Homogeneous or heterogeneous systems

I have a smart garage door so I didn’t have to add anything to it. So I can use regular garage door opener’s, I can use my phone app and Geo fencing if I want to

I went head first into the Smart Home space and from the beginning made the decision to just have one assistant in the house-Google. So, we have a Google Home or Home Mini (or w/e they call them now) in each bedroom and the family room, and a Home Hub in the kitchen, and I’ve been extremely pleased by the functionality of how everything works. I’ve also made conscious decisions as to the number of different brands I want in the house to reduce cross-play or functionality issues. We use:
Google-Home/Home Mini/Hub, Chromecast on every TV
Nest-thermostat, doorbell/camera, Nest x Yale lock, smoke/CO detectors
Wyze-Cameras, motion sensor, contact sensors, lock, smart plugs, and bulbs.
Harmony-Smart remote, with some actions preprogrammed (like end activity and turn off all connected TVs).
Arlo-Cameras

I’m glad I spent as much time figuring out what direction I wanted to go with the house before buying a mix of stuff-I’m sure it has probably saved me a ton of frustration.

Glad you like it (Google & their incorporated product lines).

I just cannot let googles invasiveness in any further than the
phone and its sniffing at the amazon fringes.

No gmail, no chrome, no maps (yeah they own waze now, grumble
grumble) and on other fringes, like no facebook, messenger or
instagram.
Hell, I hate doing business with them marketing my business.
True pay to play, they eradicated net neutrality years ago but
that’s an entire different topic.

I have a friend who has (HAD) google home.
After he was showing his set up to me (I introduced him to
assistant devices when I turned him on to Sonos) I remarked/asked
“do you feel like you are being marketed constantly?”

After that he started paying attention.
He realized our conversations that may have implied product or
service usage was populating “relevant” ads within the hour or so
to his hub, his browser and spam.
We spoke of getting ready for winter, what group trip we may
consider next, and how our kids music is going.
Next day he sent me screen shots: shovels, ice melt, snow blowers,
family vacation spots, airlines, fishing charters, sundresses,
sunglasses, music stores, guitars, sheet music.
He said he felt violated & I laughed.

He sold the google hardware & switched to alexa.
His remark to me over the holidays: the marketing is far more
subtle & does not seem to stem from conversations as it did
with google.
He also said his topics displayed on Show seem “less biased” and
more “function oriented”.

Not having both, I cannot make those distinctions.
Maybe my browser & search engine choices (Firefox/waterfox
& duck duck go) have something to do with my perceptions too?

Anywho, back on topic…I have not really found any major mixed
hardware function issues aside from most things simply will not do
what I would find useful.
no actions for Wyze cam in alexa routines.
ifttt doesnt play nice with my QNAP NAS, dropbox or my phone.
Those things come to mind.

totally cool learning others logic behind the decisions.
What drove my decisions aside from being datamined out the wazoo,
were functions I desired and what was around at the time (now 6
years into hardware, still haven’t found the integration tools I
desire).
Pricing for desired features and alternate flashing (sonoff &
shelly) & ability to install inside duplex boxes has to do
with a lot of my choices.
Pardon me while I go replace a 72 year old steel gang box and wire
so I can fit my hardware :slight_smile:

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Heterogeneous

Started with off-brand Chinese smart outlets
Then bought some Z-wave door sensors and a SmartThings hub.
Then a Schlage Connect z-wave smart door lock.
Tried an off-brand chinese cam but did not function well.
Then started getting Wyze cams.

If I had to do it all over again I’d zero on Schlage Connect and SmartThings Hub.
A few Z-wave door sensors.
Wyze cams, Sense, and smart plugs
Skip the flirtation with WI-FI smart plugs and outlets.

Curious why?
Not working consistently?
Not plugging stuff in?
Are you using adapters or duplex receptacles?

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Ya why? Love mine

No i just meant skip the part where I tried various off-brand Chinese brands like SimpleLife and SmartLife and Panamalar.
I still have the outlets and door sensors cause I’m too cheap to replace them - but having a haugepauge of devices and apps is annoying.

They function OK. Except for the Panamalar cam - which had a terrible app.

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When i started, i asked some IT colleagues what they were using, and ended up using https://www.home-assistant.io/ : it’s open source, free, has lots of integrations, and has a focus to keep data local (they do have integrations with stuff that also uses some vendor cloud, for people wanting to use those devices).

I have Hue (light, motion/temp/lum sensor), Wyze, Xiaomi (contact sensors, motion sensors, flood sensor, moisture sensor), Osram/Syviania zigbee plugs, Google Home mini, Amazon Echo mini, integration with my SolarEdge, integration with my electricity- and gas meter, Sonoff, GoSund smart plugs (flashed with ESPhome), NodeMCU’s (WLED)

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I’m using mostly SmartThings and Wyze, and mainly Alexa for voice control, with some IFTTT. The only thing I don’t like about SmartThings is its dependency on an internet connection for simple tasks. Home Assistant looks super cool, I’ve been looking into that.

I started out with SmartThings, and have loved using the hub. I see so many products, reviews etc online saying that needing a hub is a negative thing. I think it’s far more secure and reliable to have a separate smart home zigbee/zwave network, and only one device connecting to the internet. If SmartThings ever died, I could easily migrate all of my zigbee/zwave devices to another hub platform.

