So, not like the "slightly intelligent home" is a term of art or anything like that, but what the author means is simply that he doesn't have as much home automation as some other folks, good for him, but perhaps a nicer kind of slightly intelligent home would be one where no matter how much home automation you have, everything gracefully degrades or is invisible to the inhabitants, e.g. you still have physical switches, your lights do not suddenly all switch on after power loss, you can still get in the house if your Raspberry Pi dies, if you're tired of an automation you can easily rip it out, etc.
Surprised that there’s no mention of Home Assistant. It’s great for even lightweight home automation.<p>But based on the title I was expecting something less intelligent, like simple lamp timers. You can get surprisingly far with those and some motion sensors, without needing a hub or apps at all.
Small QoL things that I do with my automation. I do use Homebridge for things like connecting to my security system and thermostat.<p>1. Automate all the ambient lighting to turn on half an hour before sunset. Bonus points since we have a dog at home and I feel better leaving the lights on for him.<p>2. When we open the front door which is some 4ft away from our neighbor across, our TV lowers the volume to 5% and dims the living room's lighting. Gives our place a bit more privacy and hopefully doesn't disturb any of our neighbors.<p>3. When all of our phones have left the house, the security system arms itself. Also disarms when we get home.<p>4. When the temperature on the second floor gets to 76F, our motorized blackout blinds drop down on the second floor, turns on the air condition, and turns on our lights. This is TOTALLY a gimmick for me.<p>One thing I wish I could have are air purifiers that remembers its settings after its power cycled - so I can control it with a smart outlet/switch upon a certain PPM level. I know "smart" ones exist, but I actually draw the line there. I try to stick with things that have are Thread-enabled or are from brands that I trust.
Motion activated lights in areas you just pass through is the biggest QoL improvement in my book. There's no reason to have the hallway or bathroom lights on all the time, just have them turn on with motion and turn off X minutes after no motion is detected.<p>Second one (seriously) is voice-activated profiles. "Good morning" -> dim lights, open curtains. "Good night" -> lights off, curtains down. "Movie time" -> lights off in the living room, TV turns on, Apple TV turns on, TV switches to correct HDMI input.
This nailed it for me:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34063118" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34063118</a>
Semi-related to this, what's everyone's process for selling their IoT-enabled home?<p>My last home purchase came from a hobbyist who sunk way too much time into IoT during COVID, and it wasn't the greatest pass-down.<p>Am assuming this is going to be more and more of a problem.
> Lights and lightbulbs are maybe the biggest no-brainer thing you could automate around your home, at least in my eyes. Automate them to wake you up, turn off when you leave the house, turn on when it gets dark in the evening, when you're away, and so on<p>Not a no-brainer to me. I installed motion-activated lights in certain rooms of my house, but they aren't connected to the network. They turn on when you get close, turn off after 15 minutes of inactivity. Seems to cover all the above use cases except using them as an alarm. I don't use an alarm anyway, so no big deal to me. In general, smart home automation always seemed like a lot of money, a lot of homework, and fairly dubious benefits to me.
My slightly connected home: Caséta dimmers everywhere except outdoor security lights that use Craftmade (Bond) on/off wall switches. Heat exchanger on a timer (Craftmade/Bond smart plug). Three mini split heat pumps controlled by Bond Bridges via IR.<p>Next up is adding some scene keypads (Bond Sidekick).<p>(Bond employee here.)
Related tweet: <a href="https://twitter.com/PPathole/status/1116670170980859905" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/PPathole/status/1116670170980859905</a>