As a tech worker, I’d rather have a panicked skunk in my home than a printer.
But people keep insisting that I print, sign and scan documents like we are living in the stone age of computing. I literally recently got a brand new in a box printer from 2008 just so I could do exactly that.
Places don’t accept pdf files that have signature touchscreen signed signatures?
I sold and bought a house without signing anything except the final papers at the notary. The mortgage, the realtor papers, the inspection all were signed on either a DocuSign page or on my phone with a stylus.
I just got onboarded to a fortune 500 company as a consultant and that was the process.
I got a Lexmark business laser printer from a place that was going out of business for like $50. Best investment I ever made. It just sits there quietly, not doing anything, until I print something like twice a year. Five years in and it still works fine, I haven’t even replaced the toner.
Best investment I ever made
My brother in Christ, you’ve paid $5 per print.
Alright, best is an exaggeration. But $5/print assumes it breaks before I print anymore. The actual value is still unknown.
When you think of how much of a pain it is to go to a print shop, that’s not bad at all.
I don’t have to be in tech to not want my lightbulbs connected to the internet, my car collecting data and any decice listening to me.
I really just want a not technology smart life and its getting harder and harder.
Me too, although robot vacuums, I like those.
this guy should check out c/selfhosted
Even if I wanted to smartify my home using open source and local servers. I wouldn’t even know what to make smart.
Lights only ever need to be on when I am in the room, but every door has a switch that only requires my arm to lift a bit. So what is the point in powering electronics for that? Just wastes energy.
Anything with a lock is a no-go anyway.
I rarely close my curtains, and don’t see why they should do so automatically in the off chance of it happening.
I don’t need to touch my thermostat when I am not at home.
Can anyone tell me actual useful applications that aren’t just a gimmick?
We turn on our vacuum robot after we leave because the kids are scared of the sound :0) but they eagerly help press the button on the phone to turn it on
I have soil moisture sensors to auto-water my…uhhh…garden seedlings.
It’s the internet, nobody cares about your backyard camas root grow op.
By a curious turn of life, I have enough technical expertise in the right areas to be able to design the software and most of the hardware turn a lot of my home smart like that in a safe way were I’m fully in control of it all (no 3rd party involved) … and I can’t be arsed, for very much those reasons.
I mean at one point when I was playing around with microcontrollers I was looking for ideas of things to do with some neat microcontrollers which are cheap and have built-in WiFi support and I just couldn’t find anything worth the trouble, for pretty much the kind of reasons you list.
Sure, lots of things can be done which are “cool ideas”, just not stuff were the whole “remote controlled from my tablet” actually significantly reduces the effort in doing something without introducing new problems (i.e. it would be a whole lot of work to get my apartment door to automatically open when my face is detected outside and then the thing has a non-zero rate of failure even I I train the AI really well, so when it fails I would be stuck outside hence I would still need to carry a key around, so in the end it’s really just less hassle not do it and to keep opening the door with my key), plus often the problem is that once you add “remote control” to a device’s design you just make it consume a lot more power, so now it has to run from mains power rather than run from some batteries that will last for a year or so.
The maximum home automation I ended up doing it is automated plant watering and that stuff has been designed without remote access exactly because it can run from 3xAAA batteries for a year even though it actually has to power a water pump which when it’s running does consume a fair bit of power (but it only runs when the soil on the vase is not humid enough, which is so seldom it averages out to very little power). Sure, it would be “cool” to read the humidity sensor from my tablet and activate watering remotely, but that doesn’t actually achieve the point of of automated plant watering - making sure my plants don’t die of thirst because I forgot to water them - whilst overall making the design worse because now it needs a lot more power and I don’t have a design anymore where I can just replace the batteries once a year or so.
I have a similar background, and I actually am automating my home. However, what Google/Alexa tote as automation isn’t actually automation; I still would have to say something/press a button.
I have a pretty healthy home assistant setup, with stuff like electrochromic film on my windows that will dim the windows if someone is sitting near them and the sun is at the right angle to be in their eyes because I hate when I have to hold my head in a position to keep the sun out of my eyes.
I picked an extreme example, but I’ve also got things like reminders when my laundry or dishes are done (running off of a metered plug, so it just detects power spikes from the machines), presence detectors in rooms to automate lights on/off, and a whole slough of things that will happen when I click the play button on Plex (lights go out, curtains close, windows dim). I’ve got humidity sensors in the bathroom for starting/stopping the vent fan, I’ve got particulate/heat/humidity sensors for starting and stopping the hood vent in the kitchen.
Obviously these things save a few seconds here and there but it is nice to not have to think about these things anymore.
The only thing I’d need to make smart is my box fan, because once I fall asleep it would be better to turn it off, but I like falling asleep with it on, and I can’t turn it off if I’m already asleep.
So I could make that a smart device.
But I got those outlet power adaptors with a mechanical switch timer that just turns the power off when the timer dial rotates. It’s got a 24 hour dial and multiple pins, so I could put my fan on a schedule if I wanted.
Cost like $5, I’ve been using them since 1995. Easy to repair and replace.
If it ain’t broke.
