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Yes. A restraining order or the like is in order
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Nov 6, 2018 05:28
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Medullah posted:My sister's ex has been breaking into her house and wrecking stuff, but of course it's when no one is home and she can't prove it. My dad wants to pay for security cameras for her, what would you guys recommend for a not-so-technical person that's fairly easy to set up and monitor? Harden the drat doors and windows. You can get an $80 kit that makes kicking in a door a hell of a lot harder. And 3M makes window film that makes it harder to break into the windows. Any of the off the shelf cloud cameras will be fine for this. Just don't point it directly at the door. 30 to 45 degrees should be fine to prevent light coming in the door from washing out the face of the person walking through it. And get the cops involved. poo poo like this tends to escalate not deescalate.
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Nov 6, 2018 06:13
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Heners_UK posted:In addition to the Nest, Arlo etc suggestions, I'd actually recommend a few extra, extra hidden backups cameras, perhaps offline ones that are harder to find. That way if the dickhead destroys the Nests etc, there's something. skipdogg posted:Yes. A restraining order or the like is in order Yeah, she's got a restraining order against him but she's got no proof that it's him doing it, even though everyone knows it is. A friend recommended Blink camera, they seem fairly simple, are they terrible?
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Nov 6, 2018 13:54
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What’s the thread’s opinion on HomeKit compatible wall switches? I would like to replace my door light timer (which always seems to lose the time setting or get confused and require a reset) with something I can automate. Looks like the lutron is a good option or the elgato eve. The box doesn’t have a lot of depth though, due to it being an old house and I can’t remember if there is a neutral wire in there. Another option would be an ikea tradfri bulb along with the motion sensor switch so I could both automate it and have it light up if someone comes near.. Thinking about it this is the easiest solution so I may just do that  Still interested in hearing about wall switches though..
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Nov 6, 2018 16:19
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CheddarGoblin posted:drat that looks slick, I hadn't heard of this. I've been looking for some cheap buttons with multi tap/long press capability. I do wish they would sell a pre-flashed dongle so I could spend the $20 on that instead of jumping thru hoops and ending up with more stuff for my electronics junk drawer that I'll forget what it was for in a year or so. https://www.gearbest.com/goods/pp_0...erCreate_181026 It says Asia-Pacific version, but I'm in USA and it works fine with the setup described on the zigbee2mqtt wiki. I thought the Asia version of zigbee used a slightly different frequency, but I guess I was wrong or this TI dongle handles multiple frequencies.
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Nov 7, 2018 00:16
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priznat posted:What’s the thread’s opinion on HomeKit compatible wall switches? I would like to replace my door light timer (which always seems to lose the time setting or get confused and require a reset) with something I can automate. I like the Hue tap switches but people's experiences with them vary wildly. Once you connect it to Homekit though it seems you can assign pretty much anything to the buttons, so I have buttons that control my fan or heater or whatever, even though the thing is technically meant for lights.
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Nov 7, 2018 00:28
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My Lutron switches have been absolutely rock solid over several years, where my hue lights have had some issues several times. It’s also nice to have lights any guest can use normally without an app or remote.
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Nov 7, 2018 05:20
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For those that recommended Arlo cameras to me earlier, are the ones on Woot.com today a good value? 
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Nov 7, 2018 20:43
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Medullah posted:For those that recommended Arlo cameras to me earlier, are the ones on Woot.com today a good value? Yes that's a pretty drat good deal I paid much more for two cameras and base station.
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Nov 8, 2018 00:56
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Thomamelas posted:Harden the drat doors and windows. You can get an $80 kit that makes kicking in a door a hell of a lot harder. And 3M makes window film that makes it harder to break into the windows. Any of the off the shelf cloud cameras will be fine for this. Just don't point it directly at the door. 30 to 45 degrees should be fine to prevent light coming in the door from washing out the face of the person walking through it. And get the cops involved. poo poo like this tends to escalate not deescalate. Use Home Automation, cameras, and booby traps to create a new Home Alone for the millennial generation!
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Nov 8, 2018 02:30
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I am a nest fanboy. The basic nest. Not the iq one.
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Nov 8, 2018 05:53
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Nov 8, 2018 05:54
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I like nest, just wish it was a bit faster on reporting if it sees a person. I've had a moment where someone walked up to my door, knocked, try to shill their crap, then leave the property and it still took another minute before the app finally went "Oh hey there is a person in your front yard."
