I’m sure a similar question has been asked here but after reading as a guest for a day I just have not found it so I will just ask.
Two things are in my thoughts:
When I move I would like all my devices that remain as part of the house to work without the next owner having to reprogram everything, that would actually be a negative impact for a house sell and I’d be better off removing some of the devices than leave them.
Periodically I experience delays of up to 7+ seconds to turn a light/switch on/off. It doesn’t happen often but enough to drive me crazy.
I was thinking that a hub that didn’t rely on the internet would be a good option. I’m not opposed to using the internet for the initial setup but the goal is to have a device work without the use of the internet and to work without the internet if the hub were to temporarily lose power, it should come back online without issue and no internet talking, except maybe to update the date/time.
Let me explain… I have multiple light switches in the house and also a few wall switches which control other switches. I want these wall switch pads to work independently of the internet.
All my devices are WiFi and the list is below. Everything works great 99% of the time. But when I sell the house in a few years I would like to sell it with the system being independent of the internet. Of course the new owners would be able to setup an account and link to the hub if they wanted to but they shouldn’t be required to setup an account just to have it all working. If they wanted to do some home automation then of course they would need to be left some instructions on how to set it all up, I can definitely do that.
I have also considered just taking a separate WiFi router and setting it up to just handle the WiFi devices, on it’s own SSID.
Lastly, I got to this forum due to looking at the Home Assistant reviews and the ability to use a RPI to be the hub and control everything. This I think would be ideal in the long run. I do like telling my Google Echo to turn on the ceiling fan, turn on/off lights, etc, but it is not my priority for when the house is sold.
I do invite comments, insults, whatever. I really thought I was doing good when I purchased all WiFi devices but I didn’t realize that I might be 100% internet reliant, not what I was looking for.
Devices I have:
(4) Teckin SP10(N) Smart Socket
(6) MOES WiFi Smart Light Switch
(4) MOES WiFi 3-Way Smart Light Switch
(2) MOES Smart Wall Touch Light Switch Glass Panel Remote Control
(2) Nest Thermostat
(2) Chamberlin Garage Door Opener (B970)
(1) Amazon Echo Studio (and other Amazon echo devices)
and one ASUS RT-AC68W router that I can leave with the house, it’s not currently in use.
I don’t think the smart things is a positive thing towards the sell.
Most people would say that is a cost to rip out and start fresh.
And honestly, if I was in the plans of buying a house that was smart I would also see that as a negative thing.
I want my own, the way I want it to work.
And even if I could use the devices I would (for price sake) argue that it would have to be replaced and try and use it to negotiate the price down.
If you want to leave a device or two then it’s probably not an issue.
But leaving a whole smart home would probably be seen as “what’s wrong with it”, and “new dumb switches cost a lot to buy and have installed”.
In some jurisdictions there are regulations around what is sold and what is supported. What those are for you trumps everything.
Around here (US, TX) If insell my home there’s a requirement to deliver what was sold and a case can be made that if i demo a ''smart house" then people moving in would have an expectation that it would continue working that way. (this is important)
Theres also an expectation that what us sold continues to work as is. Theres an entire industry build around home warranties sooo.
That means you either commit to having a system thats supported xx days after the sale OR you dont demo smart stuff. Most of the realtors I know tell the clients to shut it ALL off for showings and guarantee only that the lights go on and off as a light would be expected to do. Anything else opens them up to a bunch of assurances on the sale they just aren’t ready to take on. Because in thier opinions smart home tech is still at least ten years away from being anything more than a novelty and it scares more than 40% of thier potential buyers… I can disagree with a lot of that statement, but when its the general perception of the vast majority of folks who actually sell the homes, you at least need to give it some credence…
That said l, I totally support this as from an IT security perspective, its impossible to handover a system like this without assuming risk on either side. Did the prior owner unknowingly leave a hole? Did I remember to unhook ALL of the integrations that reach into my various accounts? If this were the domain controllers for an entire enterprise where id incur a multi tens of thousands of dollars bill just to figure out what was at risk just to turn them off… Id consider it.
As much as we love our various smart setups and tech… They’re not important like those domain controllers. Its simply not worth the risk of transferring any setup and its CERTAINLY not worth the risk of becoming someone’s home automation support forever - especially your home buyer.
So turn off the smarts to show the home, reset it all when you sell the home, buy the new owner a NUC or a HA Yellow, gift wrap it with all the appropriate interconnect gear, a bottle of champagne and a gift card to your favorite take out as a housewarming present and invite them to start new with thier own setup.
Dear owner: Everything in the house is ‘ready’ to be configured to YOUR liking and has been reset so you shouldn’t have too many issues. BTW, I left a file with all of your product manuals and the websites for all the gear you bought, I hope you have many fun years if you choose to set it up.
This is exactly how I plan to do mine if I ever sell.
I appreciate the comments. While the home does have some automation, I have no intension of selling that aspect of the home and the new owners would have to make any changes they desire. All my devices stand on their own without the need for a controller of sorts, except the two three button wall switches which remotely control several of the lights. I could simply remove the two wall plates, reinstall a single light switch in one and an electrical outlet in the other and call it quits. BUT I would still like these to not be affected by internet outages/lags. So far I have not found a single controller that will work without the internet long-term.
