[sumtechguy]

A few years ago I worked at a company that was making a go of IoT (before it was called that). Everyone was trying to do home automation but the bills were paid by large companies just wanting a way to not have to roll out a guy to some remote place at 150 an hour (yeah that much). So the space was crowded with dozens of protocols and hardware hubs that all rarely worked together or promised to glue it all together. It was all kind of stitched together with odd bits of c/python/java/c# code. Each one tied to some proprietary protocol that wanted 5-30 bucks a month that would stop working when the company was either bought out, went out of business, or the product line went EOL.

Your always-beta made me think of this. I went the opposite direction I use as little of it as possible. A good old leviton toggle switch is kind of hard to beat for when you enter and leave a room. They cost basically nothing and work correctly for years.

When done up nicely it is pretty cool. But the cost still seems high on a lot of this and is very bespoke still.