Asklemmy

My wife is nearly home. System alerts me. I quickly tidy my day's mess. She doesn't need that after a big day.

She arrives. Gate opens for her automatically.

As she approaches the door, the light turns on for her.

Her night time play lists starts on low volume, overriding mine.

A leopard approaches the house. The house robot with bolt on subscriptions, (the expensive "hunt and defend" add on), wreaks carnage on said leopard, only to find it was a child trick or treating. Lawyers for subscription bot are arranging payment to child's family for their lost family member.

All in all, it's really useful.

Well, it's a hobby/passion. Simple as that. I'm a nerd, i love such things. And home automation is a thing I've dreamt of since the first automatic door in star trek. Automatic lights, alarm-system, cameras, a smart AI (locally, no stupid alexa et al),a tablet at the door which tells us everything we want to know on a quick glance (weather, shopping-list, fuel-prices, status of all machines etc). And all that with some many thousand lines of code and triple redundancy 😍

When i visit other people I actually find it "retro" to use light-switches 😁

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.

I have smart radiator valves I use to reduce heating cost. During weekdays the morning when the heating comes on, I know the main living room isn’t going to be used, so the rads turn themselves off, coming on late afternoon, just before the kids get home.

Smart bulbs are only really used while we are away on holiday, to simulate people being in.

I have solar panels, batteries and am on sn agile electricity tariff that changes every 30 minutes with 24 notice. Automations make sure the batteries are charged up ahead of any peak rate. Occasionally energy prices go negative if there is an excess of wind power on the grid. At that point my immersion heater starts heating water in my hot water tank, saving gas and making me money.

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.

A different take from a different person.

Accessibility for my disabilities, able to have the lights turned down when I have a migraine and can't get up because of pain, as well as reminders and timers with just my voice. Automation helps with my disabilities too.

I'm bedridden and home automation allows me to control the heating without getting up. I hate the app I have to use and would rather have an open solution, but it's better than nothing.

As I said to people I know, fun. I have fun setting this up. Its a hobby. I like to search for bargains and build the automations. If you don't have fun doing it, its usually not really worth it. It gets expensive quick and its kind of a lot of work to research and setup if you want to keep your privacy.

When I wake up and leave my bedroom l, the lights at the backdoor turn on so I can see where I'm going. When I get back from walking the dog, the camera knows it's me and triggers the heater in the bathroom so it's toasty when I'm showering. When I'm done in the shower, and turn the heater off, the coffee machine turns on. By the time I'm dressed, my coffee is ready to go.

That's just one routine I've got set up. I've got ones for both kids rooms for wake up and bedtime stuff.

It's pretty nice.

Honestly for me the draw is in minimizing the mental/emotional overhead of forgetfulness. My wife and I both have ADHD, and I have autism. That leads to a potent combination of spacing out and forgetting even very important things.

So both in service of that and as a fun hobby (My special interest is computing), I have automation using presence detection, various timers, Z-wave outlets/light switches (I refuse to use IoT, I prefer local access/control every time), GPS position and various stuff like that, in order to avoid things like leaving our home theater projector powered on unwatched (reducing bulb lifetime), leaving the oven on, leaving the espresso machine on (boiler heating water over and over again unnecessarily, wasting thousands of watt-hours of electricity), turning reptile enclosure lights on/off on a schedule with sunrise/sunset, that sort of thing.

I have this ultimate vision in my head of my bedtime routine going from "Walk through the whole house for a few minutes and lock doors/turn things off" to "Triple-click my bedroom light switch 'off' and it turns off the rest of the house lights/TVs/projectors, reduces AC temperature a couple degrees, locks the doors, arms the security system for 'home', locks the car...". You get the idea.

• Waking up via lights slowly dimming on is much nicer than an acoustic alarm.
• Light temperature adjusting to current time of day is very nice and does loads for my mood
• Lights automatically turning on and off based on presence and measured light levels is totally unnecessary but just so convenient
• Getting a reminder to take the wash out when the machine is done
• Smart plug automatically turns off power to other devices when the TV is turned off

I guess I got a kick out of it. Every time Home Assistant automatically turning on all lights 30 minutes before sun down, me and my kid would cheers. It's also nice to not worry about "have we locked the door?" or "have we turned off the AC/water heater/stove" etc because the automation take care of turning off everything when no one home, and automatically turning on lights when we got home at night. Also, there's an automation that send intruder alert if no one at home and the motion sensor/door sensor are tripped.

