I'm bucking the trend I guess. This is my primary use of my smart speakers and impetus for buying them.
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Smart Speaker Owners Aren't Yet Widely Using Them to Control Connected Home Devices
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People can say what they want about Alexa/Google being better than HomePod, but the HomePod microphone is fantastic. Hears very well and is incredibly fast to respond to the command. If yours is slow to respond I would venture to say something is not setup correctly.
You live in a different world from most people here, I'm sorry to say.
"Home automation products have been available since the 1980s." LOL
9 times out of 10 Siri can't even set a timer properly. I'm not going to risk asking it to dim my lights and it actually unlocking all my doors and ordering 600 pints of milk instead.
I've honestly never heard anyone say Alexa/GA were better than a Homepod.
Better than Siri? Sure. I have had Insteon switches installed in my house, my parents’ house and my vacation house for over 10 years. Direct control (hitting a button or switch directly) has zero latency even if controlling a remotely linked switch (all my switches a directly linked for 3-way/multi-way control) and 99% command reliablity. More over, given that I can now control lights from more locations than I could before, I would argue that the latency has decreased over the traditional switches (as I do not need to walk a distance to control some lights).
In addition, automatic control using Home Assistant (having switched from Indigo) makes the effective latency even lower, as many tasks are now executed with no intervention from me.
I am not too surprised; people can go beyond voice rather easy. After I put Hues to practically all over the house, motion sensors and rules for those make the voice mostly redundant. Speaking to them happens, but rarely, since mostly there is no need to. Add that if you don't have enough Hues, it may not be worth that much.
Other device uses are likely even more rare, given how new TVs with integration are still (as an example). So, thinking mass markets, this is not that surprising.
how does one get selected for some of these surveys? I feel widely under represented in a lot of these surveys. I use mostly for controlling the light switches in my living area, follow by listening to music through my bluetooth speakers, and lastly my thermostat.
That is correct lol, bad wording on my part.I've honestly never heard anyone say Alexa/GA were better than a Homepod.
The home control stuff is overrated (in terms of money spent). It's so much easier to press the switch yourself, esp cause it's usually right next to the door, than it is to yell across the room at a device and wait a few seconds for it to process. And the older touch screen controls are ok but only make things easier if you have an exceptional number of things to control. Nowhere near worth the maintenance. For music, AirPlay and Bluetooth have been around forever.
I am a fan of those motion sensor light switches, though. You get the full automation of lights turning on from your presence, the benefits of manual control, and the simplicity/compatibility of regular light switches. Also you know for sure it's not spying on you or getting hacked
I am a fan of those motion sensor light switches, though. You get the full automation of lights turning on from your presence, the benefits of manual control, and the simplicity/compatibility of regular light switches. Also you know for sure it's not spying on you or getting hacked
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"Hey Siri, goodnight." All lights in the house turn off, fan turns on, thermostat sets to a specific temperature, doors lock.
That command takes about 2 seconds to say. Siri then takes another couple of seconds to execute... Otherwise you are looking at a few minutes running around the house to manually control all of these items individually. You can have your zero latency, I will take the convenience.
I have a smart thermostat. I like controlling it via the app on my iPhone. Siri can control it, but I have no desire to use her to do that (or for anything else, for that matter.)
Bingo.
Also pressing a button is quicker than giving a verbal command.
Also also the garden variety light switch’s lifespan is decades, the cost is low and platform agnostic.
I bough a HomePod in late March and set it up the day I got it. However, I believe Apple may have pushed a minor update to HomePods sometime in mid-April to make it less sensitive. When I first got it I placed it on an end table in my living room where I used to have an Amazon Echo and it worked fine at first, it was every bit as sensitive as the Echo was. But a few weeks later, it suddenly seemed to have lost some of its sensitivity and I now sometimes have to say "Hey Siri" multiple times before it will light up. It also seems to have difficulty at times turning my Hue lights on and off in my living room. Last night I had to ask 4 times for Siri to "turn off living room". Each time the display would light up on top of the HomePod but it wasn't until the 4th time I asked that it actually turned the lights off. Having to ask 4 times kind of defeats the purpose of voice control as it would have been faster to just turns off manually.
This is the reason why I have not ordered a new Amazon Cube yet. I don't want to have to shout at my TV to change the channels when my wife and kids are trying to sleep.
Voice control is cool, but not practical in many situations. There is a reason why we still type on keyboards instead of just dictate everything to our computers.
