lol. That preceding paragraph built with such a swell of emotion, it had to be personal

All true, what the author writes. If anything, he is a little kind. He omitted to mention that many of these devices run on 2.4.GHz Wifi. Not all routers like that and my iPhone hotspot doesn't as it knocks speeds of internet back 15 years from 5 to 2.4.

Even AppleHome approved devices that costs 2 times as much use it. It is so slow. Try streaming 1080 over that. Forget continuous streams tiled on a separate display. The best solution for me is concealed wired controlled on a separate private internal network by headless Pi4/5 on the back of the tele.The CCTV network doesnt touch the internet - ever. None of my smart device do.

Also, many IOT devices use the Wifi and a background process app(!) on your phone to log data streams and perform activities, like Smart timers. Lose the Wifi, and the smart device is a plastic brick burning power. So you need Zigbee or something like that which runs without a network. But even in that area there are tons of Charlatans touting gear that hasn't implemented the newest verison so you are stuck with an old system that feels so outdated, clunky and unreliable. Never would you trust your ladies in the grow to this gear. We stick with long-tested gear like digital timers that have displays, sensors, controls onboard and costs a third the price and rarely fail.

It is a minefield and basically forget anything you can get from Argos or Curry's. The risk is way too high and the cost on network - even with a dual router - is such that have more than a few of them crashes many a network.

It says everything it needs to say about all that "smart" malarky that I never did and never will trust.

I'm not handicapped. I can get my fucking ass off of the fucking couch and flick a switch. The rest of the world doesn't need to know about it, thank you.

Back in the day I had one of those IP cameras. It was a nifty little thing. I logged into the web interface on the wired connection and set up the WiFi and network (or I could leave it wired). I then had it FTP pictures to another computer. Nice and easy with no internet required (no gateway or DNS configured which I know isn't fool proof). I'm pretty sure it had hard coded credentials I couldn't change but that didn't matter because it wasn't on the internet. Lasted me a good few years that. I tried to get a replacement with the same features and no connecting to some server somewhere and so on a few years back. I had more chance of finding a unicorn. The same goes for any smart home stuff now. It's all connect to this and connect to that, set an account up here and download this app. Some of the stuff you can't properly access or control from a PC.

Luckily, if you have a bit of electronics and basic programming knowledge you can create your own "smart" devices/home with something like a Raspberry Pi and have absolute control over them and it's a lot of fun tinkering about with stuff. The best part is that even if you don't have a clue a quick search will find you full instructions on how to build and program them plus it's cheap as chips (pre-2020).

I used to have this naive idea of what the smart home could be. You’d buy a server appliance, i.e. a home hub, and plug it into your router. And then all your “smart” devices would work with this home hub using open protocols. No need for third party services and subscriptions.

Hahaha, oh mercy.

Best you can do is Home Assistant. There's an image for Raspberry Pi.

If someone's written an integration for Home Assistant, you're doing OK.

If something needs a subscription or relies on external (remote) services to function, it's an absolute no go.

I've got some Tapo plugs. There is a way to control them via Python however you still have to use the companies servers to do it which means setting up accounts and so on. Integration doesn't always get you out of the company ecosystem.

Nasty. All the stuff I've got is locally controlled, and the house I'm building will be wired for KNX.

I have remotely controllable sockets, but they're ZigBee and I use Home Assistant to talk to them through my Hue Bridge. No sub, no internet connection required, and the wifi could even be down.

I dipped a toe into this swamp when I wanted some dimmable ceiling lights. Bought some top of the range ones and surrendered my wi-fi password to some random web site and lo I could dim the lights and select the colour. For about a week. Than had to go through the whole initialise program again.

Ditched these for some bottom of the line cheapos from the local Chinese* which came with Thier own remote control and worked as soon as they were plugged in, and, have been working ever since.

* Not a restaurant! Spain has numerous warehouse size stores where Chinese manufacturers unload excess stock. May as well buy your cheap Chinese stuff direct from the Chinese.

Use stuff that you control the data flow.

Almost all of the stuff on my HA is running tasmota or shelly, both of which are completely locally controlled.

But it's not "smart" it's just reacting to what it's been told to do - the lights are still switch operated, albeit that switch is now a little more complex than it used to be.

The word "Smart" applied to any object is a warning. Take heed of it.

I was browsing wi-fi thermostats once, and I looked behind sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard” and one turned out to have a documented open-source local-only protocol. I can't remember how I stumbled on it, but it was pure luck.

Of course the app for it didn't use this, but it was a day's work to knock one up, especially as I didn't care how good it looked.

Of course it also eventually died after several years and that company was nowhere to be seen.

Of course I bought another wi-fi thermostat, this time by Honeywell, and after 6 months the app was upgraded and started deciding it needed to delete all my schedules and re-set-up my device from scratch every morning. Now it's been reset to the point it no longer knows the wi-fi password and is just a dumb thermostat.

And of course, I'll never buy another Honeywell device again.

Now I have my own Raspberry Pi managing the garage door. When I leave, I break a beam and the Pi closes the door a minute later.

When I come home, my phone notices when I turn the last turn home, and asks the Pi to open the door. When I drive in, I break the beam and a minute later, the Pi closes the door. The phone then interrogates the bike's odometer via Bluetooth, figures out which one I'm riding by which bike answers[1], and sends this to my PC, which logs it in a maintenance spreadsheet. It then scans the spreadsheet for any items that are past due, and sends these back to the phone, which logs it in my to-do app.

This makes it a cinch to keep up with coolant/oil level checks, chain lubing, and oil changes.

[1] except for my 2007 FJR-1300, where I just type the number in the app

A lot of my lights are controlled by X10 modules. Various cron and at scripts schedule the lights to go on and off according to lighting up time with the actual communication done through heyu and a usb gateway. Neighbours once remarked that my lights go on at the same time every day -- not exactly.... The original home automation protocol, still going after how many decades? But now getting almost impossible to source modules so once my stash is exhausted I'll have quite the upgrade on my hands.

The problem with all of these Smart/IoT devices is the juxtaposition of something that ought to be highly durable -- a display screen, a light bulb (LED ones at least), a washing machine -- with something that is utterly ephemeral -- the app, the cloud service, the firmware updates. When the ephemeral bit croaks the whole device becomes e-waste despite the durable part having another 90% of its usable life left. This is what govts and regulators should be addressing. Products like Sky Glass or Freely simply should not be permitted to exist. Either make the two parts entirely discrete components with their own lifecycles or force the manufacturers to deposit a large proportion of their income from the product in escrow to fund keeping the device alive and fully functional. In other industries its called unbundling. You can't force a customer to buy multiple services/products in order to get access to just one. I don't live in hope...

...and auto-pair with Alexa without snaffling secrets...

Alexa? Are you sure? That always listening device Alexa snapping up your private conversations Alexa device?

"If it has to connect to a server either to operate, or requires connection to a network to configure, then you don't own it."

He is one hundred percent correct... and as such, if it needs such bullshit, I won't buy it.

The light switches around here were installed over 20 years ago. They still work. (Which is more than I can say about too many (dumb) LED bulbs that claimed an 18,000 hour life. But that’s another story.)