Maybe this is a sign of getting old, but I never got why this is such a hassle. Light switches are within reach when you enter a room. Once you're inside, you rarely have to touch them again until you exit. On the rare ocasion that I do, maybe it's also a good time to stretch my legs, take a bathroom break, or get a snack.
Is that such a major inconvenience that we have to overengineer solutions using expensive and complicated ecosystems of gadgets and software?
Maybe I'm in the minority with this line of thinking on this forum, but I never got the smart home appeal. I want devices that I can control directly, not those that will interpret or anticipate what I want to do and, more than likely, cause frustration rather than satisfaction. The switch is the ubiquitous and perfect mechanism of control, especially if it's directly wired to a simple state machine, and not layers of indirection and "protocols". I wish more devices used dumb switches, not less.
Don't get me started on the motion sensing lights TFA mentions. I curse the times I've entered a public bathroom that has these, only for the light to go off at the most inopportune moment. Don't want to use a physical switch because of sanitation? That's fine, but cheap and low-power LED lights exist for them to be always on during your service hours. You won't save much having the light turn off, and potentially annoy your customers.
- If I've been out (defined by my phone's wifi connection or alarm arming state) and then come home and turn on the light nearest my front door, all the lights in my house will turn on (at a predefined brightness level according to time of day)
- When I start a TV show/movie/etc on the TV (but only in the evening), the lights in the room where the TV is will dim. If I pause, they get a bit brighter. Switch the TV off and they get fully bright.
- If I'm watching TV or listening to music and get a phone call, the TV/music automatically pauses
- When I leave the house, all the house lights get switched off automatically in case I forgot to switch any off (again based on phone wifi connection and/or alarm arming state - my alarm state is one-way so HA can't control the alarm, only the other way around)
- If someone leaves the bathroom light on for too long, it will automatically switch off
- In the morning, the lights in my bedroom dim up very gradually to help me wake up (with timing and whether it happens linked to my calendar so it happens later at weekends or during school holidays when I don't need to help with the school run)
- I get a notification on my phone when my washing machine/tumble drier are done which means I don't forget to unload/reload them
I also use HA to unify energy sensors (which are then sent into a Victoria Metrics instance) to monitor the energy usage of various things in my house - this has been pretty helpful to identify where I should prioritise trying to save energy.
All of this is done locally/without cloud services and I think I've probably just scratched the surface of what's possible so far - eg I don't have my heating/AC/blinds/curtains integrated into HA so far and I also plan to investigate whether I could usefully adjust the "wake-up time" in my HA setup depending on traffic/public transport status.
All of these things are of course possible manually and my guiding principle has always been that if the HA instance isn't running then nothing should stop working - but the automations do make life a lot more pleasant.
The music quiet when phone call thing is particularly attractive. I think I have most of the pieces of it here. HomeAssistant, Owntone, airplay (shairport-sync) speakers, a phone running the HA client.