ps. We know that the Ecobees can actually be wired into the zone valves directly, but this setup gives us much greater flexibility with full HomeAssistant control, and the potential for configuring the Ecobees and American Standard thermostats to work together better.
I've known it since the beginning. It's fun to watch but not a chance in hell would I want to subject myself to living in it. Way too many failure points. I'd lose it every time something breaks. A tinkerers dream I guess and I'm not one.
yep. in time maybe things will standardise out and things will just work, but atm it seems like you need 50 different devices where each one does not play nice with the other. give us an open standard where everything can talk to each other with mandated local control with cloud being a bonus if you choose.
"Dad, my room is cold!" "Okay, let me just quickly reboot the house." From the wireless speakers to all of the thermostats everywhere to the light switches that don't work, this house is absolutely hilarious.
DIY equipment you buy on amazon or at best buy isn't intended for this scale and hes learning the hard way. Loxone, KNX and other real smart home product lines would have made everything about this system actually function, and at this rate for less money.
I remember working in HVAC and we had a house that we installed AC in and The homeowner complained that it would freeze her out in the afternoon. We asked her what time and she said around 3:00 so made an appointment to be there the next day at 3:00. The light would come in from the window and hit a mirror and get reflected onto the thermostat like it was Indiana Jones finding the room where the ark of the covenant is held. We just tilted that mirror bit, problem solved
If Linus ever sells this house, they're going to have to write a massive technical manual for the new owners and be on call for tech support just to turn the heat on.
Thats why thay made the videos never mind the next owner but him in 5 years like what the hell was the plan with this or how did I rig this thing up and make it work years ago
It will basically be impossible to sell a house like this without ripping all the tech out. It's all super niche to Linus' needs. Very unlikely he will ever want to sell though.
I recently sold my house and i took everything with me to our new build house. everything still worked manually so i also destroyed the technical manual and am writing a new one ;)
Which is so wierd because the ecobee should be able to handle both. It can be hooked to a Heatpump and an Auxiliary heat and you can configure it to activate Aux Heat at certain temps.
It is because they're unnecessarily complicating shit because Jake is a nerd. Realistically, you don't need this much shit to just control your temperature. Your boiler/heat directly connects with the Ecobee. The problem of 'not relying on the cloud' is such a stupid argument. Like the 1 time my Ecobees haven't worked is when my internet went down and guess what I did. I got my ass out of the sofa and controlled the temperature from the thermostat. 5 minutes later, it came back and it has never been an issue again. He's gonna regret putting so many layers and hops for simple things in a year or two.
Because in the truly spirit of LTT he had to do everything by himself. When you integrate everthing into 1 you likely run into communicate problem between each component instead of 1 unified system, it make troubleshooting and maintenance a nightmare. But the bright side is you wouldn't have been stuck in 1 eco-system or have to pay for subscription services just to use the product you already bought.
@@JtoddP73 Yep, there are upsides and downsides to all the things. I like to go the middle way and make chunks of "services" from one brand. For example heating is one ecosystem, AC is one and so on. Heating for me is Honeywell's evohome. Its one unified system that works even if router+home assistant goes down. But its hooked up to HA for advanced features like, if we leave home for more than 48 hours then turn down the heat. That way I have a local fallback for every service and if internet or HA goes down they can still function on their own. As for DIY vs out of the box solutions, it should be chosen based on the individual's skillset and ability to troubleshoot. Those relay models that Linus has are great. I have one triggering some non essential stuff, but I am not sure I would rely on them when it comes to heating. If you do DIY stuff, then be prepared to do troubleshooting when it goes wrong or looses pairing etc. because you don't have a vendor's support. If you go vendor system, you would have support from them. In this case when there is an ecobee, an off the shelf relay and home assistant system, then you are definitely left on your own (none of the wendors are going to help you). Not to mention that if something happens to a relay and it cannot shut off a valve and you have water or heating running for long and get a very high bill, if you have a unified vendor system for it, then insurance can cover your loss (high heating bill) because of the malfunction. If you go DIY they will not. So these are things to consider.
After watching this, my conclusion is that "smart homes" and "home assistant/homekit" are all so insanely complicated that it only works if have Jake come over to your house to install it.
Solution is to just use devices that work even when the smart home features all fail. My house has smart switches using Z-Wave, and the system works great until the Z-Wave integration fails. Then it just works like a regular house until you take the time to fix the integration (restart the VM and update the OS for me). The critical part is making sure everything acts normal when all the smart features are gone.
I feel like the amount of effort that goes into fully setting up this system so that you never have to touch the thermostat again is equal to the amount of effort you'd spend over a lifetime adjusting the temperature valve on your radiators manually.
As my heat is provided by a steam radiator that has 2 settings - on or off - I so identify with this. It's far better than my previous situation, which had a gas furnace, floor reegisters, and a roommate who kept shoving the thermostat to 80 F or 26.6 C becasue 20.5 C was too mainstream (and the gas bill wasn't in his name).
@@conroy644 taking into consideration the hiking prices of electric power and natural gases after the situation with Ukraine i decided to go back to the terracotta stove and wood burning. my house was never so warm before...
Most people don't need a system this complex to get automation and comfort. This is like a German car.... overengineered and liable to break with great cost.
I feel fairly confident that the effort to set this up is significantly more than they'd spend touching the thermostat for the rest of their lives. I mean, they only showed us configuring the system without even going into fiddly controls. Oh, and the bit about the fiddly controls - I'd guess they're probably still going to touch this system more over time to update its configuration as their schedules change. But this way they can actually program it to do things like driving the heat a bit further in the direction they need it to go when power is cheap, so they don't need to drive it as much when power is expensive, and possibly have the system set to not heat/cool while they're away so long as the temperature stays over water pipe freezing cold, but then turn on in time to get the temperature back to where they want it by the time they expect to be home. Also, some of us just futz with stuff, like Max said.
It is what professional installers like myself fear most. Those half-assed YT retrofit projects by self-declared influencers are becoming a burden for people who make a living with building automation and know exactly what they are doing. Just imagine this clown troupe using a few home depot pliers and screw drivers to tune a Tesla. Nobody would buy an electric car after watching them!
Same. I have no interest in a smart home. The same way I have no interest in a cell phone equipped car. This reminds me of 3d tv and VR. New tech being pushed on users who for the most part don't need it. I'm not clear what the end goal is?. Is a "smart home" really easier to live in than a dumb one? I have my own server rack too and more machines than you can shake a stick at but, I have no interest in making my house "smarter".
It was in 2023 Linus' house became self-aware. In June it launched a full scale attack on its occupants. Some say it was all because of a missing semicolon in a heating script written by Jake.
Nice opener with the neon logo, glad to see the on-device local-network mantra being sung video to video, sucl< it Eufy! As a Mist myself, I can tell ya, clouds are over rated. Best of luck with the heat there eh.
@@PennyAfNorberg Same for me. District heating is just awesome, especially in an apartment on the 2nd floor of 7. Even better is that our heat is cheap because well over 50% of it comes from waste heat from the local power plant.
I’m sure someone said it already, but ecobee’s have a setting where you can do temperature corrections for each thermostat. If it’s not reading correctly due to another heat source (like another thermostat below it), you can adjust the value displayed to what it should be in the room. Had to do this with my ecobee (with the motion sensor) in my last house. Works like a charm!
@@greggv8 after it reads a stable temperature in the room, you can go in and tell it what it should read. If it reads 75°F when it's 70°F, you just use the correction that basically says "display 5°F lower than what you think it is". Nothing actually changes, it just accounts for the extra 5°F of heat coming off another thermostat/TV/etc
No one's going to buy this house. The city's going to condemn it to museum status. There'll be a sign out front with a description of the eccentric RUclips Icon Linus Sebastian who built a home that ate him and his family. In one room is that transparent Xiaomi tv showing Linus begging to be freed.
Imagine if Jake one day really wanted to prank Linus. The extend he would be able to go to. He basicly knows everything there is to know about Linus' house 😄
so instead of solving the problem by building stronger security they suggest not to use the tech? Explains why these people are in academics and not building businesses
@@Abhishek_78the comment clearly says warned. And not "don't ever do this" Maybe your lack of reading comprehension is more embarrassing than these academics.
@@pizzablenderif you go through a bit more effort and use an open-source versatile frameworkand firmware such as esphome coupled with home assistant, they should last decades, if not for an almost infinite time.
I see this, and see how many "moving parts" there are to this set up and all I can think is "wow, this is going to be a nightmare eventually". I mean if it's this complicated now, how much worse is it going to be when things inevitably start breaking?
As someone in the commercial HVAC world it is not uncommon for units to be connected to a BAS/BMS. The equipment usually has a service mode that allows you to bypass and check the unit operation. For your everyday residential tech who isnt used to this, it could lead to more problems than it solves, but my guess is the installing contractor will most likely maintain this equipment when it eventually does have issues. So they should at least be familiar with the set up.
This one specifically is just a horrible setup with seemingly a lot of solutions just to solve for previous problems, rather than taking a step back and really taking a good look at finding a reliable, easy solution that addresses the core problem you're trying to solve. In this case many of the problems appear caused by wanting to combine multiple systems and finding hacks to make everything work together. The Tasmota and Ecobee system work together pretty well already, but then there's the American Standard system they are trying to make work as well and I don't really remember why that was exactly. A solution that would've given far less trouble for example was just to set it up as they had originally planned, with no thermostat in the room, just a thermometer and having it all be controlled through the Home Assistant interface. Would've been one system (Tasmota) and one system for temperature readings. They added the complexity of the Ecobee and that American Standard system because the family wanted the ability to control the heat per room. What they could've done instead is follow the original plan, but simply add a touch screen with a Home Assistant control panel on it (which is more in line with how Home Assistant is designed to be used). I don't blame them at all for the situation they're in though. I know exactly how this evolved into mess, because I've done it myself. Instead of going back to basics, you tend to "add" solutions. Either because you think that one little extra thing isn't that big a deal or because you bought something expensive you feel you now have to make work. Similarly, there's a strong "while you're in there" feeling where you're like, well if I'm already doing this, I might as well just add this little thing. I am a little unclear on the whole Z-Wave debacle though. With their backgrounds I would've thought they understood the value of having at least the core of your home being wired up and not be wireless. There's super robust systems used in office buildings, hospitals and homes like KNX for all this kind of stuff. All which integrate easily with Home Assistant. They could've added some Z-Wave here and there to supplement it or get control in places where it was cost prohibitive to put wired devices, but to have your whole house on Z-Wave is a pretty brave move if you ask me. Same for the garage door. They tried three times and only at the end really looked at what they were trying to solve (they literally describe their requirements clearly at the start of their FINAL video on the topic). But all of this is definitely part of the fun of it. If you don't enjoy thinking about things this way, home automation sucks and I wouldn't touch it. If it all works it's magic, but it's not worth the hassle if you don't at least enjoy the hassle a little.
@@anb1142 More insulation means more retained heat. So for the same input heat there is less heat loss and hence higher temperature. Whilst the main parts of the body will be at the same temperature regardless, it does affect the rest of the body, especially the sections that generally get cold, like hands.
My take on smart home systems is that they should always only help automate or more easily control things, but not be the only way to control things. That's the downside of these fancier systems vs aftermarket add-ons, you don't have still the manual controls in place in case things stop working. Most everything in my house I can now control from my phone, yet my wife who can't be bothered can still do things the old school way.
It’s just amazing to me that he didn’t just do the most simple option of using the American standard thermostats to control the in floor heat through auxiliary contacts. I get wanting all the controls to be local and not dependent on the internet but even my nest thermostat will still cool and heat my house if the internet stops working.. this whole system is a shit show.
@@alexlacey9808It’s because he thinks avoiding the 1 in a 1,000,000,000 chance that the internet connection is down and someone wants to change the thermostat at that exact same moment is worth the headache he’s created. That one time someone won’t have to get up and manually adjust it instead of using their phone is just a bridge too far
I cringe when I see a lot of other RUclipsr's who build homes with all this smart home technology. Either they'll always be troubleshooting it, accept that certain things never work, or will be calling repair people quite a bit in the future.
Linus: Has like a billion devices in his house that could be configured to run all of their communications over a wire Also Linus: Why are my speakers that probably should be wired having interference? This house is probably using up the entire 5 GHz band
And his primary communication should be KNX when starting a smarthome from scratch in a bare house. And everything which is bolted to the wall shouldn't use wifi.
@@FluffyAnnoyed Definitely... He should've just gone with KNX or Loxone and let it setup by a professional... you can still implement it in HA. But then he couldn't make like 20 videos about his smart home.