There are so many manufacturers of zwave and zigbee devices, most very affordable, that work with SmartThings and keeps everything in one app. Ikea just came out with their own affordable zigbee line too, I might get some of those.

The other great thing about SmartThings is the community. I’ve gotten tons of cool stuff working, like monitoring my ups with a raspberry pi connected to the hub, webcore automation, custom device handlers, virtual sensors to integrate with Alexa, a “Canary” bulb to detect power outages, and there’s tons more I haven’t gotten into yet.

I’m in a rental, so I’m using all smart bulbs, probably around 12 Sengled bulbs and some zigbee plugs for non standard lamps. I have 3 wyze cams, just got the lock (so glad I returned my black friday august and jumped on the wyze lock), and I’m planning on getting some wyze sensors soon for automation.

I just moved and have a new ubiquiti network setup with an edge router and nanohd ap, but I had Meraki at my last place and that worked great. I’m trying to limit my wifi smart home devices, and keep them to local control by the hub when possible. Wyze is the exception to that rule, but I feel pretty confident that the company is serious about security. I might need to get some wyze bulbs, they’re the most affordable color temp tunable bulbs I’ve seen.

I always hear people complaining about this (I actually hear it in reference to Facebook ads more often than Google, but I’ve heard both.) I really think it’s a case of confirmation bias, though. Yes, Facebook and Google do creepy things in order to target ads to you. But actively listening to your conversations are not one of them. (Aside from the things you directly ask an assistant device about, of course.) There are plenty of tech-minded people who monitor the traffic coming and going from these devices, which can easily debunk that notion.

What they DO do, and what can explain a lot of those coincidences, is that they DO know the people you interact with. They track your location with your phone GPS, IP address, and/or wireless network. They know which people are in your contact list. They know which people you’ve crossed paths with recently, based on whether your location lines up with theirs, and for how long.

Yes, it definitely happens that you’ll have a conversation with a friend about some weird topic that you’ve never Googled, and then you’ll see an ad about it. But the friend has almost definitely Googled it, or has been spending tons of time at websites devoted to that topic. And Facebook/Google/whatever can see that you just spent 2 hours with that friend. They can make a reasonable guess that the friend may have had a conversation with you about a topic they’re passionate about, so they decide you’re probably a good person to target with a similar ad.

That’s where the crazy/creepy ads come from.

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I have a friend at Facebook. He also said they have a application that follows you to other websites when you leave FB. He said you could turn it off but I can’t even find it amongst all their notifications, settings and privacy pages.

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Oh, absolutely. That’s just part of their ad network. They can’t literally track you across every site, but tons of sites are integrated with Facebook and Google’s ad networks, comments, login systems, analytics, share widgets, etc. So if you visit a website about a topic, it’s very common for them to retarget you. I thought that was common knowledge. What @minionsweb is talking about is different – Listening to conversations via microphones in your devices and targeting ads based on that. That doesn’t actually happen, although a lot of people seem to think it does, and their ad targeting practices are creepy enough that you might get that impression if you didn’t know more about it.

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Very true. I don’t believe they are listening. But…. FB hasn’t been the poster boy for good behavior. But I don’t think (think being key) they are listening.

I agree. I think their practices are plenty creepy. But actively listening to your conversations via device microphones is next-level creepy (and illegal in a lot of places). If they were actually doing that, it would be fairly easy to prove, and they would have gotten in trouble for it long before now.

But just so you understand how these companies track you across the internet, I can look at the source code of this page and see that Google Analytics is installed on the Wyze forum. Any site that cares about SEO optimization at all has Google Analytics code installed on it. You’d be hard-pressed to find a site that doesn’t, really.

The main Wyze site has both Google and Facebook analytics code on it. Again, this is extremely common. That means that if you visit wyze.com directly, whether or not you accessed it through Facebook or Google, Facebook and Google still know you were here, and can target ads to you based on that.

Similarly, if someone else at your same location or connected to your same wireless network does that, you might get target with the same ads, since it may assume that you’re connected with the person.

(Edit: Or someone who did that earlier at a different location, and then spends time with you at the same location.)

Yes, FB can follow you around after you leave. Yes, you can block FB from doing that, but you have to do it with your browser. There are several add-ons that will do this. But a few browsers have in turn blocked those add-ons due to pressure from FB.

You can’t expect FB to turn off their ability to follow you. Their ad business is their bread and butter.

Kinda. You can block their cookies, but that doesn’t stop their code snippets from sniffing your IP and figuring out who you are. If you’re REALLY careful, using a VPN and disabling cookies, etc, you could probably get around their tracking. But you’d have to make some pretty conscious efforts. They’re actually facing some legal questions about some of those practices now.

Another one is that even when you disable location tracking, they DO still track your location – just not via GPS. In addition to your IP, (obviously) if their apps are on your phone, they can see which wireless networks are nearby, which is nearly as good as GPS. In some cases, it’s actually more precise than GPS, like in large cities where GPS can be partially blocked by tall buildings.

FB uses a different kind of cookies (LSOs, I forgot what they stand for), which is why blocking cookies doesn’t work.

Those are less of an issue than they used to be, now that Flash is usually disabled by default. But yes, Flash has its own cookie system that those companies will try to use if your normal cookies are disabled.

I do use a VPN now, escaping FB stalking is one of the reasons I started.

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I don’t have a FB account. Wyze was kind enough to allow me to use my wife’s account. I just sign any post I do so people can get mad at me and not her. :joy: