this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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I'm not that old but I grew surrounded by older people with several degrees of mobility and other painful conditions amd none ever required go to such points.
Issues with lights were solved by moving the height at which the switches were placed. Certain potentially dangerous appliances were placed with timed mechanical sockets or a special purpose circuit breaker was put in place. Low power night lights for safety during dark hours.
Simple, very cheap and as safe as possible solutions.
IoT is not a solution for me, unless you can make sure your entire network can live fully disconnected. Otherwise, no thank you.
I'm glad your relatives were able to make permanent modifications to their living spaces that sufficiently accommodated their accessibility needs! Many of us do not share those circumstances, and the number of people with a huge variety of different medical problems is steadily increasing. I, for one, am very happy to have some implementation options to choose from.
The notion of home automation is not something that aggravates me per se but solutions have been made for some problems that never existed before.
This is even worse when we factor that many accessibility issues are addressed through simple measures that many times must be accomplished when basic maintenance is done, like rewiring or fittings renewal.
The timed sockets I mentioned I got acquainted it when I first saw an electric water heater. At 3000W, it could be an expensive beast to maintain. A €15 mechanical socket watch made possible to have the equipment only run at preset intervals, thus saving power and avoid possible overheating. These very basic tools can be used to do the same work IoT does at a fraction of the work.
And the most extreme solution, to provide help to a nearly bedridden relative, which involved setting up a complete subsidiary jumper box inside a room did not involve destroying or permantly altering a house that wasn't self owned; it wasn't pretty to look at but 2 days of work could be done with in less than twenty minutes to return the house to the original condition.
I'm not getting younger but unless IoT gets to a point where it can be fully self contained, with no hidden call-back-home features, I'm going fully mechanical.
I completely agree. I would love to have the option to use non-networked solutions. But for multiple reasons, tinkering with the electricity supply and residence is outside my control.
I can still control my networks and lightbulbs though. So here I am, somewhere I never anticipated, looking at networkable lightbulbs and foss repos. Like I said, I'm just happy to have an option.
May it work well and always accomplish your needs