I am failing to see the interest in having tons of IOT devices to manage, connect, segment, etc… Why would someone want to do it? To be clear, I have friends deep in it but… I still don’t understand. Can anyone try to explain the magic I am failing to see?

Edit: Thank you all for sharing your experiences! The ones I found more interesting are those that can easily translate in reducing or tracking consumption. The rest I hear but makes more sense when I look at it from an hobbyist perspective.

  • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    For a lot of things, it’s a solution in search of a problem. I set it up on its own vlan because since I do networking every day for work segmenting things off is really simple for me.

    I only have a handful of automations that I use.

    • Turn on the garage backyard lights and the back door lights when I get home after sunset.

    • Send my robo vacuum out whenever I leave the house for more than 5 minutes.

    • Turn on the porch light and the exterior housing lights at sunset and off at sunrise.

    • A button to turn off all the lights on my house on my phone that I use every night when I go to bed.

    • A button in my living room that turns on two table lamps, a floor lamp, and some accent lights instead of turning them all on individually. It also turns them all off.

    • Scene buttons at the bar that will turn on multiple lights and change colors. I’m planning to do animations with the lights here so that I can press a button and the lights do a little dance.

    I don’t really like motion sensors for rooms or areas because there are a lot of times I come in I don’t actually want the lights on. I also don’t have a million sensors because I don’t want to deal with batteries or really care about everything. Things should have a purpose and not just lights that feel like they are there just for the sake of “hey look, I have lights that do something.”