If the sun is up past 8pm && person home close the blinds could be a reasonable example. If water is flowing to the bathroom run fan for 30 minutes could also be reasonable. If motion near front door take photo of door and email/text it to you could be a rudimentary form of security or knowing a package arrived.
doorbell cam is just about the only thing i can think of
I just have my doorbell wired up to a taser. Anyone that actually wants into my house either has the doorcode or is going to break a window by default, so the only people that ring the damn thing are mormons that have ignored the “no soliciting” sign.
We only have two "smart* things: when we get up to pee at night, a motion sensor turns on a light in the living room. Much dimmer than those premade motion activated lights, so we don’t wake each other. Returning to bed and triggering the sensor again turns it off.
And when it has been raining more than a certain threshold in the past 24h, the outlet into which the pump that feeds our drip irrigation is plugged turns off, and on again when it hasn’t been raining for a while. Saves lots of water, especially when we are on vacation. (The rest of that system is " dumb", though.)
I could give you a bunch, but it would be missing the point: you should automate to fulfill a need. You don’t need automation so there’s no argument to make for it
Most rooms in my house each have at least a handful of different, indirect lighting solutions. I could pay an electrician to wire them all to a single mains switch, but then I would need them to come back whenever I want it changing. It would also be more complicated to have dimmers and set programs for different times of the day to to adjust the lighting to a number of presets.
I could just have the one or two overhead lights that these rooms came with, but that’s just an unpleasant to look at experience to my eyes all of the overhead lights got replaced with ceiling fans that have no lighting that come on when the room is occupied and over a certain temp.
You walk in the room, a bunch of lights and may be a fan come on at the right lighting for that time of the day, then they go off at a suitable period of time. I even have all my garden lighting coming on via motion despite some of it being a separate 12v system that’s battery and solar powered via a 12v zigabee multi channel relay.
If you have solar panels you can turn on appliances or compute intensive tasks if they produce power.
If you have humidity problems, an alarm can remind you if aerating makes sense. If you additionally have a bad landlord you can prove you aerated three times per day and still mold did grow, so he has to fix something!
If you have a home theatre one button can dim the lights, turn on the TV, and close the blinds.
You can have your motion controlled floor lights only turn on red in the night.
Small things which are in total useful.
With HomeAssistant its easy to do without any cloud connection.
I know a tech enthusiast, his house scares me
So how do you send documents to the printer?
USB Cable
I bought a cheap printer from walmart last year and was absolutely miffed that it didnt come with a cord. No, I am not connecting you to my wifi and installing your software on my computer! Had to buy a printer cord on amazon that ended up costing as much as the printer itself…
Sounds like the real problem here was spending way too much money on a USB cable that you could have gotten for less than a buck from literally any other place.
It wasn’t just a generic usb type-b? Or was the printer only $3?
Nope, turns out printers still come with a unique connector type.
This is just a standard Type B usb cable. https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--1v4a0pOwn0/X1n6TVbQElI/AAAAAAAAAKk/u0DMnzHqZnIAWMwhhKK4iGwabwQ2XGz8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/usb%2Btype%2Bb%2Bgeekyviews.png
Interesting. I haven’t seen a printer without a type-b port since like the 90’s or early 00’s? And those were pretty consistently the parallel printer ports from what I remember.
I don’t think I’ve had a printer come with a cord in like 20 years.
I bought mine with cord only just a few years ago. Staying that way too
I sold printers (and other tech stuff) 20 years ago and can confirm, they have never come with USB cables, even before they were wireless.
Well to be fair this was literally the first printer I’ve ever bought, at 31. It advertised on the box that it could connect by wifi or by cord, so I expected it to come with all accessories needed for that.
And what’s on the other end of the USB cable?
A pot of Bitcoin!
At this point i would feel safer having the printer on the network with my devices’ network stacks between it and the OS than I would granting a printer direct access like that.
cocking my gun
Nice try, Printer, but this is your last warning.
Say print again, motherfucker!
I’m starting to get old.
I can smart my house in a fully closed network and automate so much shit. But then I have to stay on top of it. I’m already at the point where it’s becoming a chore to catch up on the industry for new hardware for my rigs and I’ve done it so many times; it’s not fun anymore, it’s a job… I’m tired.
Solace is found in my headphones and a fire pit. The day Steam becomes fuckery, I’m retiring from technology and fully absolving myself into disconnection.
Hell of a time to be born, but fatigue.
Edit: Ah, who amI kidding? I’m a career data analyst. I’ll be chasing digital dragons until I die
Dont you fucking say that about steam. They will forever be a beacon of hope.
I program for a living.
I can’t stand all the smart shit people talk about. I hate installing software updates. I hate having to download an app just to use some shitty hardware. I hate needing an internet connection to use something. I hate having to charge yet another device.
I really hate software. I try to avoid it as much as possible.
There’s an offshoot of smart device enthusiasts that insist everything is local and reproducible. But if you don’t like software, it only makes it worse to try to keep things self-hosted, not to mention the learning curve is much, much steeper.
As someone into the Home Assistant community, this post is always annoying and wrong.
Care to elaborate?
