Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
But why do you want a WiFi enabled light switch?
You don't. The Lutron switch is not wifi. The Lutron hub is not wifi.
100% you don’t want WiFi smart home devices.
WiFi is really handy because it’s easy and accessible, but as you add devices, you wind up with WiFi network issues.
Because these devices can just talk to the internet, they can talk to their manufacturer’s websites and tell them everything they learn about you from your network, such as all the other devices on your network, any open file sharing protocols (and the files on those devices), any other devices that are willing to talk to the WiFi device. So - literally - everything on your network becomes exposed to the manufacturer of the device. It’s unlikely the manufacturer would be nefarious, but they would extract all your data.
And if the device has poor security, opens a port to the outside world, or - as I discovered this weekend on my soundbar - just has a root ssh shell with no password requirement, it could pose a security risk to you and your devices.
…. And I just remembered outbound federation is currently broken on my instance and maybe one person will actually see this comment. Fuck.
Convenience, automation, remote control.
Flexibility. A hardwired switch is choosing your lighting configuration at build time, but when you have light bulbs that can all be controlled individually through software, then you want a switch that can interact with that software.
For instance, let's say you do something crazy and unprecedented like add a lamp to your room, with hardwired switches now you either have two switchs in two different spots to deal with every time you enter a room, or you need to call an electrician to wire up a switched plug. If your switch was instead a software switch you could just reprogram it to also control the lamp.
The door from my driveway opens into my office. The light switch in my office is in a really shitty place. When coming into my office at night, I have to navigate to the light switch in the dark to turn on the light.
Or, at least I did. Now when the door opens at night, the light in my office comes on at 10%.
Stuff like that is why.
It's one way of wirelessly communicating between devices of different types.
You can have a WiFi-enabled light switch that you can control with your phone without it connecting to the internet.
I have my lights set to turn on slightly before I am supposed to wake, turn off after I go to work, before I return from home, and after I go to bed. I've recently added mmwave sensors to turn them on and off based on my presence within a room. I can do all kinds of automations that I could do manually sure but if I don't need to and can minimize the amount of excess energy waste then why wouldn't I want a wirelessly controlled switch and or lights?
And yes most everyone can do this. Google Home Assistant and get lost in the rabbit hole.