What first got you into smart home tech?

[Alan]

What first got you into smart home tech? Was it convenience, security, or just the fun of making your house feel futuristic? were you just a techie person?

 

[Power_Grafh]

Got into it for security at first like cameras, door sensors, the usual. Then the convenience side took over. Now I can’t go a day without yelling at my house to turn the lights off and shutting off some kitchen smart plugs.

 

[barfle]

Monsanto’s House of the Future at Disneyland. It’s been gone long enough that I’ve forgotten a lot of the details, but there were several push-button panels around the house that did all sorts of stuff loke windows, blinds, and flushing the toilet. I don’t think it all worked, but what a cool bunch of ideas!

I was probably in the second or third grade.

 

[PeppyBlueBear]

bluntly curiosity. I wanted to see if all the “smart” hype actually worked in real life. Now it’s more of a hobby than a convenience hahaha! half fun, half frustration.

 

[BossJoy]

Mine started out as “let’s save power” and turned into “why is everything breaking when the Wi-Fi drops.” I like the tech, but smart homes are 50% cool and 50% troubleshooting. Still worth it though.

 

[TJTex331]

What got me into home automation? The Jetsons.

 

[BigMama]

It started as a “just one smart plug” thing. Then I added a thermostat, then cameras, and now I’m talking to my house more than I talk to people.

 

[1audio]

My first exposure was some X-10 stuff that was interesting but not too useful. Then watching a Crestron installation, where the programming cost more than the hardware. And any change needed the programmer to return. Not interesting. Then I met with the guys behind Pluto, one of the earliest comprehensive systems. This was before the iPhone. They had worked out media management and integration from room to room, phone integration for both control from a "dumb phone", security integration, lighting control, network control etc. The demo was astonishing. It all took off until the dot-com meltdown crashed everything. It morphed into MIOS and Vera with a much reduced feature set.
ZWave came next. It had some real limitations and originally a very european mindset. Adapting to the US standards and ways of use took a while.
I have been watching from a distance since.