I had this same setup using ecobee as a simple thermostat. Eventually switched to just using a thermostat on homeassistant and having a tablet on the wall with a custom home assistant dashboard. I stopped using the ecobee since I kept having weird bugs/disconnection issues. Great setup now with homeassistant! Thanks for the video.
You can really understand Linus' priorities when he goes to great lengths to run Ethernet cables to every wall of every room in the house but can't be bothered to run 2 more wires for each thermostat or 2 wires for reliable speakers. And when you have to have someone (Jake) set up scripts and train you on how to use your own 'smart' home system, you know its way more complicated than it needs to be.
@@sid6645 I know, I also prefer the theatre room but maybe they want to watch two different movies at the same time or something, he can definitely afford to have two proper setups. It’s just that wireless stuff usually sucks
I love how it's been over a year now and Linus STILL doesn't have a functioning home HVAC system. His wife must be *miles* more patient and understanding than mine.
Yvonne controls the money and coin purse for Linus' businesses - you can safely assume everything either gets approved by her, or is her idea to begin with.
Ecobee room sensors can be added to each zone for about $50 a pop, and can be easily configured to be the primary temperature sensor instead of the thermostat. This would be a lot easier than swapping the orientation of the thermostats. I love seeing this type of content as an hvac contractor, thanks and keep up the great work!
Smart homes seem like a nightmare to me. I mean, good luck to the next house owner navigating and configuring this stuff. Especially if the server one day dies. 😅
Honestly that is the issue with super custom stuff like this. It's really neat being able to make all this work, exactly how you want it, but if all these guys went away, pretty much every HVAC person is going to be confused af.
Linus with Computers: What, Linux does it slightly differently than I'm used to? Heresy. Linus with homes: Light switches? That's too easy. What am I, a caveman?
How about using a 20 year old iPad because the company went out of business or stopped updating their terrible software after 2 years. Hell, old smart devices might be gold to invest in given how many dumbshit devices rely on outdated software already.
@@RandomTechWZ At that point they better have really good documentation. But yeah, most of all this stuff would probably just get replaced by new owners.
I am HVAC technician in the northern united states and I really think you'd benefit from hiring a tech for a while. I love the solutions your coming up with for these complex issues and really think a HVAC technicians knowledge could add whole new levels of content here. Similar to what happened with the electrician you had on multiple times in the past with the mini split and the wiring projects! Big fan of those episodes as well
HVAC engineer here and def agree with you. So much would be solved with just a little bit of insider knowledge. Our industry isn't incredibly hard to understand, but navigating it can be a real pain. A guide would help them immensely.
Just a random homeowner here in the mid-Atlantic US who has construction experience. I don’t screw with HVAC. “Smart home” devices is not a replacement for hiring an actual professional (and I have smart lights, locks, curtains, etc etc etc).
He can make more money by not doing that. He can keep making videos of him stumbling through some dumb setup he came up with and then more videos troubleshooting it when it breaks.
I am a Controls Engineer. Its nice seeing people so excited about what I do for a living. The industry is really changing at the moment and becoming a lot more IoT and integration based. Despite the lack of sophistication (literally some open or closed control valves with end switches), what Linus has got is a testament to how versatile the integration of different systems is becoming, and just how optimised you can make it with the use of smart thermostats.
But how can you live without your toilet connecting to WiFi so you can use an app on your phone to flush ?! Are just gonna use a button/handle on the actual toilet like some animal ?!
@@artur6912 are you serious?? An app.. what about "motion detection" via "iris scan" to detect dilation and finalisation?? Apps, buttons, smart phone?? You're a PLEB of the highest order.
The house is as smart as the guy who owns it. If he had done some research, he could have done it with the only proven & open global standard for Smart buildings and that‘s KNX. It was introduced 30y ago and is still the #1 standard for digital building automation and with v3 of the protocol and the huge installed base, it will probably be around for another 30y. Linus is just adding more junk, that will invariably end up in a landfill soon, without having ever worked properly. I still can‘t understand why he thinks he can tell people anything about he subject matter, given his track record of completely screwing up anything apart from Gaming PCs.
@@maxking3 Or its his house and he can do it the way he wants. All through the comments on all these videos you have people advocating for different systems, doesnt mean your suggestion is the right one and he cant listen to everyone. Not everything on youtube has to be done professionally or the way you would have done it. People can still show what they did and talk about the systems they use, you dont have to be an expert to be allowed to make a video about something. The videos are still interesting. If you think you can do so much better then buy a house and make a youtube series adding smart devices.
I learned one important lesson watching Linus's house problems, absolutely never go full high-tech on home stuff, causes nothing but problems for a slight increase in comfort
Indeed. For heating in particular just get yourself a heat pump with weather compensation and once you set it up you never touch it again. No thermostats needed.
Imagine buying a house like this. Oh yeah the heating won't work at all because it was all hack job held together by custom scripts running with home assistant on my NAS that I'm taking with me. Good luck getting it going again.
@@TheAkashicTraveller orrr, he'll have an electrician stick a $50 thermostat there instead and the whole thing is bypassed. Or any of the new wireless controller systems that are out now, or will be by then, and again problem solved, quick cheap and easy, back to a dumb home. It's not some irreversible change, it's using the same contacts and switching methods any dumb system would use.
@@TheAkashicTraveller they did bother wiring it up for thermostats even if they're just using it for power and all they have to do is add a traditional relay box at the valve and tie the thermostat and it's really not that big of a deal
Yeah but then if he ever loses the business then he would lose the house, I doubt that's what he has done. He could write off a bunch of the hardware that he has installed though.
I love how much tech your house has, and I enjoy that you know enough to keep the interface communication well in-house. Thanks for making this a YT series by the way, I'll never own my own home so it's cool to see what a fellow tech nerd would be able to do.
These videos are great for reinforcing how fragmented, unreliable and problematic smart home technology can be. It's great when it works, but it's a nightmare when it doesn't. They're time & money sinks for your house because there's too many moving parts and the hardware & software creators don't always stay updated with patches or communicate with each other. Overall, the smart home industry is a mess.
imagine being isolated in a bad winter and heating stopped working because a line code in the software got corrupted caused by a wi-fi worm virus downloaded by your kid
I have a dozen or so bulbs/switches for automating outdoor lighting, turning on lights when someone gets home. And its randomly a giant pain in the ass. My thermostat is set and forget other than switching from heat to cool.
The normal "industry" smart homes a giant mess. This is why linus is running everything off his own in home server. To fix anything he can do it you dont have to call tech support for their cloud when it messes up. My house has all the locks on the cloud but all of them have keys and also pads. Heating system is tied to the same cloud but can be operated manually. Anyone who links their house fully onto a cloud based system with no real manual override is insane.
just starting watching, had to pause and come down and see if anyone had noticed pixelated/censored socks, or wondering if he just got Darn Tough to make some ltt branded socks
In home automation, there is a term called the "wife approval factor". Basically, if your non-techie spouse has trouble using your smart home as designed, then it fails the sniff test. I went with off-the-shelf stuff that has a good reputation (Philips Hue, TP-link Kasa, etc) and I control it with Google Home. Not as sexy as Home Assistant, but there is minimal fuss and any quirks can be fixed by turning it off and on again.
@@travisash8180 Truth. However it is/was the only way to meet Linus's goal of having smart home control and automation without being reliant on a cloud service that might not exist tomorrow.
Did you consider getting a ground loop installed for the heat pump when you had your pool getting dug out? Ground sourced heat pumps can operate well below sub zero and are in use all over Scandinavia
And you can get hydronic heat pumps (heats water like a boiler to have in floor heat) and can also be used for a domestic hot water heater. Never a bad idea to have a backup heat source, but they really missed on this one. Especially the efficiency that could have been had.
They do perform much better than standard heat pumps in these conditions but they can be prohibitively expensive depending on the kind of land you live on etc
@@reilandeubank Cost range for ground heat pumps is about 15-30k €. For Linus, money is not the issue. But like you said, the type of land you live on is important. Here, you can't dig a well for a ground heat pump if your plot is above groundwater but idk if the loop, which is closer to the surface but delivers less heat for the pump than a well, is still allowed.
@Fortzon vertical loop is also an option. Horizontal takes up more land but for canada will probably be 12-15ft deep minimum depending on area, for good efficiency. Vertical is a well with a U shaped loop, drilled a couple hundred feet deep.
You can offset the temperature sensor in the ecobee thermostat by looking for an option called thresholds in the installation settings and offset the temperature accordingly. I had a similar issue with my thermostat incorrectly reporting the temperature.
The one BIG take away i got from this is that you can get local control of the ecobee using the homekit integration instead of having to use ecobees API key. Thanks so much for that it updates the ecobees status SO much faster now. You guys rock 😀
@@ReedSteiner I would say yes as I do have several meross smart plugs that have homekit integration and that's how I got them connected locally with HA. I just didn't think about the ecobee being a home kit compatible device. As HA docs only talk about using the api key to do the integration.
I’ve gotten pretty disillusioned with smart home products over the years. I’ve lost more time to dropped connections, hub failures, and other issues than I’ve gained from the automations. I’m hoping things mature and standardize more with the introduction of Matter, but it’s been a rough ride in the meantime.
I'd welcome you to homeassistant to be honest. I still have my smartthings hub setup for the zigbee/zwave stuff but I really need to integrate that to my Ha directly but, Ha is definitely very stable for everything I have running wich ends up being quite a bit of stuff
@@JoeyJoJoJr0 This is why I wouldn't use any cloud based device. Certain companies are working on these things. Eve Energy uses bluetooth LE and their open standards Thread protocol to have devices talk to each other and not even need WiFi or internet.
@@JoeyJoJoJr0 take your tinfoil hat off. Energy companies want you to use as much energy as possible, they want to sell it to you at the highest price. And if you haven't paid them enough, great! They'll put you on credit and make even more money on interest fees. What happens when you don't buy wood? Your wood stove stops working. That's it. That's the "perk" you speak of?
My problem with Home Assistant is all the automation logic is done with YAML config files, which is like trying to write e-mail with a mouse and a virtual keyboard. Just look how a simple oneliner if statement looks like in the HA's Automation UI (14:54)
Год назад
You can use other stuff as well of course, but then youre adding even more parts to fail. Node red is kind of awesome, I'm trying not to use it though...
Jake, I highly recommend you get the Smart PID Thermostat integration for H.A. It makes a world of difference especially on radiant floor systems with high run down and run up times. Using this integration will make the binary on/off valve operate more like a 0-100% analog point allowing it compensate for things like high ramp up and ramp down times as well as outdoor air temperature. With some proper PID loop tuning this will completely eliminate temperature setpoint overshoot and undershoot issues.
Yup, ON/OFF systems are only good for low thermal mass heating devices. The impact the PID controller makes on energy saving and temperature control accuracy is actually really big. Also, an outside temperature sensor is a good idea with PID.
@@ExCanMan agree 100%. The H.A. integration I use has a PIDE option with E being the O.A. factor. It takes the difference between your indoor setpoint and outdoor temp and multiplies it by the Ke number you set. It basically functions to create a minimum PID output value at a given O.A. temperature.
I never really considered needing several blankets that big of a deal but now that I think of it I guess most people have good enough heating that they usually don't need more than 1
I had the same sentiment when I was starting to build my own smart home. The first moment is great but configuring to be right can be complicated so your house goes from smart to dumb really quickly
Jesus, yeah. I've got an LED light strip (just a light strip!) that requires a phone app to control, and if there's ever a hiccup in power the thing comes back on unpaired and starts strobing until my network comes back up. Sometimes I have to re-pair it manually, too. None of this smart home connected stuff is worth the hassle.
Yeah, it's enough when you have to reconnect a bluetooth devide like a keyboard and it's acts up and is like "I don't wanna :(".... Being able to connect to a smart system at home through wifi should be possible, but it should also not be crucial to do so. When I get a house and if I start fiddling with smart things, I'de have high standards for how it should work and not work. 1. Have to work offline. 2. Must connect through wire (both network and power). POE whould be nice. 3. Controllable through a hub/server. 4. Can be controlled manually. 5. What ever else I've missed :) There's really no need for wifi connectivity for the "smart things" as they talk through the hub. The smart things don't even have to be smart. It's the system in a whole that should be smart. I mean. A smart system shouldn't be dumber than a non smart system.
@@user2C47 Yes. Its a bus system with 30 Volts so not dangerous. All you do is connect two wires and then configre it in a software thats easy to learn. No Cloud if you dont order a special server, no network needed and in case something happens you can go to the actors and push a button on the device ta activate/deactivate the output relais.
I work in IT, which is the reason my house has: - Mechanial locks - Mechanical windows - Router with WRT - No smart home crap - No Alexa or Google Assistant - No internet connected thermostats And i keep a baseball bat close by just in case my printer makes a unexpected noise.
