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by throwawaywindev
1864 days ago
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You know what’s even better UX? Light switches. The Hue dimmer switches are great. The most value I get out of them being “smart” is that I can program a double tap of the “off” button to turn off all lights in the house, or multiple taps of the “on” button to cycle between scenes. |
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In my case, most of my house is Insteon switches and keypads, though most I've added in the last couple years is LED/RGB stuff (with tasmota).
There's a keypad in the kitchen, with buttons "bright", "dim" and "off" that do expected things. It takes a second to press as you walk by, and visitors figure it out in 5 seconds.
There's some automations hidden though: at night, the lights automatically turn off. If nothing is on at dusk, some automatically turn on, the exact config depending on if the home is "occupied" or not (based on motion and control presses). There's some RGB lights on top of the cabinets that pick a random color when you press the buttons. "Off" actually leaves those on (dim) before midnight, though you can double-press for actual off.
All this stuff is largely hidden, but you notice if it's missing (eg: we never come home to a dark house). To me is the point of "home automation" or "smart home" (whatever we're calling it this decade), that all the phone-based and control-from-internet stuff totally misses.
My office is one exception right now. Since the pandemic I changed the lighting to all RGBW bulbs and strips, and have a circadian program running (changes color temp and brightness slowly over the day) which is awesome. I currently control it with either the home assistant app or voice; it's ok but noticeably inconvenient compared to a switch (I just haven't got around to fixing that yet).
I definitely would not remove physical controls from the wall in each room, and if you have that, I'm not really sure what you need a floorplan view for. It looks neat, don't get me wrong, but I just don't see the practical need.