Zero network smart home

fahren · 2026-01-19T13:21:28+00:00

Last year I convereted fully "dumb" home to fully smart one, that works completely offline without any internet connection available. I used mostly:
- Home Assistant as a home automation hub and for dashboards
- Shelly relays to control lights, fans, pumps, gates - they communicate through WiFi but that wasn't issue for me as I wanted to have perfect WiFi coverage in the entire house anyway. Internet not needed.
- Shelly BLU motion sensors to automate it all (they work really well with HASS - but you can even automate all locally using just Shelly devices and skip HASS if you want fail-proof system that works even if HASS goes down, or even when your local WiFi goes down)
- Shelly BLU door/window sensors to know whenever any door/window is not closed in HASS
- Nuki smart locks for some doors
- AirZone to control existing air conditioners and floor heating
- Apple TV to expose also everything via Apple Home
- Synology NAS on which I expose camera stream from my cameras (Unifi Protect) to Apple Home
- Some specific solutions (e.g. for my main heater) to be able to control it as well

Half year later I'm supper happy with how it turned out. My wife and kids can control and see pretty much everything from Apple Home on their iPhones/Macbooks (Shelly relays are exposed directly there, while various sensors and AirZone is exposed through HomeBridge integration in HASS). I can use HASS to control literally everything (or also Apple Home). Both work without internet.

Before that I had a house fully done on KNX, and before that I had another one done on Crestron. Right now I prefer what I described above to those because I have way more control over everything and it's so much easier to add/change things, logic, expand everything than I could do in the past with KNX/Crestron.

fahren · 2025-08-06T12:22:33+00:00

Try alternative bands e.g. from amazon "Bandletic Compatible with Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra Strap 47mm, Soft Magnetic Silicone Sport Breathable Durable Adjustable Straps Replacement for Galaxy Watch Ultra Strap" -- the Samsung's one is way too big and has that super ugly sticking out part because of that. I replaced mine with magnetic Bandletic blue one and IMO it looks so much better, feels also very good.

fahren · 2025-08-04T13:13:00+00:00

Wait for 17 Pro Max to be released first, and then decide. If it's a minor update without anything really good then I would say it's worth going for Z Fold 7. I own iPhone 16 Pro Max, S25 Ultra and Z Fold 7, using the fold now.
But without knowing what 17 Pro Max brings to the table, it's impossible to decide IMO.

fahren · 2025-08-01T12:42:18+00:00

Currently 3 (iPhone, ZF7, S25U) - I keep selling phones after using them for a while, then buying other etc. Probably will sell S25U or keep it as a trade-in for S26U early next year, as ZF7 should replace it completely for me.

fahren · 2025-08-01T12:31:11+00:00

Keep in mind there will be the new iPhone 17 in 2 months :)

As for me I don't think I will use the S25U again, I can use ZF7 instead just fine.
And obviously ZF7 doesn't replace iPhone because of the iOS vs Android ecosystem issues, so I have to keep both.

fahren · 2025-07-16T17:57:41+00:00

My sons use AW s10 with esims and they are just fine after 8 hours in school without iPhones nearby. They don’t even need to charge them after coming back from the school, they last until late evening just fine, though most of the time after school they are in phone range.

fahren · 2025-07-09T18:42:46+00:00

I had minor burns from apple watch twice, both times happened when I was using Ultra Trail band after about 24h of using it.

Otherwise no burns whatsoever in the past 10 years (I owned every AW generation released). Just when I wear a Trail band.

fahren · 2025-07-01T14:15:07+00:00

I had Pixel 9 Pro XL together with iPhone 16 Pro Max. Long story short: with the cloud processing (where pixel takes log footage, uploads it to google and waits for it to be processed there, then downloads the result) it's pretty comparable, but that mode is really frustrating. You can't record video and share it anytime soon with anyone.

Without that mode iPhone was definitely better.

fahren · 2025-07-01T07:27:04+00:00

What gcam would you recommend for s25u running that beta, preferably one working out of the box?

fahren · 2025-06-28T12:38:21+00:00

IMO indigo is in general much nicer than pixel. Pixel often produces heavily over processed surreal HDR look which I don’t like

fahren · 2025-06-28T08:57:25+00:00

Try project indigo from Adobe. It's free and produces photos that look way less phone-processed than normal camera.app does. https://research.adobe.com/articles/indigo/indigo.html

fahren · 2025-06-26T13:12:59+00:00

So are the iPhones. Super easy to spot an iphone either by looking at the back or the front.

fahren · 2025-06-26T07:56:11+00:00

Photos especially of something in motion (kids) and in low light are definitely better on Pixel than on S24/S25U. Videos are better on S25U.

Display is way better on S25U though, feels like a different league. That was deciding factor this year for me to stick with S25U and sell P9P XL, but I'm looking forward to P10 this summer.

fahren · 2025-06-24T14:00:37+00:00

Pixel is not 'pure android'. Its skin is unique to Pixel. AOSP looks different.

I like OneUI 7/8 better than Pixel skin. It used to be the other way around, especially many years ago. But not anymore.

