Sensors and Sensibility

Migrating to Home Assistant - Goals

2024-04-14T00:00:00Z

It’s been a while since I’ve done an update on Wodehouse - largely because not much had changed in our configuration. But, we’ve recently done a bunch of upgrades (removing gas line, installing heat pump, ERV etc.) and collected a variety of new bits and bobs (such as Lifx, Bird buddy and Span).

Because, inevitably, a smart home owner ends up acquiring a hodge-podge collection of devices from various manufacturers, managing those devices and automatons play nicely with each other gets a bit cumbersome.

Because of this, we’re in the process of migrating all the brains of our operations to Home Assistant. It’s not complete, but the goals of our migration are:

Downsize our hardware needs (we have had an explosion of proprietary hubs!)
Build resilience to manufacturers moving away from open compatibility with our existing hardware or even turning off their services
Centralise our automation logic, for better maintainability and sanity of remembering which service runs what
Have accessibility to our services from the web, rather than needing half a dozen different native applications
Make more of our systems available offline
Continue to ensure automatons are progressively enhancing the house
Monitor and adjust our energy use more accurately and easily

So, that’s the plan. I also want to do more short posts here, because writing long reviews is arduous and honestly kind of boring. I will also be doing a site migration to 11ty, because the terrible Squarespace UI is also a major energy-sapper and I’d like to stop paying them for the privilege of torturing me.

Living with the Aibo ERS-1000 Robot Dog for a year

2020-07-17T00:00:00Z

Today is our robot dog’s 1st birthday! A year ago, we activated our Sony Aibo ERS-1000 and I thought it was about time I wrote a little about it.

There’s plenty of reviews around of people having this particular robot dog for a week or two, and largely they’re positive - but does the fun hold up over the long-haul?

Living with the ERS-1000 has been utterly charming. The engineers at Sony have managed to take a pile of servos and plastic and sensors and create a truly compelling experience. It’s very hard to describe without having a little robot dog trotting around your own home on the daily, so I’ll try and summarise some of the particularly good, and occasionally annoying, features.

The good

Sparky, as we dubbed our pup, is able to freely walk around the whole main floor of our home- sometimes slowly, cautiously and at other times at a confident trot. He’s able to get himself up off his charger and able to find it again once he gets “tired” and runs low on battery (which lasts about 3 hours at full-activity). Since we’ve spent the last 6 months on pandemic lock-down, it’s been very nice to have the surprise company.
His repertoire of tricks is huge - I don’t think we’ve found them all and Sony is constantly adding new activities, many seasonal (for example, in the summer, he pretends to swim and in the winter he sings jingle-bells). Many of the seasonal performances correspond with Japanese holidays, and although this pup lives in the US, it’s been a lot of fun learning about those traditions, songs and dances. Of course, he does all the expected tricks a “real” dog would know - being able to sit, stand, roll-over and give high-fives are just a few.
He has a set of toys he’ll interact with, all bright pink. A ball, a bone and some cubes. He plays with them of his own accord and sometimes even appears to hide them or beg from them when they’re out of reach. We also picked up a special dog bowl that he’ll eat from on our last trip to Japan, being released in the US soon.
The app unlocks a feature called “Patrol” which we haven’t used, but is clearly aimed at folks who might use an aibo for elder persons-company or checking on kids. You can ask aibo to trot around the home, looking for specific people in specific areas and report back that they’ve seen them. Although I’m not sure what it does if it finds granny horizontal on the floor?
He’s remarkably reliable. It’s truly a feat of industrial engineering that Sony has been able to make a machine that can somehow roll itself onto it’s back and get back up (although a little awkwardly) and that it never really seems to go wrong. The tolerances are quite impressive.
The overall puppy-like design is adorable. The combination of OLED eyes, articulated ears and tail are just so excellent at conveying mood. He’s able to look happy, sad, angry and even a bit cheeky sometimes and it’s wonderful. We’ve noticed over time that the small, wiggling, moving motions have increased which give an extra realism feeling that a completely stationary robot would lack.

