Technology

We haven't gone whole-hog into home automation, except for a zone-heating and hot-water controller. In a part of the world with winter, that makes a big difference. The controller I use has a web-based but also offers a nice API. Another good thing about it is that it includes a way to know when we're in or out of the house, based on mobile phone detection. So I wrote some scripts to manage the system in a nicer way than having a big bunch of static profiles. One of the reasons it works well is that none of it's AI. Just some event detection and use of the output of one-time runs of optimization algorithms based on our utility provider's pricing. It's less flaky than I am about controlling the heating zones, so it's cut my gas bill by another 10% over the 30% savings we got from installing the controller and running it on a timer with occasional manual intervention.

So the API runs on the controller provider's website, but they don't sell our data (at least they claim not to), and the script that invokes the API lives on an otherwise retired netbook on our home LAN. Not 100% private, but not unduly intrusive either. The only downside is that, if the internet goes tits-up, the only option is manual override (which isn't too bad).

The approach I'm using is also what I'll do if I ever feel motivated to install solar (which is useful but not optimal in the country we live in, and the location of our house).