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Comment by weberc2 | Hacker News Reader

I was pretty skeptical before trying it. I found that you don't spend much time configuring things and it's actually quite nice to just go to bed saying "Alexa, turn off living room". Not life changing, but definitely worth the investment. If something fails, you're no worse off than you were before. Also, smart sockets and switches are great items for a Christmas/birthday/wedding/etc registry/gift-list.

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The key is the voice control. Trying to do it via an app, a remote, or even remembering the switch UI isoften too heavy-weight. Being able to say just "Alexa, living room 50%" is very nice. Same thing with being able to turn off my bedroom ceiling lights without getting out of bed. Sure, is it required? No. Can I get up? Sure. Was it worth $50 for the smart switch? For me, yes.

I know not getting up sounds like a good thing, but the logical conclusion to that are the couch potatoes shown in the movie Wall-E.

If your only exercise is walking to the light switch you have bigger problems.

It's cumulative.

Turning off the lights is negligible to your overall health. Automating it (or not) will not affect your obesity or other health outcomes. There are lots of reasonable arguments against IoT switches; this is not one of them. Let's move on.

Assertions dressed as facts are not very useful either.

You mean like:

> the logical conclusion to that are the couch potatoes shown in the movie Wall-E

Just pumping the muscles in your legs will decrease the potential for blood clots forming in them, according to a recent HN topic.

> If something fails, you're no worse off than you were before.

Well, you are already horizontal. In fact it's worse, because unless every single light source is hooked up, you now spend twice the mental effort.

Past: 1. Turn off everything 2. Go to bed.

Present: 1. Turn off everything that is dumb. Only dumb thing. 2. Ensure smart things are ON (physically have power) otherwise you won't be able to voice control them. 3. Go to bed. 4. HEY GOOGLE! GOOD NIGHT! to turn off everything and hope for the best.

You’re really stretching to make this sound tedious and error prone. Obviously you don’t have to wait until you’re in bed but moreover in 2 years I haven’t once had to get out of bed to manually turn off a light. If you like physical switches, more power to you, but stretching like you’re doing to vindicate your preference is just bizarre.

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