My smart home is entirely app controlled (HomeAssistant), generally scheduled, and at no point does anything notify me unless an actual exceptional event happens. Every smart home device is controllable via a physical switch. My command and control centers are old android tablets acting as digital picture frames until you swipe on them.
And it's really convenient and it works well. No voice anything, no needing five different apps, and the UI is stupidly simple.
Most smart home devices that are advertised are a pain in the ass, the apps are intrusive and terrible, they are far too voice heavy and they usually don't play well with normal switches/remotes/etc.
Lights and entertainment center get the most usage of course, though thermostat control is nice. I do have humidity data from the thermostats but I'm not using it currently.
I built and did an alpha test of garden monitoring but haven't messed with it since.
I can't say I found the ability to control my lights and thermostat from beyond the local network to be compelling. I changed the Nest thermostat for my mother once while she was staying there since she couldn't figure out how to do it, and I think that was the only time I found it useful. I never set up remote access for the lights and never missed it.
Remote security will be a useful application, though. Being able to buzz people in for repairs and deliveries and other services, and know that they know they can't steal anything without being seen, is an attractive possibility.
Fine-grained control of sound is another feature I would use. I often wish I could play audio in the whole house, just one room, or certain rooms, depending on the circumstances.
Also, something I find myself wishing for (less often since Covid, but still occasionally): cameras inside my refrigerator and pantry, so if I have a dinner idea while I'm out, I know what I need to pick up on the way home.
For what it's worth this is possible now with their Smart Button
As I mentioned down below, I'm currently on crutches with a broken leg. Voice-controlled lighting is a big convenience in my scenario. Mechanical switches don't "Just Work (TM)" for disabled people.
Photocells / IR motion sensors turn lights on or off as ambient light levels fall or presence of a human is detected.
Audio switches turn on or off with a sound ("The Clapper", etc.)
Timers can be used to turn circuits on or off on a set schedule. This may not be ideal, but can work for general cases.
There are remotes which work based on a handheld control and either IR or RF frequencies.
All of these are backwards-compatible with old technology, are tried and proven, and will continue to function for years.
"Smart Home" implementations remain 99.99996% crap.
I can lay in bed and turn on/off a fan, a pair of lamps, and the coffee-machine (which I pre-fill manually the night before).
More complex things would be nice, but I just don't trust most of them.
The only other thing I do is record the temperature in my living-room, balcony, and sauna. The sauna monitoring is useful because I can make it ping my phone when it reaches 80/90 degrees and is "ready".
(That just uses an off-the-shelf battery-powered temperature/humidity sensor. Every 30-60 seconds it broadcasts the current readings and I have an SDR-receiver plugged into my desktop. That logs the values to influxdb, and visualizes with grafana. Nothing amazing, but fun and a little useful.)
Imagine asking your phone to watch a movie in your family room, then automatically, the lights dim or change color, the curtains are pulled if it's dark, the tv and receiver are flipped on and the movie is loaded and ready to go on pause. Many people would find value in this. This is all technically possible and some people have actually created this setup. But it probably took them several days and fiddling to make it work. I can barely get my Yamaha receiver and LG tv to work together and they are top of the line new components.
It's valuable and useful to me, and if it could be setup up easily, I'm sure others would love it to.
Ironically I also have two japanese toilets in my house.
I'd argue that this isn't true. Installing a light switch is a HUGE pain in the ass compared to a "smart plug" that can turn a lamp on and off via your phone or any "smart" switch that can connect to it.
As annoying as setup procedures can be they don't take nearly as long or involve nearly as much sweat as cutting holes in walls, running wires, potentially installing additional circuit breakers, installing wall boxes, installing the actual switch, and making sure it's all according to code.
Furthermore, changing which outlet the wall switch controls is also a pain in the ass compared to just relocating the little smart plug or changing the device it controls in the switch configuration software.
It's possible to make a smart device that lasts for decades without security issues but device manufacturers just aren't willing to put in the effort for that sort of thing. It's much, much more profitable to make devices that only last 5 years before the end user needs to spend money on a new one.
Being able to say "Hey Siri, good evening" to switch to my evening scene, or "Alexa, turn on the lights" to turn on the lights in whatever room I'm in becomes a huge convenience, not a novelty.
This way you're not stuck with a useless home in case your controller lost power, is down for maintenance or whatever.
For light switches I use Z-Wave modules that use the wall switch as a low voltage switch to trigger the module to switch the A/C circuit. This way the existing switch acts just as it did before. My family really doesn't notice, yet somehow that porch light is always on around dusk and off by dawn.
I don't use Alexa or the like but as a developer I easily integrate with DiY equivalent.
That last point is probably a key gap generally though -- as a developer this home automation stuff comes easier to me, potentially.
Combability wildly varies between manufacturers, you have have to know what works with what.
The mesh capabilities are kinda wonky, where you have some kind of "heal" network function you use when devices for some reason stops talking to each other.
"Press the button for 3 seconds, but not five."
"Do the pairing near the receiver."
And you have to swap batteries.
Not quite “IOT” but the bridge between that low power network and the internet is a natural add on.
Would also be cool if they were more "push toggle" style so that if I have two sets of switches on the same lights, I don't have to accept that four switches all in different "positions" are different states. (That is, Up Down Up Up, but all off.)
All of that said, most of that does not need any sort of "smart" additions. Basic circuitry has come a long way.
Can program double triple or more taps to run scenes or events, and can also sync multiple switches (wirelessly and on different circuits) to control the same lighting, or use cheaper (wired) remote switches that lack status lights, but are functionally identical.
I have single press resume previous light level, double up goes to 100% double down goes to preset dim level, triple up or down turns on/off the entire room/area of house.
Hold and release to manual dim.
That said, they do fit my bill really well and I'm almost certainly going to switch to them eventually.
You can add a zwave controller that translates ip commands from a home server to zwave commands, but it can be wired or wifi (or usb).
You can also directly program zwave "scenes", which work directly between the z wave devices without needing a controller. Like a direct remote control.
Edit: Regardless of what I meant, I think you proved I should look more into these. Thanks!
My point was that it's not like most iot devices that try to find an open internet connection to phone home. They're 100% as isolated as you want them to be.
And with a huge confession that this isn't that big of a deal.
"Gorilla arm"[1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen#%22Gorilla_arm%22
YEEEESSSS
Minority Report is my go-to example for sexy, total impractical.
For example, Software Engineering :-)
It reminds me of those 3D user interfaces in the movie Minority Report. Very cool-looking and futuristic. Who wouldn't want that? The answer is anyone whose arms would be tired after a couple minutes of flailing around like that. Stop making things overly complicated for the sake of marketing copy.