There's a saying. Software engineers trust harware but hardware engineers trust software. Going with the least bad of what you know is probably the best solution.
Late reply, but as an IT professional is your issue with things going to the cloud or automation itself. I figured running everything poe on an airgapped network would be pretty safe.
Floor heating is for continuous heating not to quickly raise the temperature for a couple of hours! you will need to place radiators for that or if you didn't add those during the project phase you can look at IR panels which can provide localized heating. The beauty of IR panels is that you can place these on the sealing above the places you occupy the most EG the dinner table or above the table in the living room where you gather to watch TV. Or above you bed if you calculate it correctly you can place two panels in such a way that either side of the bed has there own temperature. Just keep in mind that IR panels are localized. In combination with a Shelly 1 Gen 3, Shelly BLU button and a Shelly BLU H&T you can easily integrate your panel in to home assistant. The integration of Shelly in Home Assistant is almost child's play! I would include something like Shelly BLU motion so they only work when the aria is occupied this might be some tweaking to get it working in the right window. EG turn of if no movement was detected for an hour.
@Linus im very sure you do, but please make sure your app data or config folders are backed up, maybe even keep a flash drive with just that in the server room. I lost my config once and spent a whole day re doing all of my HA devices, scripts and automations. Glad its coming along!
About 6 months ago I started going all in with Home Assistant and I was blown away by all the things I could do...and then I realized I was spending hours and hours maintaining a smart home when I have extremely limited free time anyway. It quickly became a time suck job and just wasn't worth it.
Yep - I could spend a week developing/tweaking HA just to solve some automation 'problem' that would really only take a few seconds to turn on/off manually.
The sad part is when Linus gets sick and kicks the bucket His wife just screams....What the Hell is all this crap, and nothing ever works again She already has that look on her face in the video called "I let my wife down" Again?
Ecobee actually has room sensors, so you can place them around the house where ever you want then use those as the temp sensor. You could do some shenanigans with the comfort setting to basically ignore the wall mounted thermostats and only use the room sensors.
This is what I was going to mention too. I use my room sensors so it only heats/cools at night based on my bedroom temperature (because who cares what the kitchen and living room temp is when sleeping). It also allows, like you said, to ignore the thermostat sensor.
For temperature offset correction (in the case of the one thermostat reading high due to it's location on the wall) follow these steps: 1: Tap the three lines in the bottom left of the main screen to bring up the main menu 2: Scroll towards bottom of the main menu and tap "Installation Settings" 3: Tap "Thresholds" 4: Scroll towards bottom and tap "Temperature Correction" 5: Adjust to match a thermometer placed in a centralized location of the room. adjustments can be made in intervals of 0.5°F, unsure what °C intervals are. (I'm an hvac tech in the state of Ohio in the US, so we almost exclusively set up our tstats in °F) 6: Exit the menus by continually tapping the back arrow in the top left corner 7: Observe the main temperature screen and watch for the room reading to change. It usually takes a few seconds to implement after getting back to the main screen I hope this helps you Linus as well as anyone else wondering about temperature correction. Note that this primarily works for thermostats that are under a constant hot/cold influence. A thermostat in an open, windowed room will still act up a bit when direct sunlight hits it for an extended time during a cloudless day.
We have "smart" light sensors at our office that turn the lights on and off depending on how well the room is lit up and if someones inside. And they do annoy the sh*t out of everyone, we all just wish to get a goddamn switch back.
The thing is, these things SHOULD come with a 3-way switch: AUTO/ON/OFF. So many headaches would be avoided. I've experienced the same at our Uni. One of the large class-rooms had automated lights, but no off switch. When you wanted to run a presentation with a projector, the professor would resort to putting a bit of aluminum foil on the detector, and waiting a few minutes for the lights to go out. Then a gust of wind would blow away the foil during presentation and we'd have to fix it back on and wait for a few minutes. The dumbest shit ever.
I love tech gadgets so I bought a smart lightbulb for the very first time for my lamp in the living room and its so damn annoying. It keeps disconnecting from the app and if you switch it off and on too quickly, it goes into some kind of pairing mode and starts doing this annoying flashing pattern and you have to spend another minute on your phone again to fix it. I had similar bad experiences with smart thermostats too...I'm honestly over it.
You have to be really careful with motion sensor light automation. Presence sensors are much more accurate at telling if people are around vs just seeing if they moved, an especially common issue with desk work in my experience. My Workaround (since i still don't have a presence sensor in my office) was to increase the shutoff duration to about an hour since there's no way i'd sit still for that long.
True. I like mqtt because I can see what is happening on the network. Makes it easier to troubleshoot. That being said, Esphome never gave me any trouble.
Definitely. I switched from tasmota to esphome. It might look more complicated but in the end it isn't. And they wouldn't even need MQTT with esphome. I've just replaced my 40 year old green house window circuit with an esp relay and esphome curtain. Works great and I've integrated rain detection and some dew point math since the green house (~100m² and two storeys high) is connected to my house. At a friends house we used it to integrate mitsubishi hvacs with HA which is awesome. I wish there would be more HVACs which could be integrated this way. I really hate the cloud trend. There should always be a local api as well.
Ironically I think linus going down the smart home path has even convinced me that I don't want a mini split, bro I ain't never seen any stupid issues with a whole house forced air system like the variety of issues linus has had over his multiple houses
I'm in residential HVAC mini splits are dope. Eventually whenever my system kicks the bucket I may just swap out the split system I have and get a 4 headed minisplit or just buy one for my computer room. They can actually help the original system not run as much, and we've had a lot of customers tell us that their electric bill went down after just putting a minisplit in their lanai and having them keep the sliders open to assist the main system.
Here in India it gets much hotter (40+ degrees) and we use mini splits only. They're very reliable and much more efficient that ducted systems. Ducted systems are anyways useless in our homes as they made with concrete and bricks. It's the automation that's causing the trouble.
@@Dijitz23 Thats because most mini splits heat 1 room at a time if you set them that way, its easier to have the source of heat or air directly in the rooms so they get hot or colder much faster.. Some rooms can boil hot where others will be cold as hell. if i get a mini split it will be a dual voltage one 120vac/220v + 12/24vdc.
@@panzer3279 > Ducted systems are anyways useless in our homes as they made with concrete and bricks. Most homes in US are made from concrete and bricks too? Only reason venting is useless in most of India is because most Indians cannot afford to pay for proper home venting systems installed by people who know what they're doing, instead the Bhayya from Bihar bullshits a terrible system for dirt cheap and everyone is left wanting more.
Totally agree. This is too complicated to be reliable. And the hours needed to troubleshoot aren't worth the extra initial install effort with basic ultra-reliable old school sensors.
If you don't want it super custom and are willing to stay in one ecosystem, it can be incredibly simple. Literally plug and play. But one walled garden never does everything you need and so you inevitably discover home assistant....Which in turn leads to never having sex again (or any life) since you're always busy fixing shit until the end of time.
The endless problem solving, tweaking, upgrading of Linus’ house stresses the s**t outta me. Plus constantly having a film crew there, I feel like I wouldn’t be able to rest.
This is why having a good contractor when building a house is SO important... HOWEVER and Ive been wondering if Im noticing this as confirmation bias or if its true, but it seems people in general are less competent at complex tasks then they used to be. So to me lately it seem its also just as likely Linus would be dealing with major screw ups by some expensive "pro" as doing these things in a do it yourself janky way.
Man, I am getting chills with all the wireless protocols. My opinion is that this kind of automation should be done wires and a plc. In the long run it will just work.
Yeah and too many proprietary devices trying to work together. Would be easier to just do everything wired with some off the shelf sensors. Either PLCs or Arduino.
And proprietary protocols and the lack of standardization cause the bad software because it has to be written against reverse-engineered systems without documentation.
As someone who owns an AC company and watches your show quite a bit this got me dying. I got a few ecobee‘s too but buddy’s right the newer ones sense occupancy. But honestly, you really only needed to get one ecobee and you could’ve bought a ton of their sensors which also detect occupancy and put the sensors throughout your home. That’s what I did two thermostat six sensors. Sensors are also super small. And can be hidden anywhere!
I was going to mention something about those communicating thermostats being installed under the ecobee‘s because those touch screens put out a ton of heat. You can calibrate and adjust the ecobee, but it’s best to move them. Both of those systems can be ran through one thermostat. A lot of the communicating units can still be ran on the traditional five wire hook up as well as the communicating two wire hook up.
One more thing - If the valves are solenoid valves, trust me at some point they will damage these cheap Chinese relays. I would suggest you to add an arc suppression circuit to the relays or go with a solid state relays. Solenoid valves can cause the relay contacts to "glue" due to the arcing. Trust me, I learned this the hard way. So Jake, fix this before Linus' wife gets angry :D
Dude! That explains why my AC kept killing relays! I got some 30a rated relays a couple years ago which seem to be working well but ill look into that arc suppression!
@@ChrisTopher-wl6pd Shelly offer RC snubbers in their online store for pretty cheap. You can also make your own with a resistor and a capacitor but its a bit ugly.
Should not need surge suppression diodes on ac coils, as by nature of ac n9 back emf. For inductive loads when using ac output relays need suitable overating due to in rush / magnetising current
Now you have local control! If your relay board ever goes out and you need heat before you can fix it, you can manually turn on zones by pushing that silver lever all the way to the right. There's spring tension you are working against when the zone valve is not powered. But if you just push the silver lever with more force you can run the zone. There is a little metal hook on the bottom that you can get the lever to rest in, thereby holding it open without power.
Linus, a Heat Pump should work constantly. It adapts the interior temperature based on the outdoor temperature. It measures the outdoor temperature and heats up the house. The thermostats should always be ''open''. This is the only way you could a constantly warm house without temperature spikes and without high costs. The heat curve should be as flat as possible.
Also the hydronic compensation should be turned on in the thermostats, which learn how quickly they heat up and cool down and compensate for that. Neither of the problems outlined in this video should really be a problem at all. Run the heat pump at either a high or low level and allow the hydronic compensation to keep the in-floor heating at a constant level too.
What are you talking about? It should work consistently yes, but it won’t always be 100%. Heat pumps have a lower limit of how cold the outside air can be before it physically can’t pull any more heat out of it. Given he lives in Canada and it’s real cold there, he will need to supplement with in-floor heating in the cold months.
I think analogue is a lot better. You can make an analogue circuit as complex as you like, but in the end, they work all the time like that Mercury switch that Linus rolls his eyes at did the same thing was not on the Cloud or relied on Web API and didn't an IT certificate to figure out it was either on or off.
@@JamesScholesUK I hope this is a Woosh. If you converted your house to florent bulbs guess what you probably had as much Mercury Vapour (which is the dangerous part). it's in a glass ampule it can't just magically get out. Also it mostly gives you Brain damage.
You can't set a schedule with analog thermostats or control them remotely, which are actually pretty substantial benefits. Handling just those would be simple too. Linus wanting to incorporate presence detection into his HVAC automation and avoid cloud services is really the main source of these problems. That and having two separate heating systems. I think an analog backup to make sure the smart system doesn't misbehave too badly would be prudent though.
Same here. Just seeing 4 or 5 different switches next to every door make it so unpleasant and ugly to me. Just to control temperature... I think the point to me is everything looks SO crowded.
It's just pure lunacy that is mostly for entertainment value. But... not really enjoying it if the kids are the one putting up with his antics, they have nothing to do with this and yet suffered the consequences of it. Linus, there's a reason why everyone else keep their heating system SIMPLE.
Might as well knock the cost of completely redoing the entire heating and cooling system for the house because there's no way a new buyer is getting that working.
6:12 Jake loves local connection stuff, but I love that access panel / wall mount for the pipes and related electronics! Everything is so beautifully laid out in a very easy to access configuration :3
At NCR 30 years ago we would put a soldering station on a stack of books under the thermostat when the computer room got too warm. So yes you need to make sure no warm devices are near your 'stats if you want good data.
The ecobee thermostats allow you to calibrate/ offset the temperature sensors. For best results, get some matte black spray paint and cut an aluminum can open and flatten it, then using some thread, hang it at chest level in the middle of a room for a day or so, and the. Using an IR thermometer, check the temperature periodically throughout the day. Then using the average temperature delta between it and the ecobee, add that offset to the thermostat.
Wanted to also add that you can pretty much use any matte black object that has a very low thermal mass. I personally use a soda can section because they are very thin, but still durable enough to be reused when needed. Depending on the home construction you may need to do the test twice, once in the winter, and once in the summer, then writing down your winter and summer offset, then switch to one of those depending on the seasons.
