Home automation is not about talking and giving orders to your home
Almost one year ago to date I quit my job in the Game Industry to try my hand at home automation. I never wrote commercial software that didn’t include a highscore table or a game over state before and as such was I was excited at the idea of “shaping the future”. And in the process of learning all about getting your light bulbs to talk with your coffee machine (no really, I’ve done this at my place) I realized one thing: There’s no single device you can buy that will make your home smart on it’s own. You need at least 3–4 devices that can communicate with each other before you can see any benefit.
At best Alexa and Hue can scratch a surface itch
Here’s my problem with Home Automation: the amount of convenience you get from your “smart home” is directly proportional with the amount of money you invest in it. You can buy an Amazon Echo and a few Hue light bulbs and turn the lights on and off with your voice due to their integration. The first few days after installing and configuring the devices my excitement had gone through the roof. Since I bought my own place my neighbors have been constantly asking about what’s going on in my home and some of them even took the plunge and ordered a few devices for themselves. But after a few weeks it became tedious to use voice commands to control the lights or turn on the coffee maker by asking Alexa for coffee every morning. As such I realized one important thing: Every piece of sci-fi media I saw growing up that featured AI’s and voice controls sold me on the wow-factor of it all, but they didn’t feature the repeated, boring, long and error-prone side of things.
Alexa, turn on the lights in the living room / Alexa, dim the lights in the living room to 30 percent
My girlfriend loved the system at the start but a few hours of hearing me repeating the same series of commands she asked a great question: Why can’t you just say “Alexa, code 22”. After asking her what she meant by that she made me realize my problem with the way things work: Home automation should be about convenience and easy of use, not straining your vocal cords.
We are sold on the idea of being able to talk to our home but in reality what we need is a home that reacts to our needs without having to explicitly ask for them.
Interaction should be minimum. It’s called Automation not using 20 separate apps
Whenever I visit my parents at their place I notice the huge pile of remotes on the living room coffee table. One for the DVR, one for the box from my cable provider, one for the DVD player, another one for the custom Kodi box. To that mix add the remote control for the AC and one for the lights and you get no space for the coffee cups. The same thing happens in the smart home field: You have Alexa and it’s app, Philips Hue and it’s app, Samsung’s app for it’s appliances, the Nest app, the Skybell app and so on and so forth. At least we have all of them on a single platform (your phone/tablet) and we don’t need several devices to interact with the appliances. Heck even Alexa does one thing well and that’s the fact that it has support for quite a few separate devices that can be controlled with it. Lucky for us there are third party hardware makers that provide something known as a hub like Smart Things, Vera, Fibaro’s hub or Home Assistant that runs on a raspberry pi. And the whole convenience part of having a Smart Home is tied to the use of such hubs.
Wake up in the morning and I raise my weary head
My favorite part about having all these smart devices in my home is that I can setup routines (or scenes) that run automatically based on my needs. For example there’s a special scene that I appreciate in the morning and it goes like this:
If it’s 8 AM it’s coffee time. My (dumb) coffee machine is connected to a smart plug that turns on every morning. Coffee starts brewing and 6 minutes later my Hue bulbs start dimming from 0 to 50% in small increments. By the time it reaches half-brightness I am woken up by the combined smell of coffee and fake-sun light. Not a bad way to start the day and I haven’t even lifted a finger. And just in case I wake up earlier I have a few motion detectors installed in several rooms. As soon as they detect the first movement of the day (between 7 and 8 AM) the smart plug turns on and coffee begins brewing but the Hue bulbs no longer dim. The 8 AM scene is cancelled for that morning.
As for night time, I have that covered too. At 10 PM I get a push notification from IFTTT reminding me to add water and coffee to the coffee machine. If it’s passed 11 PM and my laptop doesn’t reply to pings it means its bed time. The hue bulbs begin to dim from their current brightness to 0%. I no longer need to get up, walk to the end of the room and press the switch to turn off the lights nor scream at Alexa or pick up my phone and use the app.
Mirror mirror on the wall is there anybody home at all?
If I’m not home and it’s night and Vera is on away mode the hue bulbs turn on in sequence in my home. First in the bedroom for a few minutes, then in the kitchen. Lights go off in the bedroom and turn on in the living room. If anyone is casing my home hoping to score they never know when I’m away or at home. And even if someone breaks in the motion sensors trigger the bulbs, my raspberry pi is woken up and plays an alarm sound (I have it connected to a few speakers) and the Security Camera starts recording and storing video on my local server. I also get a notification on my phone so I can check out what’s happening.
The real pitch behind home automation
This is the type of home automation convenience that the future holds for us. Sadly we are sold on the idea of interacting with our home by giving commands when in reality we don’t even need to know there’s anything there. And as much as I love the idea behind Alexa, telling her to turn off the lights during the night is a no-go when I have someone already sleeping next to me. If only we could automate giving her commands.
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