I'm not sure. I love my house, but the lights are insane with a switch under every overhead light, and using smart switches to control them has been so very useful. Generally I control all the lights in a room with 1 smart switch so I don't have to walk across the room to turn on all the lights in the room
My bedroom came with 3 switches in 2 panels across the room from each other, the kids room 2 in 2 locations, bathroom 4 in 1, kitchen 4 in 3, living room 6 in 2, dinning room 2 in 2.
Detailed example: It takes 4 light switches in 3 locations to turn on my kitchen lights:
• 1 panel - 3 sides of the kitchen ceiling lights switch, kitchen recessed lights switch
• separate panel 4 feet away on the other side of a counter - breakfast bar (4th side) ceiling light switch.
• final panel 10 feet to the right, down the breakfast bar counter to turn on the recessed breakfast bar lights.
Is it too much to ask that you circumnavigate the kitchen every morning to turn on the lights to make coffee? No, the previous owners did it every day for 20 some odd years. But do I want to do it? No.
And I certainly think it's progress that I can choose not to.
I'm right there with you. I own a relatively new house (8 years old) and it has SO many switches associated with various lights. Easy to use the switches as they exist, sure. But some simple automations make it easy to flip things on/off without walking all over the house to find the right switch.
Also, some of us have roommates that don't obey the rules. My 3-year old DOES NOT turn on the lights when she walks downstairs on her own in the morning. Perfect opportunity for a simple Z-Wave motion senor + switch automation,.
Otherwise, I agree with the general sentiment to keep it simple. I use Z-Wave switches for lights, a Z-Wave lock for one of my doors, and run HA on a RPi4. Haven't spent an insane amount of time building custom scripts because I want to do other things. And those switches still work without HA too.
(totally see the benefits of Shelly, but hard to stuff in some electrical boxes like those in my house)
I like using switches and my body too. I mostly like the latter at the beach though, so last year when we had to drive 70km back from the coast because the kid next door thought it would be fun to bounce a football off a window, I caved.
Replaced the old school hard-wired 110dB neighbourhood-bothering alarm (home insurance policy requirements suck) with one I can set/unset/silence/check via internet or SMS.
Since then I've added a handful of sensors, switches and pass-through sockets. Very much cheaper than upgrading the entire heating system, long term fuel efficiency gains aside. I don't need to plan/remember to turn off things or change thermostats, I just need to set the alarm "away" and that's done.
I have 3 rules: everything has to work with the same app, I do not talk to my house, and everything has to work acceptably if there's an outage. If it's not helping with security or tangible energy savings I probably don't want it.
My bedroom came with 3 switches in 2 panels across the room from each other, the kids room 2 in 2 locations, bathroom 4 in 1, kitchen 4 in 3, living room 6 in 2, dinning room 2 in 2.
Detailed example: It takes 4 light switches in 3 locations to turn on my kitchen lights:
• 1 panel - 3 sides of the kitchen ceiling lights switch, kitchen recessed lights switch
• separate panel 4 feet away on the other side of a counter - breakfast bar (4th side) ceiling light switch.
• final panel 10 feet to the right, down the breakfast bar counter to turn on the recessed breakfast bar lights.
Is it too much to ask that you circumnavigate the kitchen every morning to turn on the lights to make coffee? No, the previous owners did it every day for 20 some odd years. But do I want to do it? No.
And I certainly think it's progress that I can choose not to.