How to control your smart home without yelling at a dumb voice assistant

I’ve got a raspberry pi in a touchscreen case that I bought for my 3D printer but frequently gets repurposed for home automation. When we have someone house sitting while we’re away I set it up with a dedicated Home Assistant screen so they can turn on the garage lights from the house.

I personally don't understand why the "smart switches" don't run powerline (data over the electricity lines) instead of zigbee. Surely that'd be way more reliable.

I use the Phillips Hue Button, which I quite like! It has 4 buttons on it and doesn’t require external power or batteries to function. The button communicates with the bridge over Zigbee, which is then connected to my Home Assistant instance, so I can control more than just other Hue devices.

I put them on the bedside tables, and in living areas near where I have any smart bulbs in dumb lamps. Main button usually toggles the light, other buttons do things like turn on a favourite radio station, toggle other lights, and toggle gas fireplace thermostats. Downside is you need to know what the buttons do (guests usually take a bit of instruction to get used to it), but it works fairly well otherwise.

The automations are a real game changer! Some of my favourites that you didn’t mention in your comment:

- UniFi external cameras detecting people / vehicles turn on corresponding lights or making voice announcements in the house

- motion lighting in closets / pantry

- motion lighting in under cabinet lighting at night for night lighting

- good night routines that shut off the lights, arm the alarm, tell me the weather for tomorrow, and play white noise

- good morning routines paired with an alarm that disarm the alarm, play the morning radio (station depending on weekday vs weekend), turn on the gas fireplace in the bedroom and a space heater in the bathroom

- voice announcement / phone notifications triggered by a power usage monitor to tell me when my laundry has finished - auto off timers for light switches / fireplaces that reset the countdown when motion is detected in that area

Any time I need to use the voice assistant or my phone is an anti pattern as far as I’m concerned! Phone more than voice assistant, but neither is as nice as a simple button. One thing I do find helpful is some Amazon FireHD tablets mounted on the walls in most rooms. They are powered by a PoE charger, and the screens unlock when motion is detected. I find this to be way better UX then pulling out a phone, unlocking, finding the app, then trying to remember why I pulled out my phone in the first place lol. The FireHD tablets are setup with a dashboard specific for that room (with tabs for controlling other parts of the house too), and are fairly UX-friendly for guests. I run "Fully Kiosk Browser" on the tablets, and that handles the autounlock / displaying the Home Assistant dashboard.

I added some simple voice commands to my HASS setup. The most used command by far is "turn off all lights" once I am tucked into bed. I find it such a nice experience to just move from my desk, couch or bathroom to bed without needing to worry about turning everything off before laying down. I could add it as an action to the button on my nightstand, but it already toggles the bedroom light and with a double press turns on bedroom and bathroom lights for a few minutes. I do not want to overload it anymore and having a single, big button is great for sleepy me. The command is also great when leaving the flat with your hands full.

I agree with you though for anything more complex. I do not control the color of my lamps via voice or select what media to play on my voice controlled HiFi. I could setup a few "scenes" for that, but I have not seen a need for it. I usually have my phone around or when I am sitting at the PC I can just use the dashboard in my browser. And there are situations where voice control just does not fit well, e.g. in public or with people sleeping in the same room.

Smart switches don't make dumb lights as smart as smart lights. Most smart lights also feature dimming capability along with color tone switching. Smart switches can't add these features to a dumb light.