Voice control is cool, but not practical in many situations. There is a reason why we still type on keyboards instead of just dictate everything to our computers.
I have one HomePod, 5 dots, one Echo spot and an Echo show and use Siri and Alexa mostly to control lights and the driveway camera then Alexa for the central heating.
Homekit is easier to configure and seems more resilient but in the UK, there are so many more options available for Alexa and Google Home than there are for Homekit. Only one smart plug available in the UK for Apple and zillions for Alexa.
Homekit is easier to configure and seems more resilient but in the UK, there are so many more options available for Alexa and Google Home than there are for Homekit. Only one smart plug available in the UK for Apple and zillions for Alexa.
I just kept an eye out for deals, havent paid full price for any home automation.
Its only easier when you just enter/exit the room, for anything else I prefer Hue.
I also have a sensor for the landing light so there’s no moment where you’re in the dark.
I also use a TP link adapter in the winter for a small electric heater to warm up the room and is handy for various shift without some stupidly long cable or keeping the heater right next to me.
I think we'd see more adoption if we had one obvious and clear standard.
Devices would be sold with the standard front and center in a consumer friendly way. A wide range of compatibility is key to making people feel comfortable investing in these products willy nilly. Think telephones...you have 2.4GHz Cordless Phones all in the same isle. It is clear that they all do the same thing basically in the same way. This whole "I can't stream to a HomePod and Google Home Mini and a Bluetooth speaker at the same time" stuff really is absolute madness for the consumer. Sure you can say it is technically complicated to make that work...but it's also political and based on marketing decisions. The consumer doesn't care how technically complicated it is. They see speakers. They see that they don't work together at the same time like hardwired speakers they've used do. Period. As a consumer right now, you have to pick a primary path and go in to secondary paths without the expectation of them mixing together in all the ways you'd like.
With that said, I don't blame people for the slow adoption... With so many options out there with their own hub and different standards...who desires to buy something with fear that the integration they want might not be supported by their phone or home assistant after five to seven years?
Devices would be sold with the standard front and center in a consumer friendly way. A wide range of compatibility is key to making people feel comfortable investing in these products willy nilly. Think telephones...you have 2.4GHz Cordless Phones all in the same isle. It is clear that they all do the same thing basically in the same way. This whole "I can't stream to a HomePod and Google Home Mini and a Bluetooth speaker at the same time" stuff really is absolute madness for the consumer. Sure you can say it is technically complicated to make that work...but it's also political and based on marketing decisions. The consumer doesn't care how technically complicated it is. They see speakers. They see that they don't work together at the same time like hardwired speakers they've used do. Period. As a consumer right now, you have to pick a primary path and go in to secondary paths without the expectation of them mixing together in all the ways you'd like.
With that said, I don't blame people for the slow adoption... With so many options out there with their own hub and different standards...who desires to buy something with fear that the integration they want might not be supported by their phone or home assistant after five to seven years?
I have 30-odd Hue lights and use my HomePods to control scenes and individual lights daily. It works great.
There was a bit of a learning curve — some names for lights and scenes work better than others with Siri — but once I figured that out I’ve had no problems. Now, I use unique names that Siri doesn’t confuse. For example, if you tell Siri to turn on the “red” scene, she gets confused and babbles about reading books. I renamed that scene “blooming.”
Siri has rendered light switches obsolete in my house.
There was a bit of a learning curve — some names for lights and scenes work better than others with Siri — but once I figured that out I’ve had no problems. Now, I use unique names that Siri doesn’t confuse. For example, if you tell Siri to turn on the “red” scene, she gets confused and babbles about reading books. I renamed that scene “blooming.”
Siri has rendered light switches obsolete in my house.
Time is a more precious commodity for most. And few things are simpler than pressing a light switch when walking into a room.
The need to turn on multiple lights in a house, one in which it would take ‘several minutes’ for the average person to accomplish is for certain a very very very niche problem. You’ve either got tremendous square footage, an infirmity, or some totally bizarre gravitational anomaly in your house.
I moved into a new apartment in April and completely revamped my HomeKit setup and have this exact same Goodnight scene. I still find it super satisfying and fun, except when it inevitably fails and a lamp in my living room stays on ;-;
Yep, me too. Plus Nest thermostats. It is incredibly convenient. “Alexa, turn on basement lights” while I have my hands full with a laundry basket.