I have been experimenting with a smart home, for a few months (Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi, with a Zigbee controller), and have bought three smart bulbs to play with.
Already, my family, are starting to resist it as they are finding that they cannot just turn on a light when they enter a room and turn it off (without using a dedicated tablet that we keep in the living room).
I am now trying to set up my Echo Dot to work with Home Assistant, so people can use voice control to turn off individual lights.
I am a bit worried that I might be going down the route of doing things just because you can, rather than making our home more comfortable.
I would be really grateful to hear from anyone that has had a smart home for a while and what devices/automations that regularly use (as well as anything that seemed a good idea but then turned out to not be).
A few things in particular:
Are smart bulbs or smart switches preferable?
How do you control devices that you do not automate (like bulbs) - do you use voice commands, a tablet or a physical wireless switch that you have stuck somewhere in the room?
Do you actually make use of bulbs that can be dimmed and change colour (once the initial excitement of changing this is over)?
I am considering getting some movement sensors for rooms where we use to leave lights on all the time - are these a good idea? How do these work in rooms where there might be little movement for some time, like a bedroom or living room?
I use shelly for most of my lights.
Major advantage is that they also have a switch input for manual control.
I use the existing light switch for that, so it can be both operated manually as well as from HA.
I also have some zigbee lights, for those i use a zigbee switch, and also use 3 RF motion detectors in toilets/hallway
I just want to have all lights under HA, so i can turn them off (either after a set time, or when nobody is home (by means of mobile device tracker)
Well, if you just move the old mechanical switch to a tablet screen, you definitely got nowhere.
That is not SMART home. That only makes it more difficult.
So, yes, smart switches are needed too. OR, even better: sensors. Motion, light intensity or person presence. And then AUTOMATE.
A home is really a smart home, if you do not need to push buttons
(nearly) all of my lights are automatet (>50). Therefore I use quite sensitive presence sensors + information about running devices (e.g. TV) and the “state” of some switches (e.g. “sleeping”). That combination makes the home more comfortable in my opinion - turning a light on and off by voice instead of a switch does not (in my opinion).
dimmable => yes, a lot, almost all of my lights are dimmable. I use different brightness in the morning, at night, when someone is sleeping, when the TV is running…
In sleeping rooms, I combine them with a “sleeping switch” - during the day, the presence sensors trigger the light, but when the “sleeping switch” is active, they are blocked. But e.g. the light in the hallway uses a very low brightness if “sleeping” in the bedroom and presence detected in the hallway…
To make it short: I think, to make the home lighting more comfortable, it needs automation and automation needs sensors.
I use switches almost exclusively for lights instead of bulbs for exactly the reason your family is resisting - once you turn off the power switch they are as dumb as regular lights.
Of the few smart bulbs I do use I have them all completely automated which is only possible because their use is completely predictable. For example my deck light always needs to be on from sunset to 1 am or after 1 am whenever we open the deck door. I know every time when it should be on so it’s possible to automate it.
otherwise using a bulb is very inconvenient. Even using sensors to automate bulbs has it’s drawbacks unless you literally have a sensor for EVERYTHING. motion, sitting still on the couch watching TV, in the shower, using the facilities, etc.
And for bulbs other than the ones already mentioned I never use dimmers so that isn’t a concern of mine. But if you want dimming then there are dimming switches as well.
I’m not (and my family/visitors are DEFINITELY not) going to want to open an app every time I want to operate a light outside of my pre-defined automation rules. Which WILL happen because lights are very organic and very hard to predict 100% reliably.
Voice control is OK and I use it too but you won’t want to be yelling at your Alexa device to operate the lights all the time either.
BUT if you really want bulbs and “normal” control then you can always use smart switches and smart bulbs together. Just hard wire the bulb fixture and use the smart switch to relay a signal to the bulb to operate. I use that for one bulb I have since it’s a ceiling fan and the bulb and fan get powered from the same wire.
But the downside there is that it will be twice as expensive because you will be paying for smarts in two devices instead of one.
