Every night I trigger a ZWave scene via the light switch in my bedroom when I head to bed. That scene shuts off all the lights, makes sure the doors (both "human" and garage) are closed and locked, sets the thermostat back, etc. In the morning I trigger a different scene that brings the thermostat back to "daytime" levels, turns on a few lights, etc.
There are a couple lights that are set up to come on automatically at sunset, but only if either my wife or I are home (there's a bit of an issue there in that the house can still be occupied when we're away if the kids are with a sitter, but the lights are just a pleasant convenience).
I've been considering adding an automation to gradually turn on the lights in the kids rooms at an appropriate on school mornings. This could potentially be done with a timer built into a smart bulb, but at that point it would just be another app I'd have to use to manage it... easier to just do it via Home Assistant.
I also use ZWave smoke detectors (they just function as normal "dumb" smoke detectors with a local alarm), which trigger all the lights in the house to 100% if smoke or carbon monoxide is detected (unless it's the one in the kitchen...).
There are plenty more (I added a wifi enabled microcontroller to my "dumb" doorbell and do some fun stuff with that, etc), but those are most of the light based automations.
That's a good use case with ZWave. Kudos for setting it up.
Still for the lighting case, an occupancy sensing light switch with timed shutoff could take care of most usage. Actually lots of jurisdictions have updated their building code in recent years to require occupancy sensing light switch to save energy.
When I arm the perimeter alarm of the alarm system at night, it would check to make sure all the doors and windows are closed. Most alarm systems support perimeter alarm.
Most thermostats can run on a schedule to adjust the temperature. Nest and the likes can do occupancy check.
Of course they won't support the exotic uses but most of the basic needs are met.
Yeah, there are definitely multiple ways to accomplish most of this functionality. There are a few reasons why this particular setup works better for us (for instance, it's not uncommon for no one to go downstairs for a couple hours, which means the Nest doesn't notice that we're up).
At the end of the day though, it's mostly the fact that I like having a single unified dashboard and framework that consolidates everything, rather than having to use a half dozen different apps/devices/panels.
There are a couple lights that are set up to come on automatically at sunset, but only if either my wife or I are home (there's a bit of an issue there in that the house can still be occupied when we're away if the kids are with a sitter, but the lights are just a pleasant convenience).
I've been considering adding an automation to gradually turn on the lights in the kids rooms at an appropriate on school mornings. This could potentially be done with a timer built into a smart bulb, but at that point it would just be another app I'd have to use to manage it... easier to just do it via Home Assistant.
I also use ZWave smoke detectors (they just function as normal "dumb" smoke detectors with a local alarm), which trigger all the lights in the house to 100% if smoke or carbon monoxide is detected (unless it's the one in the kitchen...).
There are plenty more (I added a wifi enabled microcontroller to my "dumb" doorbell and do some fun stuff with that, etc), but those are most of the light based automations.