Hi! I’m new to home assistant and I’m wondering what would be worth the cost. A lot of the “smart” appliances seem overly expensive and automating them would only save me a handful of minutes each day. I live in canada where power is cheap, so things that save power aren’t particulary useful. A way to open/close the windows and doors sounds useful and would save me the most time, but costs thousands. A way to keep track of what is in the fridge and propose recipes to avoid food waste would be nice but I’m not entirely sure how I would setup such a system.
Does anyone have ideas of worthwhile things I could setup that would be worth the cost?
Personally, that isn’t how I think about a smart home system. There isn’t a need to do major changes until maybe you need to get it replaced anyways. Starting with things like lights, a few shades, door sensors, are good ways to start. The biggest question is what do you want to get out of it?
I think highest/easiest ROI would be devices that alert or avoid bad events.
- freezer/fridge temp monitors to avoid food going bad (circuit failure, door cracked open, part failure)
- water leak detectors (water heater, bathroom, sink)
- open door alarms ( garage door left open overnight, fence door left open that lets dog out)
- doorbell camera/microphone (unwanted visitors)
I haven’t yet put it into numbers and anyway compared to the expenses to get there will be depressing but measuring temperatures to take decisions on how to manage heat allowed us to reduce the house temp from 29 Celsius to 21 over a week of tweaking. This week we’re getting the cooling system installed and I believe that with this knowledge the running cost will be much lower. In a part of the house I already automated the curtains which led also to a decrease of temps - I could cut air condition altogether there. So definitely a confort gain at least. Now money-wise it’s anyway a cost case with the automation relying on new solar panels, heat pump, new electrical cabling… so if you exclude our perception of additional confort it’s definitely not seeing a positive ROI before I’m dead of old age. But no regrets anyway.
Doing temperature monitoring in each room of the house. It really lets you work out where you’re losing heat, or failing to cool in the summer, and keep things more comfortable.
I bought a 5 pack of xiaomi temp sensors from Ali express… They were like $5 each? They’re Bluetooth but you can bridge to HA using an esp32 with esphome. Really cheap way to get some resolution on how and where and when the house is heating/cooling.
I was surprised at how poorly I understood how to manage the temp of my home. Knowing really is half the battle.