Ways home automation could be improved would be if things just worked without me saying anything at all. IE, when I walk into a room, the lights should turn on. When I sit on the couch, the TV (and friends) should turn on and the lights should dim. When I walk to my door, it should unlock, and when I walk away from it, it should lock. When someone else tries to get in, it should identify the person and have a rule table saying whether to just let them in, just reject them, or pop a notification on my Apple Watch or iPhone or computer asking me.
This is correct, and why I just laugh when I see commercials touting voice control over your "automation" system. If you have to tell it what to do every time, it's not automated.
Yes. I have motion sensor switches in certain rooms problem is if I stay in the room longer than anticipated but I'm out of sensor's view the lights go out and I have to walk into view and jump around to turn the light back on. An iBeacon could solve that.
This is exactly what I do. I have a motion sensor in my office, and a beacon under my desk with the power level set very low. When my phone is within about 8' of my desk, it overrides the 5 minute shut-off of the lights. I also have things set so that if I manually turn the light on or off, it overrides the motion sensor shut off for 30 minutes before it returns to normal motion sensing.
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Now, I'm obviously an outlier in this market, because I've been building out a DIY automation system for a couple of years now. I got into it out of curiosity involving the Hue bulbs. I bought a starter set not too long after they came out, and was having a blast playing with them. Until I realized that I didn't want to have to pull out my phone to turn lights on and off every time. And yes, you can put them in a regular switched outlet, and they function as normal lights. But if someone leaves the switch off, your expensive bulbs suddenly are no longer able to be automated. That was a frustrating realization, and it led me to start digging into what else was out there. Another frustration was that, even with a fairly regular work/home schedule, time-based programs were only able to be useful most of the time. The real trick to home automation, I've noticed, is not to create programs that automate the bulk of your time, but rather to make sure that you can accommodate those edge cases where you have to get up early, or you're having a party, or whatever it is that's throwing your routine off. You also have to plan for graceful failure, when it occurs (and it will).
IMHO, there are a couple of requirements for home automation to be successful: It needs to pass "the babysitter test", ie., someone who is basically a stranger can walk into your home and figure out how to perform the basic controls themselves. Part of this is that it needs to exist as a layer on top of the existing systems that people are used to. Flipping switches or operating the thermostat shouldn't cause any issues. The only way I have found for this to be successful is if you replace the actual switches themselves with controllable switches. That way the user can operate the light manually, or it can be controlled.
Another item require for success, as I noted above, is that the system requires minimal input from the users. When the living room temperature goes above 74 degrees, I want the ceiling fan to come on low, and as the temperature goes up, so does the fan speed. This is much more efficient, if I wait until I notice that I'm uncomfortably hot, I turn the fan on later than I should. Eventually I'll get around to motorized blinds that will help with thermal control.
One of the things I hear a lot is this question of what the use case is, and if it's not just laziness. I think of it more as convenience. In that spirit, I'll share some of the things I've done with my system:
- My wife gets home in the evenings before I do; but even so, during winter, it's dark already when she gets home. But a geofence notices when she gets to within about a quarter mile of the house. Upon that trigger, the driveway and front porch lights come on, and the thermostat heat set point gets changed from the away setting to 68 degrees. The lights in the foyer and living room come on as well. That way, when either of us arrive home, it's not to a dark house.
- In the reverse scenario, she leaves before I do in the morning, and I drop the kid off at school on my way to work. I can walk out of the house with most of the lights on, the TV left on, the heater on, etc, and know that anything I forgot to turn off will be shut down about 20 minutes after I leave, and the heater will never be accidentally left on for the day.
- When I go to bed at night, one button on a multi-button keypad on the wall by my bed puts the house into "bedtime" mode. Most of the lights get shut down, and light levels for motion sensors in the hallway and bathroom are changed so that if you get up in the middle of the night, the motion sensors only kick the lights on to about 15% brightness (and at a 2.5 second ramp rate rather than instantaneously) so you're not blinded. During the day, those settings are changed back to 90% brightness and a .1 second ramp rate.
- I have an IP camera over the front door, along with a motion sensor for the light. If there is motion while I am away, I get a Prowl notification with a URL I can click that shows me a still image from the camera.
- The lights in my fish tank are tied to sunrise / sunset time instead of absolute times, so the fish get seasons. Sort of, anyway.
You're really only limited by your imagination and your budget. Unfortunately, this kind of setup is only possible at this time for someone willing to invest a non-trivial amount of time and money in the process. It's become a hobby, so I don't begrudge the process. And, quite frankly, I've learned a hell of a lot of stuff that was previously way outside my comfort zone.
