What was the instance where your significant other finally seemed to share your enthusiasm with home automation? I have two but in my defense they both involve Google Home.
Being able to turn on/off Sonos with Google Home. Yes, you can’t change volumes or change sources but simply being able to say “OK Google, turn on Kitchen Sonos” is probably my wife’s favorite feature.
When installing some switches, I had one left over. My wife suggested a place I didn’t even think of, for the pendant lights over the peninsula. This is often a work space for the kitchen and since the other side has stools the switch is located on the stool side. Meaning if you want to turn it on, you have to reach over the work area with contaminated (meat, veggie, ect.) hands to turn on the switch. Now we can say, “OK Google, turn on island (yes, my wife calls it an island…) lights” and not miss a beat while chopping.
She always accepted HA especially with Christmas lights or turning our foyer and door lights on at sunset but these two instances were where you could see the gleam in her eye.
the fact she gets a push notification when the dryer has finished drying the school uniform (so she doesn’t have to iron it) makes her life easier. That is a step in the right direction!
I’d say its the front door being unlocked when she comes home combined with being able to open and close the garage with a double tap at a switch by the front door. No more going through the garage to get in the house.
Just the other day, my wife said… “I think we need locks that we can control remotely. We always seem to worry if we locked the door or not”. I thought, “dang it, they were just on sale and I missed it!”.
Anyway, she requests things to happen from me now. “The lights are too bright when they turn on when I get to the kitchen in the morning, can you turn it down a bit next time?”
A lot of people say FAF for “family acceptance factor.”
In our household we say xAF, where X stands for anyone but the person who chose to put the system in!
And at our house, the smart lock was an instant hit. Everybody understands the value of it, and even the people who are using a combination to enter ( rather than Geopresence) think it’s better than keys.
Voice control of the television is probably the thing that gets demonstrated most often, even more than voice control of lights. Especially jumping straight to Netflix or HBO. So when my housemates show one of their friends what the home automation system does, they almost always start with that.
The feature that people miss most when it isn’t working is motion sensor lighting. When we started adding it, my housemates thought it was only a feature that I needed (I use a wheelchair). But now if it doesn’t work they just stand there for a minute instead of going straight over to the light switch! And they say “hey, the lights aren’t working!” When in fact, the light probably work fine, it’s the sensor rule that has failed. But they don’t even try the switch initially. It’s also been the only thing that they have asked for more of.
I don’t think my wife has had that moment yet. She thinks it’s all nice, but not necessary. I think a lot of it has to do with the restrictions of Google Home though. We’ve had some issues where it refuses to understand her commands or even recognize she’s talking to it. Those kind of sour her impression of the whole thing. Also since Home didn’t support Harmony directly for a while I had to set up IFTTT applets to control activities, well those aren’t the most reliable. And the way they implemented the integration is just cumbersome (I wish they had integrated it similar to SmartThings and Hue).
‘Hey Google, ask Harmony to turn on the TV’
‘Ok, here’s Harmony’
‘Turning on the TV’
I think the closest she’s gotten to that moment was our office doesn’t have an overhead light and no switch near the entryway to control an outlet. So I used a Zooz plug and Iris button to make it so she could easily turn on the lights in the room. I’m thinking about sneaking in a motion sensor and not telling her, see what happens.
3 things for FAF: When my wife is done reading in bed at night all she has to do is tell Alexa to turn off her nightstand table lamp, rather then reaching up to turn it off. (She’s got a Kindle, not sure why she needs the light on, $%$#*)
When she opens up the garage entry door to go to work at 6am, the garage lights up with 300 watts of LED’s, the front lights turn on & the garage door opens.
I hooked my daughter up with ST’s. She & her spouse have odd schedules because of their jobs. In the past she would call me to check if they closed their garage door. I’m retired and they live close so it wasn’t a huge deal, and I haven’t had to check it since. Plus she always asks for new ST devices for her birthday & Christmas. That’s an easy shop on Amazon.
My favorite: The automatic pro on my wife’s car will tell me when she made it safely to work and when she’s leaving work. Using IFTTT, ST’s & Sonos. Mainly tells me when to start dinner.
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bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
10
For my wife it was the laundry room. I put a sensor on the door and a switch in the wall. She opens the door, lights are on, close it, they are off. Super simple and easy, but a game changer when your hands are full of laundry.
And she really likes some of the features of my app, like the severe weather asked and pet notes.
The fact that our house alarm turns on (not only SHM!) and thermostats set to AWAY automatically when everyone leaves the house won her over initially.
Another important item was to be able to turn on/off groups of lights with Amazon Echo.
Minimoting-up the master bedroom. She loves being able to control things after getting in bed. There’s an Echo in there too but the remote is preferred.
I got the smart lock first, and she accepted that immediately. Entering a code, instead of having to have keys in pocket in her morning run? Winner.
The rest was not that easy… and the WAF was, lock aside, essentially non-existent until the advent of Echo Dot with Alexa. That was/is the game changer.
Edit: in reference to the post above, the wife can’t stand remote controls as it is. The tv needs one, the cable box needs one, the Fire stick needs one, the DVD player needs one… remotes get lost, universal remotes sometimes fail to find the charging cradle, etc. so she just loves, when she’s ready to drift off to sleep, “Alexa, turn off the salt lamp”. As Jd would say, choice is good.
My stock went through the roof the first time our sonos system announced that the house was turning the heating down due to the hot weather (wife’s a Yorkshire lass so likes saving money, I’m not sure what the USA equivalent would be)
From day one my wife was on-board. She think all this stuff is cool. She hasn’t spent any time figuring out how it works, but she likes all the automations and sense of security it brings.
And they say “hey, the lights aren’t working!” When in fact, the light probably work fine, it’s the sensor rule that has failed. But they don’t even try the switch initially. It’s also been the only thing that they have asked for more of. 