The whole article(and/or the study) does not mention the cost of the current split(border,trade barriers-especially after Brexit, etc.) and how that affects both Irelands daily. And it neither talks about the EU funding Ireland would get for dealing with Northern Ireland - which would be substantial. Based on pre Brexit spending it would be around 5 billion per year, probably more. And it’s very likely that Ireland would be able to leverage a “development program” for additional subsidies from the EU after unification.

The UK is basically alone now-Ireland wouldn’t be alone with a reunification.

Steam is a major problem for a lot of reasons,but basically none of the reasons the author gave are the main problem - It sounds more like a whining of a Mac/Apple user. Once again…

There are hundreds of more important problems with Steam.

Joplin, can even be easily self hosted for synching/sharing.

Funny enough boiling water freezes faster in theory.

Actually our building is much older…But as written elsewhere, we had to renew everything anyway. I used Homematic before switching over to KNX (/KNX:RF) and while it was okay for a rental (and can do much more than people think) it’s still clunky unless you use HA as an additional layer and you waste a lot on batteries. But still, better than nothing.

We are lucky that we actually have the best renters we could ever imagine but their flat was renovated cabling wise before we bought the object so there was little use of implementing something that would require rewiring AND puts me deep in the “functional liablity and GDPR” hole. But if I ever need to rewire it, it will be done with KNX simply because I can do that myself. German/GDPR law sadly is a bit uninnovative in that regard - I would happily offer my renters fingerprint access but the fact that I then would need to do four different data transfer aggreements is a hard reason to not do it.

When renting out you very soon find out that the law is heavily geared towards big corperations like vonovia and fucks over the smaller landlords whenever possible, sometimes even to the disadvantage of the renter. E.g: I can easily produce heat consumption directly from the heating system for each renter, even can automatically send them this. It can hardly be manipulated and is seen as evidence in other countries… BUT: As we rent out two apartments I do not fall under the “small landlord clause”,even though the smaller one is just a studio. So I need to install a wireless heat measuring system on all radiators and warm water outlets. Now here comes the problem: These measuring devices need to be capable of wireless measurement soon. Funny, as all of them are in the same room…where the heater is. right next to the gateway.

But you need them by law and now I need to put this shit on my renters side costs… almost 25€/month (and that was the cheapest offer by far) per apartment. I rent out for somewhat reasonable prices (well below Mietspiegel), as I rather have friendly renters than max out what I get…but that shit makes me mad. (We “refinanced” it by me taking over smoke detector maintenance so we could keep costs the same)

The system environment does have radio based components - but you are right, some things cannot be achieved without deep integration with the house. But yeah, I rented for a long time and while I used radio based systems it is not as good. My hope is that it does get common enough that more and more landlords adopt it,at least for the midrange segment. We do actually provide some limited integration for a small apartment we rent out but currently it’s not something people care about tbh and the law here is a bit problematic in that regard, but that’s a very local problem.

Yes and no. Each component comes with an “app”(basically comparable with a driver for PC hardware) within the programming software that does the setup.

So you don’t have to decide what triggers what and some part of the logic behind it - but the app often does most of the work and you do just some fine tuning.

To give you an idea: I decide which switches (I always have regular switches even if the light normally goes on/off automatically) and what detection zones should trigger the light X1. I then link the “Switch Action” to the bus address of the LED controller L1. The LED Controller then gets told what to do with that information. In my case I have two different modes: Normal and Partymode (I use Day/Nightmode for that). In Normal mode the App gets told to interpret a “On” Action as “start HCL” and a “off” as a,well “turn it off,dude”. The HCL mode then is started with the HCL Settings according to the time. I can adjust the settings for the HCL mode (e.g. I want it darker in the evening) or I can just use the preset.

Now for party mode the same switch action does not mean “use HCL” as the same light that I want at 1am might be nice if I am on my way to bed but not If my guests need to find the loo or their staff when leaving. So it’s now a simple “turn the light on at 100%”.

