Robert McQueenThis week I've found a 2 year old patch to fix a 5 year old issue, because my washing machine was stopping me from printing.
https://salsa.debian.org/utopia-team/avahi/-/merge_requests/14
Were computers actually a good idea...?!
Francis Irving@ramcq now I'm curious, what do you do with either your washing machine or ovens internet connection? is there free software to talk to the appliances?
@frabcus
It's not actually that useful, not being able to print was significantly worse than any real benefit I've experienced from these devices being connected.
I have off peak electricity prices so I use delayed start times a lot on the washer/dryer, the (nonfree) app on my phone is a better UI for that than on the device itself.
And for the oven, literally the only thing I've ever used is to verbally stop it beeping whilst cooking: Alexa tell my oven to turn off.
@frabcus I've just switched to Octopus Intelligent where they dynamically schedule low-cost/low-carbon periods of electricity as a consequence of plugging the car in to charge, so I've been setting up @homeassistant to make sure other stuff (battery, heat pump, etc) correctly makes use of those time periods. In theory I could also set up some automations in HA to have appliances automatically apply delays to either low price or high solar times, but haven't got that far... :)
popey@ramcq @frabcus @homeassistant I'm also on Octopus Intelligent. It's fun watching the car get automatically charged starting late at night. :D
@popey @frabcus @homeassistant I was trying very hard to not have HA do anything "load bearing" so that it would be less likely to fail for my wife (or any future occupants) if I am away from home. Intelligent finally tipped me over the edge - the 6hr off-peak period represents a significant saving of money (and carbon) for running the heat pump overnight & to preheat the house in the morning. But now I have to use HA to stop the battery discharging into the car during scheduled charging.
@ramcq @popey @homeassistant awesome! interesting and good use. wonder what will happen in terms of standards for this - making every device IOT seems a bit much? I guess it is just a few high power key ones
@frabcus @popey @homeassistant The cost of something being wifi connected versus Zigbee or Z-wave means that there's not really that much incentive for a manufacturer to bother with any local wireless connectivity. Indeed they might be more pricey due to certification or royalties. The problem is that those standards also cover how common devices should communicate and be controlled, and many manufacturers don't have APIs, so you are left needing to use apps or reverse engineered code.
@frabcus @popey @homeassistant And of course, with no local or standard way to control devices, there's no way for devices across different manufacturers to interoperate, and if your manufacturer falls off the Internet (or bankrupt/acquired/...) your kit at best loses its smart capability, or at worst, stops working. I've generally tried to apply the rule that my smart home devices should continue working without connectivity - ie the app/API/... is additional rather than essential.