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Home automation - why? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

107 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 49 points 9 months ago (4 children)

In short, enlightened laziness.

I can turn the bedroom lights on and off, from my bed.

I can turn the bathroom light off, after my young daughter left it on, in the middle of the night.

My livingroom lights colour shift, to keep my family's sleep cycle in vague check.

I can turn my heating down room by room, if it's not needed. Conversely, I can preheat the house, on the way home.

While the setup took a bit of prep work, it's now highly reliable, and makes my life a lot easier.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Agreed, a little home automation can be nice. I like being able to turn my lights weird colours on a whim, it's pretty. With the exception of edge cases and people who have a disability I really don't understand smart large appliances and smart locks. I really hope there's a reliable smart lock for them and people in the edge cases. I haven't looked into it at all so I'll just leave it there.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

I have a Yale front door lock tied in to Home Assistant through Zigbee. It's completely controlled locally.

I own a bed and breakfast. The day a guest arrives, I have homemade apps that get the last 4 digits of their phone numbers and program them into the lock. The day they leave those numbers are deleted from the lock. The lock also runs on schedules. It locks at 10pm and unlocks at 7:30am, unless we have no guests where it just always stays locked.

It's so so nice. It's also pretty secure.

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