Home Assistant can be used as an AIO for smart home devices. I assume OP is referring specifically to home assistant integrations that are privacy friendly such as Z-Wave and ZigBee devices that only communicate to each other locally over radio instead of over the internet to someone else’s PC.
I struggled for years trying to find a way to set up door cameras that were secure enough that I can check in remotely. Around 2015, I finally had a solution.
I ended up spending a couple hundred dollars on a wired camera Setup from 2000s that streams to a old desktop. Then spend a couple hundred dollars on a network and software that I can dial in to view the desktop remotely. I also bought a VPN to dial in. Probably about $2k, which is chump change compared to corporation setups.
After three years and constant maintenance at roughly 10 hours a week, I gave up.
Then around 2020, i bought a Eufycam and setup, plugged it in and was up and running without any maintenance for like $200. They got a major security leak a year or two ago. Kinda sucked.
But damn, the tradeoff is so painful. Either strong secure network that costs a lot (time and money), or a insecure off-the-shelf solution that just works.
All this for the convenience of being able to see the mailman walk up to my door.
Your entire house is
smarthackable and tracks your every step for advertising revenue of big companies.My smart home is Home Assistant hosted on a server in my house. It’s fully open source and has gone through multiple paid audits to show its security is good too. The only non-local-only integrations are the weather api’s and my thermostat (ecobee).
I mean yeah, it’s possible to set it up privacy-respecting and that’s great. But the average tech enthusiast doesn’t set up his own server beyound a NAS.
Heh, I’d argue the average tech enthusiast is exactly the person that would set this up. If not them, then who is homeassistant for? I think modern tech enthusiasts are privacy conscious and will put in the small effort to enjoy that privacy. Its non-techies who wouldnt bother and just use the app it comes with.
A NAS is the perfect device to host it on though. Docker or VM.
A firejail doesn’t hurt either ;)
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THIS
I work with tech; other than in my home office; there is no tech in my house.
The voice activated things…just no. I looked into Mycroft, which looks interesting, but is till a solution looking for a problem.
Personally I love the idea of a smart home only if its self hosted and running on fully open source software, also never put a gun near an unattended printer :3
Never connect an unattended printer.
Zwave and ZigBee baby!!! It’s been Awesome so far.
Zwave is superior for not clogging up the 2.4GHz airspace, both are darling to use with hass. Wifi is a close third for usability but suffers from bogging local wifi/airspace without interoperability without a controller of some kind being online. Zigbee/Zwave both can function somewhat even with the local server offline
And if anybody is wondering if that exists, it’s called Home Assistant.
I really need to get back into troubleshooting why it won’t work in my instance. Got into a habit of it but I got distracted by a crazy lady
Home assistant, as a central system (it basically let’s you wire anything into anything!). The smart switches etc should be esp8266 or esp32 based. You can then flash either tasmota or esphome to them.
Since your server will likely be Linux based, it’s open source all the way to the bare metal, (or at elast as close as possible).
My current system almost doesn’t notice if the Internet dies. Also, if you nuke critical components, in the worst case, it still defaults to dumb control behaviour (physical switches still work etc).
I still know where the kill switches are however. I’ve also made sure it doesn’t have control of anything mobile, other than the robo vacs, and I’m fairly sure I could take them in a fight.
as close as possible [to fully open source to the metal]
Last I checked the only fully open stuff is one manufacturer’s IBM power 9 workstation and several Chromebooks
Is it better in embedded stuff? Last openWRT device I ran needed a closed binary for network
This is part of the reason I have no intention of having anything to do with IT once I retire.
I have one plan for retirement, goat farming. I go over that old list of reasons every few years just to remind myself there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Nice! What makes you want to get into that?
It was originally a joke I found online, after reading through the list it honestly just feels like I want a simpler life one day. The site isn’t mine but it came up when I searched for a couple items from the list (like “Goats security is checking the fence, not sitting in a room listening to someone for hours.”)
So that you can become an enthusiast again right? Right?
It’s an Okidata ribbon printer.
They’ll probably be no more ribbons before the machine itself gives up the ghost (provided proper maintenance)
I wish it was more common for printers to have or be supported by open source firmware. Maybe then I might start to trust them enough to buy one.
BRB, attaching a pen to my GRBL-based CNC and looking for a PostScript to G-Code converter…
This is actually a really easy conversion for popular 3d printers like the ender3, there are so many plotter mods.
Funnily enough, not being able to modify a printer’s firmware is what turned Richard Stallman into the free software advocate.
(Well, it was more the drop that made an already very full glass overflow, but still, “the printer story” has de facto come to be known as the point where free software started.)
That’s bullshit. No one really does keep a gun next to their printer to shoot it in an emergency, the notion is just ridicolus.
What if the printer grabs the gun first? You need to keep it out of reach of the printer.
My printer sits on an activated trapdoor above a shark tank. I’ve spent so much on printers trying to learn all the normal noises. Also sharks, turns out ink in the tank is not great for them.
Really, you should upgrade to laser sharks. Toner is so much cheaper than bullshit price gouging inkjet ink, and I hear brother makes some great sharklasers that take generic toner…
I live in an elevated house, straight out the window it shall sail
