Here at EffortlessHome we live and breath technology including home automation. We’re always pushing the envelope and looking for ways to streamline our lives and home to make both more convenient and “effortless”. In this article I will share some of the ideas we are working on to take things to the next level in our own home.

More Motion Lighting

One of our favorite automations lately has been the one to turn on the lights (if it is dark outside) when we enter a room. That same function automatically turns off the lights if no motion is detected for a period of time. It seems obvious now, but this is such a luxury and safety feature. We are planning to add this capability to more areas of our home. Finding and turning on light switches in the dark is so annoying and inconvenient!

More Wall Panels

It may sound strange, but sometimes we don’t feel like pulling out (or have) our phones and don’t want to talk to the smart assistant devices for whatever reason. Another common scenario in our smart home is when we have guests and they need a way to more easily control our home. In these scenarios (and more) having wall panels installed in strategic locations is a handy feature. We have a Sonoff NSPanel now in our kitchen and love it. Of course, we have chosen this device because we are fans of local, open-source supported devices. This one runs ESPHome and is incredibly customizable. The community for the device is actively innovating and expanding the capabilities. But, we can already control all of the smart devices in our home, control media players, and see the status of sensors and devices easily with this wall panel. I will be installing at least one of these on each floor of our home.

Open Source Smart Assistants With Modern AI

We are Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant users here at EffortlessHome. We use them constantly to control our home, get information and play multimedia. However, they aren’t perfect and there are many reports of privacy issues and long-term support for these devices. Fortunately, the Home Automation community is innovating in this space and it is now possible to replace these devices with open source alternatives. At the same time, the Generative AI and Large Language Model (LLM) technology has seen tremendous leaps. These new devices use that new AI technology and consequently far exceed the first gen AI device capabilities. They also are not dependent on the Cloud or a vendor who may stop supporting so they won’t go obsolete.

Summary

Thanks for reading this article on our next focus areas here at our EffortlessHome Smart Home. These areas any many others which are emerging in this constantly evolving space are on our radar and we are excited to adopt them.