<story><title>Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi</title><url>https://pragprog.com/titles/mrpython/portable-python-projects/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomxor</author><text>Unless it magically cleans and tidies everything I really don&amp;#x27;t see the appeal of home automation. Pressing a switch is far more convenient to me when walking into a room than fishing out a smartphone - whether it be through a raspberry pi or otherwise. Same with central heating, I rarely need to adjust it and I don&amp;#x27;t see the appeal of messing around with some integrated interface, i&amp;#x27;d rather an old fashioned radiator dial or an independent reliable digital central heating timer I might have to tweak for 2 mins once a year.&lt;p&gt;None of these things are analogous to the TV remote control, there&amp;#x27;s a reason why we haven&amp;#x27;t seen similar precursors such as radiator switches on extension cords, we don&amp;#x27;t need to constantly adjust these things at high frequency... and when we do, we are literally walking past it (light switch).&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;&amp;#x2F;rant&amp;gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bmurphy1976</author><text>All my lights have a physical switch or button.  The smarts come in subtle ways:&lt;p&gt;1. Turn lights on 45 minutes BEFORE sunset at any time of year&lt;p&gt;2. Turn lights on and off at specific times, automatically adjust for Daylight Savings Time (I&amp;#x27;ll never have to listen to my wife complain about the lights needing adjustment again)&lt;p&gt;3. Start warming up&amp;#x2F;cooling off my house BEFORE I get home from vacation&lt;p&gt;4. Double click a button in my Family Room to put my whole house into Movie mode&lt;p&gt;5. Some of my buttons are also temperature sensors.  This gives me the ability to monitor the temperature of parts of my home very closely.  I&amp;#x27;ve had some struggles with our boiler this winter and we also had the insulation redone in our attic.  Instead of relying on anecdotes, I have actual concrete data that I can use to make decisions and gauge the effectiveness of various mitigation strategies.&lt;p&gt;6. Put hard stops on devices (such as TVs or connected network devices) (i.e. turn the TV power off at my children&amp;#x27;s bed time).&lt;p&gt;7. Monitor my garage door and notify if it&amp;#x27;s open too long or if it&amp;#x27;s been left open accidentally at night.&lt;p&gt;8. Fans!! I can turn my ceiling fans on and off based on a variety of triggers (temperature, time, etc).  I hate having the fans off but my wife can&amp;#x27;t sleep with the fan on.  Now the problem is solved and we don&amp;#x27;t even think about it anymore, the fan runs on a schedule.&lt;p&gt;One of my next big projects will be to automate the opening and closing of our front window blinds.  They are in an inconvenient place and are difficult to get to, but I really like to have light coming in during the day but have them closed at night.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s more but I tire writing this.  I hope I made the point.  None of this is revolutionary or changes any existing behavior (all the buttons&amp;#x2F;switches we had previously work same as they always did).  But boy does it make some things a lot more convenient.</text></comment>
<story><title>Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi</title><url>https://pragprog.com/titles/mrpython/portable-python-projects/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomxor</author><text>Unless it magically cleans and tidies everything I really don&amp;#x27;t see the appeal of home automation. Pressing a switch is far more convenient to me when walking into a room than fishing out a smartphone - whether it be through a raspberry pi or otherwise. Same with central heating, I rarely need to adjust it and I don&amp;#x27;t see the appeal of messing around with some integrated interface, i&amp;#x27;d rather an old fashioned radiator dial or an independent reliable digital central heating timer I might have to tweak for 2 mins once a year.&lt;p&gt;None of these things are analogous to the TV remote control, there&amp;#x27;s a reason why we haven&amp;#x27;t seen similar precursors such as radiator switches on extension cords, we don&amp;#x27;t need to constantly adjust these things at high frequency... and when we do, we are literally walking past it (light switch).&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;&amp;#x2F;rant&amp;gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>testmasterflex</author><text>100% agree on this. There are very few things I want to do on a daily basis from my phone instead of from a physical switch. One exception is controlling my bedroom lights which I do with Hue lights from my bed.&lt;p&gt;The other thing I want to automate is music to start playing when I enter the bathroom, to give me privacy in there when my girlfriend is home. And that’s the startup I’m working on: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;Loodio.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;Loodio.com&lt;/a&gt; since there are no other solutions for it out there (that aren’t crap)</text></comment>