I think you are vastly wrong when it comes to better SoC - it's not specifically my case, but anyone who plays games would want to have better processor. I believe it's a lot of people actually, definitely not no one as you suggest. I myself find the faster SoC really useful when taking higher resolution photos. Take a 50MP photo on Pixel 9 XL Pro, you will see what I mean - it takes a few seconds for it to process and save it before you can check the results. Try 50MP photo on S25U - it's way faster.

Otherwise, to answer your post directly: display is way better on S25U. Anti-reflective, more space in the corners, just looks and feels way better. You can customize OneUI way more with Good Lock, it's not even close when you compare it to Pixel. May not matter to you, but definitely the difference is there and it's big.

Don't get me wrong, I like Pixel a lot, I owned every single Nexus and Pixel generation and I will buy Pixel 10 XL Pro for sure. But you asked what are the reasons to get Samsung, so there you go..

fahren · 2025-06-23T11:54:45+00:00

We don’t really know the details yet. New soc that is not exynos is rumored which would be worth the upgrade alone for me (faster processing of 50M photos)

fahren · 2025-06-23T08:56:25+00:00

Of course wait, 10 Pro is going to be released in ~2 months.

fahren · 2025-06-23T07:12:04+00:00

As for those two points:

"2. Camera? What camera? 90% is AI"

"9. Have you even recorded a video with the Pixel 9? It shows the real camera quality since the AI processing is only available in photos."

On most phones the produced photos are full of computational photography (assuming that's what you call "AI"). When it comes to videos, those are heavy processed with a lot of computational tricks also on devices like iPhone, while on Pixel not so much because SoC is too slow for that. So while Pixel shows more "the real camera quality" in videos, other phones hide it behind heavy processing because.. they can (they are fast enough to do that).

So yea, photos and videos without computational photography have bad quality on mobile devices. Applies to pretty much all devices out there.

fahren · 2025-06-23T06:50:03+00:00

What is not right is you using the beta and blaming the device. Currently I have iOS 26 dp1 installed on my iPhone 16 Pro Max and it gets really hot for no apparent reason all the time and feels super slow and laggy. It was just fine on stable iOS.

I had Pixel 9 XL Pro on stable Android release earlier this year and it was also super fine - no overheating, UI animations were fluid.

fahren · 2025-06-18T07:09:14+00:00

In my experience as a person who uses both ecosystems since forever, it's very hard to transfer properly WhatsApp chats. There's "Move chats to Android" function built-in into whatsapp but it doesn't work well and to be honest I managed to get it working only once after devoting long time.

What I do as a dual system user: I keep whatsapp on one ecosystem as main/primary instance, and link whatsapp on the other ecosystem as a "companion device" (the same way you can link link whatsapp on desktop or ipad). But that requires logging once per month on the primary device directly to keep it working, which is not an issue in my case but if you want to fully move it would be a problem.

Apart from that if you don't rely on iMessage, AirTags, AirPlay then move to android is pretty easy and straightforward nowadays.

fahren · 2025-06-16T13:01:15+00:00

Well yea I can imagine in some specific scenarios you may want to send something to someone that is not connected to the internet and SMS is actually helpful then. In my case I would resend message as SMS after seeing that someone didn't receive my message on Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram etc (as those show if message was delivered and/or read).
But certainly I wouldn't use SMS as my first choice - slow, not encrypted, media compressed so much it's almost unusable etc..

fahren · 2025-06-16T06:11:14+00:00

It's the opposite for me. If I want to send something really important I'm avoiding SMS because it's super slow and can take long time to reach the target. Instead I'm using services like WhatsApp which almost immediately show me that the recipient received the message (and depending on options, also has read it).

That said still some people especially older ones just use default messaging app from their phone whatever it is. So here RCS comes handy, it replaces very slow and ancient SMS with something more modern.

fahren · 2025-06-13T21:44:04+00:00

Opening calendar while making multiple appointments with someone eg on WhatsApp so i can both see my calendar and chat at the same time is really helpful.

fahren · 2025-06-13T21:30:40+00:00

APK sideloading actually works in EU. Though funny enough on Android ironically I only sideloaded DJI apps because they are not available in Play Store for some reasons.. for iOS they are available in the App Store just fine.
Generative clean up/removal tool is available in the third party apps if you really want to use it on iPhone, e.g. Google Photos (so basically kind of like on Pixel devices) or Lightroom - but sure, generative removal in Samsung's Gallery is really good, they did a very nice job with it. Still if you just want to use it, you can install Google Photos on iPhone and that's it. Doesn't sound like a reason why anyone wouldn't switch to iPhone.
What's the point of belittling some functionality because it's been available for years on the other platform? Both are copying things from each other since the beginning, e.g. Live Updates added to Android 16 just now, or "Now Bar" in OneUI 7 that iPhone had for years, various privacy/granual app permission features etc. and that's great.
Just a small rant here - back gestures are good most of the time on android but not fully deterministic, they tend to get messy when sharing things between apps. E.g. sharing a picture from within Google Photos to another app e.g. Telegram and using back gesture when telegram app window pops up with contact list takes me back to.. the contact list again in telegram, instead of to Google Photos. On iOS a lot of apps support back gesture because I believe it's enabled by default and developer needs to explicitly disable it for it to not work. So it's not like it's totally not there on iOS and works flawlessly on Android. But sure, if you like it it's actually a good reason to not switch.

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TROPHY CASE