I wonder how many people actually use these devices, other than the first time they hooked it up. I can't picture wanting to control my dishwasher from my phone.
A thermostat makes sense, and a door lock, maybe turn a light on when you are not home.
I'm totally with you on the dishwasher, etc. But automation doesn't necessarily have to mean continual
remote control.
I haven't gone further than lights (thus, the worst that black hats could do is make my house suddenly bright at night - limited potential for damage). But I use do Siri all the time to control my living room lights, setting them all
in concert to various themes I've defined controlling brightness and hue (yes, I can set "rainbow" to get every light a wildly different color, but most of the themes are variations on daylight, from midday sun to very yellowish dimmer sunset, "relax"). I can control these via Siri or a Hue Dimmer Switch mounted next to the front door, or a touch panel on my homebuilt weather station/lighting console. Being able to tell Siri, "set TV time" to get a theater-like dull red glow from
all the lights at once, is helpful, but being able to set the lights not just dimmer, but also way at the warmer end of the spectrum, in the later evening, turns out to be a substantial QoL improvement. I wouldn't want to go back to normal on/off/dimmable lights.
And I got tired of having my porch light controlled by either a timer that needed adjusting throughout the year, or a photocell that
often made mistakes (not seeing the sky well from under the porch roof), so I took out the photocell socket and bulb, and instead put in a HomeKit-controlled iDevices Socket, and one of those socket-to-plug adaptors, and a string of weatherproof rope lights (the Socket and adaptor are inside a weatherproof box, the lights are strung around the inside edge of the porch's roof). And I told HomeKit to set up automation routines to turn the light on at sunset (at 80% brightness because that looked nice), and off at sunrise, and to drop the brightness by 10% at the top of each hour from 9pm to 3am. So, late at night, it's enough to find your keys, while early in the evening, it's a more welcoming glow. And because HomeKit is running it instead of some little timer, "sunset" actually means local sunset
today and every day (same with sunrise), regardless of seasons or DST changes. It's a bit of overkill, but I've been extremely pleased with the result. This is an example of HomeKit automation that I never touch after initial setup - I'm not controlling it with my phone - and it Just Works. I
could turn it on/off from anywhere in the world, but there's no need.
The trick with Home Automation is to ignore the marketing hype, look at the specs/reviews for
what exactly it can do for you, and decide if that's useful. I have no use for Internet connected fridges or toasters, absolutely
do not want Internet connected door locks, but... the iDevices Socket I'm happily using is one that everyone else says, "why would you use a smart
socket instead of a smart
bulb? Well, for this particular use, the smart socket is perfect - a smart bulb would give me a bulb outside, I wanted rope lights, and a smart plug... I had a light socket to work with, not an outdoor plug. So, it's a matter of figuring out what actually works for you.
