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Comment by tmuir | Hacker News Reader

Yet another hammer looking for a nail. There is no killer app in home automation. Hackers like this stuff, because we like technology for technology's sake. But everyone else has a higher standard for adopting new gadgetry. It has to actually solve a problem, or otherwise provide value. Even the best use cases are largely novelties that will get about two days use. Turning on lights remotely? How often do you need to turn on lights when you aren't physically in the space being lit. Starting a washer/dryer/oven/dishwasher remotely? How will you load/unload the clothes/food/dishes remotely? Unlocking your door with a phone instead of a key? It looks cool the first two times, but novelty isn't enough.

Everyone seems to be worried about the competing standards and walled gardens, which assumes that this space will take off to the point that it even matters.

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I'm JUST getting into a little home automation, and here are some great use cases that aren't just a novelty:

When my wife and I both leave the house, the front door locks itself. We never have to worry about if we locked the door or not. We can also leave and enter without having to carry keys, which is great. I can also unlock the door remotely when my in-laws stop by unexpectedly to drop something off.

I have a room in the basement where the light switch is on the far side of the room, so you previously had to traverse a pitch black and somewhat hazardous space to reach the light switch. Now it's all run on a motion detector that turns the light on and off as needed automatically.

And we just got a Nest. My wife, a non-tech person, loves the front door lock magic and the Nest. As more stuff comes out, and I add more stuff to the system, the utility will only increase.

I'm looking forward to things like smart security systems that know when I'm home, away, sleeping, awake, have company, etc... And interact with tokens (for instance if it's 2 AM and someone pulls into my driveway, I want to be woken up and alerted. If it's 2 AM and I'm pulling into my driveway I want my wife to be able to sleep). I'm looking forward to music that follows me through the house, and turns itself down when I get a phone call.

What do you use to lock the front door?

Schlage Century Touchscreen Deadbolt hooked into a SmartThings system: https://shop.smartthings.com/#!/products/schlage-century-tou...

I'm optimistic about nest - they seem to understand this, their thermostat is a great user experience. You hook it up and use it just like you would use a normal thermostat, and it uses that info to make intelligent decisions to do actually useful things - like override the schedule and turn the heat up when you take a day off work, or turn the heat down when nobody is home, all with no user interaction.

Remote control isn't the killer app for home automation, no control is. I don't have a need to turn lights on in rooms I'm not in, but it would be nice if my house could turn the lights off for me when I forget to. Or if I drive off and leave the garage open, it could close it for me so I don't have to call a neighbor and ask them to check it.

> "like override the schedule and turn the heat up when you take a day off work, or turn the heat down when nobody is home, all with no user interaction."

Useful sure, but is it that useful? Which is to say, will people choose it over walking over and twisting a knob?

The same argument can be made for motorized blinds. Sure, yeah, it'd be kind of cool for your blinds to raise and lower themselves with the day/night cycle. Or I can just yank that cord over there.

Ditto the garage door thing. It'd be nice to have a system that just closes the door for me, but I'd call my neighbor, what, once a year to check on my garage? Worth a $100 system + installation + integration into some larger, overarching home automation network?

That's the problem with home automation, it's a bunch of janky, expensive, high-maintenance tech that solves a "problem" that nobody was really that bothered by. It's an incredibly minor incremental improvement that solves a pain that was never actually painful, and it has historically required a lot of infrastructure/installation in the home.

The new stuff is lowering a lot of the installation/infrastructure pain, but it's still relatively expensive, and for the most part their improvements are so minor, and the original problem so inconsequential, that I don't think they'll see mainstream market success. IMO none of this will take off until they find the "Killer App", the one that solves a problem that really bothers people.

I don't know how everybody else gets their nests, but I pay flat rate for power and my power company gives them out for free because it works out cheaper for them in the long run. So no, I probably wouldn't pay extra for a nest thermostat and the small amount of convenience it offers, but I like having it.

Once the Nest API gets more mature, watch power companies give these out with the ability to remotely turn your A/C up if the power grid starts to sag (that whole "rush hour" concept they're pushing).

Remote control isn't the killer app for home automation, no control is.

I think you've got this exactly backward, at least as it applies to the Nest thermostat. I find the automation aspects to be pretty gimmicky, but turning the A/C down before I head home from work or turning it off completely just before I leave town on an airplane are killer features.

I've had a Nest thermo for about a year. For me the #1 thing about it was the smartphone app - in particular the ability to tell it to turn on the heat if we were coming home earlier than normal (or the opposite). Our radiators take a while to warm up the house and this allowed me to keep the house fairly cold when we weren't there w/o any discomfort when we came home.

That said I was disappointed with its learning capabilities in terms of our schedule. Sure, it picked up on trends but it just started slapping temperature change event on the schedule instead of adjusting things. So what happened was that it would get a couple of pinch points where it'd set to 65 at 10, 67 at 10:02, 66 at 10:05, 68 at 10:10, etc and I ended up cleaning it all out by hand anyways. It'd have been nice if it recognized we probably wanted it around 66-67 around 10:05 for instance.

I'd argue there is huge value in app controlled 'home environment' devices (light color & brightness, music, air/heat/fan, etc). When the software controls are sufficiently convenient, adjusting the environment becomes an automatic behavior like scratching an itch or shifting in one's seat.

Disclaimer: I'm the developer of LampShade.io

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