Asklemmy

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.

Automate_the_boring_stuff == more_time_for_fun

I manually turn my lights on and off. Life is so hard for me.

For me it's a fun hobby, plain and simple. Some people like maintaining saltwater tanks, some people like miniature train sets, I like maintaining a smart home and automating repeat tasks.

For a lot of things, it's a solution in search of a problem. I set it up on its own vlan because since I do networking every day for work segmenting things off is really simple for me.

I only have a handful of automations that I use.

• Turn on the garage backyard lights and the back door lights when I get home after sunset.

• Send my robo vacuum out whenever I leave the house for more than 5 minutes.

• Turn on the porch light and the exterior housing lights at sunset and off at sunrise.

• A button to turn off all the lights on my house on my phone that I use every night when I go to bed.

• A button in my living room that turns on two table lamps, a floor lamp, and some accent lights instead of turning them all on individually. It also turns them all off.

• Scene buttons at the bar that will turn on multiple lights and change colors. I'm planning to do animations with the lights here so that I can press a button and the lights do a little dance.

I don't really like motion sensors for rooms or areas because there are a lot of times I come in I don't actually want the lights on. I also don't have a million sensors because I don't want to deal with batteries or really care about everything. Things should have a purpose and not just lights that feel like they are there just for the sake of "hey look, I have lights that do something."

I'm disabled and while I don't have anything set up yet (mostly because I've been looking to move house for a while), and even when I do, I probably won't tinker with it much since that's not really my thing, some home automation would make a huge difference in my life..

So no magic, just accessibility.. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

It is fun to do.

But for practical reasons the biggest thing for me has been easily connecting switches together.

For example my kitchen has two big lights. Each light has its own switch but they put the switches in the opposite side of the room, so if you want both on you need to turn on one walk across the kitchen to turn on the other and do the same thing to turn them off.

With automation/IOT I can now logically connect the switches together so turning on one switch will turn on the other.

I use it to control some of the lights in my house. WiFi enabled plugs and switches are more convenient than having to go to each one and manually reprogram them. In my bedroom, I have one set to turn on every day at 7am and again at 9am in case I turn it off and go back to bed. It's basically a silent alarm clock.

I also have WiFi control for the mini-split (AC and heat) in my workshop. I can view the set temperature vs the actual temperature from my phone and I can adjust the temperature remotely if I want.

Being able to turn lights on and off on four different levels of a house simplifies life without having to run up and down stairs with dodgy knees. A connected doorbell camera is also quite useful for being alerted when mail or packages are delivered, especially if nobody's home, and for screening solicitors. Voice assistants in multiple rooms aid in control of these and other features, especially when busy.

My home automation setup includes:

• Texting me and/or my wife whenever the washer or dryer in the basement finishes a load of laundry, but only if we’re home. If neither is home then it waits until one of us is and only texts that person.

• Turns on exterior / driveway lights when one of us arrives home after dark.

• Turns off exterior / driveway lights when we have both left home.

• Sets our Ecobee thermostats to “away” when we have both left home, and to “home” when somebody arrives home.

I also have a “bedtime” button that ensures all lights are off, thermostats are set to their “sleep” profile, and doors are locked.

Those are the nicer things we use pretty much daily. We have others as well.

What I really want is a smart home that tells me that the stove is on and been unattended for over 20 minutes now.

And which can tell me which when I went to bed last night.

Obviously it would have to be offline not some crowd service lives streaming to the NSA.

I'm using home assistant with thermostats and humidity/temperature sensors mostly to get information how the house heats and how the rooms are affected by humidity and temperature changes.

I also automated two dehumidifiers with those sensors and zigbee plugs to not run 24/7 but in defined windows when the noise isn't bothering anyone and if the humidity triggers certain thresholds. The automation also has hysteresis sesstongs so the devices do not constantly turn on and off.

In general I don't automate to a point where I can just flick a switch or turn on something manually. But it is nice to be able to control and see everything.

It’s a hobby. Some people like automating things. Some people are overdoing it. And some like to have a central control on their phone for everything. It’s nerd heaven. I am some people, but not overly excessive. And I want everything to still be usable by guests.

I personally have a few smart devices mostly because I keep forgetting to do things. Window sensors and thermostats that work together. When I open the windows, they turn down. The windows remind me to close them after 10 minutes. When I leave home, the heating turns down.

Light automations are for when you want to be lazy, like me. When I’m away or when the sun comes up, light turn off. When I arrive, hallway light turns on. When the sun goes down, some lights in the living room turn on. I don’t have any motion sensor stuff because it doesn’t work the way I want (we all know the horrors of motion controlled bathroom lights at the office). The only reasonable sensor I could imagine is actual presence detection, which just recently became a thing but I will wait at least until there exists one by a privacy focused company like Eve.

I would like to get something for my curtains but it’s all getting a bit too expensive.

The trick is to not use any smart devices that run in the cloud. Not only because of privacy but also because you don’t want to be freezing or sit in the dark just because the internet is out or the whole company shuts down. This is what people are always joking about over smart homes, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Keep everything in your own network. You can still access it from outside through the hub but that’s optional.

Various automations, conveniences, and efficiencies that can ultimately save a lot of time &/or money.

1 ) sleep hygiene = a) close the roller shutters or blackout blinds at night b) open them gradually at the same time every day, play the tron soundtrack, and start brewing my coffee. c) drop the temperature by x degrees 1 hour before bedtime.

2 ) house can start growing mould under certain conditions = run the dehumidifier after x amount of time above y average humidity.

3 ) energy efficiency = a) when weather is predicted to rise above 25c, close roller shutters on sunny side of house. b) when temperature is rises above x, or drops below y, turn on air con.

4 ) security = encrypt and upload security camera footage every 5 minutes.

Etc, etc, etc. None of the above should be difficult to set up, nor insecure... We shouldn't need to go to great lengths to automate our lives for comfort and convenience without our privacy being invaded... but in the age of surveillance capitalism, where corporations are scrambling to monetise everything we say and do, and most hardware and software vendors are actively working against us, our only solution is to tinker, hack, and patch together a multitude of disparate software and systems. Problem solving can be fun, but I'd prefer home automation to be easy and effortless.

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.

Laziness and/or sometimes genuine medical needs

I wake up and my blinds are opening, when it gets too dark outside, they close and turn the lights on, I can lie in bed and do all this..

Have you ever used a delayed start on a washing machine? If so welcome to home automation. I'm only half joking - many home devices already have some timer based functions.

The next step is to be able to program them in a more complex way together. Like - I want my laundry to be finished 15 min before I come home. At the same time water heater should come on so there is enough hot water for a shower later.

Here is a list of some practical uses so far:

• Get a notification on the phone when the washer is done.
• Charge the car when electricity is cheap
• Turn on humidifier if sufficiently humid and no motion near it for a while
• Automatically lock the front door at night
• Toggle lights with a shortcut key on the keyboard
• Change target thermostats for different rooms and different time of day.

Also nice to learn about the house:

• Breakdown of electricity usage. (How much actually goes to heating, car, etc)
• Answer questions like "When did I really go to bed last night?". Etc