I’ve been in my home for about 4 years now. It’s safe to say that over those 4 years, everything has gone to pot and now my smart home doesn’t work.
Everything is running through my network of Amazon Alexa’s. I have mostly Philips Hue bulbs with a few GE switches and Samsung Sensors connected through Samsung SmartThings. August Smart Locks. A few other odds and ends.
I’m to the point now where nothing in my Apple Home Kit shows as online anymore. None of my timed or sensor based automations work now.
I’m sure this is normal…right? Has this been your experience that everything slowly stops working? Any tips to keep things alive and fresh? Is the only solution to delete everything and start over?
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You e got a mish-mash of brands and no real home automation controller.
A “network of Alexa’s” is not an HA controller.
Over a decade in and this has not been my experience.
My personal setup is composed almost entirely of Z-Wave devices, with a small few WiFi connected devices. All of my devices work without internet access. There is no cloud dependency, except for remote access when I’m on the road and notifications. Over the years, I have swapped out controllers because I just wanted to try a different controller, or some other reason. But, regardless of controller, I have not experienced the deterioration that you report.
I have had a small few individual devices fail and require replacement. But, the overall system continues to function well.
I would guess that your deterioration is caused by a few factors. Things such as disparate systems, cloud connectivity, and WiFi issues are a common source of unreliability.
Tail as old as time for home automation. The lesson is always go cloudless.
Experience with home assistant is not this. Everything runs great with extremely limited maintenance many years later for me. YMMV I guess.
Honestly, I haven’t don’t much research in recent years and this is the first I’ve heard of Home Assistant. What is there to know about it? And significant differences to setting it up?
Not really. I had a major update to OpenHab which to be frank, isn’t the best at regression and backwards compatibility, and that kippered a lot of stuff, but once I had worked through those everything was back to normal.
Batteries run out, and sometimes kit can fail (touch wood I haven’t had that).
Though I think if you go down the commodity route with a mixed in ecosystem, you’re more likely to hit issues over a more involved system.
Try to hold everything together with duct tape and this is what you can expect. Home Assistant is the answer.
You said you’re doing pot maybe that is the root of the problem. Is there a chance that you flipped a few breakers or even the main one and lost power? Are we sure this is even your house? Is it possible you’re in the wrong house and forgotten what yours looks like?