A different take from a different person.

Accessibility for my disabilities, able to have the lights turned down when I have a migraine and can’t get up because of pain, as well as reminders and timers with just my voice. Automation helps with my disabilities too.

I love walking into my kitchen and having the lights come on at an appropriate brightness based on time of day without having to interact with the switch. I love having my gawdy custom LED lights come on in the hallway when I open my bedroom door, and having them super low at night when it’s dark so I can still see without blasting my irises. I like having a heater that runs on one end of the room until the other end hits a certain temp, and more so only having it come on if the temp is below a specific threshold in the morning. I love having my porch lights turn on and off with sunset/sunrise, and having seasonal lighting schemes. I love knowing when my house is entered and exited when I’m away, knowing that I can control many things while out of the house like lights, or if I need to open the garage door for a friend to grab something, or give access to someone once without having to give them a key, or to have the TV room turning on before I head in there so I don’t have to bother with sitting through the power up cycle for everything. Mostly, I like being able to control lights without them having to be on the same circuit. My living room doesn’t have a light fixture with a switch, but I’ve got 4 lamps and two switched down lights (one at my front door and one over the fireplace) that are all controlled from a single wireless switch, button on my phone, or voice command. My bedroom is the same, I don’t have to turn out the lights and then get in bed in the dark. I get in bed and press the action button on my phone (which works conditionally based on time, location, and a couple other consistent factors) and the lights turn off while the fan turns on. It’s a lot of work for a bunch of minor conveniences, but more than anything I really enjoy the technology and seeing what other weird and stupid things I can do with it.

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Seems like a fun hobby. They might say it’s about productivity or something, but that kind of talk is just part of the hobby.

In addition to all the automation everyone has talked about, some of us are also data nerds.

I enjoy knowing the temp, air quality, etc. in every room. How does this change throughout the day/season? Did leaving this door open or this fan on improve anything? What can I automate at what threshold to improve things?

You can also get a lot of data about energy usage too. And if you have solar and battery, it’s neat seeing how much it affects and how much you save.

Automation is useful, but in the end it’s just a hobby like many other things. It’s fine to be into it or not into it.

Lights are really nice. With one voice command I can turn the entire house into a bright daylight, or drop it to low intensity red shift at night.

My thermostat warms my room up before I awaken so I won’t be cold getting out of bed, while my lights slowly fade on over 10 minutes before my alarm, waking me before the tone sounds most days. At bedtime, I can fade off all the lights in the house at once before going to sleep.

Also, I can turn on the color effects and throw a dance party for the family.

What I really want is a smart home that tells me that the stove is on and been unattended for over 20 minutes now.

And which can tell me which when I went to bed last night.

Obviously it would have to be offline not some crowd service lives streaming to the NSA.

So many reasons.

Smart locks on doors that disarm house alarms when they’re unlocked with a code. Lights that turn on when someone is in a room, and off when the room is empty. The garage door alerting you that it’s still open around the time you go to bed. The house stereo turning itself off at a certain time on weeknights, and the house alarm system turning itself on at the same time. Being able to check that the gas fireplace is off after you’ve driven out of your neighborhood on your way somewhere. The house disabling the security system for 20 minutes when it detects you on the second floor landing, so that you don’t trip the motion sensors when you go down for a snack.

A non-trivial example of some more complex things our house does: when one of our phones enters the neighborhood, and it is after dark, our carriage and porch lights come on. If no other phones are already home, some of the inside lights also turn on. When we turn onto our street, the garage door opens. After the garage door is closed, the outside lights turn off.

Any number of things ranging from small to large conveniences. Some small conveniences become large ones when you have guests staying over.

30% reduction in heating cost without reduction in comfort.

Convincing we’re-home-simulation while gone.

Each single light is independently dimmable, making for variety in light scenes for different purposes.

I do it mostly because I’m forgetful. So I automate what I forget. For example I always forget I’ve put the washing on so I get repeating alerts to hang it out. The alerts stop once I’ve scanned the NFC tag on the washing machine.

For me, things were pretty easy/quick to set up, and the benefit? Lower electric bills. More convenience.

I operate a rooftop solar power station. While I have scripted all the individual components like battery management, Inverters and the various sinks (for where the power goes when it’s not needed immediately) using Grafana to get alerts, I use automation to activate the various scenes and settings to maximise the useful power I get from the system.

Because it’s cool.

That’s kinda it really

Same as others, convenience. You can entirely live without it, but after some learning curve it’s not much to maintain.

I’ve got opening sensors on all doors and windows so my heating turns off if something is open for a few minutes.

I’ve got a dark hallway with some movement sensors and smart bulbs so the lights can turn on when someone walks there, with the lights being dimmed if it’s late at night or not turning on if it’s super late or the luminosity sensor considers it already usable (e.g. on sunny days when there’s enough light bleeding in)

I’ve got smart bulbs in most rooms we use a lot which change the color temperature from warm to cold to warm over the course of the day depending on the sun position/time (it’s a dark country, we often need lights even during the day, especially during winter)

All in all, for me it was definitely worth the price and the investment, I’d not want to go back to not having them but I imagine for someone who hasn’t experienced it, it might seem superfluous or gimmicky.

I suppose it can make your life easier after the initial setup.
If you got the resources to set it up.

Imagine a small cute robo friend vacuuming instead of yourself doing it!