I'm skeptical of adopting for adoption sake, but I've dipped my toes in where other solutions wouldn't work. I've kept in mind the failure mode (or hacker exposure). I also like monitoring/reducing consumption as a bit of a hobby.
I previously had a dark stairway to the house and got home after dark. A timer would have sufficed (I haven't seen them for wall switches), but I got a IoT switch that turned the light on at sunset.
I had a detached garage that let out to a busy street and would often forget to close it when driving away. I didn't get around to installing something, but wanted something to close it after 15m of being open.
My floor heaters consume a lot of power and other people in the house forget to turn them off. When they were installed, they included WiFi and an app. I wrote a bridge to HomeKit and set it to turn off at 11am and 11pm.
When traveling I reduce the heating/cooling. It's nice (especially when getting home close to midnight) to turn it back on when landing at the airport so you don't come home to an uncomfortable house.
It's not quite IoT, but my kid is too young to tell time so we have an alarm that changes color when its ok to wake up. I had a dumb one, similar to an alarm clock. It was annoying to set. A more expensive, bluetooth, one sets time from my phone. I was a bit worried about the bluetooth one when traveling (time zone changes, not having wifi), but it worked great. I think the nicer one worked better because of build quality and not because of IoT stuff.
I don't have any "scenes." Just a few, very specific, items with rules. I added outdoor Christmas lights this year because last year my kid kept hiding the remote and I didn't plug things into an accessible place outside. A lot of people seem to like being able to turn off house lights without getting up from their bed. I'd never blindly recommend any of this, but if it might solve a problem they have, I'd walk them through my experience.
I previously had a dark stairway to the house and got home after dark. A timer would have sufficed (I haven't seen them for wall switches), but I got a IoT switch that turned the light on at sunset.
I had a detached garage that let out to a busy street and would often forget to close it when driving away. I didn't get around to installing something, but wanted something to close it after 15m of being open.
My floor heaters consume a lot of power and other people in the house forget to turn them off. When they were installed, they included WiFi and an app. I wrote a bridge to HomeKit and set it to turn off at 11am and 11pm.
When traveling I reduce the heating/cooling. It's nice (especially when getting home close to midnight) to turn it back on when landing at the airport so you don't come home to an uncomfortable house.
It's not quite IoT, but my kid is too young to tell time so we have an alarm that changes color when its ok to wake up. I had a dumb one, similar to an alarm clock. It was annoying to set. A more expensive, bluetooth, one sets time from my phone. I was a bit worried about the bluetooth one when traveling (time zone changes, not having wifi), but it worked great. I think the nicer one worked better because of build quality and not because of IoT stuff.
I don't have any "scenes." Just a few, very specific, items with rules. I added outdoor Christmas lights this year because last year my kid kept hiding the remote and I didn't plug things into an accessible place outside. A lot of people seem to like being able to turn off house lights without getting up from their bed. I'd never blindly recommend any of this, but if it might solve a problem they have, I'd walk them through my experience.