Note that they're not hassle free though. There is always a malfunction or two every one or two months, so I don't recommend it to anyone unless they like tinkering with stuff.

So many reasons.

Smart locks on doors that disarm house alarms when they're unlocked with a code. Lights that turn on when someone is in a room, and off when the room is empty. The garage door alerting you that it's still open around the time you go to bed. The house stereo turning itself off at a certain time on weeknights, and the house alarm system turning itself on at the same time. Being able to check that the gas fireplace is off after you've driven out of your neighborhood on your way somewhere. The house disabling the security system for 20 minutes when it detects you on the second floor landing, so that you don't trip the motion sensors when you go down for a snack.

A non-trivial example of some more complex things our house does: when one of our phones enters the neighborhood, and it is after dark, our carriage and porch lights come on. If no other phones are already home, some of the inside lights also turn on. When we turn onto our street, the garage door opens. After the garage door is closed, the outside lights turn off.

Any number of things ranging from small to large conveniences. Some small conveniences become large ones when you have guests staying over.

Edit: ooo, ooo, one other thing: I have a bunch of these switches around the house that have multiple buttons and are programmable (they recognize single click, double click, hold, etc). It allows me to hook almost any part of my house to any switch, without rewiring everything. I have several configured to turn off the alarm system, I can manually turn off all of the first-floor lights from the upstairs master, I have one in the entryway set to toggle a lamp in the office to avoid having to walk in there, navigate around the desk to the far side of the room, and switch it from there. I configured one to turn the gas fireplace on and off, because the builders had not seen fit to wire the controls to a wall-switch.

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.

I prefer to do things properly once rather than do it again every day.

For example, I have an automation that I can trigger from my phone with a single button that does all these things:

• Lowers all my blinds in the living room
• Turns on all lights in the living room and dims them a little bit
• Powers up the smart plugs for my projector, receiver and player(s)
• Sets the correct volume and source on the receiver
• Starts playing random music in my living room

The alternative would be to do each of these steps manually, every day I get home. I'm lazy, probably wouldn't do it all or just leave stuff running.

IoT devices (the non-shitty ones that don't connect to the internet) become useful together when they are automated.

30% reduction in heating cost without reduction in comfort.

Convincing we’re-home-simulation while gone.

Each single light is independently dimmable, making for variety in light scenes for different purposes.

Same as others, convenience. You can entirely live without it, but after some learning curve it's not much to maintain.

I've got opening sensors on all doors and windows so my heating turns off if something is open for a few minutes.

I've got a dark hallway with some movement sensors and smart bulbs so the lights can turn on when someone walks there, with the lights being dimmed if it's late at night or not turning on if it's super late or the luminosity sensor considers it already usable (e.g. on sunny days when there's enough light bleeding in)

I've got smart bulbs in most rooms we use a lot which change the color temperature from warm to cold to warm over the course of the day depending on the sun position/time (it's a dark country, we often need lights even during the day, especially during winter)

All in all, for me it was definitely worth the price and the investment, I'd not want to go back to not having them but I imagine for someone who hasn't experienced it, it might seem superfluous or gimmicky.

Why use a garage door opener when you can just get out of your car, open the door, get back in your car and drive it in?

Now keep asking that question about little things around the house and it starts to make sense.

For a lot of people it’s just a hobby and they use their home as a digital playground.

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.

I have only some smart lights, a Philips Hue system, and only use limited automation, but for me it is brilliant.

I live in Sweden so during the winters we have to wake up hours before the sunrise, waking up in darkness is dificult for me, so I have set up my Hue system to act as part of my alarm clock.

At 05:00 my alarm goes off, just before that my smart lights in my bedroom and hallway slowly turned on, so my eyes are already adjusted to the light, this also means that I am more alert and ready to get up. A few hours later the lights turn off.

