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This is what I always wonder too. If I lived alone with no pets I'd love to be able to automate the temperature to save money when I wasn't home. But there are

This is what I always wonder too. If I lived alone with no pets I'd love to be able to automate the temperature to save money when I wasn't home. But there are usually people in my house, and there are always pets there, so I have to keep it pretty temperate in there at all times. Other automatable things (lights, lawn sprinklers) are so easily accomplished with simple analog timers that I really do not see the attraction in controlling them via an app. Maybe it's just the programmer in me thinking... at this point in my life, I'm very jaded when it comes to software. Security is a big one, I guess. It would be nice to be able to monitor that remotely. Though honestly I already have a dog in the house which is probably more effective than 90% of the solutions on the market. My big thing is whole-house streaming audio, and we've had that for years with Airplay and Sonos and now with Chromecast as well. So that's cool.

lstamour 11y ago
Things I've considered automating: different light settings (temperature, which light to keep on, watch-style notifications/interactions when not at my device (usually because it's charging), instructions to nearby screens or audio systems, reminders... A lot of it relates to integrations and interactions which require too many button pushes. Voice control is one step closer to "mind-reading"-like experiences and having knowledge of who is in which room would improve the context-awareness of existing apps and whole-home systems. For example, ideally if I said "play some music" it would know who I was and what I liked vs others in the house. This is more than voice control, and is likely phone- or app-integrated, but every small step gets us closer. ;-)