Regarding the initial question: Although I like technical gadgets, I don’t yet know which part of a smart home I want.
My roller shutters can be programmed. Unfortunately, only for Week/Weekend and not through smart control. This means that after a few weeks, when the sun rises and sets earlier or later, the control no longer matches. So everything goes back to manual. Since we really operate the roller shutters differently every day, even a super-intelligent control wouldn’t change anything.
I’ve tried lights with motion sensors in a few places: outdoors they stay, indoors they annoy more than they help. I just don’t want light all the time just because it’s “too” dark. So indoors everything goes back to switches as well.
The only “smart” thing I use are LED bulbs, similar to Hue (only better and cheaper). With a remote control I can operate four ceiling lights, five floor lamps, and some low accent lights separately or together. That way I can quickly set my current feel-good lighting. At the same time, I can also use light switches. The lamps simply return to the previously defined state. I can also control those things from my PC or phone, could program scenes or sequences… but that is all too complicated for me. Remote, tap tap, light good. In my opinion, what’s important about such bulbs is that they don’t only have RGB LEDs but also an additional warm white. So they are not just mood lighting but also simply bright and pleasant when needed.
What I’m missing is a good video-audio doorbell system. This either fails because of money or functions. The cheap systems upload all video images to the cloud immediately. No-go. The expensive ones don’t save the video or don’t stream it via Wi-Fi to PC/tablet/phone (or they are so expensive again that I don’t even want to look at the datasheets).
I would certainly like voice control (if it works), but transmitting the sounds in my house to servers of Google and Co. is unacceptable for me, so I probably won’t have that for a long time.
Garden irrigation based on moisture sensors would be great – but then once again you’d have to exclude the “we’re still grilling” case with presence sensors. So that will probably also remain a remote control with a timer on the hose system.
In summary: I’m willing to embrace smart home – but only when it is truly damn intelligent (turn the hallway light on very slightly at night, but only when I look at the lamps…) AND when no data leaves the house. Ah yes, and since I won’t be chasing chiseling grooves for cables, almost everything must work with battery-free wireless sensors that only get power when activated via radio, briefly report their state, and then go back to sleep.
Future, I am waiting!