What is a technology/gadget you refuse to use and why?

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I go out of my way to avoid cloud-based products. Which- is funny, because I do a LOT of home automation, and many of the cheap products, are cloud-interconnected shit, which will go obsolete in a few years.
Need... a list of reasons? I got you covered. https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2022/reasons-to-avoid-cloud-based-automation-products/
- It’s there a list somewhere of good non-cloud home automation devices… I don’t want to install custom app per brand of lightbulbs ffs
  
  A good start-
  Zwave and zigbee are 100% local by design.
  Anything running an esp chip is usually flash able.
  Check home assistants integration list for things you are considering buying.
  Cloudfree.shop has a lot of local only devices
  
  Oh nice thank you. I have zwave switches with openHAB… I should look into home assistant
  
  I'd highly recommend at least giving it a try. Every single month, they keep making it better and better.
- Can you list some of the devices you do use? I’m getting into Home Automation and could use some recommendations.
  
  For plugs- Its hard to beat the sonoff S31s
  https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2023/sonoff-s31-low-cost-energy-monitoring/
  For thermostat, honeywell T6 Pro. https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2021/full-local-z-wave-hvac-control/
  For just about anything I found cool enough to blog about- https://static.xtremeownage.com/pages/tags/#home-assistant
  Also, have not had this one long enough to make a write-up yet- but, regarding presence sensors, this one has blown my mind.... Its incredibly accurate AND tunable!
  https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/human-presence-sensor
  If you have a specific type of device you are looking for, let me know, and I can prob give some better suggestions.
  
  Great list - thank you. The one thing I’ve been unable to find a fully self-hosted solution for is security cameras (indoor/outdoor). Any reccs on that hardware?
  
  Regarding the NVR solution, I personally use both Frigate (Opensource, Free. Fantastic object detection, Really QUICK and accurate detections too), and Blue Iris (Closed source, requires 45$ license. But- amazingly powerful NVR software).
  For cameras, I recommend POE cams. I Personally use reolink RLC-520s, and the likes. They support RTMP, RTSP, ONVIF, and will work with any NVR solution worth its salt. They are also quite cheap, and so far, have been pretty reliable. Of the 20 or so I have deployed, I have only had one die- which was due to it catching all of the rain coming off of the roof... in a storm. Warranty was honored on it.
  Otherwise- as long as the camera supports one OF... RTSP, RTMP, ONVIF, you should be gold. For doorbell camera, Amcrest has a few options. I have an older AD110. They have newer offerings now. I do believe either reolink or amcrest also makes a POE powered doorbell camera, which would be good, if you have the ability to run POE to your doorbell.
  
  In my experience, Blue Iris' AI detection (via the free CodeProject AI) works better than Frigate, as it ships with more usable models /whereas you'll have to pay a monthly fee to get models of the same quality for use with Frigate). There's a beta version of Code Project AI with support for Google Coral, too.
  
  I recently gave it a try for a month or so- and switched back to frigate.
  At the time, coral support was only in beta, for running on a raspberry pi- so, code project tended to consume quite a bit of resources on my NVR box.
  The other factor- Frigate integrates into home assistant effortlessly, Blue Iris is a lot more manual.
  But, I can confirm the quality of code project.ai was pretty good. Although, there aren't as many tools to "tune" it with.
  I'll prob give it another try in the future.
  
  What's the advantage of integrating Frigate into Home Assistant? For showing cameras on dashboards, I just use Blue Iris' UI3 in an iframe. Way less delay compared to Home Assistant's native video support.
  
  https://static.xtremeownage.com/blog/2023/feline-area-denial-device/
  
  EmpireTech T5442T-ZE (rebranded Dahua) is a fantastic outdoor camera. Significantly better image quality than any Reolink, especially at night. Any camera that supports ONVIF will work well. Avoid any that don't use ONVIF and require you to use their app.
  I use Blue Iris as my NVR, but Frigate is decent too. Frigate has way fewer features though, and to get good AI detection models you have to pay a monthly fee, so you may as well pay for Blue Iris and get a significantly better software package.
  
  I want a non z-wave/ZigBee scene controller. Anything other than topgreener out there?
  
  You... want a what?
  If you want to just control scenes, hardware-agnostic, just try home assistant.
  
  I want several (4 to 8) buttons home assistant can get events from, with indicator lights that home assistant can control. Insteon keypad linc is one (dead end) example. The zooz zen32 is a zwave example.
  
  It can do it.

248 comments