Once that is done you commit the change by programming the module and you’re done. (The components always communicate directly without a central module that could fail)

Now the beauty of the system is that you can be as flexible as you like. You want that switch to no longer switch on the lights but rather close the blinds? Sure. Just link it to another address.

To give you another example what the app does itself: The blinds do close according to the sun’s elevation. I basically just linked the relevant module addresses to the respective sensors,told the module the size of the blind parts (used for calculating the optimal closure position) and linked it to the “veto object” that is calculated by the home Assistant and send to the bus via IP Gateway (basically a object based on the estimated weather. I live in an area with heavy temperature drops). Everything else is done by the weather sensor - raising or lowering based on temperature and of course wind speed.

Each app can be automatically loaded but you can also load it yourself if working in an offline environment - as they need to be 100% downwards compatible you can always work with your hardware even as long as you have the app. I therefore have them all saved/backuped in case some company might go bust. (In theory you then can still get them through the association but I don’t want to rely on that).

Regular presence detectors (MDT 4 zone presence detectors, 120€ each) for the bigger rooms with some additional single zone detectors( mostly MDT as well around 75€) for some special applications (e.g. Sofa). Used those as well for some really small rooms (loo,etc.)

For the home office rooms and general presence in the bedrooms we used Steinel True Presence (around 300€ but includes air quality sensors - in the end they aren’t much more expensive if you plan on measuring air quality there anyway). They are dumb in terms of positioning in the room but superior for detecting people who do not move for a long time.

In addition to these I have normal KNX motion detectors(mostly MDT for about 90€) for some areas (as mentioned elsewhere: Next to the bed at ground level to detect your motion when you get up at night and switch on the light with 5% red so the wife does not wake up)

In terms of how it works:

Presence detectors (excluding the Steinel) are basically pimped infrared motion detectors. They detect your signature against the background and unlike motion detectors kind of remember your signature for a while. Each one has one or more “zones” it can detect you in. The “minis” mentioned above have one, the 4 zone ones have,well,four which are aimed at 45,135,225,315 degrees in case of the MDTs. This allows the detector to basically differentiate between someone being “in my right upper corner”, “in my left lower corner” etc. (Especially as detection ranges can be varied between zones but also for various applications and even day/night mode).

With a bit of clever positioning e.g. my presence detector in the kitchen has four zones: at the stovetop, workspace one and workspace two and “entry”. The detector sits on the ceiling right where these zones meet (which is not the middle of the room in this case!)

If anyone registers a presence the normal light goes on (when it’s dark enough). If you go into workspace one (where most cutting is done) the under-kitchen-cabinet light goes on. The sensitivity for that is much smaller as I don’t want it to go on if you just pass through, though. Additionally the sensitivity of the “entry” is smaller as I don’t want the light to go on if someone just passed the kitchen in the hallway.

The Steinel works a bit different as it is radar based and has only one zone, but is therefore able to recognise ones breathing movements/minimal movement while e.g. working. Otherwise it works the same.

The additional ones I use are there to recognise people better, e.g. my living room is fairly big and I want the system to specifically recognise people being on the sofa so the mini looks straight down only - while the big 4 zone detector is only able to see if people are “in the direction of the sofa”.

Hope that describes it somewhat, let me know if you have any questions!

I understand your intentions, but there question is why add this layer of complexity. A switch that is a switch and switches everything I want no matter what because it is forced by the common standard to do so and can not send any data ever is a good switch.

And tbh, while I am an absolute advocate for OSS I rather have a switch that is not depending on a possibly abandoned OSS project (been through that) - hardware in this field has incredibly long lifetime, much longer than almost all OSS projects (remember, EIB is older than Linux!) and does it’s complete job from day one. There is no evolution in some hardware in this field and all evolution that did happened did not happen hardware side but communication wise - where we are also hardware limited. It is therefore much more important to define a common standard for communication - which we have - than have flashable components (exceptions apply,sure). We need to force legislation to get a common standard of communication or at least mandatory offline gateway availability to prevent thousands of components going to waste in a few years.

