I ordered a trail camera after seeing Patricia’s results. I wasn’t sure what memory card to order so I asked my geeky techy friend who is an early adaptor of anything and everything.

His first response was I have two them still and have had many over the years around my property but Don’t waste your money! Get on board with the free Apple Home Kit app and make your house and property a Smart Home controlled by your iPhone.

So he goes on to explain, it is an app that turns your iPhone into a universal remote control for smart home devices that you could potentially use anywhere in the world. You can control your lights, temperature, locks, security cameras and other devices, all from phone.

Do I really need or even want to turn on/off/dim my lights, lock/unlock doors, have garage doors open when I drive up and interior lights come on? NOT REALLY. Adjust my house thermostat by phone? NOT REALLY. I could pre-program mine a dozen times a day; but 95% of the time I leave it on one setting.

He talked to me for nearly a hour telling me all the “cool” stuff he’s setup. He has gone so far as to program lights in various rooms with settings that can make them comfortable or turn them flashing red with a bell ringing that hurts his dog’s ears. You need to an electric outlet, WIFI, and a hub for most of these things to work. For the most part, most is NOT very costly but still I'll pass on it.

When he finished he said, like in the past you won’t take my suggestion and will get a battery trail camera. YEP, that’s what I did.


Anyone here a big fan of Smart Homes?

 

Nope. Not me. Are you surprised???

Too complicated for me.

I am content to just manually turn the light switches on and off.

 

I'm not a fan of the smart home stuff. I don't have Alexa (or whatever else) or have Siri enabled on my phone. We do have an Arlo camera for our front door which works very well and we like it, but I'm not on board with the other stuff.

We have a smart thermostat at work and it's garbage, I much prefer a normal one that I can control. I'm not a big tech person though.

 

We currently have Alexa controlling about half the lights in our house and only one light on the outside of the house.

We have a Ring doorbell and 2 additional cameras on the outside of the house. All done by me.

I, personally, don't give a crap about the cameras, but they were/are up for Melissa's (wife) piece of mind. Say no more.

We have Alexa in just about every room. I do like Alexa. I don't have siri on my phone or tablet though.

 

I sort am into it and sort of not.
There are no, none, nada, zip zero, voice interface systems in my house. So no Siri or alexa or google dots to listen to everything we say.
I also have no desire to have a dog cam or anything else with a camera inside my house.
Although if anybody did hack it and saw me nude, they'd get exactly what they deserved. and that would be this hunka hunka burning love in the buff.
If someone ever got a shot of my wife however, I'd be a walking dead man, for ever even thinking about setting it up in the first place.

With that said I do have smart thermostats and programmable exterior lights that know what time sundown is and will shut off at predetermined times.
We can also turn them on and off from our phones which is rather handy if you had them on and forget.
At some point I'm going to add water alarms near the hot water heater. you know because.

I also have a widget in the oil tank to keep track of how much oil we have and rate of consumption.

Off and on I get the itch to do more but being fundamentally lazy that drive has gotten pretty week.

 

I will add that the toys are one their own separate network domain because the network security on these is notoriously poor.
That way someone can't easily get to network the house computers are on.

 

Our home is not smart. We have a couple of old fashioned timers on lights. The lights on the front and back porch have some kind of timers, or light sensors. Our thermostat is adjusted when we feel the need to adjust it.

We have Alexa and like having her around. Don't really care if she listens. I have Siri on my phone. Not sure why anyone disables that?

At least we aren't turning lights on and off with "The Clapper." What about you?

 

because siri has had a tendency to but in and want to help and I don't want siri's help

 

Kind of like having an extra wife?

 

Awwww nah, not like that at all. It's weird how we both are ok w/Alexa though. Alexa has settled disputes like miscellaneous trivia without consequences other than suffering through some minor gloating.