I'll wager you don't have kids. I'd have to spend half an hour a day traveling around the house turning off light switches countless times if it weren't for an easy "hey Google, turn off the kitchen lights" or "turn of all the lights".

We didn't have home automation when my grandparents where kids, when my parents where kids, when me and my brother where kids. We managed to turn off the lights. Have you considered to just teach your kids to turn off lights? It's not like flipping a light switch is an impossible task for a kid, they even managed to flip it when turning the light on!

My grandparents got along fine as kids with an outhouse and no computers at all. So I'm not sure what your point is.

For one, my grandparents, didn't have nearly the number of light switches even with a comparable house size. And "just teaching" kids to turn the lights off is quite laughable. My kids know how to turn off lights and know they should turn them off when they leave the room. But knowing and always remembering to do it are two different things. I also forget to turn them off sometimes. I remember my dad grumbling quite a bit about having to go around turning off the lights or having to run back in the house after you get outside and see the lighted windows. Just one less little hassle.

Okay, but your parents had just as many light switches growing up.

> But knowing and always remembering to do it are two different things. I also forget to turn them off sometimes.

What is "sometimes"? You wrote "I'd have to spend half an hour a day traveling around the house turning off light switches countless times" which is definetly not normal and a clear case of your parenting not working. I also "sometimes" forget a light. About once a year, tops. I don't see how this isn't your brains failing to manage a very basic every day task.

A friend of mine solved that problem by replacing the light switches in the kids' rooms with those 30 minute timer switches.

His kids have to run to the switch every thirty minutes after the lights went out on them? That sounds horrible. Like those toilets that leave you in the dark if you're not fast enough, only the timers don't even care if you move and also in the room they spent most of their time in. Abysmal.

I agree. I was assigned KP duty when I misbehaved. It was brutal. I'm still in therapy for it.

I often seem to spend half an hour telling Siri to do something that takes 10 seconds to do myself.

I can't get it to open the pod bay doors, either. Time to go unscrew its higher brain functions.

Time for an ESP8266 and HomeAssistant

Though I will say: Siri wins the timer battle. You can trigger Siri and say only “3 minutes” for her to set a 3min timer.

Most of the time Google needs “Set a timer for 3 minutes”.

Without trying to sound critical, I've just taught my kids to turn off the lights when they exit the room.

My kids forget a lot the younger they are. But even I forget to turn off the lights a few times a day.