I’ve read about the HA Yellow and would pre-order but based on what I read, it does not control WiFi devices directly, it seams it controls them via an Integration which requires the internet. I hope I’m wrong but that is what I think I understand.
I tried to setup a Virtual Machine of HA and it required this integration to my google account to work. Maybe I did it incorrectly? If HA Yellow doesn’t require this except for during initial setup, that would be fantastic.
No HA will control your wifi devices locally without the internet. And it does not require access to your google account, unless you are using a google device or service that needs this access (in your case that would probably be your nest thermostat).
Just for clarity, HA is local control but for devices like nest and chamberlain(maybe more) the control is local but HA still utilizes 3rd party cloud to access device. No internet, those things stop working.
Thanks for the confirmation and it is what I feared, the WiFi units I have are not compatible to directly be controlled by anything but the cloud. So for while I live in this house I will just have to live with the two or three times a year there is a significant delay in operation and when I move, I will just replace the two wall switch plates with their original switch and outlet parts. I will leave some instructions for the new home owner if they would like to setup their own system and provide them the SSID and password I used for my smart home WiFi (which is separate from my normal house WiFi). They can reprogram the WiFi modules if they really desire, that is their decision.
Guess I will be looking into the home automation and being able to use a standalone hub that isn’t completely reliant on the internet cloud to function. I’d like to have the hosting server be under my control like the HA Yellow sounds to be, or an RPI (wish I didn’t give my last RPI way). I’m fine using Debian in a VM to run HA on my VMWare server until I can buy an RPI or HA Yellow, I just need to find the correct switch to control.
Well I think I have beat this horse enough and I do appreciate the feedback.
I believe most Moes components can be flashed to use esphome, tasmota, espeasy or some other form of local control. That’s why I posted above. See Search Devices Supported by Tasmota for a list of locally controllable (because they can be flashed with tasmota) devices.
Nest and Chamberlin and Amazon Echo all require some cloud to work, that is for sure. I guess those companies just want to lock you in.
Teckin and MOES, on the other hand, are cloud dependent by default.
However, those are not all hopeless, with some (or a lot of, depends on who you are,) tinkering, some of those could either:
If comes with compatible chips or brains, namely with ESP chips, then there’s a good chance you could open them and find pins/ports, and flash compatible firmware (as Nick mentioned above), and then gain 100% local control. Downside is that the journey is not for everyone, but easy enough. So not impossible.
If not comes with compatible chips, chances are, both Teckin and MOES devices run Tuya in the background. You might search “LocalTuya”, and see if you could get the token, for local control. This setup obviously requires leaving a router and a HA box behind for the next owner of your house.
Or your leave Teckin and MOES as is, and leave instructions to your next owner, just like what you would do with Echos and Chamberlin and Nest
Or leave them as they are as if they are dumb switches, without any smart
Or replace those with dumb ones, when the time comes
Thanks for the link, I found two devices on it so far but I need to obtain the exact model number off the switches so I may need to pull two of them out of the wall to read a label. And the six light switches are clearly Espressif Inc. chips per my network scan.
I am a senior electrical engineer, play with rockets and guidance systems for my day job. These days I do more mentoring to these young kids who think they know it all and rarely do the work to completion, thinking one quick answer is good enough, and it generally isn’t in my specific program. Tinkering is generally a fun thing for me. The only time it’s not fun is when I destroy everything and it costs me a lot of money to recover (more of an ego bruise). Even if one light switch were to break, the adventure is still in walking the path and learning something new. But to be honest, it will depend on how easy it will be to reprogram these devices without destroying the cases. I cannot sell (or live in) a house with physically broken/exposed electrical components, it’s a fire hazard and huge liability.
The thermostat and garage openers do not require internet so those would be set to disconnect from the internet before I sold the house, I’m not leaving behind my portable devices except a hub to work the switches if needed. By that point in time I will have learned enough to do it better in the next house.
Thanks again for the great information, let me wake up and feed the dogs, then I can do some research about the exact device models I have, chipsets, and Tasmota and LocalTuya.
I’m an old retired Realtor in Texas. My experience with this stuff in the home is… PULL IT ALL OUT. NOBODY WANTS IT… unless they do it themselves. To be brutally honest, nobody wants to inherit your hobby.
I wouldn’t mind getting all the stuff, but as I said, I would use it as a thing I could negotiate the price down.
I would say I would have to get an electrician to look at all the wiring and put normal switches in.
Then if bought, I would probably do it all myself and keep most of the smart devices. But the price would have been lower than the price of a standard dumb home.
Haha, brutal But pretty much confirms what I always thought.
I guess you can leave the Nest in though. It has good brand recognition and Google’s marketing made sure to maintain the mainstream illusion that you’d save a ton of money on heating once you have one of these in your home.
With all that said, I think you have all convinced me to place the home into a dumb condition when selling it. Sure is the easiest thing to do. But for now I am going to try the Local Tuya option, it doesn’t require me to open up any device.
Well it does save me money specifically from needlessly heating or cooling the upstairs space when no one it up there, and when the wife goes up there it will turn things on until after she leaves. I find it better than her turning the HVAC on and leaving it that way for weeks before I take notice of it. But I understand, YMMV.
But pretty much confirms what I always thought.