Home automation - why?
Home automation - why?
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.
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I love walking into my kitchen and having the lights come on at an appropriate brightness based on time of day without having to interact with the switch. I love having my gawdy custom LED lights come on in the hallway when I open my bedroom door, and having them super low at night when it’s dark so I can still see without blasting my irises. I like having a heater that runs on one end of the room until the other end hits a certain temp, and more so only having it come on if the temp is below a specific threshold in the morning. I love having my porch lights turn on and off with sunset/sunrise, and having seasonal lighting schemes. I love knowing when my house is entered and exited when I’m away, knowing that I can control many things while out of the house like lights, or if I need to open the garage door for a friend to grab something, or give access to someone once without having to give them a key, or to have the TV room turning on before I head in there so I don’t have to bother with sitting through the power up cycle for everything. Mostly, I like being able to control lights without them having to be on the same circuit. My living room doesn’t have a light fixture with a switch, but I’ve got 4 lamps and two switched down lights (one at my front door and one over the fireplace) that are all controlled from a single wireless switch, button on my phone, or voice command. My bedroom is the same, I don’t have to turn out the lights and then get in bed in the dark. I get in bed and press the action button on my phone (which works conditionally based on time, location, and a couple other consistent factors) and the lights turn off while the fan turns on. It’s a lot of work for a bunch of minor conveniences, but more than anything I really enjoy the technology and seeing what other weird and stupid things I can do with it.
Me too. It all comes down to not having to remember the little things you do or want done at the same time every day.