I live in Bend, Oregon. We have hot summer days, cool nights, and sometimes really bad wildfire smoke.

I can save a lot of money on AC if I open the windows at night and use the attic fan to pull in outside air. But if smoke rolls in, then we'd all be breathing 200+ AQI air all night.

I have outdoor AQI sensors, which if the AQI spikes, will close up the house and turn on the air purifiers.

> Why would I want to automate lights?

We're bad at remembering to turn lights on and off. We like having our porch light on an hour or two after sunset, but don't need to leave it on 24/7. We also have stairwell baseboard lighting that's completely unnecessary during the day, but very nice to have already be on if we get up in the middle of the night. To each their own, though. These are just nice to have. The AQI automation is an actual health benefit to us though.

I have some security stuff setup to turn on a siren when tweakers poke around my open garage and doorway after 11 PM. It doesn’t do anything else, this is just a way to scare them off a bit and to let me know something is up. H the light will also turn red if detects a person at the door (again to ward tweakers off or make them feel watched at least).

I’ve been recently discovering the joy of robovacs, except we have three floors and so I found we need three of them, ugh.

Wait until you're disabled and there are days you can't get out of bed.

Having your bedroom lights fade in at low brightness a few minutes before your alarm goes off is also really nice.

If you live in an area that's not great time wise there are also a lot of arguments to be made for making it look like your home is occupied when you're away.