News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again by matteoraso on Sunday May 07, 2023 @03:54PM (#35855014)
Adding to this, I just don't see the use case for "smart" devices. The difference between me getting up and checking the thermometer vs checking the thermometer using my phone is 10 seconds, max.
Re:I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again by wlonkly on Sunday May 07, 2023 @06:34PM (#35856260)
For me it's metrics.

We have a heat pump, so we change the temperature roughly twice a year: heating temperature in winter, air conditioning temperature in summer.

But my Ecobee reports the temperature in three rooms (and occupancy, which I tie into automating lights), outside temperature, outside and inside humidity, fan/heat/cool start/stop times, and some other more obscure metrics up to the mothership, and the excellent third-party website Beestat[1] tracks all of those using Ecobee's well-documented API. It lets me spot anomalies, and helps me understand if I've got the resistive heating configured to come on at the best time.

If we had time-of-day rates for electricity, it would optimize for those, but we don't have time-of-day-rates.

(If I had gas heat, or if I didn't work from home, I'd at least schedule temperature changes to set things cooler at night or when we're away -- maybe driven by the occupancy sensors! -- but apparently that's not effective with heat pumps.

[1] https://beestat.io/