver Jeffers' books

HomeKit connected Garage Door is my favourite thing I’ve IoT’d so far this year.

No more wondering if it’s open / closed; just ask Siri.

No more fishing about for the opener when on my motorbike or in the car; just ask Siri to open / close.

Had this for a while via a meross kit, cost something like £20 and completely flawless, even reminds me at 10pm if I have left it open.

Yup. Meross over here too.

Had one issue with it showing the door as obstructed when closing but it was because the close time was too short. Set it slightly longer in the meross app and it’s now perfect.

Worth every penny of £20.

Yep, my only issue was finding somewhere sensible to put the sensors.

The official garage door one from my installers was something like £500, that is quite a markup.