alt Hacker NewsI have 2 Coway air purifiers, they have no cloud stuff. They work really well.
While this is impressive: Why not just get a not-cloud one in the first place? Why does an air purifier need to be controlled via wi-fi?
I'm against a lot of smart home things because its actually more maintenance, not less, to have to think about an object connecting to wifi, to have to decide whether or not to control it (what are you even doing to it?) And I suppose to have to write your own drivers or app. Why allow it to occupy this much mental space for you?
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It’s just a remote control. Why did the tv started coming with a remote control. It’s convenient.
Setting up almost never takes more than a few seconds for me. I have Apple home, it’s almost always scan a QR code, wait a few seconds for wifi and done.
Also it’s fun to mess with.
> I'm against a lot of smart home things
What I like about IoT is the idea of hacking them :-). Of course I don't want connected devices running proprietary firmwares anywhere near my LAN.
Also one thing is that when a company sells an IoT device, maybe they mass produce it and it's cheap. Whereas if you wanted to build it yourself, it would be harder. Getting relatively good and cheap hardware and putting your own software on it is nice!
The article explains why: the author’s wife cranks it up for white noise while they sleep, and the author wanted to tie that into their existing “go to sleep” home automation.
>> Why not just get a not-cloud one in the first place? Why does an air purifier need to be controlled via wi-fi?
It is convenient to be able to monitor air quality from your phone, sourced from a device that is designed to improve it. Because then you can see how much of an impact it is actually making, move it to a different location with better airflow, etc.
I have the non-wifi version, and have to use a separate device for it.
Not sure about air purifier, but I have a Midea dehumidifier and it publishes runtime and setpoint info I pull into Home Assistant along with power draw from a smart plug. I can see how often it's running at different times of the year and how much it costs. Ended up saving some money tweaking it from 50 to 55 after seeing runtime and A/B testing both.
Also auto on/off. If you put Home Assistant app on your phone, you can wire up automations that turn things on and off depending on whether or not you're home. Could also have Home Assistant pull in air quality/pollution info for auto on/off. High pollen count today? Keep it running so I sleep well. Low pollen count? Turn it off.
Maintenance is minimal. I set the dehumidifer up 2 years ago and haven't touched it since or had a single issue. Main thing is a) get it working, b) get it isolated from internet, c) never touch or patch it.
Once the data is in Home Assistant, I can also look for correlation with wearable health info. Does purifier running improve sleep? Does changing thermostat set point improve sleep?