MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Noticed a few have been asking about smart things and seeing what they could do to make the home smarter. I've just started to look into it as well.
I've been following Smart Home Solver on YouTube and he seems to have some good ideas.
Saw they were testing Smart front door locks for the house on Gadget Show last week. What’s the worst that can happen?
HackerMan will bust into your house? I suspect most burglars aren't [I]that[/I] IT savvy, nor do I reckon the actual lock is the weak point in most burglaries (altho IANAB!!) so possibly it wouldn't make the much difference to how secure most houses are! It's a mistake to make them LOOK like smart locks though IMO, that might encourage the more unscrupulous person to invest in the skills needed to compromise them as they get more popular. If I were to have one I'd definitely go for one that couldn't be visually ID'd.What’s the worst that can happen?
The worst that can happen? IoT security is a horrific mess as no one wants to support it beyond the first couple of years. Make it as cheap as possible and ship it fast. Patches for the cheap stuff are rare and few.
If you want to look for things on the internet, try Shodan:
If you crappy IoT lock leaks data, Shodan will likely index it and let you see it.
I struggle a bit with seeing the benefit of a lot of smart home stuff, though I do love the geolocation and the room to room control of my smart thermostats.
My brother in law has gone balls deep though - particularity on lights. He seemed very proud that he has set it up so that all the lights in the house switch off automatically at 11 pm every night. eerr, why? Seemed somewhat annoying to me when we were sitting there and everything suddenly went pitch black.
@timmys sounds like he’s only gone tip-deep tbh 😂 next step is presence detection to check whether the rooms are occupied, or everyone has gone to bed/is out.
Yeah, balls deep was more the expenditure/effort; think he's done every light bulb, changed external locks to Yale smart things, Ring doorbell, window opening sensors, Nest security cameras, and the whole thing runs off a Rasberry Pi to translate the different incompatible underlying systems into one open source system that all runs together. Or something. Seems to do bugger all of any use that I can see.
I’ve only really gone for smart plugs on our lamps (of which we seem to have far too many, like cushions, but that is another argument). Anyway, routines and voice control on lamps is is handy but it is a bit of a stretch to call them smart.
The Echo itself is good tech though. Perfectly acceptable speaker for radio, linked to Sonos for decent sounds when needed. We use it a lot and it is stable and well made. I really like it.
What’s the worst that can happen?