The Dumb Home
For years, I've been chasing the illusion of the so-called "Smart Home". Thermostats and vacuums. Doorbells and cameras. Light bulbs and switches. Garage door openers and bird feeders. Stoves and grills. Sleep mats and of course, bathroom scales.
Fucking bathroom scales.
Oh, and the stove I've never been able to get setup.
Sure they add a level of convenience, but also, how necessary is any of it?
Considering how long humans have been around, without any of these things, best as I can tell none of it's necessary. Even factoring in the convenience of it all, I've been getting more and more paranoid about having these devices on my network.
I'm also getting more paranoid about where the data these devices collect is being sent to. iRobot being bought by a Chinese company doesn't help me sleep at night.
So the bathroom scales. We've owned two, one from Fitbit and another from Withings. The Fitbit one had a lot of issues connecting to Wi-Fi, especially after a battery change. After fighting with it multiple times, to the point of tears, I swapped it for a Withings scale.
The Withings scale was a smidge better, but also had issues connecting to the network. Most of the devices use really cheap Wi-Fi chips that don't play nice with dual-band routers. This has all led to me having yet another cheap device to create a dedicated 2.4 Ghz network in our "smart" home.
The bigger issue with the Withings scale is that we somehow managed to have a mystery 4th user profile. To make matters worse, at some point my wife stopped showing up on the scale. And to compound interest, evidently her phone stopped syncing the correct profile to her phone.
The nail in the coffin is that trying to edit the profile names to shore things up just didn't take. I'd make a change, go back into the app, it would reset. Looking through the online forums, it didn't seem like Withings was going to be much help.
Reaching a level of frustration that had me considering taking a hammer to the damn thing, I decided to reassess some things. Simply put, this wasn't where I wanted to be when Jesus comes back.
My buddy also said something to me the other day that made a world of sense. If the device needs you, then it doesn't need to be smart. Well I can't weigh myself without being materially involved.
So I did the unthinkable, I bought a dumb scale. Not too dumb, it's still electronic. Less features than we're used to, like body fat guesses (they are anecdotal at best) and definitely no Wi-Fi to contend with.
Setup was a breeze. Take it out of the box and put in the batteries. Step on the device, it tells you how much you weigh. It was quick too, the Withings scale always took a bit to settle on your weight, then you're prompted to perform a dance routine to select your profile.
Speaking of profiles, there are none, and that's just fine. Wife steps on, she gets her weight. The kid steps on, she gets her weight. And the data doesn't go anywhere.
Seriously, glorious.
I've been punching my weight into the Apple Health app, but even that seems like it will be short lived. I generally don't have much use for long term weight trends. Nobody else in the house cares either. Hop on the scale, get your weight, call it a day.
This whole exercise has gotten me thinking about what else we can dumb down in the house. At the very least, I'm sick of the 100 subscriptions that effectively means I'm leasing the hardware. I want more control of my data and my wallet.