The midwit home

I 100%, absolutely sympathize with the opening there. The situation really sucks to a surprisingly great extent. At the same time though, it has to be stated that going for a 'dumb, simple' Smart Lights really, really misses an enormous amount of the potential value. Nearly 100% of my smart home is about lights for now using just Philips Hue/HomeKit, though HA remains on my list, but only a tiny percentage is about simply having switches wherever. The true value for me has been in more intelligent color lighting based on layered actions. I change the amount of blue and brightness during the course of the day, so that there's lots in the morning and it's dimmer and ever redder in the evening. Particularly in the winter this has been incredibly helpful for my sleep cycles. It can all be extremely transparent as well since the switches and motion sensors can have time-of-day as well as which-button and number-of-clicks categorization. So hitting the on button always turns the lights on, but the color and brightness mix of a room will be different over the course of the day. Same with outdoors, motion sensors anywhere that can have different colors and activation periods at different times has been great for massively cutting down extraneous blue light at night, which is good not just for humans but for animals and insects as well. I can wake up in the heart of winter when the sun doesn't rise until 8 or later in the morning to a 20 minute long "sunrise" I created myself simulated nicely with a bunch of lights. And more complex logic like "lights all come on when smoke alarm goes off or a basement flood is detected" are also handy.

Again I'm very sympathetic to the shitty state of the ecosystems right now, frequently miserable UI/UX, and massive heaping doses of bullshit companies are constantly trying to pull to extract more ongoing revenue from people for what should be buy-once-and-done products. But it really sucks precisely because yes: smart home features genuinely can be pretty great.

This is probably because a lot of smart home enthusiasts are less enthused about actually turning the lights on and off. They have fun tinkering and building wireless systems.

I totally don't understand what I gain with colored lights. My friend had a similar setup and I just don't get the attraction. I have a Google home and setting timers has a clear value, I forget less. Playing music has clear value, I relax. Colored lights??? I don't get it.

The one word there sums it up: ecosystems. Every manufacturer seems to be insisting on themselves being "the ecosystem" and the end result is we ended up with dozens of ecosystems, none of whom have a full soup-to-nuts-yet-easy solution, and they don't invest enough effort into getting them compatible with each other.

Every few years I get tempted to go down this rabbit hole, hoping that in the last few years the industry has finally gotten its shit together, and every time I look, it's the same clown show, just with more clowns.

It's a https://xkcd.com/927/ situation because (1) there's so much money at stake and (2) many involved are incompetent/have bad taste.

High color temperature in the morning to wake you up versus low temperature in the night to let you get to sleep quickly is the main benefit.

>I totally don't understand what I gain with colored lights. My friend had a similar setup and I just don't get the attraction. I have a Google home and setting timers has a clear value, I forget less. Playing music has clear value, I relax. Colored lights??? I don't get it.

While the effect no doubt varies with individual, there has been a significant amount of studies suggesting that there is some link between bright light in shorter wavelengths (so blue end of spectrum) and melatonin suppression, and in turn circadian rhythms [ex: 0, 1, 2]. If you live near the equator with consistent sunrise/sunset year round artificial light management may be less of a concern to you, but the further you are and the more seasonal variation you experience the more helpful it may be (and is for me) to have lighting throughout home/work that can help maintain circadian rhythm as desired. "Sunrise" into bright white/blue in the morning and day, then slowly changing into dimmer, redder light as one approaches the desired time to go to sleep. YMMV of course but as someone in tech who had decades of difficulty in maintaining a normal 24h cycle in the northern latitudes, heavy light brightness and temperature control has been a very significant improvement in my QOL and I never want to go back.

Of course, some people just enjoy having fun with lighting as well, for parties and mood and such. "Painting with light" can be interesting by itself. But for me the practical advantages have been significant value for the cost, and without any need for any kind of drugs or other mechanisms.

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0: https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep-blue-light

1: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-ha...

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9424753/

Other than fun, being able to shift lights in the kids bedrooms to a more yellow hue for storytime then a dark red for a nightlight has been good.

Eh, it's not exactly that... its more of

"Lets design a spec that anyone can use"

Premium brand that uses spec is $30 dollars a light, but works...

UNGADONG brand made in China is $10 dollars and has a 30% chance of catching on fire.

Premium brand goes out of business and market is taken over by crap.

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Also, vendor lock in by the premium brand allows them to jack up prices even more.

Yeah, big companies (tech or otherwise) now have their ears up to prevent anything from becoming a success without them, and so nothing becomes a success because there’s no room for the users and startups around them to evolve to what the products really should be.

We need more things that are complete in themselves but causally work with other things. (Y’know, like the web.) Things that can perform tasks without an installation page, but readily extensible using MQTT or HTTP. That’s the kind of thing my company tries to build. That’s a very useful thing about Shelly, or any of the polished devices that expose an open protocol.

they're fun! they help set the mood, so the living room changes from an office space vibe to a campfire vibe to a cool outer space feel. it's goes beyond strictly utilitarian uses but you have to have emotions to get use out of that feature.

When my teen would be up in his room with headphones on, I would flash the bedroom lights remotely from downstairs. That was his cue to come downstairs for dinner or so we could figure out our weekly schedule or whatever.

There are so many ecosystems that should die and get opened up. Televisions, car entertainment systems, closed app stores.

They hold society down.

The 1 Hue light I have resets itself on occasion and I've given up on reprogramming it to do the 1 thing I want it to do, which is color tracking by time of day.

I imagine if I bought a compatible "smart switch" that issue would go away (power never completely dropped to the bulb), but seriously...

I have a bladerunner/Tokyo nights mode I can put my apartment in, I love it.

I believe you based on my experience with the salve, but I’m the opposite.

Very much, “I just want it to work.”

Here’s what I’ve found useful from a smart home:

* I can leave for a week or weekend, let the house get quite hot or cold (obviously within some safety parameters) and then turn in the heat or AC a couple hours before I get home.

* I get alerts when a package or other delivery shows up at the front door.

* I can set a timer to turn off any lights my kids left on during the day, late at night every night.

* I can set a timer to turn off the heat or AC in an outbuilding no-one sleeps in late at night, in case my kids were out there and forgot to turn it off.

* I can set my outdoor lights to go on at sunset, and turn off around “it’s unlikely anyone will be going out here and need a lit pathway” time.

* I can set my espresso maker to turn on and warm up before I’m ready for coffee, and turn off when we’re a bit past “you should stop drinking coffee or it’s gonna mess with your sleep” time.

* When we leave town with an arrangement for a dog sitter to come by and take care of our dog a few hours after we leave, I can check to make sure they actually did and poor Rover isn’t lonely and unfed.

But I do 100% agree with the author’s frustration, and wish things “just worked” and just worked together.