Comment by movedx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by movedx | Hacker News Reader

I’m moving away from this level of automation in my home. At the most, I’m thinking of a smart panel that can turn on/off/dim simple, non-smart LED bulbs throughout the main living area, and that’s it.

Right now I have expensive (at the time) GU10 LIFX bulbs you can no longer get. They’re not operating on and off at the wall, because my wifi settings changed and I couldn’t be arsed having to reconfigure 14 bulbs by manually resetting them, unscrewing them, and then slowly and painfully register g them on the wifi. I’ve probably created a lot of my own pain here because I could have used a dedicated SSID for that infra that never changes… oh well.

Also, in the time the smart bulbs have become idiot bulbs, I’ve never needed to really dim them, change their colour, or do anything smart.

I sort of feel like the idea is a good one but really it’s overthinking a really simple idea: turning a light on.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m under thinking this? Would love some thoughts.

Most smart home tech is sold because it sounds or looks cool, not because it is actually helpful. For instance, smart bulbs are dumb because they break the most obvious correct control in your house: The light switch. Smart switches are a lot better of an idea, and they recognize the reality that most of the time the best time to turn on the light is by touching the switch when entering a room.

Monitoring can be really useful and some subtle scheduled controls can be a nice touch, but people go very dumb and very overboard.

Smart switches (at least for lights) seem to me like a solution in search of a problem. Why would I ever need to turn on lights when I'm not there? If I am there, what's wrong with just using the switch?

I am using HA for something else. I'm building some ESP32 based "smart" thermostats to collect temperature and humidity data as well as exert some control over my minisplits. The only viable interface is IR so that's taking a little work to place a transmitter and receiver appropriately s.t. my wall mounted device meshes well with the existing remote control. The end goal is to integrate with the hydronic backup to create a hybrid heat system.

It's frustrating I have to build all this myself. This shit should all just work that way out of the box, without the "GE Cloud" or whatever. But I'm glad it's made relatively easy by tools like HA and microcontroller dev boards.

> Why would I ever need to turn on lights when I'm not there?

The use case I have is to turn off lights when I'm not there. My wife frequently leaves lights on when exiting a room, so it is often useful to turn the lights off remotely. Voice control is nice too, for the situations when my hands are full and I can't hit a switch.

Actually, I’d have them come on to at the same time the cleaner is due. Or the dog walker. I DO intend on a smart lock for the front door.

So smart switches are solving two problems instead of one problem: When you want to automate it, you can. When you just need it to work conventionally as a light switch without breaking your automation, it also does that. They are the no-compromise solution.

I guess that's the thing: I can't imagine wanting to automate a light switch. There are plenty of practical things to automate. For example, window shades for passive solar heating (or the prevention thereof), hvac, hell I think it would be awesome to have a temperature sensor in my utility room and machinery to "scram the reactor" (shut off the well pump and drain all the water pipes) if the temperature drops below 34°F. But light switches?

Sibling comments suggest automatically turning on/off lights if someone is expected to arrive or depart, but wouldn't that person just think "weird, they left the lights on"?

> Smart switches are a lot better of an idea, and they recognize the reality that most of the time the best time to turn on the light is by touching the switch when entering a room.

i went with precense sensors instead, stuff light up as i move across the house, and will be removing the switches.

You know what I really hate when I am up at 3 AM trying to move about the house without being blinded? Probably your lights.

That’s why the lights go on at the dimmest setting at night. Or not at all.

It’s literally one extra if clause in the logic

And then when I need it brighter? Or if I don't want the lights on at all?

Sure, you can manage an increasingly programmed logic path for every conceivable option, but it's way easier to just hit the light switch.

There’s a point where you're spending a multiple of the cost on equipment and a huge amount of time, to save you a net amount of... zero effort. It becomes a waste.

> but it's way easier to just hit the light switch

> to save you a net amount of... zero effort

This is just not true. I have 7 lights in the room I'm in right now, and I want them to all turn on and off together. This was a huge pain before I had smart lights.

then you change brightness or on/off using the homekit integration. its literally on my lockscreen

use adaptive lightning

why not leave the switches for emergencies?

I'm currently building a local LLM (multiple threads - one for each sensor suite) sensor array for more proactive needs. I don't want it else conditions, and I don't want to turn lights on when I do x or y. The sensors are cheap and plenty on AliExpress and all it takes is an esp32-s3 or similar.

A smart home should predict my needs dynamically rather than do stuff based on predefined conditions and is more than just "turn living room red."

> I could have used a dedicated SSID for that infra

Just move the phones and laptops onto a fresh 5ghz ssid

Then the old 2.4ghz becomes the iot one

The main use I see for smart bulbs is to put wall-switch lamps on timers. Then again, that could be done with a smart dimmer instead.

Too bad so many of these "smart" devices insist you talk with a server in China (or anywhere other than your own LAN!) to turn on the lights.

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