During weekends the I don't have an alarm, and the lights turn on at 07:00, meaning I wake up slowly to a lit room.

I have been thinking of adding automation for the lights for when I come home after work, but so far I am happy enough with manually turning on the lights just outside the door.

For me, things were pretty easy/quick to set up, and the benefit? Lower electric bills. More convenience.

In addition to all the automation everyone has talked about, some of us are also data nerds.

I enjoy knowing the temp, air quality, etc. in every room. How does this change throughout the day/season? Did leaving this door open or this fan on improve anything? What can I automate at what threshold to improve things?

You can also get a lot of data about energy usage too. And if you have solar and battery, it's neat seeing how much it affects and how much you save.

Automation is useful, but in the end it's just a hobby like many other things. It's fine to be into it or not into it.

Because it’s cool.

That’s kinda it really

Seems like a fun hobby. They might say it's about productivity or something, but that kind of talk is just part of the hobby.

You can read measurements without going to the device itself, instead, you use a phone or similar. This also means that a device doesn't require a display. Consider an outside thermometer as example. Home automation allows you to draw a little graph giving you a good idea how cold it got. Let's add another measurement device, say a radon meter. Again, no display needed and you could stick it somewhere less accessible.

You can make home automation as silly or useful as you want it to be.

My journey started innocently. I wanted some dimmers in my basement which has my office and a theater setup with 3 separate light sets. Then my wife wanted a craft area so I added another dimmer. I then bought some smart plugs to control my desk lamp and my monitors. Initially all of these devices were individually controlled either via web page or by the company app (Shelly) all within the confines of my LAN. I then spun up home assistant to see what it could do on a whim - and found it had built in hooks for my projector, receiver and Nvidia shield. When I sit down to watch a movie, I can now dim all lights, turn off distracting things (my office monitors and desk lamp), kick on the projector and control the shield to pick a movie. And if I have to use the bathroom? Pause the movie, turn up the accent lights and walk without fumbling for a single switch. Also - the dimmers are all connected to physical switches on the wall so it's not a "phone only" setup. Press the wall switch, lights come on. Hold the switch, and the lights start at their lowest point. Double click the switch and full brightness. Pretty versatile!

Many people live on a schedule. When you can automate things according to that schedule it's nice.

Only when you have it working you truly realise how cool it is that things can now happen on their own, AND because you wanted them to. Like, I have some stair lights turn on when someone passes by, BUT only when the Sun angle is low enough. So it magically happens earlier in winter, and later in summer. BUT it's even better, because when it's after 22:30, the turn-on automation is deactivated as to avoid the dogs flashing the lights on while we sleep. It's like magic and you can tailor things for your workflow.

I personally don't have any of that but here's what I would like to use it for. When I go away for, say, two weeks, I'd like to be able to randomly flick lights and TV on and off in my apartment to seem like someone's home. Currently I do it by plugging floor lamps into timered power socket controllers, but they aren't internet enabled so all I can do is program them to come on and off at specified times during the day, which an observant burglar could figure out.

I would also like to save on gas bills and turn the heating off when I go away. But if it's winter time and I go away for 2 weeks, I hate coming back to a cold flat that take ages to warm up to comfortable temperatures. I'd like to be able to turn the heating off when I leave, and then back on, say, a whole day before I come back.

I operate a rooftop solar power station. While I have scripted all the individual components like battery management, Inverters and the various sinks (for where the power goes when it’s not needed immediately) using Grafana to get alerts, I use automation to activate the various scenes and settings to maximise the useful power I get from the system.

The most useful automations I personally have are rules to control the AC. It basically only kicks in if it's too hot or too cold, and I set it to turn off if I leave the house or at night. Basically saves money, and removes the need to use the remote control.

There's more stuff I'd like to do (like controlling lights and house fans), but that's definitely less urgent to me.

I suppose it can make your life easier after the initial setup.
If you got the resources to set it up.

Imagine a small cute robo friend vacuuming instead of yourself doing it!

It's fun, like most other people said. And for some things, it's nice.

