Unpopular Opinions (11 Viewers)

Unless you are building your house from scratch smart lights are not smart.

You have already paid for the copper in the walls and the switching and now are making a % of that redundant by buying expensive lightbulbs with a lot more non-recyclables built into them to make them function just so megacorp can tell when you are home or not.

Smart would be using the existing infrastructure in your house that you paid for already.
 
Wait, how do these bulbs make your copper wiring partially redundant? (I have no idea how these things work)
They’re still being powered by the wiring, right?
Is it that the lightswitch is now your app?

Google always know when I’m not home – I want the heating off when I’m not there. Crazy really.
 
Wait, how do these bulbs make your copper wiring partially redundant? (I have no idea how these things work)
They’re still being powered by the wiring, right?

They are, but think about how much of the routing of that wiring Is to actually facilitate the switching. on a new build knowing all the lights would be smart none of wall chasing (making the holes for the wiring), none of the feeds to the switches would exist, saving about 3M of copper per single switch as all the lighting wiring would just go straight through the ceiling without branching down for switching.
 
They are, but think about how much of the routing of that wiring Is to actually facilitate the switching. on a new build knowing all the lights would be smart none of wall chasing (making the holes for the wiring), none of the feeds to the switches would exist, saving about 3M of copper per single switch as all the lighting wiring would just go straight through the ceiling without branching down for switching.
I can tell you a Massive percentage of average new builds are standard wiring / not smart
 
Speaking of smart stuff, have any of you tried Arduino or Raspberry Pi? I got an Arduino a couple of years ago, it was great to figure it out. I didn't have the time to get very far but it was cool to see what the possibilities are. The programming looked simple but typos really frustrated me. When I get set up in my new place my eventual plan is to make a simple drumming robot. I'd be interested to see if any of you have tried one and made headway with it. If you were handy with simple engineering projects and not fazed by nit-pickiness of coding you could do all the smart controlling entirely yourself without any need to put yet another chunk of your data online.
Edit: @annpost maybe?
 
Speaking of smart stuff, have any of you tried Arduino or Raspberry Pi? I got an Arduino a couple of years ago, it was great to figure it out. I didn't have the time to get very far but it was cool to see what the possibilities are. The programming looked simple but typos really frustrated me. When I get set up in my new place my eventual plan is to make a simple drumming robot. I'd be interested to see if any of you have tried one and made headway with it. If you were handy with simple engineering projects and not fazed by nit-pickiness of coding you could do all the smart controlling entirely yourself without any need to put yet another chunk of your data online.
Edit: @annpost maybe?
It’s one of those things I’d love to have the time to do. The raspberry pi in particular... so cheap.
 
A friend of mine is half way through making an 80's style pub space invaders table for his kids, got the cabinet made and half the programming done before he stalled. It's doable!
 
No, he wants to get it done. Just jas a busy job and two kids. Some of the doing (as far as I've got anyway) is absorbing. Some of.it is fairly arduous. But there are lots of projects where you can download the entire code and not bother with any of that.
 
They are, but think about how much of the routing of that wiring Is to actually facilitate the switching. on a new build knowing all the lights would be smart none of wall chasing (making the holes for the wiring), none of the feeds to the switches would exist, saving about 3M of copper per single switch as all the lighting wiring would just go straight through the ceiling without branching down for switching.
I get you, but I think it will be a long day before you get light switches written out of the code
And teh cost is mostly in labour, copper wires is pennies - or it is here anyways

You'd have to think that home construction in general is getting more expensive as homes get more complex and regs insist on better insulated buildings


But overall, I'd be a hard agree with you

Those smart bulbs are stpid
 
Speaking of smart stuff, have any of you tried Arduino or Raspberry Pi? I got an Arduino a couple of years ago, it was great to figure it out. I didn't have the time to get very far but it was cool to see what the possibilities are. The programming looked simple but typos really frustrated me. When I get set up in my new place my eventual plan is to make a simple drumming robot. I'd be interested to see if any of you have tried one and made headway with it. If you were handy with simple engineering projects and not fazed by nit-pickiness of coding you could do all the smart controlling entirely yourself without any need to put yet another chunk of your data online.
Edit: @annpost maybe?

Raspberry Pii - I got one of those and used the retropie platform to turn it into a load of 80s consoles (NES, SEGA, SNES - PS1 works but bother with saving games).

Arduino - few projects of varying difficulty on the go:

1. Porch Light activated by a PIR sensor and a photo-resistor. This is exactly what you can buy off the shelf for a few euro, I'm just making it for learning, also using lights from some piece of crap that broke a few months ago so its sorta recycling.

2. ventilation for the sittingroom - temperature controlled extractor fan for when the room gets to the temperature we like it starts dumping hot air into the room next door (the partition is wooden). Also adding a CO2 sensor and a light sensor on this so it doesn't work unless people are in the room and they dont asphyxiate.

3. control for the library/workshop/space that I do all my making stuff in. Controlling the dehumidfier, fan and heater to A: stop the books getting damp B: special modes for when I'm painting stuff and want everything ramped up to speed up drying times and then maybe C: setting up a control panel in the house that'll speak remotely to all these things so I can just shut it all down without going outside.

Spent about 10 hours learning before xmas using this website.


Once you run 5 -6 codes and sorta see how they work its not too tricky. Just got the nano one in the post today which will be going in the sittingroom project - Thing about it is even if you make nothing Its a really nice way to learn about how EVERYTHING works.
 
Awesome. I got a few of the basic training projects done, but nothing I actually wanted.

Thing about it is even if you make nothing Its a really nice way to learn about how EVERYTHING works.
Zackly. Kids should learn it in school. Defo hard for your average forty-something to crack though, time and energy being scarce commodities at this age.
 
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