Just use an ecobee sensor and place it in a spot that better represents the room's temperature and have it read from that sensor instead. Probably easier
@@jeremiahkuehne2400 While it would be good to use multiple sensors, compared to other companies, ecobee gouges like crazy on their sensor prices, in addition to needing expensive batteries that do not last anywhere near the advertised times. Beyond that, they refuse to add much needed functionality that will play to their strengths, for example, The ecobee can control the heating, cooling , and fan separately, why not allow me to use have the system cycle just the fan if the temperature delta between upstairs and downstairs exceeds a specified amount?
Keeping server room heat inside the house should be standard practice when it's cold outside. Feed that heat to the heat pump to make it more efficient.
honestly - you did the same mistakes most people do when it comes to smart homes - a lot of different vendors, no real "standard" used and worst of all - wireless stuff. in my experience, the only working, standardized way to do a smart home is KNX / EIB Bus. you can mix any vendor with it, it can be done with only wired components (the most important part, wireless in any way or form is shit for reliable stuff) and is overall extremely stable (decentralized approach). Downside - its more expensive and probably not broadly available in the US and Canada? here in Europe (or more specific Germany) it is THE go to Standard for Smart Business installations and used by any Smart-Home owner who wants a pain free experience and is able to spend the "extra". if you are interested in how you would work with a KNX system to avoid some of the problems you had, i can share more details on it :)
So True! I'm doing an apprenticeship as a building IT specialist and have a lot to do with KNX. Linus should totaly integrate it into his Home. There are so many possibilities and you can even integrate it into Homeasisstant.
I've been renovating my house at the same time Linus has. While immensely envious of his relative house-peen, this video rings very true. The pursuit of integrated tech perfection whilst being hyper aware of the ideal and the disparity of a realistic scenario, is incredibly demoralizing. As they say, ignorance is bliss and I'm now left envious of oblivious plebs.
The 3 blankets thing is just weird but also just normal if you don't have proper quilts for some reason and don't like heating you're house overnight for no good reason. You're sleeping grab that extra blanket and maybe even a hat you'll be just as confortable and save money.
After a couple years using automation in my house, I can say what´s worth is turning the lights on/off at sunset/rise, and that´s it. Everything else is just a pain to mantain.
I always got the impression that most people who have these things have a usecase that warrents automating maybe one or two things... and then everything else is just causing them more problems and expense rather than actually improving their lives in any way.
FYI: There is a native Firmware for ESP-Relay-Hardware like you used called ESPHome... This is part of HomeAssistent and therefor fully integrated (eg no MQTT needed)...
Probably because these American Standard things have an unnecessary bright display. And iirc Linus aint even at fault there, since the contractor used proprietary tech in that system, that only can communicate with these. Or maybe I'm completely wrong and these things are just as reliable as every gadget made out of Chinesium. Looks good, but not for long
@@meuchooo I did make this comment before Linus mentioned that he didn't want those thermostats, but it's insane to design a thermostat that just sits there making heat. Even if you want a stupidly fancy automatic switch flipper, you can do it without wasting power like that. You're probably right though.
IMPORTANT- a heat pump should be using weather compensation and therefore the thermostats and valves need to remain open to get as much volume in the system as possible. Instead of zoning, increasing and reducing the heating (which is way less efficient) the system should be balanced to spread heat across the whole house to keep the home at a constant temperature. Look up Heat Geek for more information!
That's not what's happening though. The in-floor heating is using a natural gas fired boiler. I saw no mention of how they intend to balance the in-floor heat boiler and the mini-split system.
You haven't seen the other videos? If nobody is going to be in RoomA, just close it off (Door and Vents) but keep the rest open. No need to heat/cool a room where nobody is. You like 22°C but in the other room they prefer 20°C? zones are your friend
@@notalostnumber8660 any rooms within the thermal envelope of the property will be sucking heat from other rooms unless insulated internally, meaning a heat pump will need to run hotter to compensate. To achieve the best possible scop you want as much surface area as possible on the emitters.
The best thing about those mercury thermostats is that you can wire in parallel means to turn on the heater. A very simple method with no cloud requirements. Add some esp32s, temp sensors and relays and write your own code.
It is all local. So hacking it is pretty hard. You either have get physical access to his network, or you have to hack one of his PCs and use them as a bridge into his network. So no additional attack surface. But stronger consequences if it does happen i guess.
For the most part, Tasmota also talks directly to HA via the Tasmota integration. You just need to SetOption19 0 on your devices. Should work for most entities.
This video perfectly illustrates why I haven’t touched home automation stuff for myself yet, even though theoretically I could set it up with my IT skills. It’s just far too much trouble to get it to work the way I want it to, too many companies with too many products adhering to too many disparate standards or using proprietary garbage, and far too much bodging and kludging just to get what should be a straightforward switch to work. I come home to relax from work, not to continue having to troubleshoot network connections because my lights won’t turn on anymore.
I know right? So much easier to just setup a "smart" digital thermostat floor heater and or portable AC unit that is just set to the temperature you like and just let it turn on and off on its own to adjust the temperature. Sure not anywhere near as efficient as what a true smart thermostat system like Ecobee or Nest or what not but you don't have to spend hours of your life getting it set up and then have to spend hours troubleshooting if something inevitably goes horribly wrong...
@@kingzach74 Also like, a smart thermostat or switch doesn’t need any access to the internet whatsoever to be smart, and it shouldn’t need any software updates to keep running properly, it should already be robust out of the box. These are already solved problems without “smart” devices, even just a programmable thermostat or timer switch allows better robustness and flexibility than a “smart” one, and introducing some software automation-ability to it shouldn’t totally bork the system as it was existing before like the ones on the market do today.
It's not bad once you learn the lesson that you should only add functionality, and never remove it. That means if there is an on/off light switch, it should always do what it's supposed to, and turn the lights on/off even if the wifi and/or controller are down. In this case, they had thermostats that should work as expected when everything goes down if wired in, but decoupled it from doing its job, and now it only works if the least reliable component (home assistant and the home network) is fully functional. This is a bad example of how to do a smart-home setup, and it's always going to be a pain.
ps. We know that the Ecobees can actually be wired into the zone valves directly, but this setup gives us much greater flexibility with full HomeAssistant control, and the potential for configuring the Ecobees and American Standard thermostats to work together better.
Love you!
Okay
Hi LTt love from India Assam
Dont say that, what if you house is really dumb.
All these issues could have been avoided with a Loxone system. :/
Linus's smart home series is the best ad against smart home lmao
I've known it since the beginning. It's fun to watch but not a chance in hell would I want to subject myself to living in it. Way too many failure points. I'd lose it every time something breaks. A tinkerers dream I guess and I'm not one.
yep. in time maybe things will standardise out and things will just work, but atm it seems like you need 50 different devices where each one does not play nice with the other.
give us an open standard where everything can talk to each other with mandated local control with cloud being a bonus if you choose.
@@HHalcyon It's like if your house was a BMW lmfao.
@@HHalcyon Im a tinkerer I love it. But if it's minus 10 outside and my home thinks im in tropical weather conditions ill still be annoyed at it :D
If he can't do it, with a whole team helping and researching.
I won't even try lmao
"Dad, my room is cold!"
"Okay, let me just quickly reboot the house."
From the wireless speakers to all of the thermostats everywhere to the light switches that don't work, this house is absolutely hilarious.
Linus will probably spend all his free time trouble shooting.
@@jeroenk3570 you misspelled Jake
House.exe has stopped responding...
DIY equipment you buy on amazon or at best buy isn't intended for this scale and hes learning the hard way. Loxone, KNX and other real smart home product lines would have made everything about this system actually function, and at this rate for less money.
@@BobDevV you misspelled job security.
I remember working in HVAC and we had a house that we installed AC in and The homeowner complained that it would freeze her out in the afternoon. We asked her what time and she said around 3:00 so made an appointment to be there the next day at 3:00. The light would come in from the window and hit a mirror and get reflected onto the thermostat like it was Indiana Jones finding the room where the ark of the covenant is held. We just tilted that mirror bit, problem solved
Damn, i would never have thought of that kind of problem 😂
That's hilarious. You just never know what gremlin is lurking to screw up a plan.
@@elchartps3 Happens alot
And different times of the year… people are funny
Stonehenge of a house equinox established
If Linus ever sells this house, they're going to have to write a massive technical manual for the new owners and be on call for tech support just to turn the heat on.
Manual just needs Jake's cell in it, he's tethered to this project for life.
Thats why thay made the videos never mind the next owner but him in 5 years like what the hell was the plan with this or how did I rig this thing up and make it work years ago
It will basically be impossible to sell a house like this without ripping all the tech out. It's all super niche to Linus' needs. Very unlikely he will ever want to sell though.
I recently sold my house and i took everything with me to our new build house. everything still worked manually so i also destroyed the technical manual and am writing a new one ;)
No one would buy it after seeing that mech room, so no prob!
The dual thermostats with neither actually doing a full job is killing me 😂
My wife would divorce me
We need a linus - tim the tool man taylor cross over episode
@@Chunkosaurus Luckily, his wife handles the accounting and knows that things not working will bring in more views/more revenue.
Which is so wierd because the ecobee should be able to handle both. It can be hooked to a Heatpump and an Auxiliary heat and you can configure it to activate Aux Heat at certain temps.
Ahh, the wonders of proprietary protocols.
I like how every new episode of this series is a new argument against smart homes.
It is because they're unnecessarily complicating shit because Jake is a nerd. Realistically, you don't need this much shit to just control your temperature. Your boiler/heat directly connects with the Ecobee. The problem of 'not relying on the cloud' is such a stupid argument. Like the 1 time my Ecobees haven't worked is when my internet went down and guess what I did. I got my ass out of the sofa and controlled the temperature from the thermostat. 5 minutes later, it came back and it has never been an issue again. He's gonna regret putting so many layers and hops for simple things in a year or two.
@@Nathan5791 These things should withstand more than most cloud providers are willing to provide a service. Good luck after that.
I actually see these as a reason to push companies to sell more local equipment and pressure not having all the proprietary bs
Because in the truly spirit of LTT he had to do everything by himself. When you integrate everthing into 1 you likely run into communicate problem between each component instead of 1 unified system, it make troubleshooting and maintenance a nightmare. But the bright side is you wouldn't have been stuck in 1 eco-system or have to pay for subscription services just to use the product you already bought.
@@JtoddP73 Yep, there are upsides and downsides to all the things. I like to go the middle way and make chunks of "services" from one brand. For example heating is one ecosystem, AC is one and so on. Heating for me is Honeywell's evohome. Its one unified system that works even if router+home assistant goes down. But its hooked up to HA for advanced features like, if we leave home for more than 48 hours then turn down the heat. That way I have a local fallback for every service and if internet or HA goes down they can still function on their own.
As for DIY vs out of the box solutions, it should be chosen based on the individual's skillset and ability to troubleshoot. Those relay models that Linus has are great. I have one triggering some non essential stuff, but I am not sure I would rely on them when it comes to heating. If you do DIY stuff, then be prepared to do troubleshooting when it goes wrong or looses pairing etc. because you don't have a vendor's support. If you go vendor system, you would have support from them. In this case when there is an ecobee, an off the shelf relay and home assistant system, then you are definitely left on your own (none of the wendors are going to help you). Not to mention that if something happens to a relay and it cannot shut off a valve and you have water or heating running for long and get a very high bill, if you have a unified vendor system for it, then insurance can cover your loss (high heating bill) because of the malfunction. If you go DIY they will not.
So these are things to consider.
After watching this, my conclusion is that "smart homes" and "home assistant/homekit" are all so insanely complicated that it only works if have Jake come over to your house to install it.
Solution is to just use devices that work even when the smart home features all fail. My house has smart switches using Z-Wave, and the system works great until the Z-Wave integration fails. Then it just works like a regular house until you take the time to fix the integration (restart the VM and update the OS for me). The critical part is making sure everything acts normal when all the smart features are gone.
@@grex2595 Better solution: Everyone gets a personal Jake :)
I personally think my dumb home is far superior. You know what I have to do if I want the heating on? I flick a switch.
@@EvidensInsania it sure is nice to just be able to turn up your heating or cooling from your phone or other device though
@@EvidensInsania I say hey Siri set ac to 72 and stay in my bed. Or when I leave the house the ac automatically goes to 77.
I feel like the amount of effort that goes into fully setting up this system so that you never have to touch the thermostat again is equal to the amount of effort you'd spend over a lifetime adjusting the temperature valve on your radiators manually.
As my heat is provided by a steam radiator that has 2 settings - on or off - I so identify with this. It's far better than my previous situation, which had a gas furnace, floor reegisters, and a roommate who kept shoving the thermostat to 80 F or 26.6 C becasue 20.5 C was too mainstream (and the gas bill wasn't in his name).
True, and for most people it wouldn't be worth it. I enjoy stupid tech projects, so setting up something like this would be very fulfilling.
