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I really don't understand smart home stuff. Seems like such a waste of money to me for a negligible convenience gain.
I like having smart things for automating certain aspects of the home. It also adds convenience for certain lifestyles. I can control my
thermometerthermostat while I'm out of the house, for example, or check in on my pets on the cameras.This is not advocating for things like what Amazon is doing, to be clear.
Checking on the pets seems like a good use. Why do you need to change your thermometer when you're outside the house, though?
The simplest examples I can think of would be:
- you meant to before you left but forgot
- weather conditions changed so your house temperature needs changed
- you want the house to be warm or cool when you get home, similar to the main benefit of remotely starting a car
I know many dumb thermostats support scheduling, which might preempt the last one, but if - again - you forgot to set that up or you didn't know when you were going to be home, it would be a boon to have a way to address that.
Also, most of the smart thermostats I've seen have temperature threshold alarms. If a fire starts, you would get a notification and hopefully be able to do something about it. Or if the climate control system fails while you're out, you can respond as appropriate.
I agree that there is no biological imperative for smart home equipment, but I have appreciated mine many times; and I mostly self host, so in theory I'm not giving away data. To me, the only downside is the cost, which comparatively isn't really all that bad in many cases.
For the pets, or preheating your home for when you're there.
One reason we like the remote thermostat is it allows us to adjust the temp automatically for house plants depending on temp and humidity.
I could see the reason for scheduling a thermostat, at least. Mostly to save money on heating/cooling when you are not home.
To save money on your electric bill. A smart thermostat will know when you're not home, and automatically turn up the temperature to keep the bills down. It can also know when you're heading home, so that it can turn it back down and have the house already cooled for you before you even open the front door.
You can also use them to automatically pre-cool your house at night, when electricity is cheaper. The residual coolness keeps temperatures down and the thermostat doesn't have to run the A/C as much during the day, when electricity is more expensive
That all sounds good, but aside from the remote control doesn't seem like any of it would require it to be smart. Scheduling it would do the same thing with a simpler piece of tech.
So far I think you've made the best argument for it, though.
I personally love cool tech, that's it. It's not even about the convenience but "oh shit bro you see what this shit can do???" -kinda thing. It's cool
What I don't love is some asshole corporation stealing and abusing that data for their profits or handing it to the pigs
That's fair. I definitely don't mean to yuck anyone's yum. I just have the opposite reaction to most new tech I guess.
If all this stuff actually integrated with other things you owned (regardless of brand) and was under your control instead of Amazon's it would be cool as hell. Instead it spies on you with a thin veneer of functionality on top.
You can do that with HomeAssistant
Same here, if I do get anything that's cool new tech I'll get the self hosted version. I don't need anyone else having access to my stuff.
Having appliances that are aware of your energy costs is a good reason. There is a massive potential for savings if your fridge and thermostat know to avoid running as much as possible during the hours of the day when electricity is the most expensive, for example. That reason alone makes smart home stuff worth it for me.
Also, having lights that adjust their color temperature automatically throughout the day works wonders for my sleep. It's like having a blue light filter for your entire home. And don't even get me started on how nice it is to have a smart TV. It's basically Android for your living room, which means that you can install 3rd party apps and block ads without paying a premium. Who needs Netflix when you can just directly stream torrents to your TV?
This sounds stupid but I started out with smart lights (as one does) then moved on to presence detection, door/window sensors, temperature/humidity sensors and a robot vacuum/mop. I have two outdoor cameras as well.
It lets me do really cool stuff like “turn on the fan when the front door is open and it’s hot in the living room” or “make the porch light brighter when a person is detected.” The robots are great because I can have them clean when no one is home.
Everything is automated to the point where it doesn’t need to be turned on/off manually. That sounds super lazy, but if something happens (like I botched my server lol) I realize how spoiled I am. It’s really convenient to have everything managing itself and I can focus on other things.
Unless you are disabled, in that case it seems mega convenient and worth the privacy nightmare.
That definitely seems like the best use case in my opinion. I can absolutely understand the appeal for people with disabilities.