this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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Good ROI Suggestions? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/homeassistant
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Hi! I'm new to home assistant and I'm wondering what would be worth the cost. A lot of the "smart" appliances seem overly expensive and automating them would only save me a handful of minutes each day. I live in canada where power is cheap, so things that save power aren't particulary useful. A way to open/close the windows and doors sounds useful and would save me the most time, but costs thousands. A way to keep track of what is in the fridge and propose recipes to avoid food waste would be nice but I'm not entirely sure how I would setup such a system.

Does anyone have ideas of worthwhile things I could setup that would be worth the cost?

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[–] Schmu 0 points 1 year ago

I’m also in Canada and have noticed that the power savings from an ROI perspective is minimal. That said I think it’s still beneficial. Just simple things like lights turning off when you leave. Furnace/heat/ac changing to an “away” mode. Heat/ac getting disabled if window/door open for extended periods of time. Most of my devices and automations are either about convenience (lights dimming when playing a movie, lights automatically coming on at 1% for nightlight, sprinkler schedules) or collecting data. Collecting data did lead to an energy savings as I saw how much the garage baseboard heater was actually running in the winter and so I kept the temp lower.