I just started my journey and can’t believe I lived without smart light switches, and am looking into installing automatic blinds to make life easy.
What do you guys consider must have devices and automations that you can’t see yourself living without, and that everyone should have?
Bathroom fan comes on when I sit on the toilet
My absolute favorite that has proven to have the highest WAF (Wife Approval Factor): Motion sensors that turn on the light in the laundry room. All of us do laundry and it’s amazing to not have to shift any load you’re carrying to try and flip a light switch.
Most people aren’t going to consider a utility room to be a good target for automation, but this has been pretty major for us.
Hallways motion controlled lights, upstairs and downstairs.
Bathroom motion controlled lights.
Multi-zone presense aware 100% automated heating.
House wide data collection and reporting.
Power monitoring and control w/ standby power detection ( work in progress ).
One button bedtime. I live alone, and when I get in bed, I push a button on the nightstand, all lights go off, the doors lock, the plug controlling an outdoor heater/fan shuts off, the thermostat adjusts, the living room TV turns off, and the bedside lamp comes on at 10% brightness. No lying there, wondering if I forgot to turn something off. Also, motion and presence detection for lighting; I can wake up at night to go to the bathroom, stumble in, the lights come on bright enough to see, but not bright enough to blind me, then I stumble back out and they turn off on their own, one minute after I’ve gone.
We have a ceiling light in front of our pantry. So, I used an Aqara door sensor and a Shelly 1 relay to turn the light on when the pantry door is opened and turn it off (only if it was off before the door was opened) after it had been shut. Very simple, but it brings me a lot of joy.
I also have both kitchen lights on motion sensors. I don’t think I have manually turned the kitchen lights on or off more than 10 times in the last couple of years. More helpful than I expected it to be.