Very often in different forums, in different articles and in the comments, there is an opinion that a smart home is only automation. All other solutions, such as remote control, control via a phone is not considered a smart home, of course, I personally disagree with this approach, because of course there are options related to automation and scenario development, but I for example, I started making a smart home with scenarios such as simply turning off the light if someone is not in the room for a long time, and so that I can remotely press a button in another room and turn off the light, this is convenient and it doesn't seem quite correct to consider it as non-automation, so I think that a smart home is still more correct to use the term smart, or if in Russian, then flexible, for example, allowing you to configure and switch interaction more universally, that is, if it is an ordinary switch, then it is physically connected to a regular physical one a light bulb is wired, and it is quite difficult to change its behavior, and you still need to provide for it in advance and make the appropriate wiring, in the case of smart devices or a smart home system, when the switch is separate, and the light bulb is separate, and accordingly, you can decide that I want to turn on a light bulb from this switch, or turn off another light bulb, or perform some other actions, so after all, the smart home system gives more flexibility than conventional solutions.

For example, in my kitchen there is a switch on the table, this is a wireless switch operating at a radio frequency of 433 megahertz, the simplest and cheapest switch, but I use it more often than the usual switch that is located near the door on the wall, because when I sit at the table and see that I have enough light, I can press the button and turn on the desired chandelier or the desired lamp to change the lighting.

Well, it's also considered automation, if I press a button, the light turns off immediately, it doesn't seem to be automation, but just remote control, and if I press a button and the smart home system checks the conditions and, say, after a second or 10 seconds, or, for example, turns off the light in the absence of people, then this automation is already there, so of course it's a very thin line, but still it's probably correct to assume that any rule that sets some kind of behavior and communication between devices, This is still an automation or scenario as used in some smart home systems.

Very often, they also describe how to set up scenarios in different systems and provide an interface where all these settings are shown quite finely, I think that this is also not very convenient, after all, first of all, it will not be so easy to copy the script, because the number of sensors in the house that need to be processed may be different, the reliability of the sensors may also be different, respectively, it is possible and necessary to take into account different combinations, they also actually differ in people's habits, and for example, the light turns on in my bathroom in many scenarios, and not just by movement or just by opening the door, and therefore, of course, there are a lot of such scenarios and I just can't look somewhere else and copy them, and I have to come up with something new and my own every time, and automation itself, of course, requires constant configuration if, say, the system is ordered from some kind of integrator and he installed his smart home system and set it up himself, then of course after a while it will be clear that something is inconvenient, something is not working right and you will need to contact this integrator again and if it is still available, maybe it will help, but if it doesn't work anymore or let's say the company has closed, then of course there is nowhere else to turn and if some specific solution is used or the settings were not sufficiently documented, then it won't be possible to change these settings or finalize the ready-made system, I use almost different options for automation and scripting. that is, it is also writing in the form of scripts in a programming language, it is either python or bash, or I use some other specialized systems, for example, I use NodeRed, this is a system that can integrate with various other smart home systems, has a graphical interface that allows you to draw different connections, different events and configure additional handlers, it is quite convenient, it works quite quickly, so in some cases I also use it, but mostly of course I use this system more as experiments, real I have no use for it, because firstly, the conditions that I need are much more complicated than the logic in this system allows, and I have to add a lot in the built-in language, which is also not simple enough in terms of understanding, well, I also use scripting in the Yandex smart home, if it makes it very easy and quick to take some kind of setting, especially if this setting is related to Yandex smart speakers, then of course it's easier to do this, well, in the smart home systems themselves I use two systems on the same server, OpenHAB and Home Assistant, I also set up some automation in them. In OpenHAB, these are mostly some very basic automation, but lately I've stopped doing them there, because it's more convenient for me to write scripts, but in the Home Assistant I also have several options for handlers that cannot be done by other means, because in the Home Assistant you can throw a lot of different non-standard devices and access them in other ways is quite difficult, so in order for these devices to somehow prepare to process the information and transfer it to my smart home system, I also made several scenarios that allow this information to lead to an easier option for use.

For example, Xiaomi's smart scales work like this, which work via BLE, communicate with the smart home server based on the Home Assistant, and then I check some parameters from it and send it to my smart home system, and then I do processing based on scripts, and I also use the Yeelight dimmer, which It also works on BLE, but I'm basically more for the sake of experimentation, and since the Home Assistant also has built-in integration and support for working with BLE sensors, I've set up the rules that handle and manage the necessary devices there.

Also, through the same BLE integration, I poll the status of two fitness bracelets, this is a bracelet from Xiaomi and there is a bracelet from Samsung, and the value is also transmitted to me and processed beforehand and then transferred to the smart home system.

Therefore, I develop automation almost wherever it is convenient for me to do it, where it will be easier and clearer to maintain and configure it later, but still it is important for me that it is clear and works very reliably, and after a while, of course, I forget where and what is configured and how it works, and often, even when there is some kind of update of the smart home system, for example, the version is changing, the Home Assiatant version has changed several times and the OpenHAB version has changed several times, and Yandex can change something, then the corresponding script stops working or starts working incorrectly and you will need to remember everything as it is configured and redo everything again.

Automation in a smart home should be useful and create additional comfort, but sometimes everything goes wrong… The reasons for this, and how to configure everything, see on my channel.