Home Automation?

[Doofus]

I'm sure this has been covered before, and I don't want to hijack any of the ongoing threads, so:

I like gadgets and tinkering and stuff, so home automation interests me a bit.

But is it just answering a question nobody asked? I'm perfectly capable of switching my own lights on and off, and I can open the curtains myself. I don't have a smart speaker because I can use my fingers and a phone or tablet to play music or look at a weather forecast.

Would/could home automation actually offer any me benefit, or is it just a toy? I'm fairly confident answers will either be positive from current users or negative from others, and I know my questions seem a little prejudicial, but I'd appreciate objective feedback.

[randlemarcus]

Singularly, Im not sure any one automation is worth the candle, never mind the expense and faffing so you dont have to get up from your LazyBoy sofa to turn on the lamp four feet away from you.

Where the value is, is doing that from the pub, so when you get home the lights are on, or getting trnahces of things operating together, so all the lights are on based on your location. Or the heating not turning on because the windows are open.

[98elise]

Doofus said:

I'm sure this has been covered before, and I don't want to hijack any of the ongoing threads, so:

I like gadgets and tinkering and stuff, so home automation interests me a bit.

But is it just answering a question nobody asked? I'm perfectly capable of switching my own lights on and off, and I can open the curtains myself. I don't have a smart speaker because I can use my fingers and a phone or tablet to play music or look at a weather forecast.

Would/could home automation actually offer any me benefit, or is it just a toy? I'm fairly confident answers will either be positive from current users or negative from others, and I know my questions seem a little prejudicial, but I'd appreciate objective feedback.

I have some simple automation

My living room and upstairs hall lights are automated, so they come on just before sunset. Sets the house up for evening mode.

My house is extended so to get to the kitchen from the living in room you go thought two hallways. The are automated to come on with movement (after sunset), and so is the kitchen. Useful if carrying food etc.

They also shut off if lights are on for any length of time without movement (any time of day)

When going to be we have a night routine that shuts the livingroomTV and lights off, and turns the lights on up to the bedroom, and turns the en-suite lights on.

Our side and garden lights have been automated to work together. They are switched from different rooms, so the automation effectively makes them all work as if they are two way switched.

All pur bathroom lights will shut off if left on for too long. In the winter my daughters bathroom light gets shut off automatically 3-4 times an evening, and normally again in the morning.

Next I want to automated the front motion sensing lights to also turn the interior hall lights on when we arrive home.

They've all been very useful automations.

Edited to add...

I've also set up a monitor for my elderly mother via home automation. I've placed a motion detector in a way that will only trigger if shes sat on her sofa.

I've then added various routines/automations with alerts so that I get a message...

1. When she first gets up in the morning
2. If she fails to get up in the morning
3. If there is 1 hour with no movement during the day
4. If there are 2 hours without movement during the day

I need to add one that alerts me that movement has been detected after either alert 3 or 4 has already been sent. That will save me having to check in when they get triggered

Edited by 98elise on Tuesday 30th September 11:26

[Doofus]

So it seems to me that it does 'nice to have' things, rather than groundbreaking 'life enhancing' things.

Thanks both. I'll do some futher investigation.

[98elise]

Doofus said:

So it seems to me that it does 'nice to have' things, rather than groundbreaking 'life enhancing' things.

Thanks both. I'll do some futher investigation.

I've added the automation I've put into my mothers home. That saves me a lot of worry with an 80+ mother living on her own.

The stuff in my home is purely "nice to have", but I'd hate to be without it now. In the evenings we basically don't have to bother with lights. They just sort themselves out.

I should add another for my home. I've added a battery powered switch next to the bed that will operate off the en-suite light. If means you need to use it in the night you can switch it on without having to stumble around a dark bedroom.

[Fastdruid]

Doofus said:

So it seems to me that it does 'nice to have' things, rather than groundbreaking 'life enhancing' things.

100%.

The rules we have are:

Turn lights on if we're all out at sunset and then turn them off late at night
Turns the porch light on if its past sunset and the porch door opens
Take a photo and send an alert to our phones if we're both out and the porch door opens.
Send alerts if the freezers get over temperature.
Disable the garage door overnight or if the alarm is on.

Most of the time though its so we can turn off the lights from bed when the kids have left them all on and we can't be arsed to go round turning them off.

[Freakuk]

For me I have a few WiFi enabled sockets which I have an app on my phone where I can set timers and turn on/off remotely, you can still switch them on/off at the socket also. But I use them for lights if we are away or some outside lights where I can't be bothered going out in the cold and switching them on.

I have an outdoor garage and office with electric radiators in again controller via WiFi, most of the year they sit there doing nothing, but in the winter months if I work from home and need to use the office I can switch them on when I wake up so the room is warm before I head over.

Next door has some remote blinds which I think would be useful for when you are away, but we've managed so far.

As for stuff like Alexa etc I don't see the need for us personally.

[ARH]

I copied this from the other thread as you did not want to hijack that.

To me a smart home means automating all the stuff that happens every day, or every weekday or weekend.

