Since there is not a lot of activity on the forum i thought an interesting question may spark some ideas and sharing. I have noticed in so many posts where folks have mentioned about how they had to please their wives/spouses to get justification for adding a new gadget or automation… Since our better halves make a difference to our smart home solution selection, it will be interesting to know which devices or use cases please your spouses the most and why?.. That way may be it will motivate others and may spark new ideas 
Let me start by saying that my wife just loved the Echo… It sits in our kitchen and she can just talk to it and get everything done while cooking, including turning the roomba on (which is another thing she loves)…she didnt care how much i spent for any of it
Things to please your wives [spouses, partners, significant others, diverse roommates, cohabitatants, live-in family, AirBnB™ guests…]` 
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Pro: My partner appreciates the Echo as well, but just as of last week when I added the home theater projector and screen as linked switches (via a ThingShield project). Reduces the number of different remotes needed to a single Alexa request.
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Pro: I decided to rapidly install the Schlage Z-Wave lock w/keypad on the back door (to garden) because I had accidentally locked him out there a few too many times (forgetting he was up the hill). The “connected” feature will come in handy as we rush out of the house front-door, often not sure if the back door was locked… now we can check and lock by mobile App.
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Con: Motion activated lights in the den are handy for following the dogs out, but not so friendly when they keep coming on, then off, then on, during evening yoga. Have to check against an alternate light switch or some other condition to temporarily disable motion activation. NB: Adding this type of condition is likely trivial via either of the “rule builders” out there, but harder if I have to search for – or write – a scenario specific SmartApp!
Aha - market opportunity!
Pressure sensing, Bluetooth connected yoga mats.
( Everything’s better with Bluetooth )
Not at all related to ST. Handing over the remote so that she can watch downton abbey… Doesn’t matter if she has watched the episode million and one times.
In ST world, it’s the hues, lightstrips and the Go… Besides that she doesn’t use any of the stuff. But anyways she has to use the front door lock though and I get the feeling she kind of likes it.
Yea my wife finally came around to liking the z-wave lock. Which is good because her presence works better than mine, even with outsourcing it to IFTTT…
For my RF switches that I typically control with an arduino shield I gave her the old RF remote for her side of the bed for when that fails and I’m away.
They can be tough to convince.
With the help of a IFTTT I set up two different Hue lights before the baseball game. One green for the Oakland A’s and one orange for the San Francisco Giants. As each team scored the light would flash on and off. This became an overwhelming success in my house. Now it’s being requested before every baseball game. 
The only thing that’s not going over so well is my boyfriend just hates being called the “wife” 
-no wife acceptance factor in my house.
xAF = anyone-other-than-me acceptance factor.
At our house, we have the people who live here (3 housemates), family and friends who visit often, people who work here (mostly health aides), and occasional guests. And the dog. 
Highest xAF without question is Amazon Echo to control the lights. Everybody loves that.
Second highest is the combination lock on the front door. Solved a multitude of problems for a multitude of people. Everybody immediately understands its value. Some people aren’t crazy about the aesthetics, but they aren’t the ones who live here.
Third would probably be the harmony home integration, which my housemate bought because he wanted a universal remote and it said smartthings on the box. He loves being able to toggle lights on and off from the remote while he’s watching TV. Because Harmony has an IFTTT channel, I was also able to add VoiceCommands via text which was very nice for me, although no one else really uses it. They all keep asking when the echo is going to work with the harmony.
Everything else we’ve done has either been for me, or pretty much invisible to everybody else. But light control by voice, the new doorlock, and some integration with the AV all have high xAF.
The dumb switches that act smartly (AKA the GE rocking Z-wave switches). Took me forever to get her interested in “home smarts”. Kwikset Locks and a combination of Big Switch/Home Phrase Director that turns everything off, locks the doors and sets the thermostats to a predefined setting seemed to have done the trick for me. Other than that, energy efficiency gadgets seem to catch her attention, if reasonably priced. Also, my wife hates Alexa - not sure if there is a sense of competition going on there - she’s annoyed by Hue light-bulbs notifications and really has zero tolerance for home smarts misfiring (and unfortunately the latter happens way too often). Ah… she does like Sonos reminders! “There are wet clothes in the washer”…was a hit
@SBDOBRESCU, I think our wives may be sisters. She does not show much emotion on what we have, I think because she knows if I saw her excited about something I would go out and spend more money
I would say number one would be the thermostat. Her temp. is constantly changing and if she is cold in the morning while still in bed then she can bump up the heat before she gets up.
She does not really comment about the other stuff. She knows the Echo was for me, all the lights I added are switches not bulbs so manual switching still worked. I also have Smart Alarm setup with sensors on all windows and doors and while she does not mention it, I think she likes it. I also have the hallway light turn on if we arrive home after dark so the house is not dark when we open the door, this help…I think.
That makes sense! LOL! It should be something really amazing for my wife to be excited.
Actually we are getting very good at the “tug of war” game, lately. You should try it too, is fun, NOT. “Honey…see it’s working! Ahhh… no, is NOT” kind of game. We have ST v1 hub to thank for keeping us going, and Harmony hub, and Lutron hub and Echo. Endless opportunities to reach new heights…
OK…You convinced me, I will ask her for a SONOS Play 1 for my Birth Day gift and will setup weather reminders and calendar reminders via the IFTTT.
Yeh…If you read my Rant on the thread about 48 hours ago, than you know my story. No Re-cap. I am done with H/A until I have the Hub V2 in my hands. And Ben gets me a replacement Siren for the one I killed. LOL! 
I just want the Mode to stay the way it is scheduled, so I can finally install those new ge 45614 z-wave switch 3-way on/off kit in my stair case. To turn on lights after dark.
One more thing, If we all get our wifes together…They probably related in some 3 degrees of seperation way.
Bro…You are an Evil Genious! Lets do that at my house. I provide the Grill and the Beer. And hope that the Wives will hatch a plan to get Ben to ship it to us by the end of the month.
I’m adding an in-wall smart outlet to the load side of the GFCI on my wife’s side of the bathroom to turn off her hair straightener automatically when she leaves for work. Right now she’s using a dumb Belkin Conserve Socket and it’s saved her twice from having to turn around on her way to work.
I already have a ‘getting ready for work’ and ‘back to bed’ hello home phrase that will turn on the lights downstairs when motion is detected outside our bedroom (between 4-5am), and then turn off all those lights when my wife leaves for work. At that ungodly hour she was previously (understandably) leaving lights on a couple times a week and now I don’t feel like my father every time I look at the electric bill.
We also have a door sensor on the dog food cabinet so we are alerted when the dogs are fed. Now we’re not asking each other every day if the other fed the dogs. It also gives us some peace of mind when we have someone house/dog sitting.
Quick question: how did you install the in-wall smart outlet “on the load side of the GFCI”? Did you use a GE in-wall outlet? And did you remove the existing GFCI outlet but leave some ground fault switch in the wall? Or just use a ST plug-in appliance outlet?
Be or act dumb! She is the smarter thing in the household!
I haven’t followed through with this yet, but here’s my plan. The bathrooms currently only have one GFCI outlet and then have two or three protected outlets down stream. Like this: http://i.stack.imgur.com/cRLPX.gif
I am planning on just swapping one of the downstream outlets with a smart outlet. I would still use a GFCI Tester to verify it’s protected, but it should work.