I am failing to see the interest in having tons of IOT devices to manage, connect, segment, etc… Why would someone want to do it? To be clear, I have friends deep in it but… I still don’t understand. Can anyone try to explain the magic I am failing to see?
Edit: Thank you all for sharing your experiences! The ones I found more interesting are those that can easily translate in reducing or tracking consumption. The rest I hear but makes more sense when I look at it from an hobbyist perspective.
Unpopular opinion: home automation is overblown. Except for the disabled or edge cases the convenience these solutions add are comparable to the inconvenience they bring (added expensive, harder to maintain, repair, replace, etc).
I’ll get out of bed to turn off the lights.
Ironically, IKEA of all companies has done it right. Their smart lighting is price comparable to dumb lighting, and works out of the box. Even pairing an additional bulb to an older controller is fairly painless.
Under the hood, however, they are using ZigBee. This means they are cross compatible. You’re not locked into their ecosystem.
Basically, you can have something as simple as a drop in lamp bulb, that can be turned off or on with a little remote. If you want more capabilities, it will scale with your desires, including playing nicely with other brands.
Most heavily advertised home automation is a steaming pile of shit. It’s mostly to try and lock you into their ecosystem and either sell your data, or show you adverts. Hobbyists can go DEEP. There is a useful middle ground however. It just gets quite buried in the noise.
God damnit you’re living the life.
Does ylour system need a lot of maintenance? Are you using home assistant?
This is the sort of stuff I use it for. I have a bed time routine. The thermostat connects to the local grid to conserve power during peak times. Eventually I plan to put up LED light strips for better lighting and to be able to “redecorate” on the fly. So when we have people over for a board game night, we can have dinner with inviting light and later switch to something appropriate to the game.
I have ADHD. It’s easy for me to forget something in my routine. So I’ve set up many of my routines to be automatic or controlled with a single voice command.
When I wake up to my alarms, my lights start turning on gradually at a dimmer setting and blue. Then they turn white at full brightness to really wake me when it’s time. When I leave for work, I simply say “I’m leaving” and my lights all set themselves appropriately. I even have certain things like space heaters on a smart switch and they automatically turn off when I’m not home in case I forgot to manually shut them off.
Then when I get home, instead of needing to hit a bunch of switches for all of my various lights, I simply say “I’m home” and in 15 seconds everything does for me what would have taken me 5 minutes manually. By the time I have my shoes off, my house is already ready for me.
When I go to bed, it’s the same. A simple “goodnight” turns my TV off, turns my fan up, and turns the lights off, all with me not having to get out of bed.
When I do laundry, my phone gets a notification when things are done. I’m able to plan my cycles more efficiently and do things like run an errand and be able to be back just in time to swap loads. When there’s an error, instead of “E43” or some nonsense on the screen that I need to lookup and is still vague, I get a notification in the app that says “Error: Washer unbalanced. Please check load and restart” and actually helps me.
If a fire alarm goes off in my house and I’m not home, my security cameras will pick up the noise of the alarm and send an urgent push notification to my phone. I can check in and see if someone just burnt food or if there is an actual emergency.
I could go on. I’ll admit that being tied to google/Amazon isn’t ideal and you should use something like HomeAssistant instead so you have complete control. It’s just a steeper learning curve, is all. But regardless, you want a home from The Jetsons? It’s already here. Not perfect mind you, but in large parts it’s already obtainable and really not that expensive. Just swap a bulb/switch here and there.
Nothing more than a LG washer and Dryer and their app. It tells you a lot more, including exact times things will finish, in the app.
Also, unrelated, but are you aware your account is listed as a bot account? Or at least it appears that way to me. You have the little bit emoji by your name. It’s in your account settings if you’re unaware.
Thanks for pointing it out. I have no idea why my account is flagged as a bot account, and I haven’t been able to fix it all this while. At some point I just gave up.
Ever think about a home-assistant setup for your washing machine?
I love all this but it would survive contact with my family. :)
I have tried to set stuff like up but mainly in my wfh office and then just as an experiment.
Yep, I feel this one. I’m of the opinion that automation should stay out of the way. As a result, my automations are all very carefully crafted to be wife-approved - Anything I can automate is done without interrupting the usual way you’d interact with the thing. My lights are all z-wave light switches, so that anyone who needs a light can just click it on. Any light-based automations are disabled while someone is in the room the lights are in (except ones like “when a movie starts on the Roku, turn off the home theater room light”).
I have water leak and fire alarm sensors and a security camera. Fairy low maintenance and I kinda want to know if any of these go off when I’m not home
I do it mostly because I’m forgetful. So I automate what I forget. For example I always forget I’ve put the washing on so I get repeating alerts to hang it out. The alerts stop once I’ve scanned the NFC tag on the washing machine.
I have still resisted any smart devices to this day, but I would absolutely love the option of a no strings attached way of getting a text/notification when the laundry is done
I put a Shelly smart plug in my washing machine outlet. If it detects the machine using power for 30 seconds and then stop using power for 5 minutes, then it sends a signal to Home Assistant, and HA send a notification to my phone. It’s easy.
