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.
I guess I got a kick out of it. Every time Home Assistant automatically turning on all lights 30 minutes before sun down, me and my kid would cheers. It’s also nice to not worry about “have we locked the door?” or “have we turned off the AC/water heater/stove” etc because the automation take care of turning off everything when no one home, and automatically turning on lights when we got home at night. Also, there’s an automation that send intruder alert if no one at home and the motion sensor/door sensor are tripped.
Note that they’re not hassle free though. There is always a malfunction or two every one or two months, so I don’t recommend it to anyone unless they like tinkering with stuff.
This sounds like my use case. I dan’t have as many issues, but the platform makes a big difference. I’ve been diligent about keeping everything z-wave, not wifi, and it’s been reliable.