@@conroy644 taking into consideration the hiking prices of electric power and natural gases after the situation with Ukraine i decided to go back to the terracotta stove and wood burning. my house was never so warm before...
Most people don't need a system this complex to get automation and comfort. This is like a German car.... overengineered and liable to break with great cost.
I feel fairly confident that the effort to set this up is significantly more than they'd spend touching the thermostat for the rest of their lives. I mean, they only showed us configuring the system without even going into fiddly controls. Oh, and the bit about the fiddly controls - I'd guess they're probably still going to touch this system more over time to update its configuration as their schedules change.
But this way they can actually program it to do things like driving the heat a bit further in the direction they need it to go when power is cheap, so they don't need to drive it as much when power is expensive, and possibly have the system set to not heat/cool while they're away so long as the temperature stays over water pipe freezing cold, but then turn on in time to get the temperature back to where they want it by the time they expect to be home.
Also, some of us just futz with stuff, like Max said.
These smart home videos are great in convincing me to never have crucial home features dependent on a smart device. Thanks Linus!
It is what professional installers like myself fear most. Those half-assed YT retrofit projects by self-declared influencers are becoming a burden for people who make a living with building automation and know exactly what they are doing.
Just imagine this clown troupe using a few home depot pliers and screw drivers to tune a Tesla. Nobody would buy an electric car after watching them!
I'm all for home automation but so far, the things I would most like to automate are cloud based and/or proprietary.
@Cinneray i agree, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke
Same. I have no interest in a smart home. The same way I have no interest in a cell phone equipped car. This reminds me of 3d tv and VR. New tech being pushed on users who for the most part don't need it.
I'm not clear what the end goal is?. Is a "smart home" really easier to live in than a dumb one?
I have my own server rack too and more machines than you can shake a stick at but, I have no interest in making my house "smarter".
Automation with ZERO! wireless conections i might accept but anything else is just suicidedly dumb... especialy in transportation and homes....
It was in 2023 Linus' house became self-aware. In June it launched a full scale attack on its occupants. Some say it was all because of a missing semicolon in a heating script written by Jake.
Nice opener with the neon logo, glad to see the on-device local-network mantra being sung video to video, sucl< it Eufy! As a Mist myself, I can tell ya, clouds are over rated. Best of luck with the heat there eh.
@jappleng8283 Missing /half/ of his colon.... We have to hope that it isn't missing a period. Could have a Demon Seed situation!
It's always some mundane detail...
It's always Jake's fault
@@larryroyovitz7829 This is not some mundane detail, Jake!
Linus: “You never want it colder than 19 inside”
Anyone on oil heat: “14 is plenty warm for me this year”
*Anyone in Europe 🙈
@@LuckyLukeTF2 Anyone without a heat pump or free wood or both :-)
District heating and sharing every wall/floor/ceiling with neighbors => 24+c at no extra costs
@@LuckyLukeTF2 Facts!
@@PennyAfNorberg Same for me. District heating is just awesome, especially in an apartment on the 2nd floor of 7. Even better is that our heat is cheap because well over 50% of it comes from waste heat from the local power plant.
I’m sure someone said it already, but ecobee’s have a setting where you can do temperature corrections for each thermostat. If it’s not reading correctly due to another heat source (like another thermostat below it), you can adjust the value displayed to what it should be in the room. Had to do this with my ecobee (with the motion sensor) in my last house. Works like a charm!
Upvote this! There are temperature corrections for thermostats under the contractor settings!
Maybe i didnt pay attention during the video, but wtf is the point of that ecobees panel???
@@Deffine They run the hydronic in floor heating. The rectangular ones run the heat pump, which apparently Linus is only using for air conditioning.
How can it compensate for the equivalent of a mini hair dryer mounted right below it, wafting warmed air right at it all the time?
@@greggv8 after it reads a stable temperature in the room, you can go in and tell it what it should read. If it reads 75°F when it's 70°F, you just use the correction that basically says "display 5°F lower than what you think it is". Nothing actually changes, it just accounts for the extra 5°F of heat coming off another thermostat/TV/etc
If Linus ever sells this house the new home owners are going to have to watch these videos like Tutorials on how to use the house
No one's going to buy this house. The city's going to condemn it to museum status. There'll be a sign out front with a description of the eccentric RUclips Icon Linus Sebastian who built a home that ate him and his family. In one room is that transparent Xiaomi tv showing Linus begging to be freed.
@@biff647019 lmao 🤣
@@biff647019 On the floor across from it - the “kick-proof TV”, finally ended by a rouge Wii remote
@@biff647019 you win LMAO
@@biff647019 😂🤣
Imagine if Jake one day really wanted to prank Linus. The extend he would be able to go to. He basicly knows everything there is to know about Linus' house 😄
Dennis would still fuck up the plan somehow
@dot don't call poor dennis clown
he's much more than that
@@vaisakhkm783I mean, your right. He’s like a chaos god with how quickly he broke that lamp in that recent vid.
Yes, he can freeze him to death, making the temperature upstairs below 19 c.
Extent, not extend. I can't tell if it's a typo or a genuine misunderstanding so I wanted to tell you
Can't wait for the video of Jake explaining to the next home owners how everything works.
They'll revert back to dumb mercury switches.
"Here's a RUclips playlist"
After the sell you will have to subscribe Jake on a monthly fee to keep it all running... Finally, your home as a service.
My computer science professors all warned us against home automation and IoT. Linus's videos with his smart home convinced me
Life cycle is also wrong. A boiler lasts 15 years, radiators easily outlast that. How long doe smart home standards stay?
so instead of solving the problem by building stronger security they suggest not to use the tech?
Explains why these people are in academics and not building businesses
@@Abhishek_78the comment clearly says warned. And not "don't ever do this"
Maybe your lack of reading comprehension is more embarrassing than these academics.
@@pizzablenderif you go through a bit more effort and use an open-source versatile frameworkand firmware such as esphome coupled with home assistant, they should last decades, if not for an almost infinite time.
I see this, and see how many "moving parts" there are to this set up and all I can think is "wow, this is going to be a nightmare eventually". I mean if it's this complicated now, how much worse is it going to be when things inevitably start breaking?
That'll never happen...it has to start working first.
"More content!"
As someone in the commercial HVAC world it is not uncommon for units to be connected to a BAS/BMS. The equipment usually has a service mode that allows you to bypass and check the unit operation.
For your everyday residential tech who isnt used to this, it could lead to more problems than it solves, but my guess is the installing contractor will most likely maintain this equipment when it eventually does have issues. So they should at least be familiar with the set up.
@@OramWerd At what price? And when Locutous isn't around, what then?
This one specifically is just a horrible setup with seemingly a lot of solutions just to solve for previous problems, rather than taking a step back and really taking a good look at finding a reliable, easy solution that addresses the core problem you're trying to solve.
In this case many of the problems appear caused by wanting to combine multiple systems and finding hacks to make everything work together. The Tasmota and Ecobee system work together pretty well already, but then there's the American Standard system they are trying to make work as well and I don't really remember why that was exactly.
A solution that would've given far less trouble for example was just to set it up as they had originally planned, with no thermostat in the room, just a thermometer and having it all be controlled through the Home Assistant interface. Would've been one system (Tasmota) and one system for temperature readings. They added the complexity of the Ecobee and that American Standard system because the family wanted the ability to control the heat per room. What they could've done instead is follow the original plan, but simply add a touch screen with a Home Assistant control panel on it (which is more in line with how Home Assistant is designed to be used).
I don't blame them at all for the situation they're in though. I know exactly how this evolved into mess, because I've done it myself. Instead of going back to basics, you tend to "add" solutions. Either because you think that one little extra thing isn't that big a deal or because you bought something expensive you feel you now have to make work.
Similarly, there's a strong "while you're in there" feeling where you're like, well if I'm already doing this, I might as well just add this little thing.
I am a little unclear on the whole Z-Wave debacle though. With their backgrounds I would've thought they understood the value of having at least the core of your home being wired up and not be wireless. There's super robust systems used in office buildings, hospitals and homes like KNX for all this kind of stuff. All which integrate easily with Home Assistant. They could've added some Z-Wave here and there to supplement it or get control in places where it was cost prohibitive to put wired devices, but to have your whole house on Z-Wave is a pretty brave move if you ask me.
Same for the garage door. They tried three times and only at the end really looked at what they were trying to solve (they literally describe their requirements clearly at the start of their FINAL video on the topic).
But all of this is definitely part of the fun of it. If you don't enjoy thinking about things this way, home automation sucks and I wouldn't touch it. If it all works it's magic, but it's not worth the hassle if you don't at least enjoy the hassle a little.
I love Linus going on about how cold it is in his house and Jake is casually standing in the background wearing shorts and t-shirt
yeah the temps he shows are the goals I will my AC would COOL my house to lol.
before I lost some weight, I was the same. Didn't realize fat is such a great insulator. Drowns you in sweat when it's sunny though
overweight people are warmer?
@@armanke13 internal temp doesn't go down as fast as slim people. temp is still the same.
@@anb1142 More insulation means more retained heat. So for the same input heat there is less heat loss and hence higher temperature. Whilst the main parts of the body will be at the same temperature regardless, it does affect the rest of the body, especially the sections that generally get cold, like hands.
My take on smart home systems is that they should always only help automate or more easily control things, but not be the only way to control things. That's the downside of these fancier systems vs aftermarket add-ons, you don't have still the manual controls in place in case things stop working. Most everything in my house I can now control from my phone, yet my wife who can't be bothered can still do things the old school way.
I think this is the wisest way to go about creating your smart home systems.
I appreciate Linus for going through all this to showcase how IOT is hell and mercury switches are awesome.
Just like I always say about mercury: Don't knock it 'till you tried it, the taste really grows on you.
It’s just amazing to me that he didn’t just do the most simple option of using the American standard thermostats to control the in floor heat through auxiliary contacts. I get wanting all the controls to be local and not dependent on the internet but even my nest thermostat will still cool and heat my house if the internet stops working.. this whole system is a shit show.
@@alexlacey9808It’s because he thinks avoiding the 1 in a 1,000,000,000 chance that the internet connection is down and someone wants to change the thermostat at that exact same moment is worth the headache he’s created. That one time someone won’t have to get up and manually adjust it instead of using their phone is just a bridge too far
Can you imagine Linus selling this place someday and the new owner, who probably struggles to set up their new iPad, has to figure all this shit out?
Linus will sell Jake with the house
@@pinkside692 Jake rental.
I cringe when I see a lot of other RUclipsr's who build homes with all this smart home technology. Either they'll always be troubleshooting it, accept that certain things never work, or will be calling repair people quite a bit in the future.
Good Luke finding the secret room.
all he has to do is send them the links to these videos, ez
Linus: Has like a billion devices in his house that could be configured to run all of their communications over a wire
Also Linus: Why are my speakers that probably should be wired having interference?
This house is probably using up the entire 5 GHz band
And his primary communication should be KNX when starting a smarthome from scratch in a bare house. And everything which is bolted to the wall shouldn't use wifi.
@@onnikukkonenI’d be surprised if Linus is using a PSK for his WiFi.
The house is probably just using all the bands! 2.4, 5, 6, an unreleased 76!
All wifi on channel 69(blame Jake)
@@FluffyAnnoyed Definitely... He should've just gone with KNX or Loxone and let it setup by a professional... you can still implement it in HA. But then he couldn't make like 20 videos about his smart home.
I had this same setup using ecobee as a simple thermostat. Eventually switched to just using a thermostat on homeassistant and having a tablet on the wall with a custom home assistant dashboard. I stopped using the ecobee since I kept having weird bugs/disconnection issues. Great setup now with homeassistant! Thanks for the video.
Blaming Jake, always a good way to go.
Yes
Same vibe as blaming the older brother
#BlameJames , erm, #BlameJake
Yeah, fuck that guy!
#FakeJake
#ThanksForNothing
You can really understand Linus' priorities when he goes to great lengths to run Ethernet cables to every wall of every room in the house but can't be bothered to run 2 more wires for each thermostat or 2 wires for reliable speakers. And when you have to have someone (Jake) set up scripts and train you on how to use your own 'smart' home system, you know its way more complicated than it needs to be.
The speakers is because he already had expensive wireless ones. And they have a theatre room completely wired up wtd you going on about??
@@sid6645 The speakers should be wired though, because the wireless setup is causing problems and the speakers won't be moved anyways
@@felix871 his TV set up is super jank because he has a theatre room. Its just his family's unfortunate preference that they like the jank set up.
@@sid6645 I know, I also prefer the theatre room but maybe they want to watch two different movies at the same time or something, he can definitely afford to have two proper setups. It’s just that wireless stuff usually sucks
That's the problem when you take free wireless speakers from Sony. You have to actually use them.