It does not help your cause when you can flash the hardware but the hardware is still talking to the wrong, proprietary communication channels.

As we had to redo all wiring anyway (renovation of a 80 y old house) and worked in stages it’s a bit difficult to do an estimation. Generally we found KNX is about +15%/+20% to comparable conventional wiring depending on the complexity (conventional wiring is cheaper for simple “one switch one light” situations but gets immensely expensive for more complexity - we found KNX was cheaper for some situations like “four different switches in four different locations all switching different combinations of lights”). In total around 40k € for a large house- that includes rerunning all wires, a few specialities due to age of the house and installation by a master sparky but no programming by them(did that myself - it’s not that difficult actually but takes a bit of time to get into).

The KNX wiring in theory could be done by a amateur as it is 24v only, but 240V needs a professional here. If we had done all KNX wiring ourself and let the sparky only do the 240V part (which in retrospect we should have done) we would have actually gotten out cheaper than conventional wiring, but I had no time to do so.

Of course the level of integration we opted for is far beyond what you normally put into a house - it’s a hobby more or less and we will not break even in terms of energy savings ever - but as we had to do something anyway why not do it right. Additionally it is heavily geared towards us getting older (e.g. we have motion detection at the ground level beside the bed - this recognises if you get up at night and now switches the bedroom lights on at 5% red so the wife does not wake up and then switches the lights on towards the loo. The whole routine is capable of recognising that someone has fallen or is unable to get off the loo)

It all depends on the brands you choose - as KNX has a huge spectrum of suppliers there is everything from cheap switches that are hardly more expensive than regular ones and top notch switches that cost 500€ each…we went with rather cheap but flexible ones.

A friend did some calculations with normal “off the shelf” smart home stuff like Hue, etc. and was 20% above what we payed for comparable level of integration.

As someone who does live in a “fully smart” home, used quite some time to plan it and had to fend of “smarthome” manufacturers like flies aroud a shitcake:

90% of all products on the market are a scam and shouldn’t be called smart at all - they are fancy “remotes” either via voice or mobile phone. Nothing about that is smart. That’s dumb. It is not more convenient compared to a proper lightswitch if I need to know a long specific voice prompt or take my mobile out of its pocket to switch on a certain light.

What the autor of the article requests is already on the market for decades - KNX/EIB any a few other standards (Modbus, Onewire, etc.) are available for ages, are not depending on one brand and one central component. There is no fucking need to stay within a walled garden but the point is: These systems exist for such a long time that they do not show up as “big introduction” at IFA or CES. They evolve gradually and to stay within German exhibitions are found at the Light and Building rather than the IFA. Because the first one is a builders/electronics exhibitions, the later a multimedia/TV trade fair. The Verge is simply at the wrong place.

To give you an idea of my (actually very common, nothing about it is very special) setup/usecases and what I mean with “smart”: KNX does everything that requires switching, all sensors, basically all background work excluding the doorbell (works via LAN) and Fingerprint (works via LAN).

Lights:

The system does recognise people automatically when they enter a room and their positioning in a room. Paired with enviromental data (natural light level in the room, outside light, time of the day, our schedule according to our calenders*) it determines the appropriate level of light based on the human centric lightning concept. Light will be brighter and more blue in the morning (unless I am coming home from nightshifts), darker and more orange in the evening (unless we have a party), very dark if you go to the loo at night. It furthermore recognises your positioning in the room (e.g. when you are in a certain part of the kitchen certain lights go on) or that certain power sockets draw power according to a certain charateristic (e.g. the TV goes on)

Temperature:

The system knows current inside and outside temperature and the expected forecast*. It will heat the rooms accordingly, e.g. will turn down the kids rooms during schooldays but have them back at temperature when school ends. If the system recognises that someone is still in the room for long after school should have started it determines that someone is sick/schools off unexpectedly and temps are adjusted accordingly. In the summer the system shuts the blinds according to the light level to keep the heat out - based on the current position of the sun(e.g. the eastern blinds are lowered in the morning but not the western ones) and outside light levels. It will let enough light in for everyone to work but at the same time keep the heat out.

