I think it’s also just that there’s not that much it makes sense to automate in the home. I run Home Assistant, and I do not have much of the typical home stuff on it. Why would I want to automate lights? My cat feeder has a timer already. I’m not about to get a smart lock and can’t imagine why I would want to automate one.
The useful things I do use it for are:
-heating control to take advantage of cheaper electric rates (I’m on 15 min spot pricing)
-automatically setting EV charging times to optimized cost
-a remote to start and stop a water pump to water plants in the garden, optionally with a timer
-a remote to consolidate a couple of lights that I want to turn on and off simultaneously to watch movies.
That’s it. Controlling my pool heater would be good but unfortunately it has a safety that trips if the power is interrupted. I’ve been using this system for years and simply cannot think of much else I want to automate.
There are some really nice things that home automation enables that was previously impossible.
I live in Bend, Oregon. We have hot summer days, cool nights, and sometimes really bad wildfire smoke.
I can save a lot of money on AC if I open the windows at night and use the attic fan to pull in outside air. But if smoke rolls in, then we'd all be breathing 200+ AQI air all night.
I have outdoor AQI sensors, which if the AQI spikes, will close up the house and turn on the air purifiers.
> Why would I want to automate lights?
We're bad at remembering to turn lights on and off. We like having our porch light on an hour or two after sunset, but don't need to leave it on 24/7. We also have stairwell baseboard lighting that's completely unnecessary during the day, but very nice to have already be on if we get up in the middle of the night. To each their own, though. These are just nice to have. The AQI automation is an actual health benefit to us though.
I have all kinds of lights automated. Lights that turn themselves off with a software timer. Lights that turn off when nobody is home. Lights that turn themselves on when I get home. Lights that do things in response to the status of other lights. Lights that fade on slowly every evening beginning at sunset and reaching 100% brightness at civil twilight, and do the opposite every morning.
I suppose that it does make some things less frustrating.
The days when I'd come home from work and see that the porch light got left on all day or find that the pantry light has been left on for hours are all behind me. That's not as important (money-wise) with LEDs as it was with incandescents, but it's good.
It's also fun -- for me, at least -- to think of ways to automate things.
Like: I have a bedroom that tends to get hot on sunny days and overlooks a busy road, and I don't like feeling like I'm on display. So I'd like those blinds closed at night, and open during the day. Sounds simple. I can do that the old fashioned way by opening and closing the blinds with my hands.
Except: If it's hot in there, then maybe they can just stay closed during the day.
Except: Maybe I can let ambient daylight in, and only close the blinds during the day during times when the position of the sun allows for direct sunlight to pour in.
Except: If it's cold in the room and it's during the heating season, then that sunlight is useful energy that saves me money and they should stay open.
Perhaps I could manage all that myself manually every day (and maybe I'll remember to try to get it right, or maybe I won't bother trying at all), or I can code something up one time that does it for me. The latter might not actually be less work, but it's more fun and it's probably going to be more reliable than I am myself.
I automate lights because we have a bunch of then to manipulate: four switches for the living room. Shades are worse, we have 10 windows so automating them so they open and close at once on demand is a win (I told my wife we should always keep them open and she was really against that, so automated was a marriage saver).
I have some security stuff setup to turn on a siren when tweakers poke around my open garage and doorway after 11 PM. It doesn’t do anything else, this is just a way to scare them off a bit and to let me know something is up. H the light will also turn red if detects a person at the door (again to ward tweakers off or make them feel watched at least).
I’ve been recently discovering the joy of robovacs, except we have three floors and so I found we need three of them, ugh.
Wait until you're disabled and there are days you can't get out of bed.
Having your bedroom lights fade in at low brightness a few minutes before your alarm goes off is also really nice.
If you live in an area that's not great time wise there are also a lot of arguments to be made for making it look like your home is occupied when you're away.
I have some lights on mechanical timers so the living room has a minimal amount of light in the evening, and they turn off automatically at midnight. That's useful to me, and it was cheap and simple. Haven't had to touch it in 10 years, except to adjust the timers to the seasons. The mechanical timers (Ikea) predate Alexa, and it's cheaper to just keep using them.
I also have a porch light that used to have a light sensor, but those sensors keep failing after a few years, and it's a hassle. Instead, Alexa has a schedule for that porch light switch, and you can specify "turn on at sunset" and "turn off at sunrise", and it's perfect.
And I have an Alexa rule for turning off the other lights that it controls (living room, dining room, family room, hallways, but not the porch light) at midnight. Simple and useful in case I forget to turn the lights off.
You can be completely right in a bad way, and it's what I suspect is going to happen.
Three years ago I mentioned to co-workers I was most concerned about juniors not being able to build skills to become mid-level or senior. In the past year others have started talking about the same. But also I had thought people who were already mid-level or senior could resist and control themselves enough to use it well - but in the past six months two different co-workers have independently said they've noticed their own skills atrophying. And with those skills atrophied, they'll have less and less input/direction for the AI tools.
My suspicion is that for everyone who has gone all-in, a few years from now, they will still see a productivity increase from their own baseline - but their baseline will have dropped from where it is now as they "get used to it".
As soon as you quantify something (lines of code, tickets closed, tokens spent, whatever) it starts to be gamed and therefore ceases to be a reasonable measure of work.
Same experience, I thought using chatGPT to find some fairly specific things to buy would be a slam dunk, but it couldn’t provide links half the time and also failed to hold to criteria like shipping region etc. I would tell it to give direct links and it would mostly just say ”go on Amazon and search for X”.
There’s a special type of frustration when an LLM is close to being useful but just… isn’t.
When someone tells you about the hard times in their life and you find out they just made it up, you probably feel upset about it. Same thing. The experiences people have matter.
I think this is one of the moments where the adage "it's the thought that counts" makes sense! If you're just throwing a prompt at a generator and send it to your friend as a birthday gift then that's a bit tacky. I once got a hand drawn picture in a card from one of my best friends. It was terrible! But I knew how much effort he put into it.
If I found out that he just used AI to make the picture, then I'd probably ask him what his workflow was.
I'm not against using AI to generate images and stuff! I actually have been playing with image generation (Nano banana and also comfy ui). I like making silly pictures for friends and family as e-cards (or whatever they're called now). If it's not a close friend, then I'll exchange prompts with nano banana and generate a few dozen images and then pipe it into veo to make an animated e-card. Maybe takes 10-20 mins including image generation time.
For closer friends I'd spin up comfy ui, spend some time looking for workflows or loras, probably generate a few dozen images as well, and pipe the one I like into Wan video.
This process can take me about an hour, which includes generation time. But I tell my friends they're ai generated, not that I need to because they all I know I can't draw. They don't mind, even if they don't necessarily know how much effort I put into their picture. To their eyes, maybe I just used nano banana. But no ones ever accused me of being lazy with them. It's all in good fun anyways.
If you play at a casino, you’re statistically guarantee to lose money, edge cases not withstanding. Do you see casinos closing down because people stop playing?
Sure but if there's no moat would you rather pay 100% or 80% until the credits run out? You reap the 100% spend in the meantime. Not everyone even has the no moat discount.
The useful things I do use it for are:
-heating control to take advantage of cheaper electric rates (I’m on 15 min spot pricing)
-automatically setting EV charging times to optimized cost
-a remote to start and stop a water pump to water plants in the garden, optionally with a timer
-a remote to consolidate a couple of lights that I want to turn on and off simultaneously to watch movies.
That’s it. Controlling my pool heater would be good but unfortunately it has a safety that trips if the power is interrupted. I’ve been using this system for years and simply cannot think of much else I want to automate.
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