I was explaining to a friend this weekend the routines he could create with just a couple of smart devices. I was also asking him questions to understand his day-to-day life, so I could suggest where he could get a simple IoT device to do some of the work for him.
I noticed that as he wasn’t familiar with the possibilities we have today, he didn’t really know what he could automate.
So it made me wonder if people usually get introduced to the fantastic World of home automation through friends/family, or a youtube video, maybe at work or at a…automation party?
In my case, I got to test some IoT devices at work for a project, and that got me investigating things for the home afterwards!
I was discovering this world with IFTTT a long time ago, but then only with services and not “home” automation.
The first home automation gadget I got was a Netatmo Weather station. Then I discovered that I wanted to use it as a home security thing (because it has a noise sensor inside…
I couldn’t really define when i got interested in home automation but I started with one LIFX light, I got a Google home adn it took of from there door sensor, presence sensor, smart Life Netatmo, Smart things, even flirted with Philips Hue until they threw the original adaptors under the bus
I had a Piper security system that had a good but problematic way of automatically arming when I left home and disarming when I got home. I decided to look around for other ways to accomplish it and got onto IFTTT. Later, I started getting into Hue lights and wanted to have some lights turn on when I got home at night. This led me to Apilio as it could combine the two different things (I got home, it is night) to make a decision. I have been doing my own IoT maker projects (using MQTT) and eventually want to integrate my projects with Apilio. However, I haven’t gotten that far.
Your device journey is very similar to mine.