“This is getting ridiculous and I’m about to just toss the whole thing and move back to Google,” one Redditor said of the “full-volume” ads for Alexa+ on their Echo Show.
Oh sweet summer child, Google is NOT going to be any better at this. That will just be changing one corporate evil for another.
Home assistant is the way to go, all run locally on a homePC, I have ZigBee lights and switches automated
An example is my front deck lights turn on at sundown, at 10% brightness, at 11;00 pm they drop to 1%.
If motion is detected they brighten up for a bit. On holidays they have appropriate RFB effects.
All of this is automated, none of it talks to the internet.
My current project is making a harry potter style “clock”, with hands for me, my wife, and kids. Can set up some geofencing. Run off some ESPhome and the HA app, which reports directly to my install, without releasing tracking info.
That’s awesome, but I don’t need it. :)
Oh, for sure, it’s just for fun
My entire design goal is making it invisible for my wife, so things just work. As an example, I took our doorbell, and made it smart… Not a smart doorbell, but I have an esphome between the doorbell and the chime, so I can turn the chime off, or I can have our phonea get notified.