The smart home is flailing as a concept–because it sucks

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • Home Assistant

    :house_with_garden: Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first.

  • I feel like the biggest problem I've had with smart home technology is that there is no out of the box standard for controlling or having access to all of your devices. Almost every device seems to require interacting with it with the vendor's own app or other utility, and so I've needed to install a multitude of at least 3 apps just to control the lights. So not only are vendors trying to compete with their smart devices, but additionally with the apps they've created to even use them, probably to see how much more money they can squeeze out of selling your personal information.

    Thankfully, there's Home Assistant[1], which is an amazing project that aims to bridge connectivity and control between all of these devices into a single centralized environment. Pair that up with Tasmota[2]-compatible devices and you can have a smart home that can be completely disconnected from the cloud and in your control.

    [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/

    [2] https://tasmota.github.io/docs/

  • Tasmota

    Alternative firmware for ESP8266 and ESP32 based devices with easy configuration using webUI, OTA updates, automation using timers or rules, expandability and entirely local control over MQTT, HTTP, Serial or KNX. Full documentation at

  • I feel like the biggest problem I've had with smart home technology is that there is no out of the box standard for controlling or having access to all of your devices. Almost every device seems to require interacting with it with the vendor's own app or other utility, and so I've needed to install a multitude of at least 3 apps just to control the lights. So not only are vendors trying to compete with their smart devices, but additionally with the apps they've created to even use them, probably to see how much more money they can squeeze out of selling your personal information.

    Thankfully, there's Home Assistant[1], which is an amazing project that aims to bridge connectivity and control between all of these devices into a single centralized environment. Pair that up with Tasmota[2]-compatible devices and you can have a smart home that can be completely disconnected from the cloud and in your control.

    [1] https://www.home-assistant.io/

    [2] https://tasmota.github.io/docs/

  • WorkOS

    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

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  • esphome-mitsubishiheatpump

    ESPHome Climate Component for Mitsubishi Heatpumps using direct serial connection

  • If your Mitsubishi uses IR for it's remote, this probably would work: https://github.com/geoffdavis/esphome-mitsubishiheatpump

    Or, you can use a Broadlink IR blaster to clone the remote.

    If your heat pump talks to MEL cloud (Mitsubishi's cloud thingy) then this should work: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/melcloud/

    I have yet to buy a "smart" device that I haven't been able to control through HA. The Broadlink RF/IR bridges even makes anything with a remote automatable.

    Seriously, If it wasn't for Home Assistant, the "smartness" of smart devices would be next to useless.

  • HeatPump

    Arduino library to control Mitsubishi Heat Pumps via connector cn105

  • Check out https://github.com/SwiCago/HeatPump (and derived projects) for your heat pump. I was just looking at this yesterday - unfortunately my units don't have the CN105/CN92 connector so I'm out of luck but if your unit is newer you should be fine!

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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