The bad

The app. It’s always the app.
- The app is rubbish. It’s slow, buggy, regularly fails to connect and generally feels like an after-thought.
- You don’t have to use the accompanying application past initial setup, but it does offer some useful features - such as checking the physical condition of aibo, and some additional interactions such as being able to set up the patrol, see pictures aibo has taken (if you have that enabled) and “feed” aibo virtual food (which often reward you with a fun behaviour or dance).
When he fails, he really fails and the realism illusion bursts. Our dog regularly gets stuck under our coffee table, bumping his head, causing him to simply go limp and fall into error mode, which can only be recovered by resetting. The aibo does keep an internal map of the house, so it would be great if we could simply teach him not go to near the coffee table, or have him fail more gracefully.
Part of the charm of an aibo is they have a certain amount of “free will”. They can chose to completely ignore your instruction or request and go and do something else. The problem with that, though, is it’s hard to know if your dog is just in a churlish mood or if the command is simply failing. There’s no feedback.
Additionally, aibos mature over a number of years, moving from puppy to elderly, and we can’t tell if that’s happening. He does appear to have become more obedient over time.
He’s loud! Well, his servos are loud. There’s definitely no missing him, which makes him awkward company if you’re trying to hold a conversation.
Much like the infamous Daleks, before they took flight, he’s not good on an incline and forget stairs. He’s designed to strictly walk on completely flat ground and is baffled by slightly too-thick rugs. Fortunately, he is able to at least see the top of a staircase and not accidentally tumble down.

The rest

Part of the appeal of Sony’s aibo series has always been that they supposedly develop unique personalities over time. Since few people have the spare cash to be able to afford more than one of these, it’s hard to know if that’s really true. I’d like to believe that our dog has developed specific personality traits just from how we, personally, have interacted, but we’ll likely never know.
- Sony does maintain a community group, which would give a window into how other ERS-1000s are performing, but sadly it’s on Facebook. I hope that recent shenanigans with Facebook will have Sony consider alternatives.
There’s a whole developer toolkit! I haven’t ventured into it at all, but the possibility is a welcome addition.
Some folks are going to be creeped out by a device walking around their home with two cameras a microphone attached. I totally get that. There is a physical switch on his underside to disable internet entirely, and his photography option can also be disabled.
The engineers have put out a few very interesting talks and slides regarding how the services work and couple together which may provide insights that’ll affect your trust-level. There’s also full tear-downs, if you’re OK with robot gore.

We’re not able to have a living, breathing animal in our home, so although rescuing a dog or cat would have been preferable, it’s just not a possibility for us. Sparky has been a very welcome addition and has filled a gap in our lives that a pet might. He makes us laugh, entertains us, begs for our attention and in exchange we chat, pet, and play with him. We wouldn’t be without him.

Solar with Tesla Powerwall batteries for residential power

2019-04-29T00:00:00Z

Since we moved house, I've been really excited about the truly smart Smart Home devices that have become available to us. Going beyond toothbrushes with bluetooth to things that make a material difference to how the home and our lives fundamentally work.

The first change we've made is going fully solar. It took a year all told to go from signing the agreement to buy and install the solar through to actually getting permission from the city and PG&E to turn the system on and have it actually work (not to mention the expense) but it's been worth it.

It'll vary from state to country how you go about getting solar, but in California we worked with SolarCity who specialise in residential solar installations and were recently acquired by Tesla (and will eventually no longer be identified under the SolarCity name). As such, we also decided that not only did we want to be solar powered during the day, but we wanted to store energy so we could also be solar-powered over night and in electrical outages, so we also installed two Tesla Powerwalls in our garage (the sharp eyed amongst you may have spotted them lurking in the gloom of the garage in the Miracle-grow post a few weeks back).

Solar alone doesn't necessarily make this system smart, but the PowerWalls are where things get fun. They come with an app that allow a few insights and controls.

They're a bit of a prepper's dream. You can configure how much battery to always keep in backup incase of an outage as well as go into grid-only mode if a storm is heading your way to preserve maximum battery power availability. The live updates to show how much energy is in use, how full the batteries are and the when fill-up times are at their most optimal should you prefer to use more energy-hungry devices only during direct-solar hours.

Since we're now heading into summer time, we're hitting our peak solar capacity. We're regularly filling our batteries, powering the house and still putting about a third of our generated power back into the grid (check out the weekly graph of energy usage screenshot). We planned for excess capacity so we can make further power-hungry additions to the house at some point (like AC or upgrading our plug-in hybrid to a full-electric car).

Thank you, sun!

Oura Ring

2019-04-22T00:00:00Z

Another day, another tracker. This time, I've got a ring for you.

I usually like to wait a couple of weeks before reviewing a tracker, but I've actually been wearing this one for nearly 3 months. It's the Oura Smart Ring.