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Nov 8, 2018 21:40
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Leal posted:I like nest, just wish it was a bit faster on reporting if it sees a person. I've had a moment where someone walked up to my door, knocked, try to shill their crap, then leave the property and it still took another minute before the app finally went "Oh hey there is a person in your front yard." I see people complain about this, but I never have this problem. However, my wifes phone does have this problem and I think its' due to how your particular device is handling background apps and notifications of particular types. In other words, it's not exactly a Nest problem, but more a problem with how Google/Android/OEM is trying to save battery on your phone. (not that this information is helpful in any way) Also, I really like my Nest cameras, but I would pay a lot more for devices/software that were just as good and that were self-hosted. Alas, such a thing does not exist.
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Nov 9, 2018 00:52
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What's the state of offline controllers in 2018? I want to ditch my smart things controller because it's just been nothing but problems over the years and I'd love to get something I can isolate on its own vlan for some straightforward rules to process things that also runs faster. Plus I'm not optimistic with the lovely new Samsung connect app deprecating the old functional smart things app. I was looking at Vera in particular and wanted to get the thread's opinions...
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Nov 10, 2018 13:44
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Is there a recommended non-hub Smart Bulb? One of the rooms in my house gets almost no sunlight, and I was planning on picking up some 4000 or 5000k plain bulbs, but then Amazon had a promo for $1 Echo Dots today, so I got one of those and figured I might as well try out a smart bulb. I'd like one I could set up to gradually transition from daylight (6000k) in the morning to warm light (2700k) at night, but if I have to manually change it, that's fine too. RGB colors would be a nice bonus, but are not a requirement.
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Nov 11, 2018 03:37
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OSU_Matthew posted:What's the state of offline controllers in 2018? Roll your own with a Pi and Home Assistant. Mozilla Things is also starting to look really interesting and easier to use, though I don't think it has wide device support yet. I'm keeping an eye on it; Home Assistant is pretty great but it has a steep learning curve and can be a pain in the rear end to manage sometimes. Either one is probably better overall than any AIO solution, and work well offline. If you are used to Wink or Smarthings you will be quite surprised how fast Home Assistant reacts to events like doors opening, light switches, etc.
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Nov 11, 2018 06:51
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Ixian posted:Roll your own with a Pi and Home Assistant. Either do that (hint: do that) or pay quite a bit for Homeseer (not used it, only know of it)
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Nov 11, 2018 15:30
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KingKapalone posted:Anyone have anything to say comparing the Logitech Smart Control to the Companion?
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Nov 13, 2018 01:36
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Lester Shy posted:Is there a recommended non-hub Smart Bulb? I had an amazing combo going for a while, Phillips Hue bulbs with the Lutron Connected dimmers theey you wirelessly pair up to it. The fuckers at Lutron changed the dimmer into a new proprietary model, the old universal kind I bought for $20 each are now discontinued and go for like $100 each on Amazon used. Anyone know of a replacement wireless dimmer than can pair to the Hue bulbs?
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Nov 13, 2018 02:31
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My new house has a lot of light fixtures that are fans with 4 small bulbs in them, so my Sengled bulbs won't work with them. I would like a few rooms to have Google Home controlled lights - are there any options that control the light and fan at the switch level (2 switches)?
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Nov 13, 2018 02:42
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WhiteHowler posted:I dread the day my Harmony 880 dies. There's just nothing quite like it -- all the app-based and wifi-connected controls seemed really laggy when I've used them at other peoples' houses. I had an 880 and that thing was a piece of poo poo, especially the janky-rear end charge cradle. I replaced it with a 750 which was better is every way, especially button feel, and then replaced that with the hub that they have now which I like far and away the best of the three. If there's some delay, it doesn't bother me. That said I can't give KingKaplone any advice because Logitech releases a billion hubs with overlapping functionality and confusing names and has updated some old hubs to be software compatible with the new ones making online information out of date. When I bought my hub the only difference between what they were selling new and what you could get for $100 was the addition of light bulb buttons on the remote.
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Nov 13, 2018 10:57
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LastInLine posted:I had an 880 and that thing was a piece of poo poo, especially the janky-rear end charge cradle. I replaced it with a 750 which was better is every way, especially button feel, and then replaced that with the hub that they have now which I like far and away the best of the three. If there's some delay, it doesn't bother me. I agree the Harmony 700 is great, but it's not better in every way than the 880. The 880 had 8 display-side buttons, I almost never had to scroll to find the correct activity. The 650 and 700 waste space with their fixed-function buttons at the top and have a much worse display as a result. Still definitely glad I gave up on the 880 though. Too bad almost all the other nice remotes go idiotic and include a touchscreen, which is the dumbest poo poo on a remote since you should be able to operate it mostly without looking. And for whatever reason Logitech keeps cancelling the 700 and then bringing it back intermittently, as if rechargeable batteries are only important in bursts.
