THE PORCH LIGHT
Howdy!
An engineer at AI platform Hugging Face’s French subsidiary gave some insights into how they built and designed this quirky open-source bipedal duck:
Apparently, solving bipedal walking came down to a series of special actuators and software (get the info here). You can just see this little guy being a big hit with some consumers, though.
This week, we also look at:
What the SIM in your alarm actually costs
Why your appliances go haywire after a power cut, and what it adds to your bill
The R365 switch that works with whatever you pick
A 70-inch Samsung at R4,000 off
And way, way more…
Hit reply and tell us what you're running at home. We want to know how many of you are quietly running Home Assistant in a cupboard.
Justin, Kobus and Rowen
THE BIG ONE · AUTOMATION
Tuya, Sonoff, Matter and Home Assistant: which one to actually pick
Ever find yourself standing in Builders holding two smart plugs that look identical? One of them locks you into a system you'll want out of in two years. The problem is knowing which is the right one to buy in SA.
And, over here, if you’re looking at any automation product, it’s probably one of four brands. They often get compared as if they’re all just different options of the same thing. They’re not: Tuya and Sonoff are device brands, Matter is a standard, and Home Assistant is a brain.
Here's who each one is actually for.
1. Tuya, if you want it working tonight
Tuya isn't a brand you buy; it's the platform inside hundreds of brands, and it's everywhere here in SA, at Builders and Takealot. Walk in, buy a plug, done in ten minutes. They have a huge catalogue and are genuinely cheap.
The catch is that it runs through Tuya's cloud, so when your Internet goes down, your automations die too. You also can't run it on a network with no internet at all.
2. Sonoff, if you like fiddling
The DIY route, and unusually it has a proper local distributor. Eiferer in Gauteng stocks the range from R149 with a one-year local warranty, so you're not waiting three weeks on an import when something dies.
Sonoff wins on local control and custom firmware, but plenty of people run both brands, Sonoff for what must work and Tuya for accessories.
3. Matter, which you check for rather than buy
Matter lets devices from different brands talk to each other. It's real now, but still only about 300 certified devices.
The rule: buy Matter on anything new; don't replace working gear to get it.
4. Home Assistant, once apps start annoying you
Free, open source, runs on a box in your house instead of someone's cloud. Connects to Tuya and Sonoff both, and keeps working when your fibre doesn't. It's the only one here where every device can sit on an isolated network with no internet and still be under your control.
Setup is the cost: It's far easier than it was, but budget a weekend, not an evening.
What it costs to start
Hubs and voice: R1,000 to R3,000, smart lighting R3,000 to R15,000, plus about 15% if someone else is fitting it. Plugs, bulbs and sensors are DIY. Anything hardwired at your DB board (geyser controllers included) needs a registered electrician or you void your CoC and hand your insurer a reason to decline.
The signal
Tuya if you want it working tonight and don't mind the cloud. Sonoff if you want local control and a local warranty. Buy Matter on anything new either way, because that's what lets you change your mind later. Home Assistant only once the apps start annoying you.
FIVE SIGNALS
Smart insights, short and sweet
CONNECTIVITY Your data expires because Vodacom and MTN want it to. South Africans have been baffled by the fact that some data types “disappear” after 30 days for a while now. ‘Cos data can’t physically expire like fruit or milk, right? Of course not; ICASA agrees with consumers, so they ordered telcos to stop bundles expiring. Now MTN and Vodacom took ICASA to court to try block the rules. Signal: Don’t expect it to get sorted anytime soon; plan your data usage carefully.
SAFE AND SOUND SAPS bodycams will make facial recognition routine. The rollout puts the surveillance technology into everyday policing rather than special operations, which will require regulation and will serve to make South Africans used to the idea of being filmed and identified in public. Signal: What's normal at a roadblock sets the bar for what your estate thinks it can do at the gate.
AUTOMATION ClickFix tricks you into hacking your own computer. New malware from HBO and Reddit is an attack that shows you a fake error and asks you to paste a command to fix it (Mac and Windows both). Don’t do it, though. Signal: Nothing legitimate ever asks you to paste a command into Terminal. Nothing.
SAFE AND SOUND The fraud-resistant smart ID is being forged. MyBroadband reports that the new ID card touted as tamper-proof is turning up counterfeited after all. Well, that didn’t last long. Signal: If your estate accepts an ID scan as proof of identity, it's accepting something forgeable. The true digital version only comes much later.
WORK AND PLAY Apple is making game controllers under the Beats name. Reportedly in development, which says something about how seriously Apple now takes the TV as a games machine. Signal: What Apple’s doing here is experimenting in a field it has no track record in, but not in its own name; it’s using Beats as a buffer to learn how gaming markets work.
WORTH IT?
Sonoff M5 SwitchMan Matter wall switch, 1-gang
R365, down from R410 at Eiferer
BUY if you're starting out. WAIT if your walls are still coming down.
This is the cheapest way to act on any of the automation options in SA. It's a Matter switch, so it works with whichever ecosystem you land on, and it'll still work if you change your mind in two years and move to Home Assistant. That's the entire point of buying Matter now.
It replaces an existing light switch, so the light still works normally off the wall. Nobody in the house has to learn anything, which is the real reason smart lighting fails.
Two catches: It needs a neutral wire at the switch, which older South African homes often don't have, so check before you order. And a wall switch is fixed wiring, so unless you genuinely know what you're doing, that's an electrician's R400 on top.
THE FIX
After a power cut, your appliances quietly cost you R300 a month
Fungi Utilities analysed 400 million meter readings across almost 3,900 homes in estates in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and KwaZulu-Natal. The finding: after a power interruption, timers reset or lose time, and geysers, pumps and heaters end up running at the wrong hour or all at once.
A geyser that drew 354W went to 370W after a breaker reset. On a 600kWh home, this year's tariff increases already add R180 to R220, and resets push the total swing to about R500 a month.
01 Check the power-on state on every smart switch and plug you own. Most default to "on" or "last state", which is how everything comes back on at once. Set them to "off" unless there's a reason not to.
02 After any outage, check your timers. Geyser, pool pump, borehole pump. They're the three that quietly cost the most and the three most likely to have lost time.
03 Watch your overnight baseline for a few days. A normal household sits near 0.45kWh overnight, covering the router, the fridge, the alarm and the electric fence. Well above that means something is running when you think it isn't.
ONE AUTOMATION
Stop your geyser and pool pump running at the same time
WHEN the geyser element switches on
THEN hold the pool pump off
AND run the pump once the geyser is done
Two of the biggest loads in the house, both on timers, both usually set to the factory default, which means they overlap most days without you knowing. Splitting them flattens the spike.
It matters more than it used to. If you're on an inclining block tariff, a bigger monthly total pushes you into a more expensive block, so the same electricity costs more. And in an estate, several houses spiking together can lift the whole estate's measured demand and land back on the central account.
The simplest version needs no logic at all: set the geyser and the pump to timer windows that don't overlap. Ten minutes, once. Do the smart-switch version later if you want it automatic.
THE LIST
4 Deals to consider this week
Item | Where | Price |
|---|---|---|
Incredible | R9,999 | |
DeLonghi Magnifica Evo, silver | Takealot | R9,399 |
Eiferer | R199 | |
Amazon.co.za | R105.93 |
The Samsung sale ends 30 September. And the Evo does milk at one touch with a 24-month warranty, which is the difference between using a bean-to-cup machine and resenting it. Plus, the R199 sensor is the cheapest way to make lights come on by themselves, which is still the automation people keep.
