An exciting day tomorrow (Thursday) in my smart home; my Soma Connect arrives. They (finally) got the new bridge made, and it’s a USB dongle that costs $70. It’s cheaper than the old Raspberry Pi-based model, and a lot cheaper than building your own Pi-based bridge.
I am concerned about the range of the unit, as the tilt motors connect via BlueTooth. However, at $70 a pop, I can always get a second one and have each cover one half of the house. I am looking forward to being able to include the blinds in my automations and I already have a few in mind.
As to the Soma Tilt units themselves, they are still working well. The provided solar panel keeps them at 100% charge, even at this time of the year, although they typically only get triggered twice a day - open in the morning and close in the evening. I don’t even think about them any more, which is mostly the point.
Working through the house room by room is definitely good advice, but I am now constantly annoyed by my remaining dumb rooms where I have to physically hit a switch. Stupid, cocksucking rooms.
It took a day longer than predicted, but the Soma Connect arrived today. It’s literally just the USB stick in a little plastic baggy; no box, no instructions, nothing. I looked online, and the instructions on Soma’s website appear to be for the old Raspberry Pi unit.
I plugged the dongle into USB power (not my computer) and opened up the Soma app on my phone. From there it was shockingly easy. You add the Connect to the Soma app, following the on-screen instructions, and this is essentially so it can join your home wifi network. And that’s it. It took seconds.
The instructions to add the blinds to the Home app on the website are current. You add the bridge to Home, and then it takes you through each of the sets of blinds connected to the bridge to add them to the appropriate room. So now they are all available in my Home app to be actuated and automated to my heart’s content.
On my first try, the bridge was plugged into a wall outlet in my office and it picked up all the blinds except the ones in the kitchen. I moved it across the landing to the master bedroom, and from there it was able to pick up all the blinds in the house (2-story, 1500sf). It’s a nice, discreet location too, so I don’t have a USB stick jutting out from the wall randomly.
The Soma app can connect to my blinds only one at a time, and it doesn’t hold the connection. So making an adjustment on the fly was a minor pain because you had to be in the general vicinity of the blind and the wait for the app to connect each time. The boon here - in addition to having the blinds in the Home app now - is that the bridge is “always on”, so I can actuate the blinds in real time as necessary from wherever I am, even when away from home.
Holy crap! I just found out that my LG TV is HomeKit enabled.
I was adding a smart plug for my new office floor lamp and it showed up in the list of available accessories. Even better, when I selected it to add it, the HomeKit code shows up on the TV screen. Now I can control a lot of functions of the TV through the Home app.
With the “big stuff” all-but done, I am starting to fill in the gaps in my smart home.
For example, I have a cup warmer on my desk that switches on and off depending on whether there is a cup on it. But what if I forget to take the cup off it at the end of the day and it stays on? No problem: smart plug to the rescue. The plug is activated and deactivated with my “Work” scene, and I have added it to the “Goodnight” scene just to make sure that it always gets turned off.
I must say, I am very happy with the Aqara ecosystem for the “bits and pieces” of my smart home. The cameras are great and the hubs are extremely quick and responsive. I am running their door sensors, motion sensors, smart plugs and also smart mini switches. The smart plugs have their own on/off switch, so they can still be actuated without having to use an app.
I do have some smart devices that cannot be actuated physically, notably my smart blinds, and here is where I am starting to deploy the Aqara mini switches. They have three triggers - a single click, double click and long press - that can be programmed independently to control devices, run scenes and run automations. The blinds can now be opened with a single click and closed with a double-click on the mini switch in that room.
I’ve seen lots of glowing reports about it, but I cannot see where I would have use for it. Perhaps that’s simply because I live alone, so everything is already configured to me, whereas the cube could be useful to set scenes for different people.
ETA: Also, my cats would probably bat that thing around and crash my system.
Last night, I said “hey Google, get my car ready for a 8am departure tomorrow“. When I got in my car this morning and it was a toasty 70°F and I drove off through the cold Vermont morning, I smiled the entire drive, One step closer to the automated, voice activated world that Gene Roddenberry envisioned 50 years ago…
I thought my A6 was nice. This new car is so much more refined and I did not even think that was possible. I think the mass of the BEV (5,060lbs) coupled with the air suspension make for a sublime ride. It can be dialed in to feel like a track car or a plush cruiser, all at the push of a button. One thing I noticed is that with the added weight, the thing is a beast in the snow. None of the hydroplaning on slush you get with lighter cars.
I am glad to hear that Audi has executed this well (I just read your Part 2 in the EV thread). It used to be that their line up being all AWD was a detriment to comparative speed, because the “Quatro” system added a lot of weight. With an EV, when you add drive to the other axle, you also add power with a second motor, and everyone’s EVs weigh a ton because of the batteries. This is their sandbox that everyone else is just coming in to.