I love how it's been over a year now and Linus STILL doesn't have a functioning home HVAC system. His wife must be *miles* more patient and understanding than mine.
Your screw ups don't contribute to a seven figure income though, just guessing :p
@@SpencerHHO exactly. she can go sulk in her lamborghini
@@varunaX heated seats, with massage. Very comfortable sulking in CA winter.
@@usucdik Canadian*
Yvonne controls the money and coin purse for Linus' businesses - you can safely assume everything either gets approved by her, or is her idea to begin with.
Ecobee room sensors can be added to each zone for about $50 a pop, and can be easily configured to be the primary temperature sensor instead of the thermostat. This would be a lot easier than swapping the orientation of the thermostats.
I love seeing this type of content as an hvac contractor, thanks and keep up the great work!
Yeah I think it would just be smarter to get a regular thermostat that can't be shut off by your electrical company
Smart homes seem like a nightmare to me. I mean, good luck to the next house owner navigating and configuring this stuff. Especially if the server one day dies. 😅
Or the server rack doesn't sell with the house? Yikes!
Honestly that is the issue with super custom stuff like this. It's really neat being able to make all this work, exactly how you want it, but if all these guys went away, pretty much every HVAC person is going to be confused af.
Linus with Computers: What, Linux does it slightly differently than I'm used to? Heresy.
Linus with homes: Light switches? That's too easy. What am I, a caveman?
How about using a 20 year old iPad because the company went out of business or stopped updating their terrible software after 2 years. Hell, old smart devices might be gold to invest in given how many dumbshit devices rely on outdated software already.
@@RandomTechWZ At that point they better have really good documentation. But yeah, most of all this stuff would probably just get replaced by new owners.
I am HVAC technician in the northern united states and I really think you'd benefit from hiring a tech for a while. I love the solutions your coming up with for these complex issues and really think a HVAC technicians knowledge could add whole new levels of content here. Similar to what happened with the electrician you had on multiple times in the past with the mini split and the wiring projects! Big fan of those episodes as well
HVAC engineer here and def agree with you. So much would be solved with just a little bit of insider knowledge. Our industry isn't incredibly hard to understand, but navigating it can be a real pain. A guide would help them immensely.
Just a random homeowner here in the mid-Atlantic US who has construction experience. I don’t screw with HVAC. “Smart home” devices is not a replacement for hiring an actual professional (and I have smart lights, locks, curtains, etc etc etc).
He can make more money by not doing that. He can keep making videos of him stumbling through some dumb setup he came up with and then more videos troubleshooting it when it breaks.
Just a random youtube content absorber here....hello
Could you guys imagine responding to a breakdown at this house lol.
Your experience has convinced me to let this entire concept sit for another few years. Thanks
I am a Controls Engineer. Its nice seeing people so excited about what I do for a living. The industry is really changing at the moment and becoming a lot more IoT and integration based. Despite the lack of sophistication (literally some open or closed control valves with end switches), what Linus has got is a testament to how versatile the integration of different systems is becoming, and just how optimised you can make it with the use of smart thermostats.
All this has taught me is that my dumb house is the smarter house.
But how can you live without your toilet connecting to WiFi so you can use an app on your phone to flush ?! Are just gonna use a button/handle on the actual toilet like some animal ?!
@@artur6912 Yes.
Peak wisdom, *poo in a hole in the woods*
Recycling and fertilizing the earth
@@artur6912 are you serious?? An app.. what about "motion detection" via "iris scan" to detect dilation and finalisation?? Apps, buttons, smart phone?? You're a PLEB of the highest order.
If Linus has kept ANY of this after 3 years I'll be very surprised. It feels so kludge.
He’ll probably just sell the house and try again with another.
The house is as smart as the guy who owns it. If he had done some research, he could have done it with the only proven & open global standard for Smart buildings and that‘s KNX. It was introduced 30y ago and is still the #1 standard for digital building automation and with v3 of the protocol and the huge installed base, it will probably be around for another 30y. Linus is just adding more junk, that will invariably end up in a landfill soon, without having ever worked properly. I still can‘t understand why he thinks he can tell people anything about he subject matter, given his track record of completely screwing up anything apart from Gaming PCs.
@@maxking3 Why do you care so much dawg
@@justynpollard3969 he has a reach of 15+ million people thats why
@@maxking3 Or its his house and he can do it the way he wants. All through the comments on all these videos you have people advocating for different systems, doesnt mean your suggestion is the right one and he cant listen to everyone. Not everything on youtube has to be done professionally or the way you would have done it. People can still show what they did and talk about the systems they use, you dont have to be an expert to be allowed to make a video about something. The videos are still interesting. If you think you can do so much better then buy a house and make a youtube series adding smart devices.
I learned one important lesson watching Linus's house problems, absolutely never go full high-tech on home stuff, causes nothing but problems for a slight increase in comfort
Indeed. For heating in particular just get yourself a heat pump with weather compensation and once you set it up you never touch it again. No thermostats needed.
To get comfy we gotta get right uncomfy
12:40 This is how I felt the whole video working with Celsius! 🤣
As a former plumber, I cannot fathom why anyone would willingly do this to themselves.
Imagine buying a house like this. Oh yeah the heating won't work at all because it was all hack job held together by custom scripts running with home assistant on my NAS that I'm taking with me. Good luck getting it going again.
@@TheAkashicTraveller orrr, he'll have an electrician stick a $50 thermostat there instead and the whole thing is bypassed. Or any of the new wireless controller systems that are out now, or will be by then, and again problem solved, quick cheap and easy, back to a dumb home. It's not some irreversible change, it's using the same contacts and switching methods any dumb system would use.
As an electrian I can’t imagine trying to trouble shoot this house
@@TheAkashicTraveller they did bother wiring it up for thermostats even if they're just using it for power and all they have to do is add a traditional relay box at the valve and tie the thermostat and it's really not that big of a deal
I'm a software engineer and would love to have this house. Been able to fully control it remotely and automatically is something that is just awesome.
Mosquitto author here - thanks for the mention, it's always nice to see it put to use - and keeping people warm is definitely a good use.
I wonder if Linus can write off his house as a business expense yet
More than likely he can, I don't know how Canadia does tax law
If he records it he can write it off as an business expenses
Yeah but then if he ever loses the business then he would lose the house, I doubt that's what he has done. He could write off a bunch of the hardware that he has installed though.
The price of all the smart home equipment for sure, and he can take a tax deduction for using his residence as a workplace.
100% YES
I love how much tech your house has, and I enjoy that you know enough to keep the interface communication well in-house.
Thanks for making this a YT series by the way, I'll never own my own home so it's cool to see what a fellow tech nerd would be able to do.
These videos are great for reinforcing how fragmented, unreliable and problematic smart home technology can be. It's great when it works, but it's a nightmare when it doesn't. They're time & money sinks for your house because there's too many moving parts and the hardware & software creators don't always stay updated with patches or communicate with each other.
Overall, the smart home industry is a mess.
imagine being isolated in a bad winter and heating stopped working because a line code in the software got corrupted caused by a wi-fi worm virus downloaded by your kid
I have a dozen or so bulbs/switches for automating outdoor lighting, turning on lights when someone gets home. And its randomly a giant pain in the ass. My thermostat is set and forget other than switching from heat to cool.
It's an extremely niche market for wealthy westerners who think that standing up to change the room temperature is too much hard work.
The normal "industry" smart homes a giant mess. This is why linus is running everything off his own in home server. To fix anything he can do it you dont have to call tech support for their cloud when it messes up.
My house has all the locks on the cloud but all of them have keys and also pads. Heating system is tied to the same cloud but can be operated manually. Anyone who links their house fully onto a cloud based system with no real manual override is insane.
@@nanaliciousftw you could always just go open the electric valves manually
LTT socks at 2:27 ?
I guess they're getting closer to meeting Linus' standards to competing with Darn Tough!
just starting watching, had to pause and come down and see if anyone had noticed pixelated/censored socks, or wondering if he just got Darn Tough to make some ltt branded socks
@@kleesenheim7076 same
08:48 "he just thinks he's helping" - like handing your toddler relative an unplugged controller so they think they're playing too
I like how this shows, no amount of planning will safe you from having to work around stuff you didn’t expect.
unknown unknowns are the bane of all plans.
That's a cool system. Mine works differently. Basically, if I feel cold, I turn the valve on the radiator counterclockwise. Has never failed me.
I'd like to see a video summarizing every video they've done on Linus' house. Maybe once it's done.
Narrator: "It's never done"
So in around 23years?
Well. They do have a playlist already for that.
For now here's the whole playlist: ruclips.net/p/PL8mG-RkN2uTzgyA8zzE8vRB3_ZXQfuFRz
In home automation, there is a term called the "wife approval factor". Basically, if your non-techie spouse has trouble using your smart home as designed, then it fails the sniff test.
I went with off-the-shelf stuff that has a good reputation (Philips Hue, TP-link Kasa, etc) and I control it with Google Home. Not as sexy as Home Assistant, but there is minimal fuss and any quirks can be fixed by turning it off and on again.
Jake is a very smart and hard working guy, and yet does not take himself seriously. Class act.
The heating system is an over complicated mess.
@@travisash8180 exactly - but it is content ;)
@@travisash8180 Truth.
However it is/was the only way to meet Linus's goal of having smart home control and automation without being reliant on a cloud service that might not exist tomorrow.
Did you consider getting a ground loop installed for the heat pump when you had your pool getting dug out? Ground sourced heat pumps can operate well below sub zero and are in use all over Scandinavia
And you can get hydronic heat pumps (heats water like a boiler to have in floor heat) and can also be used for a domestic hot water heater. Never a bad idea to have a backup heat source, but they really missed on this one. Especially the efficiency that could have been had.
Probably not. Though would be nice having that under the pool or something, in non freezing depth.
They do perform much better than standard heat pumps in these conditions but they can be prohibitively expensive depending on the kind of land you live on etc
@@reilandeubank Cost range for ground heat pumps is about 15-30k €. For Linus, money is not the issue.
But like you said, the type of land you live on is important. Here, you can't dig a well for a ground heat pump if your plot is above groundwater but idk if the loop, which is closer to the surface but delivers less heat for the pump than a well, is still allowed.
@Fortzon vertical loop is also an option. Horizontal takes up more land but for canada will probably be 12-15ft deep minimum depending on area, for good efficiency. Vertical is a well with a U shaped loop, drilled a couple hundred feet deep.
Never have i expected to be scared by what socks linus might be wearing
Glad I’m not the only one who noticed that 😂
Underrated comment
Linus' foot content must be behind a paywall!
@@overamped23042 He puts it on his OnlyFans. It's too sexy for RUclips. (2:24)
You can offset the temperature sensor in the ecobee thermostat by looking for an option called thresholds in the installation settings and offset the temperature accordingly. I had a similar issue with my thermostat incorrectly reporting the temperature.
The one BIG take away i got from this is that you can get local control of the ecobee using the homekit integration instead of having to use ecobees API key. Thanks so much for that it updates the ecobees status SO much faster now. You guys rock 😀
Will this work with everything linked via homekit? I have a few ceiling fans light on my Bond Bridge that has a delay I would like to cut down on.
@@ReedSteiner I would say yes as I do have several meross smart plugs that have homekit integration and that's how I got them connected locally with HA. I just didn't think about the ecobee being a home kit compatible device. As HA docs only talk about using the api key to do the integration.
Only Linus can talk about his kids freezing upstairs then transition into a segway from our sponsor ridgewallet
I’ve gotten pretty disillusioned with smart home products over the years. I’ve lost more time to dropped connections, hub failures, and other issues than I’ve gained from the automations. I’m hoping things mature and standardize more with the introduction of Matter, but it’s been a rough ride in the meantime.
EXACTLY!!
I'd welcome you to homeassistant to be honest. I still have my smartthings hub setup for the zigbee/zwave stuff but I really need to integrate that to my Ha directly but, Ha is definitely very stable for everything I have running wich ends up being quite a bit of stuff
Just wait until the utility companies override your settings, because you're using too much energy/resources! Nothing beats a wood stove lol
@@JoeyJoJoJr0 This is why I wouldn't use any cloud based device. Certain companies are working on these things. Eve Energy uses bluetooth LE and their open standards Thread protocol to have devices talk to each other and not even need WiFi or internet.
@@JoeyJoJoJr0 take your tinfoil hat off. Energy companies want you to use as much energy as possible, they want to sell it to you at the highest price. And if you haven't paid them enough, great! They'll put you on credit and make even more money on interest fees.
What happens when you don't buy wood? Your wood stove stops working.
That's it. That's the "perk" you speak of?
