[Gyrantula2]

>Building my offline smart home took the better part of a weekend

Yeah, right.

Nobody in their right mind should be making their home "smart" for the convenience or efficiency. It's a hobby. A frustrating, inconvenient, burdensome, potentially expensive, challenging, neverending hobby.

It taught me to love light switches.

[corethree]

It's actually easier now then ever before. Buy smart bulbs for cheap off of temu. They all integrate with alexa or google home automagically.

I now never touch a light switch.

"Computer dim lights to 40%." I never bother touching a light switch. This guys set up is too complicated. The easy way to do it nowadays is to buy smart devices that integrate with the google or alexa echo system and you just talk to alexa or google to get it to do what you want.

[tcfhgj]

Alexa and Google Home are literally microphones with connections into the cloud

[CharlesW]

> It's actually easier now then ever before.

Agreed, but Alexa fails hard if you have no internet, and my understanding is that Google Home also becomes mostly inoperable.

I've tried Home Assistant but could never get it to work reliably. HomeKit is great and works offline if you have a home hub (an Apple TV, a HomePod, or an iPad).