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Using Home Assistant, adguard home and an $8 smart outlet to avoid brain rot

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370 points remuskaos | 1 comments | 22 Jun 25 20:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.229s | source
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gerdesj ◴[22 Jun 25 23:20 UTC] No.44351102[source]▶
When I specify smart home stuff, I have several criteria. Things like controls must be mains powered or on UPS or both.

If it is important, then if wifi/ethernet out then it should still work. So my doorbell used to have a link to a mechanical chime (Doorbird), the current Reolink jobbie does not but it is PoE and all my switches have UPS. The Reolink does have a separate chime that plugs into a power socket and a way better camera.

Oh and none of my home things ever get unfettered access to the internet. I have two VLANs for IoT: things is for most devices and sewer is for those that scare me somewhat.

I treat the whole thing the same way I do corporate IT and I do point Nessus at it. I have several Home Assistants that I look after - home and work and several customer ones too.

The OP's choice of smart plug is clearly designed to be mildly inconvenient to get at but also reliable. I'll put money on there being a monitoring function too.

That's a nerd that does things "proper like".

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phil21 ◴[22 Jun 25 23:24 UTC] No.44351122[source]▶
> The Reolink does have a separate chime that plugs into a power socket and a way better camera

I started using PoE to DC power adapters for most of these use-cases. It lets me centralize my UPS to the utility closet, and offer a ton of runtime that way. My router + switching setup now powers my entire house including remote switches (PoE++ powered) and access points. Security cameras (and slowly now - security floodlights) are PoE powered as well. I have probably 12-14 hours of runtime off a large stack of UPS batteries, and could add a few days to that if I wheel my "whole home" UPS I never had the time to hardwire into the house yet into the room.

Items like the fiber NIU and cable modem are powered via PoE splitters into 9/12/24V outputs they require. I still have a few random bridges and other various devices I should convert as well, but I've been lazy lately.

I went with two lower port count "core" switches vs. one so I have redundancy there, so one going out will only take out half my network and I can still operate in a degraded mode - my AP density is such that it works fine, and I can re-patch the in-wall and PoE powered switches for workstations.

The only issue is that it kind of grows with a mind of it's own... I am up to an absurd number of devices on the network now.

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1. gerdesj ◴[22 Jun 25 23:53 UTC] No.44351242[source]▶
I live in a UK sticks n bricks two storey roof and a half building. It looks like a bungalow with three bedrooms in the roof on floor one (second floor for the US and other one based countries).

I have two switches in my attic above those bedrooms and most of the rest of IT.

That means I can easily run cable drops along my attic and then under the roof to the outer walls of my house. I've run four Cat 5e to my garage and four to my sitting room.

Basically, I think we are both doing it right.

The biggest criticism of IoT is insecure and unreliable. If you buy any old tat and wire it up to Alexa well that's fine if it hangs together and it mostly does these days. If you squint hard enough, you can forget about Alexa being a bit of a security ... quandry.

There is no such thing as absurd when it comes to automation.