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What do you guys think of the idea of smart homes? I could make a basic setup using https://home-assistant.io to control my home temperature and lighting; the tools for doing this are everywhere nowadays and implementation doesn't seem too horrific anymore.
But setting aside what I "can" do, is this something that I "should" do? How can a person implement this without connecting any devices to the internet?
This. I have been slowly building my smart home for the last 4-5 years, and I've yet to have a dead piece of equipment outside of a failed plug-in outlet. Since i do run everything through home assistant, there isn't really any worry on my end up about longer term support, and if something does break in 10 years then whatever, I got 10 years of automation and a fun hobby and I'll just replace it with the switches and shit that I took out to begin with. But because my house is now built around zigbee and home assistant, the only thing I actually have to worry about is HASS going away.
I mean, sure, I'll probably upgrade to other things over time anyway, but that is the nature of technology. I mean, I'm sure these articles have been written but this thread is the equivalent of "laptops - computers are already fine, isn't it just going to be a headache to carry one with you?" Ditto for modern mobile phones.
Yeah, my favorite part is the stability, honestly. I don't have my HA instance facing the internet in any way, only accessible via my Nebula overlay network. No pressure to update the OS regularly or expect that I'm suddenly going to lose features because some big tech company decided they wanted to paywall or disable it in an update.
The fact that I moved earlier this year and was able to bring my whole smart home setup with me, and have it working at the new house before we even had an Internet connection is just golden.