After much experimentation I finally switched over my home automation system to a Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant. My system is pretty simple as it just controls a few lights for now. When the house was built we had PIR sensors and door switches fitted along with X10 lighting control. The Comfort controller was good at the time (2003), but we now have access to small, cheap computers that can do far more. Home Assistant can connect to many of the available Internet of Things devices. It sees my Google Nest and Chromecast, but I'm deciding if I can use those for anything. It also works with Philips Hue, Amazon Echo, Sonos Audio and many more.
There's a web front end that I can also see on my phone. They have an iPhone app, but not Android yet. It's all open source so that anyone can contribute. I'll see if there's anything I can do. Advantages of the new system are that it will automatically adjust to changing sunset, it's more easily programmed and may actually use less power. You can even control things with voice commands, but it's a bit hit and miss.
I've just connected it using breadboards for now, but will get some more permanent connectors so I can tidy it away in the wall box.
The Pi is in a cabinet. That will get tidied up too. I just wanted to see it all working first and then I'll look at getting rid of the old system. I wonder if anyone would want to buy it.
Congats on both accounts. Successfully connecting Pi and Better upvote :)
Cheers. Just trying to live in the future we were expecting by now ;)
So what do you think about the recent (and ongoing) massive denial of service attacks that have been happening through IOT devices, like webcams and home systems? I watch this site: Level 3 outages. It's calm now compared to the last week or so, when those orange areas were bright red and so many folks were reporting down services. It's been interesting to watch this attack morph and sustain.
It is a big problem. People will be tempted by cheap devices that won't get updated. I'll be careful about devices I buy, but it's impossible to be 100% secure if you have internet connectivity. I don't need the automation system to be externally accessible yet, but I'll be careful if I do.
If you could explain what you do to enhance the security of your IOT devices, that would be neat. It's an underappreciated issue. I have no ability to help anyone, but even I can see that it's a growing problem. Folks want the cheapest devices, and there's no incentive for the manufacturers to implement good security or updates over time.
I've seen suggestions for using 3 routers to isolate IoT devices from the rest of your network. That seems too much work for most people. We need routers that have this built in. I have some Google devices, but I trust them to take security seriously. We have to trust the experts to spot the problems.
Wow - 3 routers is probably more than what most folks would do.
Exactly. Most have probably never even changed anything on the one they have, including the password. General users cannot be expected to know how this stuff works, so suppliers have to protect them with good defaults and appropriate software updates.
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