[iFred]

I feel like a kindred soul of sorts with this author.

I’m on my fourth iteration of a smart home setup with HA. Depression, neglect, a feeling that I need to burn it all down and restart, and depression again were all extinction level events for my setup. At one point I had meticulous Grafana dashboards worthy of a Golden Grot that could tell you the concentration of CO2, the pressure waves from the Tonga eruption, a map of Puget Sound gas prices, and other bits and bobs. I had dozens of Airthings sensors, plant sensors, ZWave temp sensors, three weather stations, countless LIFX bulbs, all working in unison to give me a pulse on my house.

Then I had a bout of the existential sads and just stopped looking at the slack notifications when HA connected the dots between a spike in radon and a nearby earthquake. I stopped caring that the CO2 concentration in my office was over 750ppm, or that watering my plants in my office in the winter was contributing to increased particulate in the air. Because I wasn’t listening to the interesting stuff, I stopped listening to the important stuff- alerts about failed drives, dying batteries, and broken updates.

Not caring felt so freeing. I didn’t start things up again until a few months later when I realized I wanted something cool to show in an interview. The cycle started anew.

[atoav]

I have HA but my one principle is that it has to stay invisible.

That means it does things like switching off the lights when nobody is home, measuring temperature that informs heating, switching on certain things based on time etc.

But what it isn't meant to be is a dashboard that I have to look at constantly. All functions I need shall be accessinle with physical buttons, dials or switches.

[chronid]

This is what home automation was supposed to be. You shouldn't be looking at it, it should just help you silently and reduce the amount of things you have to care about.

Turning lights off, closing shutters when it goes dark, handling temperature and CO2 concentrations, etc.

I feel people have a need to look at dashboards, have screens, etc (maybe it's some sort of sympathetic reaction about looking at dashboards all day at work?) instead of letting go. Dashboards should be looked at if something is wrong and automation is failing.

[firecall]

I can relate to that!

The existential depression cycles that make me wonder why I’m even bothering to do the things that used to bring me joy, or at least keep me occupied, are exhausting.