The funny thing about the "internet of things" and "smart" stuff is that most of it seems like convenience, or marginal quality of life improvements. But as time has rolled on and we sit with this stuff, it's more than that.
For example, my recent issues with HVAC spotted a potentially expensive issue. The short story is that a wiring problem, in combination with a blower motor problem, resulted in the system turning on the stage 2 heating coil. This was happening with the AC running at the same time (since the heat pump and blower communication is pretty crude). It may have taken awhile for me to notice, since it was blowing room temperature air, but I noticed immediately that we were pulling an absurd 14 kW from the grid. Even having caught it when I did, we used something like 120 kWh that day, and it could have gone on for days.
In this case, the thermostats track run time, and the electric plant (solar and batter) measure usage. Ordinarily, this is just something neat to see, predictive of your electric bill and a record of the climate. But in this case, it also identified a serious issue.
Even when you go smaller, there are unexpected benefits of devices. A self-cleaning litter box seems like a luxury for people who tire of dealing with the cat shitters, but it turns out that they also weigh cats. So combined with the usage statistics, this thing is giving you a picture of your cats' health. Without this, you likely have to be reactive about cat health, but with the data, you can be proactive before something becomes serious.
The HVAC guy has something in his electrical panel where he can spontaneously measure everything on a per-circuit basis. That would be cool, if generally unnecessary.
No comments yet.