For Example

I have one button that turns on the house first thing, turns on lights we use, puts the radio on around the house. It knows if the sun has risen or not and sets lights accordingly. The light and radio turn off when the last person leaves the house, it changes radio station as set time, when we want to listen to something else. It switches stuff back on when we get home and depending who is coming home it determines what stuff to turn on. If the house needs heating it will check to see who is home and switch it on if someone is home, when we are coming home it turns the heating on if needed when we are about 4 miles away if in the car and a mile away if walking.

This button controls other stuff as well, depending on single or double clicks etc. I use presence detection to turn off and on lights radios and TV depending on if the room is occupied or not.

There are many other things that just happen when needed as well.

I very rarely use a light switch or shout at some voice control, I do have the ability to control anything smart by voice though.

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[Shnozz]

98elise said:

I've also set up a monitor for my elderly mother via home automation. I've placed a motion detector in a way that will only trigger if shes sat on her sofa.

I've then added various routines/automations with alerts so that I get a message...

1. When she first gets up in the morning
2. If she fails to get up in the morning
3. If there is 1 hour with no movement during the day
4. If there are 2 hours without movement during the day

I need to add one that alerts me that movement has been detected after either alert 3 or 4 has already been sent. That will save me having to check in when they get triggered

Edited by 98elise on Tuesday 30th September 11:26

Can you tell me which one you use? I could benefit from that. Don't want to infringe on privacy with a camera, but a sensor would be perfect.

[Shnozz]

Doofus said:

So it seems to me that it does 'nice to have' things, rather than groundbreaking 'life enhancing' things.

Thanks both. I'll do some futher investigation.

I am generally in that camp but also appreciate tech advancements mean I might be missing out - and I too love a good gadget.

I have a few smart plugs and also heaters and towel rail have wifi capability so I can turn them on from afar. I also have a house abroad so quite useful to be able to switch on a light or whatever and be able to use wifi cameras to check on things.

I don't really feel that I use it beyond those basic steps or get into the "routines" and stuff. Not sure if it might be useful.

[AdamV12V]

I think it all largely depends on what you want to be able to automate. If you don t want to automate anything then there s little to gain in going down that route, but for some people it s a game changer.

I find it really handy to be able to see progress of and control our existing washing machine, dishwasher, tumble dryer, fridge, freezer, both ovens, hob, gas fire, cctv, solar/battery and MVHR currently. I m going to add remote access via an App to the HW immersion and room heating thermostats at some point soon for sure.

Might be nice to control the external lighting at a push beyond just the timers and light / movement sensors they are on at the moment.

Beyond those I don’t feel the need to have any additional remote access and certainly don’t feel any need for complex scripting and automation.

[Crumpet]

I went fairly big on automation but have actually started reverting back to old fashioned.

Numerous bulb failures after a year or two with Hue (the filament style ones) and some flaky connectivity meant it was starting to get frustrating rather than helpful.

Where it still remains useful is for lamps and atmospheric lighting because it’s easy to see various scenes. And also for security purposes so you can make the house look a bit more occupied. But for ‘big lights’ it’s really just a bit pointless and frustrating.

Maybe there’s a point in life where you finally realise that most ‘stuff’ in life is totally unnecessary and it’s just the marketing that sucks you in. There’s something to be said for leading a simple life.

[Fastdruid]

Crumpet said:

I went fairly big on automation but have actually started reverting back to old fashioned.

Numerous bulb failures after a year or two with Hue (the filament style ones) and some flaky connectivity meant it was starting to get frustrating rather than helpful.

Where it still remains useful is for lamps and atmospheric lighting because it s easy to see various scenes. And also for security purposes so you can make the house look a bit more occupied. But for big lights it s really just a bit pointless and frustrating.

I'm really not a fan of the bulb based ones from an automation perspective. They're nice for the ability to dim or have a different hue but they're expensive, mostly dependent on cloud providers and just not reliable enough for the price. I very much prefer the switch based ones for HA although equally you could combine the two!

[Doofus]

AdamV12V said:

I think it all largely depends on what you want to be able to automate. If you don t want to automate anything then there s little to gain in going down that route, but for some people it s a game changer.

All I can think of is driveway and entrance hall lighting, but that's currently done on PIRs.

I can't see any possible reason to want to check on my washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, fridge, oven or anything similar if I'm not standing in front if them, because I couldn't do anything with the information that it's finished/started if I'm not there anyway.

I think it could be cool to control everything through a tablet, but I don't think routines would work for us because we get up and go to bed at different times each day and at different times to each other.

I wouldn't mind having whatever I'm listening to on my phone to switch to different BT speakers as I go into another room, but I reckon one of the portable speakers we currently have, or a couple of clicks on my device work well enough.

My wife thinks it's the sort of thing that we'd make use if if we had it, but only to do stuff we don't actually need to do, and it would be a lot of ballache.

I'm struggling to formulate a credible rebuttal...