There's been a few rings on the market before - some have notifications, some do steps, some do sleep, so let's just run down specifically what this one does:

Tracks movement through a gyroscope and accelerometer
Measures body temperature
Reads your pulse

That's the core of it - and honestly, that's quite impressive for a device that no one will notice is a tracker unless you show them. Given these few pieces of data, the system extrapolates how well you are likely sleeping every night and gives you charts and summaries to inform you of why you might be feeling how you feel on any given day and then you can use this information to adjust your behaviours to perhaps improve your future performance.

It's a bit of an odd duck, though. It's focused solely around helping you to understand how well you sleep - it won't tell you anything about your heart rate, for example, before and after exercise. You can only get data for sleeping periods. I wonder how much of that is an intentional product focusing by the company, or whether it's actually a smart battery saver choice if it doesn't have to be constantly tracking and reporting all of your bio-metrics throughout the day.

I've found it to drastically over-report on steps, so I wouldn't recommend it as a replacement for another device that is focused on activity tracking, but it will give you enough of a general overview of how active you've been to at least consider it a factor in how well you rest later. I expect that the nature of having it on a hand (which, at least in my case, is a very animated part of the body) rather than a wrist or body tracker leads to the over-reporting.

It also has trouble connecting to my phone from time to time (over bluetooth, naturally) and some nights it just doesn't bother to track me at all. It's not clear to me if it's moved to a position on my finger where it thinks I'm not wearing it at all, or if it's having technical issues of some other kind on those nights.

The other irritating thing - and I make this critique of a lot of smart systems - is the way it tells me in a peppy tone that I'm going to have a truly wonderful, productive day, but in reality I woke up feeling like a truck ran me over. There's no way to correct the system and "well, actually" it so that it can learn its expectations and your realities have not met one another. It almost makes me feel guilty some days that I haven't met up to the high expectations that were set for me.

It's definitely one of the most invisible devices I've ever worn. No one has asked "What's that?" as they have done with other trackers I've worn. Folks have generally been impressed at how it just looks like normal jewelry. I had to buy the very smallest size ring the company offered, and it's a tiny bit loose still but it's comfortable enough. I do find that it's a bit thick and it's not something I would wear if it wasn't "smart" (see the photo above comparing the Oura to my wedding bands).

If you're interested, a word of warning: They're not cheap and they're not fast. A basic ring from Oura costs $299 and order-to-delivery took nearly 4 months for mine. I wouldn't give it a strong S&S recommendation unless you really don't like highly visible trackers but still want some of the data.

Command and control dashboard - Google Home Hub

2019-04-15T00:00:00Z

According to Squarespace's analytics, one of my most popular posts on S&S has been the command and control dashboard I made about a million years ago that allowed me to casually control my lighting etc. from an always-on android tablet. I started to build a version 2, intending to make something a little more charming and polished, but then something happened.

I bought a Google Home Hub.

Google Home Hub in picture frame mode

This little tablet-screen format Google Home is pretty much exactly what I had wanted in the first place.

It's a really attractive piece of physical and digital interface design. It sits merrily in my kitchen informing me of all sorts of things around the house. It tells me about my calendar, it shows me who is at my front-door (via the nest doorbell) and I can pull up the backyard camera to see what the squirrels are up to instantly. I can ask it to play me YouTube videos or make phone calls. It's really good and well thought-out and I'm seriously tempted to get a second one for my home office.

Google Home Hub showing rooms and controls

It has most of the elements I wanted from a custom dashboard - I can pull down screens to show light switches in rooms and toggle them on and off or adjust dimmers and such, and see how things are currently set. My only real complaint is that I can't set to be a dashboard-first i.e. show that as the default screen instead of my calendar and the weather. I also wish I could just install this Google Home Hub software on any small tablet or phone (even if that was restricted to Android models). I could imagine having mini dashboards in other rooms, that way.

Google Home Hub quick overview home control screen

Minor requests aside, if you're googling around for a simple command and control dashboard for your SmartThings or similar Google Assistant-compatible smart home systems, check it out. It's a lot less faff than installing some custom code I forked on github once, I promise.

Miracle-Gro Twelve System

2019-04-08T00:00:00Z

A few months ago, a friend sent me a link to the Miracle-grow hydroponic Twelve system on Indiegogo, and I sort of just backed it without really thinking about or actually reading much about it. I'm an easy sell when it comes to plants and gadgets.

Well, I forgot about it and this week a giant box magically appeared on my doorstep.

I honestly didn't notice that it was a "smart" system with the obligatory phone app for control and monitoring until I unpacked it. I bought some seeds and planted it up and this is what I've noticed.