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Nov 13, 2018 15:40
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I will admit the eight function buttons were better than the 4, later reduced to 2 (2!) soft activity buttons on the 650. I actually forgot about that. Still, the 880's hard keys that lacked a positive response when pressed, the poor backlighting, and the overly complicated layout (something that I'll admit everyone adjusts to no matter how crazy it is with enough time) made it a pretty sad beast. The remote I got with the hub is the one without a screen and looking at the layout I'm glad. Back when I got the 880 I needed a ton of different devices to be supported with crazy remotes with all kinds of obscure buttons but now I have almost exactly the components KingKaplone has and the amount of stuff I need a remote to do is down to the normal stuff that normal buttons can do. I've never needed the Help button like I needed with the IR remotes and turning stuff on with voice is preferable anyway. As long as playback controls, menu selection, and volume work well that's all I need and the Harmony Hub works great for that. Considering the Hub was like $80 when I got it, it was a steal.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:06
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Can you run multiple smart bulbs from different manufacturers through the same app? I ordered a LOHAS smart bulb and a Gosund smart plug to go with my Echo Dot. I downloaded the TuyaSmart app for the bulb, and I was surprised to learn that it could recognize and control the plug perfectly, so I didn't have to download/install/sign up for Gosund's own app. Now I've caught the bug and want to buy more lights, but I don't want a dozen different smart home apps/skills on my phone/Dot. Am I locked into LOHAS bulbs now, or would a Merkury Innovations bulb from Walmart integrate into my current Tuya setup?
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Nov 14, 2018 20:02
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Lester Shy posted:Can you run multiple smart bulbs from different manufacturers through the same app? I ordered a LOHAS smart bulb and a Gosund smart plug to go with my Echo Dot. I downloaded the TuyaSmart app for the bulb, and I was surprised to learn that it could recognize and control the plug perfectly, so I didn't have to download/install/sign up for Gosund's own app. It'll be hit and miss whether or not a particular bulb works with a particular app. A lot of the cheaper ones do tend to be the same basic hardware though. You'll need to do a bit of googling to find out. It does look like the Merkury bulbs will work with the Tuya app though: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/94uiki/these_are_only_13_at_walmart_any_idea_if_i_can/ Tuya is an API/framework for smart bulbs and whatnot, and it looks like a lot of the cheaper bulbs are using it.
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Nov 14, 2018 22:36
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Well goons after being an advocate for the nest cameras in this very thread I found myself doubting or at least looking for a work around to a fatal flaw in the nest cameras. Night time picture quality isn’t up to par. A day ago I was informed by my idiot neighbor that a week ago he saw my car entered by a thief. I’m not sure why it took so long to tell me this but sure enough I saw someone open my wife’s car and rummage through her car. What an eye opening experience to see someone so nonchalantly go from car to car in my block and casually open doors of cars not locked and look through it. I was upset with my wife for leaving her car open but she said she wasn’t aware she hadn’t locked the car. So now I’m wondering if perhaps if low light is an issue maybe I could get some motion detection flood lights to somehow trigger a better picture from my cameras. During the day the quality is excellent. Any thoughts on what I can do? Any hardware recommendations? At this point I feel violated and want to catch whoever does this in the future. If a flood light isn’t good then what camera is good for excellent night time video? I’m at a loss.
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Nov 15, 2018 08:35
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I received some WeMo Mini Smart Plugs recently and read that their "Insight" switches have an unpatched vulnerability right now. I have a Google Home Mini hooked up to my network already and was thinking about hooking this up to it but now I'm getting a bit paranoid. Have you goons done anything to try and secure your network a bit with one of these on it? This will be my first step into home automation, which is exciting, but I don't want to be part of some botnet if I can help it.
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Nov 15, 2018 10:02
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Thermopyle posted:I set zigbee2mqtt up and goddamn this is great. 20 bucks worth of hardware and I can use all sorts of cheap zigbee devices with my Home Assistant setup. These Xiaomi devices listed in the wiki are particularly cheap and effective. For example, 10 bucks for a wireless button that can control anything that I have hooked up to HA. I set one on my nightstand that on single press toggles my lamp on and off, double press turns my fan on and off, and long press activates my "good night" scene. My sniffer/debugger just arrived, though I haven't got anything else ZigBee based at the moment, is all zwave currently. Are you running mosquitto as your mqtt broker? Are you running it locally? Is everyone here who is using home assistant automating in yaml, or has anyone gone with node red? I've dipped in and out of Hass in the past, running it mostly as a curiosity along side my Vera. But looking to start a fresh with hass and would like to get too far up a garden path before realising I should have gone a different route.
