Doing laundry, dishes etc involves real work and takes time. Getting up from my chair and pressing a switch when I feel it is getting too dark is not really a

Doing laundry, dishes etc involves real work and takes time. Getting up from my chair and pressing a switch when I feel it is getting too dark is not really a chore. And it is probably good for my back. I do have a couple of X10 switches but I mostly use them where I once was too cheap to put an extra cable. One died this year after only 20 years of service. Luckily I had a spare. I also have a couple of electronic thermostats. I really hate having to replace batteries every few years. Now I set the day and night temperatures to a about the same. But I like that if I feel cold, I can manually turn up the heat and not having to remember to turn it back down. This should also be possible to implement mechanically. I also have a drawer with some Zigbee smart home stuff and a CC2540 debugger to program a USB dongle to allow me turn off all the lamps in my living room. Which I will do whenever I feel like it. Because I have 5 lamps and if I turn them off 3 times a week for 20 years and I save 3 seconds per lamp minus 3 seconds to use some Zigbee switch, I will save 10 hours in total. If I have to find a phone or remote first, it will be a lot less. And I will probably spend a lot more than 10 hours before it all works. And I am not sure that it will work for 20 years, or that I can easily replace broken devices in 20 years.