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For those that are thinking of getting into smart home automation or are just starting out it can be an exciting world of possibilities with the ability to have lighting functions and sequences to just happen automatically throughout the day to suite your lifestyle, have power devices turn off when you forget to turn them off, garage doors and gates open via voice command and geofencing, control of TVs, Air-conditioning, heaters by your phone or temperature sensors and so much more.
All this can be daunting when you look at a big picture like that, I was going to write an in-depth article regarding all this but one of the youtubers I follow just released a video comparing DIY to professional install which covers so many points as per below.
What I do want to add is like many I started with a 3 pack of Arlec RGB globes and I am now running over 50+ devices and still growing.
I tackle a room at a time and when I setup automations within a room it takes around 2 weeks of tweaking those automations to get it right before I can close out that project and shouldn't have to touch it unless there is power failure or wifi drop-out and I have to turn light switches off and on again to reset the lights or bulbs then clear tape the switches off again.
One note... generally if you have a smart wall switch there is no advantage to having smart lights or bulbs as well (there are some minor exceptions), and if you have smart lights or bulbs you want to have constant power to them to run scenes and automations so switching via mobile devices, motion sensors, door contacts and other sensors or off other devices is always better they don't like to run automations off switching 240v On..
Like The Smart Home Solver says you want to get to know your systems that way you can make adjustments yourself.
Start small try automations with things that will happen within 30sec or 1 min so you can see it work then when happy change the time intervals to what you require thats what I always do I don't want to sit there and wait 10min every time to see if it works or fails.
Run a bedside lamp with a scene so it turns on at 5pm on full bright then a delay for 2hr then dim to 1% another delay for 1hr then turn off
Same lamp 7am turn on dim 1% delay 10min then 25% dim delay 5min 50% dim 5min 75% dim delay 5min 100% dim delay 1hr Off
Thats your first daily lamp routine, don't touch the switch tape it off, if you want to turn it off do it by phone or connect it into Google hone or Alexa for voice command.
So as you can see with small steps it is not a scary place but very exciting and guess what we are here to help you on your journey. You don't need a professional if you just start off small, take your time and ask for help as per below.
Check the video below and some of his others.
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