heavygweit

i'm in a buy buy buy spend spend spend mood

stop me :)

okay in true erica fashion i have curated my material desires into 4 categories:

1. make my home a smart home
2. build my own propagation station with cute little jars and some nice sticks
3. vintage vests (or waistcoats), especially ones with fringe 
4. beef up my wfh setup with either an under desk treadmill, 360 swivel balance board, or mini trampoline

tbd

Homelabs

random facts and life excerpts. vulnerability is strength ✨🌈 building /uno, design & dev

If you ever wanna go down a rabbit hole on smart homes a la self-run services, peep /homelabs!

I worked on the Google Smart Display team and have quite a soft spot for smart home stuff, as well as some opinions should you ever want things to pickup or avoid!

father, husband, css golfer, ux engineer, silently defining variables as /sdv sdv.wtf

I haven’t used Alexa but believe it lacks a deep knowledge graph like Google Assistant. Though from experience that probably doesn’t matter much; I’d sum up 98% of voice commands to be one of the following

- what’s the weather
- set a timer
- turn [device] [on/off]

Most IoT devices play nicely with the three big assistants, though if you want maximum compatibility look at devices that support the newish Matter standard.

I have a Nest lock and Nest doorbell, and while the doorbell notified my smart displays, I find it annoying there’s no facial recognition for my lock. Google stuff works fine today but given their bad track record of sunsetting products and ecosystems, I wouldn’t recommend investing in them tbh.

Alexa is probably okay; Siri / HomeKit devices seem interesting and I lowkey wish I had more direct access on my iPhones, and would probably be my go to if I started today.

There’s also the DIY assistant route with local LLMs but that’s a deep rabbit hole of its own 😆

ooh i was gonna go for alexa but i'm keen to hear your take on what options are the best

i eventually want to be able to customize everything and have it all be both voice and remote (or app) controlled. blinds/curtains, lights, watering system for plants, etc