zlacker

>>pictur+(OP)
Can someone explain to me what this ecosystem is and the appeal of it?

I have nothing automated in my life, that I know of? I don't have a garage; the door to the house has a key; the lights I turn on with a switch; no Alexa, don't use Siri... I am not exactly opposed to automation, but I am hesitant to share even more demographic data to cloud services.

>>triyam+f5
The lights in my house turn on and off with the rhythm of our lives. We don’t think about turning a light on or off. They do that by themselves. My home knows when the dishwasher is done. My home can silence alerts if I’m on a zoom call. My home knows if the air quality is low and doesn’t turn on the ventilator fan.

Automation is not about having an app for your lights, it’s about not having to think of trivial stuff like turning on a light.

>>op00to+v6
I like having an app for my lights. Getting a little dark during a video call? Just turn the lights on without missing a beat. Better than the awkward "I'll be riiight back" that wastes 10 people's time.

(As for automatically turning on lights, that is also good. I have two receptacles outdoors that aren't on a switched circuit. Thanks to the magic of smart lights, they are now off during the day.)

>>jrockw+T8
I think you could probably just skip the awkward “I’ll be riiight back” stand up, flip the light switch and carry on. I mean unless the light switch is in another room you’d still hear whatever is going on and unless you are literally running the meeting I struggle to imagine what the purpose of announcing your action is.

Maybe I’ve become a crusty old man, in years gone by I would have thought that people would notice me getting up and wonder where I was going. Now though, I’ve realized that no one is really paying that much attention to anyone else, even if someone were curious about why you walked away for a moment, the room getting brighter and you sitting back down doesn’t require a brain surgeon to piece together what happened.

Once you remove the completely voluntary awkward part of that video call, fiddling with an app and flipping a switch are on a lot more equal footing.