TO THE CYNIC, all this new smartification of everyday items seems to involve putting networked computers in places where they’re not needed, and needing dozens of companion apps on your smartphone to keep tabs on all these smart things—and in so doing, opening all these devices (and possibly your phone too) up to attack.
Some manufacturers are better than others at keeping their IoT things secured, and many attacks could be prevented by users changing default credentials. Since 2016, Raspberry Pis no longer ship with the SSH service enabled because it’s too easy to spot them when they’re exposed to the internet.
WATCH THIS!
But there’s a lot of smarthome projects that are fun, safe, and will bring some degree of joy to your home. Lots of these are variations on standard Pi maker projects—we really like, for example, Elio Struyf’s project documented at www.eliostruyf.com/diybuilding-busy-light-show-microsoft-teams-presence. This uses an LED array as a status indicator for outside your home office.