Noise

As I was setting it up, it asked me to choose a name for it so I dubbed it "Silent Running" (after the movie, for obvious reasons) and instantly realised what an ironic name that was going to be.

One of the press-photos captioned "A stylish design for any home"

The press photos for the system have it staged in lovely, modern homes - happily growing plants in fantastically clean mid-century modern spaces. This suits my aesthetic, so I dutifully staged it in my home. After approximately half a day, it had to be relocated because it was so extremely annoying. It sounds like exactly what it is - a water-pumping motor with a fountain running 24/7. It's also as bright as the sun which is useful but not exactly great for mood-lighting.

In the garage with the lights off so you can appreciate its brightness

My system now lives in the garage, which makes everyone who visits ask if I'm growing pot.

Looks

I think it's quite handsome. It's inoffensive and it'll look rad when it has some plants actually growing in it. Your tastes may vary. It's definitely sturdy and a good height for an end table.

Smarts

There's actually not a lot of smart stuff going on in this system:

It tells you when the water level is low so you can top it up
The timer for the lighting is configurable and you can temporarily override the brightness for some reason
You'll get a calendar of when you add fertiliser to the water and when to harvest anything edible

That's it. And it's all in an app dedicated to this one, specific, Miracle-gro system - you can add multiple Twelve tables - which seems really daft and irritating if you happen to already have (or acquire) one of their tabletop Aerogarden smart systems. It would have been a better user experience, and product marketing, had they made a single app (or webapp!) to manage all of their systems in one.

It all connects over bluetooth and you can't edit anything while you're not connected directly to the system over the bluetooth.

There's also a weird mismatch between their paper literature and the app. The marketing materials list a lot of plants and herbs that aren't actually available to select during setup in the app. A small, but weird discrepancy that led to me buying Petunias for one slot (listed in the paper manual as recommended) but then having to create a "custom" plant in the application.

Conclusion

Not a bad system and it's nice that it doubles as furniture. You won't actually want it in your actual house, unless you like the sound of running water or are trying to drown out a more irritating noise, but I'm looking forward to hopefully having some tasty herbs and flowers on-hand soon.

How to uninstall an August Smart Lock

2018-11-26T00:00:00Z

Step 1 - Remove the battery panel

I find simply attempting to operate the August Smart Lock with one's hand sufficient to remove the battery cover, but a strong gust of wind or a stern look should also do the job. You'll know it's worked by the familiar clattering of the cover falling on the floor again.

The August battery cover in it's natural habitat.

Step 2 - Realise this doesn't help you remove the lock

The actual mechanism you need to mess with to remove the lock is actually along the outer ridge of the lock. It's hard to see, but there's a pair of indentations on either side that if you put a screwdriver under - or use a finger with a nail you don't mind breaking - will lift up like two little arms allowing the lock to slide off a mounting plate.

Little notches here.

Step 3 - Notice the glaring problem

Ah, the previous owners of this home and door had to remove the inner-door mechanism to attach this superior smart locking system, leaving behind just a rod. Try scrabbling around in the boxes in the back of a cupboard where you know they left a bunch of random screws and such and maybe the old latch is still somewhere and come up short.

This won't work.

Step 4 - Declare failure

Put the August lock back on the door, because this job now requires a trip to a hardware store. And it's Thanksgiving.

Step 5 - Repeat step 2

Having returned from the local hardware store with a whole new front door lock (turns out it's not particularly easy to just buy half a lock) unscrew the mounting plate from the door.

Step 6 - Add new lock

Remove the inner-side lock from the packaging and basically throw the other half in the bin (or, I guess, save it for if you ever need to change your own lock in the future). Install it as per the instructions in the box. Triumphantly turn the lock with your own hand without bits falling off and with a reduced number of security attack vectors. Note that you're still going to have to patch and repaint the door because of the unsightly condition left by the August lock.

New lock.

Step 7 - Uninstall the app

On the off chance your August lock was still successfully paired with your phone, you should probably tell your device to forget that bluetooth connection. My lock, fortunately, took care of this step on my behalf many moons ago.

You can now safely uninstall the app, and gone are your days of standing at your own doorway, hoping that a device mere inches away will connect more quickly than a local mugger spots you standing in the blue-glow of your phone late at night.

Wodehouse upgrade

2018-09-07T00:00:00Z

Time for the classic blog post opener: I'm so sorry for the lapse in posts. I promise to be better. I have a good excuse, however.