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Nov 15, 2018 22:39
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Piggy Smalls posted:Well goons after being an advocate for the nest cameras in this very thread I found myself doubting or at least looking for a work around to a fatal flaw in the nest cameras. Night time picture quality isn’t up to par. A day ago I was informed by my idiot neighbor that a week ago he saw my car entered by a thief. I’m not sure why it took so long to tell me this but sure enough I saw someone open my wife’s car and rummage through her car. What an eye opening experience to see someone so nonchalantly go from car to car in my block and casually open doors of cars not locked and look through it. I was upset with my wife for leaving her car open but she said she wasn’t aware she hadn’t locked the car. The major fault with most camera night vision is the intensity, or lack of, the IR LEDs on the camera. You can boost this while not increasing the amount of light around your home by getting an external IR illuminator and mounting it to provide the additional coverage that you need.
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Nov 15, 2018 22:48
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MeKeV posted:Is everyone here who is using home assistant automating in yaml, or has anyone gone with node red? I've dipped in and out of Hass in the past, running it mostly as a curiosity along side my Vera. But looking to start a fresh with hass and would like to get too far up a garden path before realising I should have gone a different route. I'm using both. Some things seem more natural to write in YAML automation, some in Node RED flows. So for example my automation to keep the Harmony Hub activity synced to the receiver input when it gets auto-switched by CEC is in HA, while the reset timers for my cheap motion sensors that don't send an "off" message is in Node RED because re-triggering timers is cleaner in that.
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Nov 15, 2018 23:51
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n0tqu1tesane posted:The major fault with most camera night vision is the intensity, or lack of, the IR LEDs on the camera. You can boost this while not increasing the amount of light around your home by getting an external IR illuminator and mounting it to provide the additional coverage that you need. The major fault with most cameras during the night is the size of the sensors. Bigger sensors=more light sensitivity.
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Nov 16, 2018 05:01
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Frank Dillinger posted:The major fault with most cameras during the night is the size of the sensors. Bigger sensors=more light sensitivity. Ok, well, yeah, but if you otherwise like the camera, an IR illuminator can help with nighttime visibility.
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Nov 16, 2018 06:00
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n0tqu1tesane posted:The major fault with most camera night vision is the intensity, or lack of, the IR LEDs on the camera. You can boost this while not increasing the amount of light around your home by getting an external IR illuminator and mounting it to provide the additional coverage that you need. You were on the money. Bought an inexpensive well reviewed ir Illuminator and it worked amazingly! I love these forums.
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Nov 17, 2018 20:43
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We just bought a house and the wife has been voicing her wish for external cameras in the future. The neighborhood has private security patrols but there's no "you must use this home security company" requirements. What's the general opinion of the Amazon Blink system coupled with an Echo Show for basic external monitoring? I'm thinking 4-6 external cameras and 2 ES's inside. We're kind of split down the middle as far as ecosystems, we have a lot of Amazon products and a lot of Google so we're not really married to either option currently.
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Nov 18, 2018 12:54
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MeKeV posted:My sniffer/debugger just arrived, though I haven't got anything else ZigBee based at the moment, is all zwave currently. I use mosquitto. It runs on my home server in a docker container (so does hass). I do simple automations in yaml (which comprises 90% of the automations I need), and just write python for more complex stuff.
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Nov 18, 2018 22:23
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I've been through a bunch of 'home' security systems and although I can't speak for everything, nothing has come close to Hikvision stuff. Granted, there is a learning curve, and you should run your own DVR (PC), but the quality of video and ease of checking footage is 2nd to none. I've noticed a bunch of local banks using them.. and they take security pretty seriously.
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Nov 19, 2018 01:15
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Dahua or hikvision cams are great, but setting up/installing and maintaining a blue iris system is a hobby in its own right. You’ll get the best possible system for your money, but it’s not just a plug and play system, especially if you want decent motion detection/alerts that don’t drown you in false alerts.
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Nov 19, 2018 03:12
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On Friday a connector for the hot water tank finished rotting away, and it took me about a half hour to find out. Enough time for some rooms of the basement to get a nice river running through them. What's a good, cheap water sensor I can use, preferably battery powered, so I can drop them and forget them? I'm using a Hue hub and a Nest thermostat.
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Nov 19, 2018 13:05
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Got a little frisky yesterday, threw together an ESP8266 into my alarm control panel. Just have it set up for monitoring, and remote arming right now, don't really feel great putting my alarm code in the config to enable disarming.  Got all the status stuff into my Home Assistant server.  
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Nov 20, 2018 04:39
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