I live with my wife and two kids, and I'm the only one that cares about the size of the heat and electric bill. I know the lights are on because they've been left on every night since we've lived there, and if I don't walk around the house every night before bed and shut off the lights, they're still on in the morning.

I don't know a single person with kids that doesn't have to do this wonderful nighttime ritual - visit every room in the house and set the electronics to the correct setting. It's very simple and I believe a computer would do it better and faster.

I agree - all this automatic light dimming for movies and "scenes" seems like a gimmick. But I'd love to have a button on my phone that switched every light in my house off as if I had flipped a switch.

Good questions, our house isn't huge (smaller than "normal" it according to that def) so light travels. We usually DO turn lights off before getting in bed but sometimes we are tired and forget, and it's not obvious until our eyes adjust. It's a little childish but it's like "ugh I don't want to get up"

We really only use lamps and sunlight aside from the kitchen so we're mostly using the plug-in switches, so it really is nice turning off lamps in 3 bedrooms + living + den in a few taps.

Might as well turn this comment into a little review of my Vivint setup. These are controlled via the console in the house, the web and the app:

- Alarm

This is nice because you can enable it after you leave the house, which is nice if you are in a hurry or just simply forget. Maybe not a killer feature.

- Front door lock

Same deal here, but it also lets me open the door for people remotely or grant them temporary access. It's a little janky, I imagine that the Lockitron is better. My main concern is battery life, which it alerts me about long before the batteries (4 AA) die. My second concern is that the gears inside will wear out, though it has lasted for ~3 years so far.

- Thermostat

Super convenient for Florida. We travel a lot so it's nice to kill the AC before we leave and still have a cool house half an hour before we get back home. There is an automated "Nest-like" web interface for this but I don't really trust it. Scheduling works great.

- Pan & tilt camera

This is more of a toy but it's cool, the other day we saw our dog tearing up the trash can in the living room so we ran home and stopped her (and put the can in the garage).

None of this stuff is perfect, and you are probably better off (quality and price wise) by going with Nest + Wemo + Lockitron + some alarm company, but we're still happy with it all.

Some of this becomes painfully apparent after you give these systems a shot, especially inexpensive half-baked solutions like Wink.

However it can be nice to schedule lighting changes (I live in a high-crime area), have your porch light come on when you roll up in the driveway, etc. I find myself primarily using it as a dimmer, but in a rental property being able to install a few $15 25-year LED bulbs and a smartphone app to get some of these features does not feel wholly ridiculous to me.

If the app works it should tell you the state of your devices.