Reading between the lines here, I guess the real question is “does this stuff work when not everyone is technically inclined”.
When I first started working in home automation my boss at the time had a saying “if you have to press a button, it’s not home automation”. That single phrase is the core of making automation work with non-technical users. The house should always do the least surprising thing by default, for example turning on lights when you enter a room, but only if it’s dark. Light switches should turn the lights on and off, rather than disable the light automation (looking at you Hue).
If you can configure things to that extent, then yeah, it works beautifully. If everyone has to faff around with a mobile app to be able to see where their aiming on a 4am toilet run it’ll be hated with a passion.
The huge stumbling block I ran into when I proposed looking into home automation with my wife was that we had very different ideas of what the "right" thing to do in any given situation was. The combination of lights she wants to have on when in a room are very different from the ones I want to have on, for example. So unless there was face recognition so the room knew who was there, it would never automatically do the right thing.
Also anything that involved having to use an app to do anything was a very hard No.
Having 1 button to switch an entire room filled with many light sources between your wife's and your preference is also automation, and exactly at the right level. HA is not going to solve disagreements between people ;). In this case the alternative would be changing many lights manually, right? I mean the face recognition sounds like huge overkill and a pita to get perfect.
I have a Hue Tap, which has 4 buttons to program, we set: 1: Normal on, 2: Cosy on, 3: Cooking on (bright in the kitchen) and 4: All off. Near the couch I have an extra Hue switch to dim the couch area even more if desired. That works well for us. Atm this doesn't involve HA but it would if I had any other brands of lights and I would also want other aspects changed (like room temp, i.e. "cosy on" could also raise the thermostat by 1 degree, because it's couch time) with the same Hue Tap buttons. HA is great at having different brands of home automation stuff talk to each other, so you can pick the best of all worlds.
I just got a smart thermostat, so my "All-off" Hue Tap button may just as well set the thermostat to "eco", of course only at night because otherwise it may just mean the sun being bright enough was the reason I turned all lights off. Or, maybe when I set my thermostat to "away", HA can signal the rest of the house that the lights and the coffee machine can now be turned off, if any were still left on, I'd do that with a 10 min delay or so because I may still be running around the house to get stuff. HA is perfect for this type of logic.
Using a phone for anything is a big No for both of us as well. Home automation for us means having single buttons that do many things at once. We set timers for our garden lighting (dawn=off and sunset=on). And we use some motion sensors. In the bathroom for example, the Hue motion sensor switches the light on, and then HA turns on the fan, through a Sonoff flashed with Tasmota. At night the light also switches on but less bright, everybody loves this automation (more than the previous manual solution), and it's completely in line with Home Assistant's vision for Home Automation: [0]. It's easy to over-do Home Automation, the people you live with are good indicators for when you do so ;)
They also have "press up 2x" "press up 3x" "hold up" "hold up released", and the same for the down direction.
My GF and I use these to switch the room between modes that we want. My main modes are "passive" "gaming" "movie" "meeting" "off" and "party".
The modes are a state machine written in both node-red, using a global state variable that is saved to disk, and homeassistant using a select template variable. They stay in sync through a node-red flow, so changing the mode from either has the exact same result.
My wife prefers bright lights while I prefer them dim. My solution was to have the dim lights switch on when motion is detected and it is dark. My wife would then use the wall switch for the bright lights. This works great for the kitchen and bath.
> Light switches should turn the lights on and off, rather than disable the light automation (looking at you Hue).
Why are you looking at them? The Hue lights wired properly do exactly what you describe. You wire them in so they are constantly fed with electricity and send smart signals with a wall mounted control panel. They sell you this control panel. It looks like a switch.
Heck if you are retrofitting a building you you can use their wall switch module to adapt any traditional wall switch to become a smart switch.
They have the spunk to also work with half-assed installations. You can define in what state the bulb should be after the power is restored to them. Of course if you go this route they can't be turned on when the power to the bulb is off. What would you expect them to do? Should they pack an RTG in their bulbs to have the option to illuminate when the power is off? Should they throw a tantrum and tell you off for installing the lights wrong? Of course they don't do either of those. They just keep on trucking the best they can.
Could they remember if they were off or on? And return to that state? Could they interrogate the switch to see what state they are 'supposed' to be in when power is restored? All of those would be acceptable I think.
Yes. That is an option. Not a default option because when most people flick a switch ON they expect light. If by default the light would not come on, they would receive a lot of returns. But you can totally set that if option if that is your preference.
> Could they interrogate the switch to see what state they are 'supposed' to be in when power is restored?
What type of switch? The dumb one they know is on. If you have a smart switch they could. But if you have a smart switch why would you not wire the bulbs to be always powered? (always as in when the circuit breaker is ON, not literally always :) )
When I first started working in home automation my boss at the time had a saying “if you have to press a button, it’s not home automation”. That single phrase is the core of making automation work with non-technical users. The house should always do the least surprising thing by default, for example turning on lights when you enter a room, but only if it’s dark. Light switches should turn the lights on and off, rather than disable the light automation (looking at you Hue).
If you can configure things to that extent, then yeah, it works beautifully. If everyone has to faff around with a mobile app to be able to see where their aiming on a 4am toilet run it’ll be hated with a passion.