this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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A 100% fully automated smart home is a fucking bad idea. Might as well sign your death certificates. Our family had one such system (not Alexa) and it controlled the whole thing. Yes, we should have researched better but the sellers were really convincing. Anyway there was a malfunction and it trips multiple breakers in our house. Our rhought at the time was to get the fuck out and called the electricians. Guess what? The doors refuse to open properly, so we had to climb over....
If anyone really really really wants a smart home, please only assign the system for mundane tasks like music, lightings. Dont do it for security stuff like doors, cameras.
Or just dont install one, even better.
Bad setup isn't a reason why something is a bad idea. Whatever your opinions of cars are, talking about how bad they would be if everyone drove drunk doesn't really prove your point.
In any security system, and this should also apply to home automation, one of the things you have to account for is failure. If you don't have a graceful failure mode, you will have a bad time. And context matters. If my security system fails at home, defaulting to unlocked doors makes sense, especially if it's due to an emergency like a fire. If the security system in a virology lab fails, you probably don't want all the doors unlocked, and you may decide to have none of the doors unlocked, because the consequences of having the doors unlocked is greater than having them locked. Likewise, but of a much less serious nature, if your home automation fails, you should have some way of controlling the lights. If you don't, again, it hasn't failed gracefully.