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Home automation - why? (lemmy.ml)

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

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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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[–] brygphilomena 3 points 10 months ago

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."