34 LXF249 May 2019 http://www.linuxformat.com

ep,we’reprettycynicalabout

voiceassistantshereatLXF

Towers.Our(nameless)sister

magazinesrantandrave

aboutthelatestAlexaadditionsandhow

they make ordering tat from Amazon even

easier. They quietly forgive the chaos that

ensues when Siri’s name is spoken on the

television, as all the fruity phones within

earshot frantically start offering to help.

Tech pundits wax lyrical on the

importance of shoving a network stack

deep into every single appliance in your

housesothatit canbe‘smart’,sothatthe

‘smart’appliancescanallchatteramong

themselvesabouttheirdumbmasters.If

you’reintheisolatedenclaveknownas

theUK,yourutilityproviderswoulddearly

love you to have smart meters installed.

They tell you this will help monitor your

usage, save money and not be subject to

wildly varying usage estimates. That may

be true in individual cases, though we bet

a lot of people will find their water bill

increasing post-smart meter. But mostly

it’s because they can generate more

profitbynothavingtopaypeopletodrive

aroundreadingmeters.Insteadthey’ll

havetopaypeopletodrivearoundfixing

themona regularbasis.

Bethatasit may,voiceassistantsand

network gadgets are here to stay, and as

the old saying goes, if you can’t beat ’em,

make an open source equivalent and have

said equivalent control your home. So

here’s our guide to the FOSS-powered

smart home, featuring the Mycroft voice

assistant, openHAB, Home Assistant and

more. Let’s get to it...

VOICE CONTROLLED

SMART

HOME

Y

If you utter “Siri”, “Alexa” or “OK Google” in Jonni Bidwell’s

home, all the lights go off and the router disconnects.