While I personally like some of the extras a smart home can do for me, we can all agree that we’re being sold a bunch of bs that doesn’t work well for anyone.

Basic rules for smart devices should start with

• local manual control still works, exactly as anyone expects. The “smart” part is man extra
• local network only whenever possible. Should never depend on the internet
• no vendor lock-in. work with my mix of devices. No I will not use a stupid vendor app to a stupid vendor portal per device to do basic operations.
• the goal is for my home to work better for me, not to feed me more ads. That will get your device thrown out