Like many tech enthusiasts, I dabble in Smart Home tech. There’s a ton of stuff out there for home automation and an infinite number of ways to set things up.
As discussed with the other members of the household, there are a few principles that any home automation project must follow –
- It must fail functional
- It must pass the mother-in-law / babysitter test.
- An automation that breaks must only ever be an inconvenience.
- Must support self hosting
Fail Functional
This means that the smart home gear needs to have a way to make it work if the back-end system is down.
- Internet is down? The lights still need to turn on.
- Did we just recover from a power outage? There is no waiting for servers to boot up.
- did the home automation sever crash? I still need those lights to turn on.
I have seen designs that are super intricate and really slick, but if the automation server is down, the light switches don’t work. I want to use the tech, not troubleshoot it, so it must fail functional.
For switches, I selected Lutron Caseta. They work like regular switches, but also work with smart home tech.
For smart plugs, I picked TP-Link Casa units. They integrate with all the major platforms, can be called from a local web URL, and have a button on the side to trigger them if the back end automation is down.
The Mother-In-Law Test
Everything must be intuitive enough that someone not familiar with the house can intuitively operate it. There should be no user guide required to operate the most common functions in the house.
- The TV has just one remote that operates all of the components. One power button, one volume control, no input selection, and a design that rarely needs to be fixed.
Automating for convenience
Any automation in the system should not be load bearing. If the automation system fails, the should only be an inconvenience, not a drop everything and troubleshoot it because a critical thing is broken.
One example of this – I have a countertop ice machine that is controlled by Home Assistant. I have it set to turn on in the nearly morning so I have freshly made ice at breakfast time. if that automation fails, I’ll be annoyed that it didn’t turn on, but it is trivial for me to flip the switch on the front of the icemaker when I notice the failure.
A load bearing scenario where I wouldn’t use this automation – a basement sump pump. This needs greater reliability and I wouldn’t depend on a full automation system to run the pump. I’d instead use the automation system to report on defects of the pump (if it is pulling more or less power on average when running, or if it isn’t cycling when it should, or with a water sensor detecting a high water level indicating some other type of problem)
Self Hosted as the primary goal
Tech companies change their policies, put things behind paywalls or subscriptions and generally are looking to monetize as much as they possibly can. Any hardware or software in use must support self hosting with open-source / community supported tools.
My preference is Home Assistant. Lots of support for it and any smart home gear I buy must support it with a direct, local connection.
My Tech Stack –
- Lutron Caseta switches
- TP Link Casa smart plugs
- Switchbot sensors and ir blasters
- HomeAssistant
- Ubiquiti Unifi