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Comment by jordanab | Hacker News Reader

> Overall, I consider "smart home" to be a fairly expensive and time-consuming hobby that saves me maybe 10 min per day

Fair point, but does it really need to save time for you? For me it's more of a convenience thing. I recently bought a new house, and I didn't immediately have the time to install my smart devices (Nest, Hue lights, motion sensors etc). After just a couple of days I was already getting fed up with having to get up to "manually" flip switches, change the temprature, rolling down the blinds etc.

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This is so true.

When you get used to something being either fully automated, like hallway lights turning off and on automatically or easily voice controlled, like enabling movie mode via Alexa (Dim lights, turn on TV and media devices) it's really hard to go back to the old way of running around pushing switches.

Omg yes. I had an Ecobee in my previous hone and thought it was just kinda okay. 3 weeks ago I moved into a new place that has a traditional thermostat and I’m now aware of how much better that Ecobee was.

> change the temprature

How much are people actually changing the temperature? I have a temp for the furnace (68F), and a temp for the A/C (73F). I almost never adjust it.

Seriously. I set the times and temperatures in my thermostat when I bought this house in the late 90s. I tweaked them a bit over the next few months and have not changed them in over 20 years.

My thermostat is on an exterior wall, so the reading is affected by the outdoor temperature. I need to adjust it every few weeks as it gets colder so it doesn't turn my house into a sauna in the winter time. Obviously this is not ideal, but count this story as one more anecdotal example that some people change their thermostat frequently.

If anything, this is a reason why you need multiple temperature sensors.

It depends on many factors: size of the house and where you spend most of your time. It sounds like you may live in a relatively small space.

Almost no home heats completely evenly and you will have some rooms that are warmer than others, especially when the air is on. (Good HVAC setup can mitigate some but not all).

So for example, I live in a 4,000 sqft home, and the kitchen is far and away the hottest room in the house, especially when it is in use. So when I have guests over I will tend to turn the overall heat down, and leave the gas logs on in the den to keep guests cozy while I cook.

Just an example, but I am sure there are many situations like it out there.

> How much are people actually changing the temperature?

In some cases, a fair bit.

On the other hand and friend and I did a back of the envelope calculation and worked out he could manually change the temperature in his house for about 100 years and still spend less time than he had already spent working on his somewhat homebrew solution (this was a while ago).

Arguably the convenience is not the labour involved in turning a dial, but the burden of remembering to?

That's true - will depend a lot on usage. Also scriptability is very different than interactive use.

Temperature is a huge factor influencing sleep cycle for some people, myself included. I sleep and wake much better if physical temperature and light color temperature adjust in time with my schedule, which isn't always uniform so rigidly programmable thermostats don't quite do the job.

I have mine turning down every night to save energy

You don't need a "smart home" for this. I have a decades old thermostat that can be programmed to turn down at night.

We're aiming at the same thing, I just quantify convenience by the amount of time saved per action.

For example, leaving my home is about 20 seconds faster (no need to turn everything off manually and reach the switch to turn the lights on/off in the hallway when putting on shoes).

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