Home Automation

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Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.

It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.

Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.

Warning: Working with electricity can result in injury, property damage, or even death if it is not done properly. Please keep this in mind while assisting others. If you are not sure about what you are doing, hire a licensed professional.

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How bad business broke the smart home (www.theverge.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is it easy to use out of the box, or do you have to be a propeller head to use it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Relatively!
There's a bit of a learning curve initially - though much less now as you can buy a HA server pretty much ready to go.

If you stick to devices with HA compatibility out of the box, then it's really easy.

The main differentiating factor is, if you delve deep enough, you can do anything you want with it - including making it talk to things that were not compatable out of the box.

Fortunately there's a community of 'propeller heads' figuring out how to integrate all kinds of random things.

I'd never used HA until March when I had Solar & Batteries installed. The app from the manufacturer (Solis) was useless. I followed someone elses instructions on GitHub (blindly) and it worked amazingly well.

Since then, I've just learned gradually, adding different things to it. Now I know the basics, it feels friendly enough.

Today I made it switch on my Christmas Lights at 5am, switch off at sunrise. On at sunset & off at 11pm. Really easy, no code to write. Just works.