My problem with Home Assistant is all the automation logic is done with YAML config files, which is like trying to write e-mail with a mouse and a virtual keyboard. Just look how a simple oneliner if statement looks like in the HA's Automation UI (14:54)
You can use other stuff as well of course, but then youre adding even more parts to fail. Node red is kind of awesome, I'm trying not to use it though...
9:57 for a second i legitimately thought they were kissing, wtf is my brain doing
I can kind of see Yvonne locking Linus and Jake in the house with a camera till the whole system works properly.
Jake, I highly recommend you get the Smart PID Thermostat integration for H.A. It makes a world of difference especially on radiant floor systems with high run down and run up times. Using this integration will make the binary on/off valve operate more like a 0-100% analog point allowing it compensate for things like high ramp up and ramp down times as well as outdoor air temperature. With some proper PID loop tuning this will completely eliminate temperature setpoint overshoot and undershoot issues.
Yup, ON/OFF systems are only good for low thermal mass heating devices. The impact the PID controller makes on energy saving and temperature control accuracy is actually really big. Also, an outside temperature sensor is a good idea with PID.
@@ExCanMan agree 100%. The H.A. integration I use has a PIDE option with E being the O.A. factor. It takes the difference between your indoor setpoint and outdoor temp and multiplies it by the Ke number you set. It basically functions to create a minimum PID output value at a given O.A. temperature.
I never really considered needing several blankets that big of a deal but now that I think of it I guess most people have good enough heating that they usually don't need more than 1
Just this week bumped my blanket count up to 4. Still have 2 spares ready lol.
What's wrong with using more blankets anyway? XD
I had the same sentiment when I was starting to build my own smart home. The first moment is great but configuring to be right can be complicated so your house goes from smart to dumb really quickly
that feeling when Alexa becomes Lenny....
This made me scrap any smart home plans I’ve had. Even having to re-“pair” the smart lights is really annoying when it happens
Look at KNX. Its wired and works great.
Jesus, yeah. I've got an LED light strip (just a light strip!) that requires a phone app to control, and if there's ever a hiccup in power the thing comes back on unpaired and starts strobing until my network comes back up. Sometimes I have to re-pair it manually, too. None of this smart home connected stuff is worth the hassle.
@@demacherius1 But can you DIY it without ending up on the wrong end of a lawyer?
Yeah, it's enough when you have to reconnect a bluetooth devide like a keyboard and it's acts up and is like "I don't wanna :("....
Being able to connect to a smart system at home through wifi should be possible, but it should also not be crucial to do so.
When I get a house and if I start fiddling with smart things, I'de have high standards for how it should work and not work.
1. Have to work offline.
2. Must connect through wire (both network and power). POE whould be nice.
3. Controllable through a hub/server.
4. Can be controlled manually.
5. What ever else I've missed :)
There's really no need for wifi connectivity for the "smart things" as they talk through the hub. The smart things don't even have to be smart. It's the system in a whole that should be smart.
I mean. A smart system shouldn't be dumber than a non smart system.
@@user2C47 Yes. Its a bus system with 30 Volts so not dangerous. All you do is connect two wires and then configre it in a software thats easy to learn.
No Cloud if you dont order a special server, no network needed and in case something happens you can go to the actors and push a button on the device ta activate/deactivate the output relais.
I work in IT, which is the reason my house has:
- Mechanial locks
- Mechanical windows
- Router with WRT
- No smart home crap
- No Alexa or Google Assistant
- No internet connected thermostats
And i keep a baseball bat close by just in case my printer makes a unexpected noise.
There's a saying. Software engineers trust harware but hardware engineers trust software. Going with the least bad of what you know is probably the best solution.
Lol, same here. I'm occupied with fixing stuff in the company all day, so no way I'd want to tinker with home automation in my spare time.
Late reply, but as an IT professional is your issue with things going to the cloud or automation itself. I figured running everything poe on an airgapped network would be pretty safe.
Smart. Especially the thermostat one.
Floor heating is for continuous heating not to quickly raise the temperature for a couple of hours! you will need to place radiators for that or if you didn't add those during the project phase you can look at IR panels which can provide localized heating. The beauty of IR panels is that you can place these on the sealing above the places you occupy the most EG the dinner table or above the table in the living room where you gather to watch TV. Or above you bed if you calculate it correctly you can place two panels in such a way that either side of the bed has there own temperature. Just keep in mind that IR panels are localized. In combination with a Shelly 1 Gen 3, Shelly BLU button and a Shelly BLU H&T you can easily integrate your panel in to home assistant. The integration of Shelly in Home Assistant is almost child's play! I would include something like Shelly BLU motion so they only work when the aria is occupied this might be some tweaking to get it working in the right window. EG turn of if no movement was detected for an hour.
@Linus im very sure you do, but please make sure your app data or config folders are backed up, maybe even keep a flash drive with just that in the server room. I lost my config once and spent a whole day re doing all of my HA devices, scripts and automations. Glad its coming along!
About 6 months ago I started going all in with Home Assistant and I was blown away by all the things I could do...and then I realized I was spending hours and hours maintaining a smart home when I have extremely limited free time anyway. It quickly became a time suck job and just wasn't worth it.
Yep - I could spend a week developing/tweaking HA just to solve some automation 'problem' that would really only take a few seconds to turn on/off manually.
The sad part is when Linus gets sick and kicks the bucket
His wife just screams....What the Hell is all this crap, and nothing ever works again
She already has that look on her face in the video called "I let my wife down"
Again?
@@bullwinklemoose7232 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Ecobee actually has room sensors, so you can place them around the house where ever you want then use those as the temp sensor. You could do some shenanigans with the comfort setting to basically ignore the wall mounted thermostats and only use the room sensors.
This is what I was going to mention too. I use my room sensors so it only heats/cools at night based on my bedroom temperature (because who cares what the kitchen and living room temp is when sleeping). It also allows, like you said, to ignore the thermostat sensor.
14:43
The best decision would be to stay away from internet connected thermostats at all.
For temperature offset correction (in the case of the one thermostat reading high due to it's location on the wall) follow these steps:
1: Tap the three lines in the bottom left of the main screen to bring up the main menu
2: Scroll towards bottom of the main menu and tap "Installation Settings"
3: Tap "Thresholds"
4: Scroll towards bottom and tap "Temperature Correction"
5: Adjust to match a thermometer placed in a centralized location of the room. adjustments can be made in intervals of 0.5°F, unsure what °C intervals are. (I'm an hvac tech in the state of Ohio in the US, so we almost exclusively set up our tstats in °F)
6: Exit the menus by continually tapping the back arrow in the top left corner
7: Observe the main temperature screen and watch for the room reading to change. It usually takes a few seconds to implement after getting back to the main screen
I hope this helps you Linus as well as anyone else wondering about temperature correction. Note that this primarily works for thermostats that are under a constant hot/cold influence. A thermostat in an open, windowed room will still act up a bit when direct sunlight hits it for an extended time during a cloudless day.
You've just convinced me, that IOT and home assistant are a nightmare and should be avoided. :)
Hobbyist open source software sucks and there might be a reason 99% of people around the world prefer real software instead? *surprised pikachu face*
We have "smart" light sensors at our office that turn the lights on and off depending on how well the room is lit up and if someones inside. And they do annoy the sh*t out of everyone, we all just wish to get a goddamn switch back.
The thing is, these things SHOULD come with a 3-way switch: AUTO/ON/OFF. So many headaches would be avoided.
I've experienced the same at our Uni. One of the large class-rooms had automated lights, but no off switch. When you wanted to run a presentation with a projector, the professor would resort to putting a bit of aluminum foil on the detector, and waiting a few minutes for the lights to go out. Then a gust of wind would blow away the foil during presentation and we'd have to fix it back on and wait for a few minutes.
The dumbest shit ever.
I love tech gadgets so I bought a smart lightbulb for the very first time for my lamp in the living room and its so damn annoying. It keeps disconnecting from the app and if you switch it off and on too quickly, it goes into some kind of pairing mode and starts doing this annoying flashing pattern and you have to spend another minute on your phone again to fix it.
I had similar bad experiences with smart thermostats too...I'm honestly over it.
You have to be really careful with motion sensor light automation. Presence sensors are much more accurate at telling if people are around vs just seeing if they moved, an especially common issue with desk work in my experience. My Workaround (since i still don't have a presence sensor in my office) was to increase the shutoff duration to about an hour since there's no way i'd sit still for that long.
@@itsbazyli If they had a 3 way switch the "auto" would never be used LOL
Tasmota is pretty good but ESPhome may suit your needs better as it’s integration is native to HA
Exactly what i was thinking…
True. I like mqtt because I can see what is happening on the network. Makes it easier to troubleshoot. That being said, Esphome never gave me any trouble.
Definitely. I switched from tasmota to esphome. It might look more complicated but in the end it isn't. And they wouldn't even need MQTT with esphome. I've just replaced my 40 year old green house window circuit with an esp relay and esphome curtain. Works great and I've integrated rain detection and some dew point math since the green house (~100m² and two storeys high) is connected to my house. At a friends house we used it to integrate mitsubishi hvacs with HA which is awesome. I wish there would be more HVACs which could be integrated this way. I really hate the cloud trend. There should always be a local api as well.
Linus is the only guy that can be freezing to death and still make a Segway to a sponsor
Jake is the only person that can have Linus quietly listening to the tech magic he unfolds. Shout out to Tivy
Ironically I think linus going down the smart home path has even convinced me that I don't want a mini split, bro I ain't never seen any stupid issues with a whole house forced air system like the variety of issues linus has had over his multiple houses
Minisplits/heat pumps are pretty sick, it's the automation that kinda kills it
I'm in residential HVAC mini splits are dope. Eventually whenever my system kicks the bucket I may just swap out the split system I have and get a 4 headed minisplit or just buy one for my computer room. They can actually help the original system not run as much, and we've had a lot of customers tell us that their electric bill went down after just putting a minisplit in their lanai and having them keep the sliders open to assist the main system.
Here in India it gets much hotter (40+ degrees) and we use mini splits only. They're very reliable and much more efficient that ducted systems. Ducted systems are anyways useless in our homes as they made with concrete and bricks. It's the automation that's causing the trouble.
@@Dijitz23 Thats because most mini splits heat 1 room at a time if you set them that way, its easier to have the source of heat or air directly in the rooms so they get hot or colder much faster.. Some rooms can boil hot where others will be cold as hell. if i get a mini split it will be a dual voltage one 120vac/220v + 12/24vdc.
@@panzer3279 > Ducted systems are anyways useless in our homes as they made with concrete and bricks.
Most homes in US are made from concrete and bricks too? Only reason venting is useless in most of India is because most Indians cannot afford to pay for proper home venting systems installed by people who know what they're doing, instead the Bhayya from Bihar bullshits a terrible system for dirt cheap and everyone is left wanting more.
As much as i love this series it just makes me never want to deal with smart home nonsense
Totally agree. This is too complicated to be reliable. And the hours needed to troubleshoot aren't worth the extra initial install effort with basic ultra-reliable old school sensors.
If you don't want it super custom and are willing to stay in one ecosystem, it can be incredibly simple. Literally plug and play.
But one walled garden never does everything you need and so you inevitably discover home assistant....Which in turn leads to never having sex again (or any life) since you're always busy fixing shit until the end of time.
I's always a joy to get the Linus & Jake bug each other hour, but I gotta say Jake killed it hosting this one.
The endless problem solving, tweaking, upgrading of Linus’ house stresses the s**t outta me. Plus constantly having a film crew there, I feel like I wouldn’t be able to rest.
For this reason, im glad to be in a small house with a dumb thermostat and normal light switches
I’m sure getting a lot of this stuff for free or discounted rates makes it a hell of a lot easier
@@MiguelY22 Danfoss Eco 2 is even better than the dump and can be controlled with bluetooth. They also turn down if you open the window.
What's more, his new house is probably being treated as a business premise / use and all the tax deductions which come along.
This is why having a good contractor when building a house is SO important... HOWEVER and Ive been wondering if Im noticing this as confirmation bias or if its true, but it seems people in general are less competent at complex tasks then they used to be.
So to me lately it seem its also just as likely Linus would be dealing with major screw ups by some expensive "pro" as doing these things in a do it yourself janky way.
Opening/closing a valve - how complicated can you make it?
Linus: Yes!
Man, I am getting chills with all the wireless protocols.
My opinion is that this kind of automation should be done wires and a plc. In the long run it will just work.
Wireless isn't the issue. Bad software and lack of standardization is.
Yeah and too many proprietary devices trying to work together. Would be easier to just do everything wired with some off the shelf sensors. Either PLCs or Arduino.
And proprietary protocols and the lack of standardization cause the bad software because it has to be written against reverse-engineered systems without documentation.
