QUESTION OF THE MONTH: What smart-home platform do you prefer?

e14 Question of the Month

With the holidays coming up, smart speakers are likely at the top of the wishlists for the technically inclined. These days, smart speakers are a central component of the smart home. But before choosing a smart speaker, you have to decide on a smart-home platform, with the top three being Amazon Alexa, Apple Home/Siri, or Google Home/Assistant.

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DAB over 1 year ago +6

I refuse to have one of these spies in my house. If I got ambitious for home automation I would build an entirely local system that shared nothing on the web.
Andrew J over 1 year ago +4

I don't have any home automation and not at all interested. We briefly owned an Amazon Echo but never really used it and to be honest was more trouble than it was worth. Tried setting it up to "automate…
kmikemoo over 1 year ago +3

I don't know if "prefer" is the correct word. What I have are two Echo Shows and a Dot. The one in the living room and the one in the basement pretty much control lights or outlets controlling lights.…

ntewinkel over 1 year ago in reply to dougw

dougw said:
I don't carry a cell phone with me

I've been carrying that thing far too much lately. I need to just leave it on the counter when I'm in the garden.

I think a lot of it has to do with me needing to be easy to get a hold of by my wife during chemo, just in case. Thankfully that's complete now.
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obones over 1 year ago

I'd rather have it run locally and not rely on servers located half way around the world.
Hence the reason why I'm experimenting with Willow and integrating it in my already existing openHAB ecosystem.
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DAB over 1 year ago

I refuse to have one of these spies in my house.

If I got ambitious for home automation I would build an entirely local system that shared nothing on the web.
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ntewinkel over 1 year ago in reply to DAB

Yeah the spying sucks. I'm getting ads for winter tires across all my things now. Obviously they saw me check out CanadianTire online.
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ntewinkel over 1 year ago in reply to ntewinkel

ps, I'm guessing that's more likely Google etc sharing information with all their corporate buddies after I searched for reviews and such, and less likely (but not ruled out) the Amazon things listening to me whining about the old tires.
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Cquk over 1 year ago in reply to ntewinkel

Neither statement is true. There are strict privacy policies in place for both vendors.
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ntewinkel over 1 year ago in reply to Cquk

Good to know. And I don't mind when it's being used for my convenience. I'm guessing then that the ad networks are getting ads from the vendors where I've been looking.
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kmikemoo over 1 year ago in reply to ntewinkel

ntewinkel I agree that it's Google. It follows me from work to home and back. It makes Christmas shopping quite a chore.
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ntewinkel over 1 year ago in reply to kmikemoo

kmikemoo said:
I agree that it's Google

That actually makes sense, when Google's ad network controls what I see, then it's well within the privacy policies.
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Cquk over 1 year ago in reply to ntewinkel

Correct. You will have a unique UUID that you can opt out of that is able to be used to target your interests.
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