HomeKit Is a SmartHome just "cool" or do they solve problems?

[JBaby]

Just don't expect this stuff to change your life 100% for the positive.

Even when it doesn’t work 100% of the time my life has changed 100% for the positive. I’d love home automation even if it failed 50% of the time. Home automation has been life changing for me.

 

[Weaselboy]

I'll give a you a personal example where my home automation gear saved my bacon.

Hubitat Elevation® | Local, Reliable, Fast and Private Home Automation

Hubitat Elevation® is a local, reliable, fast and private home automation hub to connect your smart home devices. Elevate Your Environment™ with the solution that is not cloud-dependent. Shop now!

hubitat.com

About a month ago I bought the Hubitat Elevation home automation hub ($69.99 on sale), mainly for some lighting and switch control. I also bought several of these Samsung moisture sensors ($17 each) to put under all my sinks. So about two weeks in I get an iPhone alert the guest bathroom leak sensor is showing "wet". I check, and sure enough, all wet in the cabinet under the sink from a slow drip at one of the water lines. This is a guest bathroom where we go weeks at a time without looking in that cupboard, so I'm thinking I would have had a a lot of water damage by the time I finally noticed the leak.

So yes, some of the home automation stuff is doing it just because you can and it is fun, but there are also things that can have real utility like my leak detector example.

 

[redgreenski]

Like anything else, Smart Home tech is "cool" when it works and majorly annoying/possibly dangerous when it doesn't.

E.g., asking Siri to raise the thermo temp 3 degrees and instead she pushes it to 98.

I read some really poor reviews of Homekit enabled AC thermostats, hence I used old fashioned programable one. It works well enough for me, 70F when I leave the house at 730am and 80F when I come back home at 5pm.

Otherwise I have HomePod, Philips hue lights/motion sensors and Serena Shades. These have worked 100% of the time in the past 1 month based on my cell phone location, time of a day, sun rise and sunset.

 

[sonicrobby]

It makes life easier for me personally. I wake up around 4am, and having my smart lights set to turn on at that time, and my AC to turn off makes it more likely that I will get up and not hit snooze when my alarm goes off in the morning. For me personally its not necessarily about solving problems, but definitely more of improving my quality of life.

 

[sclawis300]

In my home the ceiling fans were not wired separately (lights and fan) so i had to pull the chains which was a pain. I installed remote control modules with wifi and now i can turn control my lights and fan separately using my phone, the physical remote or using siri.

This is my setup. Do you mind sharing a few more details on how you did this? What products did you use?

 

[MisterSavage]

Like anything else, Smart Home tech is "cool" when it works and majorly annoying/possibly dangerous when it doesn't.

E.g., asking Siri to raise the thermo temp 3 degrees and instead she pushes it to 98.

Or asking Siri to turn on the lights when your hands are full of something and she says "Hmmm, I can't do that right now".

Or setting a location-based automation that just never, EVER works.

Just don't expect this stuff to change your life 100% for the positive.

I set an "I'm leaving" routine to set my temperature to 84 degrees. That's great in the summer, not so much in the winter. Glad I caught that before I left for the day!