Episode 112 - The (growing) Cost of our Smart Homes

Image with me for a moment, if you would, the start of a perfectly normal day in the “modern smart home”… Your alarm goes off right on time, and your start-of-day automation scene kicks in. Lights begin to subtly come up, adapting to eyes still very much wanting to be closed for at least 10 more minutes. The Air Conditioning goes to your preferred morning setting, while the living room TV kicks on with the morning news. After the tea kettle reaches the precise temperature for ideal steeping, reminders start arriving on your Home Screen summarizing the day ahead. Left over dishes go into the washer, and that last pesky load of laundry kicks off. Everything works, everything communicates, this is… “good”… right? 

That’s the thing about smart home tech or, honestly anything in the gadget-filled world we know and often times love… when it works… it’s freakin magical! 

The cost of that little slice of magic, though, is the other side of the coin… imagine once more that same scene with one vital change… last night a storm blew through and this morning the unthinkable… the internet is out…

Don’t mis hear me, we’re not talking a life-and-death “rise of the Cylons” situation here… but it’s shocking to take mental stock of everything in our homes that grind to a halt when suddenly “offline”. Will your alarm still go off on time? Automation scenes, smart lighting, and adaptable thermostats? Better be running something like Home Assistant. And more and more, even something as table steaks as that load of dirty dishes comes into question without a lifeline to the cloud. 

The cost of convenience so often is security… but more and more it also seems to be one of resilience. Maybe there’s a better way?