I have two of my doors with network compatible smart locks with fingerprint readers so I don't need a key to get into my own house, and I have a remote garage door opener that I can fire off with my phone to let somebody in if need be.

All of the entrances to my house have video cameras over them that alert my phone if they detect any movement, and some of my lights are on schedules to let me know when to go to bed because I have problems with that anyway.

Other than that it's kind of nice to be able to turn on all of the lights in my house with a few clicks, although many of my lights are on motion detectors so I don't have to try to find the light switches, mostly in hallways and closets.

The one thing I have left to set up of the stuff that I have bought is a sensor for my front door.

Once it is set up, I will set it so that when I open my front door it will turn on the main light in the living room so I don't have to try to reach around and find a switch.

Finally, it's nice having the peace of mind to know that if I'm away from my house I can double check and make sure all of the lights are out, adjust my air conditioning so that I'm not heating an empty building, and once I'm done with that I intend on setting up a smart watering system so if I'm away from the house during the summer I can make sure that my plants receive enough water.

It's just handy stuff. Makes my life easier, gives me something fun to do, and it can be really cool to watch my house take care of itself without me having to lift a finger.

I'm not deep into it, but I've been trying to get deeper in with Home Assistant. I have several smart plugs, a smart thermostat, some Google Nest products, and even an indoor security camera.

What drove me to home automation, specifically the smart plugs where it all started, was that I live in an apartment. Most of the outlets aren't connected to wall switches. So I'd have my various lamps around where the plugs/attached switches are like behind furniture or other awkward spots to reach to. It got annoying. The smart plugs solved that so I could turn them on/off from my phone.

Next, I started placing them on a schedule. So that when I got home (back when I was working from the office), I could come home to a lit house. Or if I fell asleep on the couch, all the lights will turn off at some point instead of being on all night. Or when I'm out of town, I can play with the lights to simulate someone being home.

Then I got a free Google Nest Mini (similar to an Amazon Echo). Controlling the lights from phone was great, but controlling via voice was even better! Because what if my phone wasn't on me? Or battery dead? How about if I had guests who wanted to turn on/off lights? Now both bedrooms have one, plus the living/dining room. I can control everything from those, by voice.

The thermostat here, though digital, wasn't even programmable. So I replaced it with a smart one, free from the power company. I can even control from my phone (or voice). Now I can schedule heating/cooling. During a trip, I'll leave it outside of my at-home temp range to save money. But on the way back home, like from the airport, I can have it start heating/cooling so that by the time I get home, my apartment is ready for me.

Security camera is obvious. I travel a fair amount, so it's an extra piece of mind.

Altogether, it's about convenience and ease. These all solve or at least mitigate admittedly minor issues, but still, I don't have to worry about them anymore. Some, especially the thermostat, even help me save money. And a couple even provide me with a bit more security (at least I feel that way).

Lights are really nice. With one voice command I can turn the entire house into a bright daylight, or drop it to low intensity red shift at night.

My thermostat warms my room up before I awaken so I won’t be cold getting out of bed, while my lights slowly fade on over 10 minutes before my alarm, waking me before the tone sounds most days. At bedtime, I can fade off all the lights in the house at once before going to sleep.

Also, I can turn on the color effects and throw a dance party for the family.

I'd only like smart windows and lights, since I like low yellow light at night and to open the windows in the morning and to close them later. But I don't like the idea of Amazon or Google having my house (and conversations, internet traffic, etc.) even more at their disposal, that's why I avoid to invest on IoT devices right now.

Also, there's the getting locked out of your own house: https://medium.com/@bjax_/a-tale-of-unwanted-disruption-my-week-without-amazon-df1074e3818b

Like someone else said, it’s a hobby. I spend money on things, they make me happy for a little bit, they make problems for me, rinse, repeat.

Why do people go fishing when you can buy fish in the store? Why do people draw instead of taking pictures?

It’s nice to go to bed with all the lights on, press a button and have them all go off. It’s nice to have the doors lock when I leave and unlock when I come home. It’s nice to get an alert on my phone if my garage door is open when I leave. It’s nice that all the lights come on as the sun sets.

None of these are necessary, but all of them are nice and it would be annoying if I had to go back to dumb lights.