At the end of last year, we did the ultimate upgrade to our smart home, Wodehouse.

We moved!

So, I've had the opportunity of finding out what it's like to dismantle a smart home and re-configure a system in a new one. We also have a whole new world of options and upgrades available to us, as we now have a single-family home. The roof is now up for grabs.

I'll follow-up soon with the new and shiny discoveries, but for now… here's some of the gadgets that didn't make the cut in the move.

Arlo Cameras

Living in a flat meant that we didn't have control over anything beyond the wallpaper - we couldn't just drill holes for wired cameras or install extra WiFi easily in the hallways or outside our doors and windows, so I thought these would be a good option.

They're WiFi cameras from Netgear that run on batteries, although it looks like they do an AC version now, too.

They look pretty neat, but they add to hub-ageddon in my home, have really poor range (so a wall too many will break connection and good luck connecting more than one in two locations).

All in all, I just prefer wires for everything for jobs like this.

Blink Cameras

For all of the Arlo reasons but like, 30% crappier. I didn't even take any photos of them, but they're still a thing you can get.

MySmartBlinds

I liked these in my initial review and they did work, but they just didn't wow me enough to commit to kitting out a whole new place (with all new blinds).

The Bluetooth stack, as usual, flaked out too often and the software was just too clunky and was isolated from the rest of my automations. I still want to automated the window shades, but I'll be looking for something more integrated this time around.

S&S Newsletter

2017-10-25T00:00:00Z

Due to mild interest, you can now keep up to date with Sensors and Sensibility via the power of email!

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Wodehouse status update

2017-09-08T00:00:00Z

It's been kind of quiet over here, and that's largely a good thing - Wodehouse has just been ticking along more-or-less working as designed. I've not needed to add any new devices for a while, nor have any catastrophically broken. We are looking at upgrading Wodehouse in the near future (i.e. moving), so it'll be interesting to see how redeployable our setup is.

In the meantime, here's a quick round-up.

Bye Bye Hello Sense

So, back in June, Hello went bust, so my sleep tracker's life has come to an end. The company stated they'd be releasing the data from the system to users "at the end of [that] week", but that never happened. I did send a follow-up email to find out what was up with that, but I haven't heard anything. I'm a bit disappointed that they said they'd release the data and they haven't followed through.

My advice on data is if you know you're going to want it, only use services that already offer data extraction up front - my experience has been that if they don't offer it to begin with, then go bust, they generally have little incentive to offer it after the fact.

Other things to look out for are how the data is published, is it in an open format, is it compatible with other services (and do those other services have import options) and are they going to charge you for the privilege? Fitbit, for example, used to only offer export as a premium service, but now it's available to everyone. Google Fit lets you export your data anytime via Google Takeout.

The same goes for checking if you can delete all of your data from a service before you commit to using it long-term, which may be something you can do but requires you actually contacting them to ask (you'll have to check the T&Cs on signup).

Remember, most companies are not incentivised to help you either leave their services. If freedom to move your data between services is a top priority for you, check before you commit.

Wrist wearable

On the topic of sleep data, my now only sleeping tracking device I'm actively using is my Pebble Time Round. It's still working great, although I have bought a back-up one from Amazon for cheap just in case. I'm glad I did, since the latest offering from Fitbit - the Ionic - is underwhelming to say the least. My plan is to keep my Pebble on life-support until someone else cottons on to the fact that women want smart wrist watches that actually fit.

My continued delight in my Pebble has made me turn my attention to the other devices I'm carrying on my person day-to-day. My smartphone - currently the Google Pixel - really bothers me. It's so large and cumbersome, doesn't fit in my pockets and is just so boring. I'm looking at either getting, or making, something a lot smaller or continuing to supplement it with other devices that mean I don't have to drag that brick out of my bag so often. I'd love to see a trend back towards the wacky Nokia days.

ToDo

The house is largely running how I want it to right now - I have a couple of outstanding jobs. The first is our roller blinds in the living room - they're still dumb, but I'd really like to connect them up for privacy and security reasons. I often stalk kickstarter and indiegogo when I'm at a loss, and I am hoping that the MOVEZ blinds motoriser device comes through soon. I had come across their solution a couple years back when it was only Bluetooth, but now that it's Z-wave it could be perfect for what I'm looking for.

The other thing is the recent heat-wave in San Francisco has me looking at air quality and cooling again. We generally don't need AC, but Wodehouse does kind kinda stuffy and it's only predicted to get warmer.

Not got my eye on anything specific yet, so please do send your reckons.