Interesting Links for 03-02-2023

1. James Gunn's plans for the DC Movie Universe look very sensible - and might actually be good!

(tags:tv movies dc comics )

2. The topologist's world map

(tags:topology map countries )

3. Timelapse of the future: A Journey to the End of Time

(tags:thefuture visualisation video timelapse space awesome )

4. An Astonishing Regularity in Student Learning Rate (Students seem to get better at about the same speed as each other)

(tags:Education speed psychology )

5. Squid skin inspires novel "liquid windows" for greater energy savings

(tags:squid colour glass )

Frustrations with automation

I've been playing with home automation a bit. Partially because it's handy if we can turn the "behind the headboard" light on or off without groping around on the floor on my side of the bed for the button, and partially because I wanted Sophia to be able to turn the light on and off in her room without having to climb on something to reach the light switch.

My Setup
So I have a Govee LED strip behind our headboard and a Wiz light bulb in her room. In the living room, we mostly use two tall lamps in the corners of the room for indirect lighting, and I've got those plugged into Amazon Smart Plugs.
I then have an Amazon Echo Flex devices (about £10 each) in each room, which you can talk to, and that works pretty well. If you say "Alexa, Light On" then the lights come on instantly, and when you say "Alexa, Light Off" then the lights go off instantly. Huzzah!

Buttons are a problem
But what if I don't want to talk to Alexa to turn things on/off? What if I want to use a button? Well that's why I picked up a Flic smart button starter kit. Press the button, make a thing happen. Nice and easy. Setup was a couple of minutes, works very smoothly. Except...except that with Alexa each button press can carry out one action. And "light on" and "light off" are each an action - there's no "toggle" function!

I could set up the buttons so that "short press" turns the light on and "long press" turns the light off - but as Alexa has a "toggle" function for plugs, why on earth can't it have one for lights as well? After all, if I want this to be nice and easy for people who aren't used to tech, and having to have an instruction manual about what length of press turns the lights on/off doesn't feel nice or easy to me!

Turns out that that if I use IFTT to hook up the button to the light then *that* has a toggle function. But also takes about 3 seconds roundtrip. And 3 seconds for a button to turn a light on or off also doesn't feel like a nice solution.

Looking through the different integrations that Wiz supports, it looks like there are some other options to play with - Homey looks plausible, and there look to be some options if I fancied running this all myself on a local server (which I really don't).

Reliability
*Both the Govee and the Wiz lose their WiFi connection about once every two weeks, which is a quick on/off at the light switch for the Wiz and about 3 minutes of messing about in its app forthe Govee. The Amazon plugs are rock solid so far.

The future
I think that I'm actually coming to this stuff just a little too soon - the smart home standard Matter is just arriving this year, and with all of the big names signed up to it it'll be much easier to control everything through whatever method you fancy, which should hopefully bring a bit more competition into the automation side of things. But I'm sure I'll keep playing with things intermittently, and see when it becomes easier.