[gerdesj]

"My instinct is to ridicule the entire concept of the smart home"

Your choice. I'm an IT consultant and I try to run my home IT to the same standards as at work.

I keep my IoT devices on a separate VLAN or two. I use Home Assistant as a mediator and I absolutely refuse the likes of Alexa. I'm pretty sure that my Kitchen telly is listening and it is surely loving Morecambe and Wise show's audio on an endless loop and quite quiet.

[oriolid]

I'm a former IT consultant, and I'd like to run my home network to the same standards as at work. I looked into it and came to the conclusion that dealing with a few timers is much less hassle than trying to do it with computers.

[jkepler]

We're totally happy with a Christmas tree timer, and see no need to let the world know when our tree lights are on or off.

[oriolid]

I have a few plant light timers, and I'd really like to adjust them to varying daylight hours without setting every timer separately. A computer could even do the daytime calculations automatically. And while I'm at it, it would be nice to run them all day on cloudy winter days. I wouldn't need to broadcast it to any service provider though, and it would be nice if the setup would work without any Internet connection.