KEY - DO NOT ANNOY other household members by implementing something they never agreed to unless is is completely seamless to them and does not affect them at all (other than a pleasant surprise of making their life easier). So, you really really need to think all the use cases through before starting. Here are a couple examples: 1. Try to never write code in Home Assistant that directly controls a DEVICE. Always call a “service” if possible instead. That way, if you replace a device, you do not have to rewrite too much code. 2. KISS (as in the old saying Keep it Simple, Stupid). Never try to write a piece of code that is super long that has too much logic built into it. It will be harder to maintain, and you would most likely run into weird scenarios that require a huge amount more code to handle in that one place - or would be impossible to implement! Also whatever CPU you are using will be tied up executing that code while something else might need to be done in HA (so always run in parallel where you can). Of course, write any kind of automation that you like to learn, but then go back and clean it up later after the understanding has sunk in. For example, I never connect a motion sensor to a light. I have it instead start a timer when motion is sensed. Then make the timer, when started, turn a light on, and when finished, turn the light off. As little code as possible. When motion is sensed and the lights were already on from previous motion (meaning the timer is still counting down), I just have it restart the timer (so it wil take longer to again count down). That way if there is no movement for a little while, then the lights do not go off while someone is in the room. But, if there is no motion for a longer time, then the lights would turn off. You have to think through different logic for a wall switch rather than a smart outlet if it is for lights, too. For instance you would not do this with a smart outlet, but you would for a smart wall switch - to keep it self-maintaining so to speak - if the wall switch is turned on manually, then have an automation that starts the timer - and another cancel the timer if the light is turned off using the switch. Be sure to not have the automation then suddenly turn the lights on if there is motion - for about 60 seconds or so. There is nothing more annoying to my wife to turn off a wall switch and then when she turns around to leave the room, the lights go back on again! I have widgets on my dashboard to change the length of the timers, and then also switches on my dashboards to turn the automation on or off. So you don’t have to keep updating code when the circumstances change. Of course you will then have to include logic in all your automations that are triggered that does not bother doing the automation steps if the automation is “turned off”. Then, if you want to be elegant, you will remove redundant code by creating scripts that are generic that are called from many different automations for the same kind of logic. In my case with the above example, I call a script from all over the place which takes as three arguments, the three entities involved: the entity for the dashboard switch representing whether or not the related automation is turned on or not, the entity that stores the length of the timer, and the timer entity itself related to the switch to be handled (or not). In this scenario if you think through what I am saying, you can see that piece of code could be centralized. The main key to automation is to not annoy other house members and make things HARDER. For example - if the automation, in my case, is a motion sensor and timer talking to a smart plug into which a lamp is plugged - if I switch that automation OFF on my dashboard - then the smart plug must be turned ON and left that way. So if the wife comes into the room and sits down and tries to turn on the lamp - it actually turns on while the automation is turned off. There’s nothing more annoying to others to try to turn a lamp on which does not go on because a smart plug is off - and then when you tell them it’s fixed they say it still isn’t on - and you have to explain to them that they had just turned the lamp OFF so they have to try to turn it on AGAIN… Also be careful for anything cloud based - to NOT use it for critical items like keeping medicines refrigerated or to rely upon it for an alarm system… in those cases you really should use something that has no reliance upon internet access or even power in the home if possible (all battery powered sensors). So even if you cannot get to it from your smartphone when you are not home - it is still working properly (ideally you should stil be able to get to it over the internet from your smartphone but it should not require the internet access to still work properly on it’s own). I could go on and on and on… you get the idea. Keep any code snipped or automation SHORT. It’s MUCH easier to debug that way, annoying that you might have to create a gazillion short automations - but much easier to debug!
Slightly disagree, though i get your reasoning. But if i place all my switches on one screen as replacement for mechanical switches, you do get benefit in my opinion
automations is of course next step to prevent you taking out your phone for every action. Morning and evenings schedules are easy first step to most people that do have no weird working schedules
and next step after that is sensors in all flavors. hardcore home automator in NL that had some money to burn. You will see that even in a big room the number of sensors are important to make luxury behavior. Sorry for video in dutch, but i gave me some insights on robust automating
Not sure that is a better approach. It’s so annoying when they don’t hear you or do something completely else.
I honestly believe this will be more annoying than the tablet, but everyone has a different opinion.
Well… not sure to be honest.
We have two smart switches, both Tuya, and mostly the issue is the brand. But I don’t really like it.
If they fail or need to be rebooted. Well, two options unplug the main wire/neutral or switch off the whole house.
If it’s a bulb, there is a hard switch on the wall.
IKEA remotes are very nice for the the price. We have the four button, and the two button, and the spinny thing.
The two button remotes are working very nicely, the spinny thing is a bit less good but we still use them every day.
Even though they sometimes are not working then it’s still a very nice remote.
Dimming yes, colors are mostly used by the kids.
I don’t have any, can’t say.
I think you should look at mmwave.
No problem with dutch, as I’m kind of dutch too…
Yes, in your opinion. Well, that does not look to be the opinion of the other inhabitants of you house, as you already discovered…
Well, it does not need to go all the way to cost thousands.
I live in a normal 5 rooms apartment, 100m2. Together with a girlfriend and her son. I’ve started the same way, like you, and got the complaints.
The only way to stop it, and get the house doing, what we want, was, as I said already AUTOMATION.
They do not want to touch displays, search phones. They want, that things happen automatically, and still have the possibility to overrule things with manual switches.
So every room here has a motion sensor, a smart 4 scene button and a smart bulb. All light goes on and off automatically. They never complain anymore…
So, if you want to get it right, LISTEN the wishes of your family and try to make things so, that THEY feel like things are getting easier for THEM.
Philips Hue smart bulbs and smart switches and motion sensors. You can get mountings for the switches that fit neatly over your existing wired switches (at least you can in the UK) so the wired switches remain always on and the family can still turn the lights on and off in a way they are comfortable with.
I also have a voice assistant in every room and a wall-mounted tablet on each floor, so there’s always a choice. You might take a look at the Entity Controller integration from HACS - it makes a decent stab at dealing with the conflicts which arise fom combining manual and software control (does a manual switch override a motion sensor, and if so for how long).
I’ve never seen the point of coloured lights, but teenagers may.
Well, of course you are. Your family are right, it will always be much easier to flip a switch. Not nearly as much fun, though.
