Asklemmy

43940 readers

485 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

144

Home automation - why? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

110 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I am failing to see the interest in having tons of IOT devices to manage, connect, segment, etc… Why would someone want to do it? To be clear, I have friends deep in it but… I still don’t understand. Can anyone try to explain the magic I am failing to see?

Edit: Thank you all for sharing your experiences! The ones I found more interesting are those that can easily translate in reducing or tracking consumption. The rest I hear but makes more sense when I look at it from an hobbyist perspective.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Ironically, IKEA of all companies has done it right. Their smart lighting is price comparable to dumb lighting, and works out of the box. Even pairing an additional bulb to an older controller is fairly painless.

Under the hood, however, they are using ZigBee. This means they are cross compatible. You're not locked into their ecosystem.

Basically, you can have something as simple as a drop in lamp bulb, that can be turned off or on with a little remote. If you want more capabilities, it will scale with your desires, including playing nicely with other brands.

Most heavily advertised home automation is a steaming pile of shit. It's mostly to try and lock you into their ecosystem and either sell your data, or show you adverts. Hobbyists can go DEEP. There is a useful middle ground however. It just gets quite buried in the noise.