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Home automation - why? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

97 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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[–] IphtashuFitz 2 points 10 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Darkscryber 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

How do you do the "both away or home"?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

If they're using Home Assistant then it's pretty straightforward. You can either have the devices report back their location and update based on a Geofence or you can check and see if everyone's on the wifi or not

[–] IphtashuFitz 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Since we're an iPhone family I use iCloud3 in HomeAssistant to track our devices. After setting that up and associating the phones with people in HA it was just a matter of creating triggers based on us entering the home zone:

alias: Somebody Arrives Home
trigger:
  - platform: zone
    entity_id: person.jack
    zone: zone.home
    event: enter
  - platform: zone
    entity_id: person.jill
    zone: zone.home
    event: enter

We live at the end of a dead-end, so I set up the home zone to extend down the road a bit. That gives iCloud3 enough time to figure out we're home and trigger the automation in HA while we're still approaching. I combine the above with a check to see if it's roughly sunset to sunrise, and if it is then turn on the outdoor lights.

For doing things like turning off the lights when nobody is home, I have a similar trigger for everybody leaving the home zone, followed by a conditional that verifies everybody is away:

condition:
  - condition: or
    conditions:
      - condition: template
        value_template: >-
          {{ states('person.jack') != 'home' and states('person.jill') !=  'home'  }}

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