Technology

I think that’s one of the ones I tried. It’s just more convenient to have unlimited access to music, whether I own it or not.

Yeah sure, I get it. I actually use Tidal Hifi. But not really for streaming but for downloading and discovering new music. Has its benefits for sure.

What do you do for lights? Like motion/position detection into each room? Or voice control?

It's mostly based on motion. If it's dark enough in a room and you enter it, light goes into a - we call it motion-light - cyan. So it's clear to us it's automatic. If no motion after 2 minutes is detected it slowly fades out for like 20s so you got a chance to "renew" the light by moving. Unless you switch a scene on, then it just stays on. If you switch it off, the automatic mode is on again. Took a good while to fool-proof it :-)

Voice control too, yes. But also homebrew. No Alexa-shit or similar. Also control by watch, or even outside over telegram.

I’ve wanted to get into automation several times, and I’m never settled enough in a house to spend the money. There’s always some reason we want to move and I don’t want to do all that permanent work to move. I even worked at an IoT company for a few years on backend and embedded code, so I have literally no excuse…

Oh dude, we moved like 5 times in the last 5 years :-) Good thing is, we take the stuff with us. I use zigbee, not wiring. Wiring is superior, but also very fixed. So yeah, I regularly have to place everything again and adapt the scripts a little bit. But nothing much changes actually. Just a lil more extra-work after moving. Awesome, for an IoT-company I would even consider working again :-)

Lol, excuses....It's a time- and money-sink, there you have great excuses. Also at least once a month I have to tinker here and there, or change a battery. Since Star Trek i wanted a home that reacts to voice and does things automatically. And tablets which give a great overview. Or, as mentioned, our watches. Automatic doors would be awesome now! And they gotta do the WOOOSH-sound!

Not sure where that is. That would be nice (except that they could reduce the cashback anyway). Consumer Protections these days have been eroding in the US. Even our so-called consumer protection laws have landmines to protect the businesses.

That 14-day-forced-return is EU-wide AFAIK. And yeah, you guys took the "FREEDOM!" really literally. You just forgot that the companies have those freedoms too :-) I often cuss about our country (or the EU), but as a consumer it's really nice having some decent rights. But if you need service, you're in the darkest mid-age here. Recently had troubles moving some domains from my german ex-provider to a us-based one. The german one did cost 10x as much for half the benefits, but i had to wait 3 days for a fucking reply. Weekends are holy. The us-based answered in like 5 minutes on a saturday night.