Air quality:

The system measures the air quality of the rooms and outside air quality&temperature and does ventilate accordingly - or ask us to manually open a window if that doesn’t provide sufficient clean air. (But won’t do so if the Air quality outside is bad)

Windows/Doors:

All of them have sensors showing their opening status, some if they are properly locked.

Doorbell/Fingerprint:

The Doorbell/Fingerprint system is the only system not on the bus as Video is beyond the scope of what the system can transfer.

Devices/Appliances:

Most things are “dumb” integrated first- we see when the washing machine is done because of the power charateristic, we see if the refrigerator is broken the same way. While we use Home Assistant for additional comfort, it is not really necessary.

Visualisation:

We use both KNX only as well as Home Assistant. But I could change over to openHAB, ioBroker or whatever we want tomorrow.

*: This data has input from external sources.

My point is: This is done without much user input. And by using around 30 different brands. With dumb actors and sensors (blind e.g. are just a “on off” motor, windows are binary contacts, same goes for leakage, etc.) so the components can be exchanged easily. And you don’t pay the hefty premium everyone tries to sell you for their “remote controlled blinds” (twice the price for a shitty remote,another useless gateway and Alexa…) and it’s far easier to use different brands. And if the blind actuator brand goes bust (way more unlikely compared to a smarthome startup) it will work without a cloud and can be exchanged seamlessly with any other brand.

We are there. But it is not fancy enough for the media.

You mean like KNX?

Which we have for 3 decades now, is totally offline if needed and can by design not leak data without the user noticing, is available both wired an non-wired, is compatible across hundreds of manufacturers and even has some open source projects, is totally backwards compatible and does not require a fancy “central component” that might stop the whole system functioning?

Seriously: The whole smart home world is a scam. 90% of all products that are new and fancy are nothing more than “voice/mobile remotes” and not truely intelligent. They are used because people refuse to do their homework in terms of smarthome.

Which is basically your consumer data …

(More or less)German who traveled to almost all countries of the EU/Europe: Italy with Romania being a close contender.

The combination of mountains and sea always gets me, but Italy wins by having those two combined more closely and the food being a slight bit more refined. The Danube Delta always beats the Po Delta,but both are still phantastic. Finland and Portugal are Nr. 3 and 4 on my list.

Austria is also nice, depending on the region. Oberösterreich and Kärnten can bite my shiny metall ass, but Vienna, Niederösterreich, Tirol, Vorarlberg are nice.

For some reason Iceland, Denmark and the Netherland are simply not my thing without me being able to describe why - I did not not enjoy them. But… They were always kind of “unmemorable”, maybe to easy, to similar to Germany, I don’t know.

No wonder they need to pray so much in the heilige Land… For a cure for their throat issues…

A fucking shame, the whole region is already fucked due to the river Po not carrying enough fresh water for the last two years.

How did Matrix fail?

It’s the base for numerous messengers used by governments around the world, it has a userbase of more than 70 million core users (not counting the various closed messengers). Various competitors (e.g. Rocket Chat) have changed their base to Matrix.

And Beeper is Matrix with Bridges (which you absolutely could deploy yourself). In theory anyone could recreate the Beeper functionality with existing other apps/bridges AND be able to communicate with Beeper on their native standard - Matrix.

I am all for political correctness and some restraint is needed.

But I also seen people criticizing other people for using their home country’s name Niger or the Spanish word for black as Spanish speakers (in that case even more cynical as the person who was criticised was a PoC from Cuba).

*Sights. Every time we discuss this. Every fucking time. * Under the GDPR are they are. See §4 part 1.

This is incorrect if the data transfer was done voluntarily/planned. This also applies to EU data outside the EU - Meta has been fined a 1.2 billion euro for that.

And no, the definitive definition of the data transfer extent is a key point of the GDPR. Each and every data owner has the right to know where their data is stored exactly. So a “EU only” would not be enough - It is basically already mandatory as transfer to other countries is a major problem after Schrems 2.