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Home automation - why? (lemmy.ml)

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

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It saves me tons of money by optimizing my heatpump and my car chargers for low energy pricing and lots of PV availability. When bad weather is on the horizon it will keep the buffer batteries and the cars charged in case of an outage. It closes the blinds following the sun if it's too warm outside. It reminds me when I forgot an open window and the room starts to get too cold. It turns on the lights on the driveway when I come round the corner in my car. It turns on the pump in the fireplace when I light a fire and reminds me on my watch when the fire has burned down and needs new wood. When it has frozen a lot overnight, it will preheat my car if I've got a appointment somewhere else before ten. When my smoke alarms go off, it raises all the blinds and unlocks the main door. The list goes on and on, it's just so useful.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

God damnit you're living the life.

Does ylour system need a lot of maintenance? Are you using home assistant?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yes, I'm running HomeAssistant, 100% local. Knocking on wood, no, it didn't need a lot of maintenance, but there was a lot of tweaking necessary, e.g. until the heatpump controller hit the right indoor temperature depending on outside temp and wind speed.

There were some breaking changes in HA over time, but the authors of the integrations I'm using followed those. If they hadn't, I would have had to push some python around myself, which I probably would have managed.

I'm doing regular restore tests and I'm monitoring the health of the HA backups. That's my plan in case shit goes south.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

This is the sort of stuff I use it for. I have a bed time routine. The thermostat connects to the local grid to conserve power during peak times. Eventually I plan to put up LED light strips for better lighting and to be able to "redecorate" on the fly. So when we have people over for a board game night, we can have dinner with inviting light and later switch to something appropriate to the game.