Home Automation – 5 years Of Experience

It was 5 years ago when I wrote about my home automation efforts: Home Automation – Choosing Bulbs

Back then, I was enthusiastic about replacing the myriad halogen bulbs in my house with LED based bulbs, and while I was at it, ‘automating’ them as well. I installed Philips Hue, some Lutron dimmers, and hooked it all up to Alexa so I could say “downstairs lights on!”. So, 5 years on, how has it gone?

Well, aside from doing the occasional demo of turning the lights on and off by talking to the ever present speaker, we really don’t use the automation at all. Why not? It’s far easier to just flick the light switch on or off when you enter/exit a room, and we never really got into ‘automation’, like setting up on/off patterns when on vacation.

These past few days, I decided to have another go at it. Throughout the house, I’ve been retiring various consumer electronics related to TVs, lights, computers, and the like. I won’t say that I’m an Apple fan boi, but they have a lot of kit in their ecosystem that “just works”. So, what have I done?

Lighting

Well, I’ve replaced the Philips Hue lights with those from Nanoleaf. Beyond just basic light bulbs, they have lots of panels, strips, shapes, to play with. I just bought a 3 pack of Matter A19 bulbs from the Apple store.

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Tinkerer’s Closet – Hardware Refresh