[NorthDave]

For me (and I do it for a living) the main advantage is mood lighting. Being able to press one button and have lights come on at a preset level is handy. Maybe it doesnt make sense in an attic but in a living room with pendant(s), table lamps, picture lights etc it is easier than switching and manually dimming multiple lights.

There is also the security side of things but I am not a huge fan of PIRs (except for WCs and cupboards) and timers. People get confused when things happen automatically.

Fridges, washing machines etc I an safely ignore, more so when they have AI plus an app. It's a load of rubbish.

[Doofus]

NorthDave said:

For me (and I do it for a living) the main advantage is mood lighting. Being able to press one button and have lights come on at a preset level is handy. Maybe it doesnt make sense in an attic but in a living room with pendant(s), table lamps, picture lights etc it is easier than switching and manually dimming multiple lights.

Now that could be useful. We have rather too many flush-mounted GU10s for my liking, so I prefer incidental lighting.

[RizzoTheRat]

Partly a toy, partly to get around some limitation in the existing house setup.

Some examples of my setup (the first was why I started with smart home stuff):

• I have whole house mechanical extraction ventilation system, with fans on the top floor controlled by a switch in the kitchen. The shower is 2 floors above the kitchen so ideally you'd need to walk down 2 floors, turn the fans on, go back up 2 floors, have a shower, and then remember to turn the fans off before you go out. Now the fan is switched automatically by the humidity difference between the bathroom and hallway, temperature in the laundry room (small room with a tumble drier gets hot!) and position of the kitchen extractor hood

• My outside light was on a switch in the downstairs hallway, if I wanted it on when I got home I had to turn it off when I went out. One option would have been to replace it with a light on a PIR sensor, but as I already had a Ring doorbell with it's own motion sensor, I set it up to turn on when the Ring detects motion.

• My downstairs hallway has no windows, so when you come in the house with your hands full of stuff blundering about to find the light switch was a pain, now it's on motion sensors.

• We have a 5 story town house, my wife is terrible at turning lights off, it's a pain in the arse having to go up 4 flights of stairs because you realise a lights still on when you're going out. Now when both our phones disconnect from the wifi for more than about 15 minutes all the lights turn off, or we can turn all the lights off from a switch by the back door.

Most of the rest are laziness, the stairs lights turn on and off automatically, I can dim the lounge lights without getting off the sofa, turn off my wife's bike charger after several hours, control floor lamps from a wall switch, etc.

Oh and when my coffee grinders switch broke I wired it permanently on and plugged in through a smart plug so then you press the button it will run for 15 seconds and turn off.

Doofus said:

I can't see any possible reason to want to check on my washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, fridge, oven or anything similar if I'm not standing in front if them, because I couldn't do anything with the information that it's finished/started if I'm not there anyway.

I used to think that, and we bought non smart washing machine and drier wen we moved in. However they're one floor up from the lounge so you don't always hear them finish and it's easy to forget there's a load in. In hindsight if we'd bought smart ones I could have set it up so when you turn on the bedroom or bathroom light you'd get a notification if there was still a load in the machine. Being able to turn the oven on to warm up without going down to the kitchen would be nice too.

Edited by RizzoTheRat on Tuesday 30th September 13:30

[carinatauk]

I have automated lights, installed energy monitoring but the one area I focussed on is security. The solar system also goes through it.

I ripped out the old security system, with having dogs it was rubbish. The security system is made up of cameras and door sensors, along with a keypad and flashing / audible sounder. Works well and easy to control.

Unless you have specific objectives then yes it's a nice to have.

I have all my stuff on Home Assistant, on a mini pc under a Proxmox hypervisor. Why? well I use it to automate, tinker and learn. It's been a good interest since retiring.

[AdamV12V]

Doofus said:

All I can think of is driveway and entrance hall lighting, but that's currently done on PIRs.

I can't see any possible reason to want to check on my washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, fridge, oven or anything similar if I'm not standing in front if them, because I couldn't do anything with the information that it's finished/started if I'm not there anyway.

It deffo depends on your own home layout / setup and circumstances.

For instance our laundry room is in the basement and I have to go outside to visit it. The washing machine and tumble dryer vary their cycle times depending on load so it s really handy to know before I go down there that it s actually finished! They can take anything from 1hr to 3hrs and sometimes it seems to defy expectations!

If those appliances were in your kitchen, then yes somewhat less useful.

Another example - if we get woken up in the middle of the night by a strange noise (as does happen - our house is fairly remote and in the woods), then we lay in bed and check the CCTV on the app to reassure ourselves it was just a fox or whatever it was. If I was to see something concerning it would be great to be able to remotely turn the external lights on to scare it / them off and see them in full colour rather than night mode.

Imagine the other extreme that the cctv had to be accessed on a fixed console in say the study or worse in the basement. I d have to get out of bed to investigate meaning that I m then fully woken up for ages, or more likely I d choose not to investigate further and then I d lay there worrying.

Edited by AdamV12V on Tuesday 30th September 13:33

[Doofus]

carinatauk said:

a Proxmox hypervisor

I Googled that, and understood fewer than half the words.

Eff that. Definitely not my thing.