Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

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Home Assistant really is about home "automation", not home "buttons now on your phone". I have dozens of automations in my Home Assistant install and I only interact with Home Assistant when I'm updating it or screwing with the automations themselves.

In the morning, depending on the weather, both of my floors set to heat, cool or heat/cool. The lights adjust to a cool temperature, fully on. Maybe the lawn gets watered, if it hasn't rained in a while and won't soon (I live in the PNW, so that one doesn't trigger often, haha). At sunset the lights adjust again, and finally most of them turn off at 9pm and the hvac system again adjusts, depending on the weather. The lights and shades in the media room adjust when the TV turns on. And a million other things that I won't bother to type out. But the point is, it all Just Happens, and I go to great lengths to keep it that way. If manual control is needed, just flip the switch or turn the thermostat.

I don't how this is true when lovelace is so well developed and you an have simple dashboards for anything you want to control. My partner hates home automation stuff and even she loves having a button that can pull up everything in the bedroom from the lights to the music to the humidifier as well as having easy switches for "going to bed" or "left the house forgot to lock things up and turn them off" etc

Yes, I can go on about my automations in the same way, it does feel like a magical home sometimes :)

But when I have guests and we need more light for a board game, or when the automation didn’t work as expected and lights are still off at sunset or the blinds got stuck at midpoint, or the heat is still too high and I’m already in bed etc. there’s a real need for fast and effortless manual control.

I’m now investing in Zigbee switches and knobs to have more physical means for controlling the home, but in my engineer mind, an app made more sense at the time.

I spend most of my time on my keyboard laptop anyway, why not use it for dimming the lights, or adjusting the speaker volume.

I realized that I don't turn my lights on/off at the same time consistently enough for automation to be worthwhile.

> there’s a real need for fast and effortless manual control.

On iOS i just pull down the control centre from the clock and it shows my most 6 most used home assistant things (a few lights, temp and door lock). HomeKit Bridge, I think is the integration that provides that.

It provides essentially the same UI as your app, without any app needed, and allows for "hey siri, turn on the hallway light" too.

Yep, I have the same HomeKit integration, but I mostly needed macOS keyboard shortcuts which are not provided by the Home app.

I also needed to control non-HA devices like standalone ESPHome lights/remotes, which Volum can do.

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