@@itsbazyli I love how Linus wants the standardization but then complained about the American thermostat standardization in the video lmao
@@Justin-wx1pu he complained about the lack of standardization.
As someone who owns an AC company and watches your show quite a bit this got me dying. I got a few ecobee‘s too but buddy’s right the newer ones sense occupancy. But honestly, you really only needed to get one ecobee and you could’ve bought a ton of their sensors which also detect occupancy and put the sensors throughout your home. That’s what I did two thermostat six sensors. Sensors are also super small. And can be hidden anywhere!
I was going to mention something about those communicating thermostats being installed under the ecobee‘s because those touch screens put out a ton of heat. You can calibrate and adjust the ecobee, but it’s best to move them. Both of those systems can be ran through one thermostat. A lot of the communicating units can still be ran on the traditional five wire hook up as well as the communicating two wire hook up.
One more thing - If the valves are solenoid valves, trust me at some point they will damage these cheap Chinese relays. I would suggest you to add an arc suppression circuit to the relays or go with a solid state relays. Solenoid valves can cause the relay contacts to "glue" due to the arcing. Trust me, I learned this the hard way. So Jake, fix this before Linus' wife gets angry :D
Dude! That explains why my AC kept killing relays! I got some 30a rated relays a couple years ago which seem to be working well but ill look into that arc suppression!
@@ChrisTopher-wl6pd Shelly offer RC snubbers in their online store for pretty cheap. You can also make your own with a resistor and a capacitor but its a bit ugly.
Should not need surge suppression diodes on ac coils, as by nature of ac n9 back emf. For inductive loads when using ac output relays need suitable overating due to in rush / magnetising current
Now you have local control! If your relay board ever goes out and you need heat before you can fix it, you can manually turn on zones by pushing that silver lever all the way to the right. There's spring tension you are working against when the zone valve is not powered. But if you just push the silver lever with more force you can run the zone.
There is a little metal hook on the bottom that you can get the lever to rest in, thereby holding it open without power.
Linus, a Heat Pump should work constantly. It adapts the interior temperature based on the outdoor temperature. It measures the outdoor temperature and heats up the house. The thermostats should always be ''open''. This is the only way you could a constantly warm house without temperature spikes and without high costs. The heat curve should be as flat as possible.
Also the hydronic compensation should be turned on in the thermostats, which learn how quickly they heat up and cool down and compensate for that. Neither of the problems outlined in this video should really be a problem at all. Run the heat pump at either a high or low level and allow the hydronic compensation to keep the in-floor heating at a constant level too.
What are you talking about? It should work consistently yes, but it won’t always be 100%. Heat pumps have a lower limit of how cold the outside air can be before it physically can’t pull any more heat out of it. Given he lives in Canada and it’s real cold there, he will need to supplement with in-floor heating in the cold months.
I think analogue is a lot better. You can make an analogue circuit as complex as you like, but in the end, they work all the time like that Mercury switch that Linus rolls his eyes at did the same thing was not on the Cloud or relied on Web API and didn't an IT certificate to figure out it was either on or off.
Exactly, a simple old school thermostat in each room would accomplish this
although it will kill you and your loved ones if you drop it, and the chance of that with these hosts is pretty frickin high
@@JamesScholesUK I hope this is a Woosh. If you converted your house to florent bulbs guess what you probably had as much Mercury Vapour (which is the dangerous part). it's in a glass ampule it can't just magically get out.
Also it mostly gives you Brain damage.
You can't set a schedule with analog thermostats or control them remotely, which are actually pretty substantial benefits. Handling just those would be simple too. Linus wanting to incorporate presence detection into his HVAC automation and avoid cloud services is really the main source of these problems. That and having two separate heating systems.
I think an analog backup to make sure the smart system doesn't misbehave too badly would be prudent though.
@@JamesScholesUK The amount of mercury in a thermostat's tilt switch isn't likely to be lethal even if a person ingests it.
This whole environmental control system is a bloody nightmare.
I get anxiety watching these Linus’ house videos.
😵💫
Same here. Just seeing 4 or 5 different switches next to every door make it so unpleasant and ugly to me. Just to control temperature... I think the point to me is everything looks SO crowded.
It's just pure lunacy that is mostly for entertainment value. But... not really enjoying it if the kids are the one putting up with his antics, they have nothing to do with this and yet suffered the consequences of it.
Linus, there's a reason why everyone else keep their heating system SIMPLE.
Might as well knock the cost of completely redoing the entire heating and cooling system for the house because there's no way a new buyer is getting that working.
6:12 Jake loves local connection stuff, but I love that access panel / wall mount for the pipes and related electronics! Everything is so beautifully laid out in a very easy to access configuration :3
At NCR 30 years ago we would put a soldering station on a stack of books under the thermostat when the computer room got too warm. So yes you need to make sure no warm devices are near your 'stats if you want good data.
The ecobee thermostats allow you to calibrate/ offset the temperature sensors. For best results, get some matte black spray paint and cut an aluminum can open and flatten it, then using some thread, hang it at chest level in the middle of a room for a day or so, and the. Using an IR thermometer, check the temperature periodically throughout the day. Then using the average temperature delta between it and the ecobee, add that offset to the thermostat.
🤓
Wanted to also add that you can pretty much use any matte black object that has a very low thermal mass. I personally use a soda can section because they are very thin, but still durable enough to be reused when needed. Depending on the home construction you may need to do the test twice, once in the winter, and once in the summer, then writing down your winter and summer offset, then switch to one of those depending on the seasons.
I don't know what type of sensor it used. But they right resistor probably do the job
Just use an ecobee sensor and place it in a spot that better represents the room's temperature and have it read from that sensor instead. Probably easier
@@jeremiahkuehne2400 While it would be good to use multiple sensors, compared to other companies, ecobee gouges like crazy on their sensor prices, in addition to needing expensive batteries that do not last anywhere near the advertised times. Beyond that, they refuse to add much needed functionality that will play to their strengths, for example, The ecobee can control the heating, cooling , and fan separately, why not allow me to use have the system cycle just the fan if the temperature delta between upstairs and downstairs exceeds a specified amount?
Keeping server room heat inside the house should be standard practice when it's cold outside. Feed that heat to the heat pump to make it more efficient.
honestly - you did the same mistakes most people do when it comes to smart homes - a lot of different vendors, no real "standard" used and worst of all - wireless stuff. in my experience, the only working, standardized way to do a smart home is KNX / EIB Bus. you can mix any vendor with it, it can be done with only wired components (the most important part, wireless in any way or form is shit for reliable stuff) and is overall extremely stable (decentralized approach). Downside - its more expensive and probably not broadly available in the US and Canada? here in Europe (or more specific Germany) it is THE go to Standard for Smart Business installations and used by any Smart-Home owner who wants a pain free experience and is able to spend the "extra". if you are interested in how you would work with a KNX system to avoid some of the problems you had, i can share more details on it :)
Whats the cheapest KNX room thermometer in the world?
So True! I'm doing an apprenticeship as a building IT specialist and have a lot to do with KNX. Linus should totaly integrate it into his Home. There are so many possibilities and you can even integrate it into Homeasisstant.
EnOcean is also quite powerful
I would also recommend knx 100%
Would be nice, at least looking into it. Show advantage/disadvantages to his setup.
Jake's laugh about it being ready in time for winter immediately sets the expectation level.
I've been renovating my house at the same time Linus has. While immensely envious of his relative house-peen, this video rings very true. The pursuit of integrated tech perfection whilst being hyper aware of the ideal and the disparity of a realistic scenario, is incredibly demoralizing. As they say, ignorance is bliss and I'm now left envious of oblivious plebs.
"Over-engineering our home! What could go wrong!"
"So yeah, my kids sleep with 3 blankets tonight and my wife make me sleep on the couch..."
The 3 blankets thing is just weird but also just normal if you don't have proper quilts for some reason and don't like heating you're house overnight for no good reason. You're sleeping grab that extra blanket and maybe even a hat you'll be just as confortable and save money.
After a couple years using automation in my house, I can say what´s worth is turning the lights on/off at sunset/rise, and that´s it. Everything else is just a pain to mantain.
I always got the impression that most people who have these things have a usecase that warrents automating maybe one or two things... and then everything else is just causing them more problems and expense rather than actually improving their lives in any way.
FYI: There is a native Firmware for ESP-Relay-Hardware like you used called ESPHome... This is part of HomeAssistent and therefor fully integrated (eg no MQTT needed)...
Question: why are your thermostats using enough power to generate heat themselves?
An environmentalist's nightmare.
Probably because these American Standard things have an unnecessary bright display. And iirc Linus aint even at fault there, since the contractor used proprietary tech in that system, that only can communicate with these. Or maybe I'm completely wrong and these things are just as reliable as every gadget made out of Chinesium. Looks good, but not for long
@@meuchooo I did make this comment before Linus mentioned that he didn't want those thermostats, but it's insane to design a thermostat that just sits there making heat. Even if you want a stupidly fancy automatic switch flipper, you can do it without wasting power like that. You're probably right though.
They are mining Bitcoin.
@@nicolaim4275 An environmentalist dies every time you burn another log in your fireplace.
IMPORTANT- a heat pump should be using weather compensation and therefore the thermostats and valves need to remain open to get as much volume in the system as possible. Instead of zoning, increasing and reducing the heating (which is way less efficient) the system should be balanced to spread heat across the whole house to keep the home at a constant temperature. Look up Heat Geek for more information!
That's not what's happening though. The in-floor heating is using a natural gas fired boiler. I saw no mention of how they intend to balance the in-floor heat boiler and the mini-split system.
@@StephenGrinwis They shoud really set it up as dual fuel have have the floor heat take over below 0 degrees C
You haven't seen the other videos?
If nobody is going to be in RoomA, just close it off (Door and Vents) but keep the rest open. No need to heat/cool a room where nobody is.
You like 22°C but in the other room they prefer 20°C? zones are your friend
@@notalostnumber8660 any rooms within the thermal envelope of the property will be sucking heat from other rooms unless insulated internally, meaning a heat pump will need to run hotter to compensate. To achieve the best possible scop you want as much surface area as possible on the emitters.
Can Linus use the heat from the servers to keep the house warm, or was that already mentioned in another video?
The best thing about those mercury thermostats is that you can wire in parallel means to turn on the heater. A very simple method with no cloud requirements. Add some esp32s, temp sensors and relays and write your own code.
I love Jake's "that sound like a you problem" laugh 😂
Linus' house seems like an infosec nightmare.
It is all local. So hacking it is pretty hard. You either have get physical access to his network, or you have to hack one of his PCs and use them as a bridge into his network.
So no additional attack surface. But stronger consequences if it does happen i guess.
@@oznerol256 It's not all local. But good point. Just the amount of apps needed to keep the house working increases the attack surface.
Instead of Tasmota you could have left the MQTT out of it by using ESPHome since they have a direct API to HA.
any options to not use MQTT is an option to consider :D
For the most part, Tasmota also talks directly to HA via the Tasmota integration. You just need to SetOption19 0 on your devices. Should work for most entities.
This video perfectly illustrates why I haven’t touched home automation stuff for myself yet, even though theoretically I could set it up with my IT skills. It’s just far too much trouble to get it to work the way I want it to, too many companies with too many products adhering to too many disparate standards or using proprietary garbage, and far too much bodging and kludging just to get what should be a straightforward switch to work. I come home to relax from work, not to continue having to troubleshoot network connections because my lights won’t turn on anymore.
I know right? So much easier to just setup a "smart" digital thermostat floor heater and or portable AC unit that is just set to the temperature you like and just let it turn on and off on its own to adjust the temperature. Sure not anywhere near as efficient as what a true smart thermostat system like Ecobee or Nest or what not but you don't have to spend hours of your life getting it set up and then have to spend hours troubleshooting if something inevitably goes horribly wrong...
Really need to have these smart systems with a simple manual override, that let's it work as a regular simple switch/thermostat, etc
An IT professional getting smart home is just bringing your job into the house
@@kingzach74 Also like, a smart thermostat or switch doesn’t need any access to the internet whatsoever to be smart, and it shouldn’t need any software updates to keep running properly, it should already be robust out of the box. These are already solved problems without “smart” devices, even just a programmable thermostat or timer switch allows better robustness and flexibility than a “smart” one, and introducing some software automation-ability to it shouldn’t totally bork the system as it was existing before like the ones on the market do today.
It's not bad once you learn the lesson that you should only add functionality, and never remove it. That means if there is an on/off light switch, it should always do what it's supposed to, and turn the lights on/off even if the wifi and/or controller are down.
In this case, they had thermostats that should work as expected when everything goes down if wired in, but decoupled it from doing its job, and now it only works if the least reliable component (home assistant and the home network) is fully functional. This is a bad example of how to do a smart-home setup, and it's always going to be a pain.