Safety and remote switching of supplies.

[RandomGrinch]

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[SimonH2]

... in the main they are controlled local, "hey google turn on landing lights" for example when I approach the stairs with two cups of coffee one in each hand ...

Being pedantic, they are not local control. I'm fairly certain that turning your stair lights on, by voice control from the bottom of the stairs, will be utilising "someone else's computer" somewhere in the cloud. The majority of "smart" things these days rely on a working internet and the vendor not having decided they CBA to support them any more - I think Nest is the latest in a long line to announce that some of their devices will stop working shortly. In fact, it's really hard to find "smart" stuff that will work without an internet connection and some vendor provided service that they can discontinue on a whim.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Being pedantic, they are not local control. I'm fairly certain that turning your stair lights on, by voice control from the bottom of the stairs, will be utilising "someone else's computer" somewhere in the cloud. The majority of "smart" things these days rely on a working internet and the vendor not having decided they CBA to support them any more - I think Nest is the latest in a long line to announce that some of their devices will stop working shortly. In fact, it's really hard to find "smart" stuff that will work without an internet connection and some vendor provided service that they can discontinue on a whim.

Good point! and I agree it is something which concerns me, but only slightly.

There are two potential issues, the need for my Internet to be working and the servers - having said that, my Internet has not failed for many years. As I understand it, my Smart Plugs are independently reliant on a choice of two servers, either the Alexa or the Smart Life servers. I rely upon the Alexa one, that has full control of my plugs, but if that went permanently off line, then I could set up similar automatic routines on Smart Life. If the Smart Life one went off line at the moment, I would not even notice as I do not use it.

Even the whole lot went AWOL, I would simply be back where I used to be, manually switching, or switching via time clocks.

Of much more concern for me, is the Smart Plugs themselves stopping working and unnoticed by me, until I checked - Alexa seemed to lack any way I could find, to let you know there was a problem communicating to a Smart Device as a fail safe, so I ended up devising another separate way to confirm communication was still possible with the devices. https://www.diynot.com/diy/threads/smart-devices-advising-lost-lan-contact.594075/

I'm not yet sure whether Alexa might be unable to communicate with a device, yet a ping might still be responded to, but time will tell.

 

[RandomGrinch]

The majority of "smart" things these days rely on a working internet and the vendor not having decided they CBA to support them any more - I think Nest is the latest in a long line to announce that some of their devices will stop working shortl

I've recently had this happen with my Denon hi-fi - the network radio tuner abruptly stopped working with a message onscreen advising visiting a certain website.
Denon has used a 3rd party - 'vTuner' to 'collate' the list of radio stations used by the radio.
Whatever the reason, Denon and vTuner have fallen out, meaning my hi-fi can not populate a list of radio stations.
It can still connect to the stations directly, but there is no way to do that within the radio controls and display!
We were left being 'blackmailed' by vTuner into paying a yearly subscription (albeit at only $4 /year!), to access our radio stations!
As with many of these issues, there are some very clever people out on the web who disagree with this sort of practice.
I now have an RPi zero that acts as the radio server. It intercepts any calls to the vTuner IP address and inserts its own publicly available list of online radio stations. All very configurable and works seemlessly!

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I now have an RPi zero that acts as the radio server. It intercepts any calls to the vTuner IP address and inserts its own publicly available list of online radio stations. All very configurable and works seemlessly!

Someone a while ago, suggested I could 'jailbreak' my Smart Plugs (maybe on here), to gain direct LAN control of them. I have not felt the need to do that yet, as they work so well with Alexa control.

 

[RandomGrinch]

Someone a while ago, suggested I could 'jailbreak' my Smart Plugs (maybe on here), to gain direct LAN control of them. I have not felt the need to do that yet, as they work so well with Alexa control.

I suspect that most smart systems with a huge userbase will have long term support; that is until most users have upgraded or drifted away - after all, servers do cost money to run.
If not there could be uproar - however, subscription models are becoming the norm and although BMW are currently facing criticism, it's probably as they are one of the first automotive makers to try it!
...and as above, if all support is dropped, I suspect there will be a few 'hacks' available for those who care

 

[ericmark]

Jaguar also require an annual subscription to use the smart phone to control the car. We did pay for first year, mainly as second hand and wanted to be sure previous owner could not remotely start the car. It allows one to pre-warm the car as long as not parked on the public highway, other than to test it, we have never used it.

It can warn if battery going flat etc. and I noted over lock down the smart charger would activate at around 11:40 am every day, so I assume that's when it sends info to base? But we have never renewed the subscription.

I note that IFTTT now costs, but no longer use it. The only item which would really cause a problem is the relay in the landing lights, although the centre lamp is also controlled by the original two way switching, the outer 4 lamps are zigbee only, and selecting how bright and what colour sequence for centre lamp also zigbee controlled.

To begin with I was not happy with voice control, but now have got use to telling google to turn lights on/off, so handy with two cups of coffee in ones hand.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

To begin with I was not happy with voice control, but now have got use to telling google to turn lights on/off, so handy with two cups of coffee in ones hand.

I mostly use Alexa by voice, to set reminders for myself - it's most handy for setting reminders when cooking.

It allows one to pre-warm the car as long as not parked on the public highway, other than to test it, we have never used it.

Mine has a diesel night heater, I wasn't aware of a rule that you couldn't run them on the public road?

 

[SimonH2]

having said that, my Internet has not failed for many years.

I used to say something along those lines Then a few weeks ago we had an outage - as this many many people, all over the country, and affecting multiple ISPs. Clearly an OpenRetch problem with the FTTC network - but of course I bet they've not admitted to any fault. Internet was off for 2 days - and boy did it make me realise how reliant we've become on it. Luckily I was able to use my mobile as a WiFi hotspot to get some internet access - until I chewed through my modest data allowance and couldn't access the ISP page to add more.
Still, could be a lot worse - at least we weren't without electricity or internet for a week

 

[JohnW2]

... Internet was off for 2 days - and boy did it make me realise how reliant we've become on it. Luckily I was able to use my mobile as a WiFi hotspot to get some internet access ... Still, could be a lot worse - at least we weren't without electricity or internet for a week

Yes, we have become seriously 'reliant', which means that we tend to take it for granted more than we probably should. The systems are very complex, such that 2 days, or even a week, to fix a major problem probably is not necessarily all that unreasonable. The important thing, as you observe, is to have redundancy/backup ...

Luckily I was able to use my mobile as a WiFi hotspot to get some internet access - until I chewed through my modest data allowance and couldn't access the ISP page to add more.

Been there, and almost got that T-shirt. However, we (deliberately) have two mobiles, with separate data allowances, so if one 'hits its ceiling' we still have the other to get an internet connection in order to get things 'sorted'!

Kind Regards, John

 

[SimonH2]

Oh yes, for good measure I was texting my boss to say why I couldn't work - he'd been affected by the same outage. So he'd just hiked into the office (only a few minutes walk for him) to find ...
They are doing a load of civils nearby, and ... you've guessed it, they went through both the power and network cables to the building so that was out of action for a week.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Still, could be a lot worse - at least we weren't without electricity or internet for a week

I don't think it would in that case matter much if the Internet went down, if there was no power to control via the switches.

 

[Why Not Indeed]

Just make sure every smart plug/lightbulb/etc is sold with one of these:

Danger Automatic Machinery May Start Signs | Seton

Buy your Danger Automatic Machinery May Start Signs online with Seton. Identify and warn staff and visitors of Automatic machinery starting without warning

www.seton.co.uk

Problem solved!