The biggest gap in the smart home, assuming standardization of protocols occurs via Matter, is dealing with controls (i.e. switches and buttons) and recognizing the fact that sometimes voice control is slower and more intrusive to the activities going on in the room than the click of a button. Yes, you could get out your phone or watch and navigate to the home controls to find the button in an app, but to need to do that while standing next to the wall plate that used to be a button you could click but has now been disabled so as not to cut power to your smart bulbs is backwards from an efficiency point of view. Imagine replacing emergency stop buttons with voice commands... its never going to happen because it is too slow. Now eventually maybe some day there will be enough sensors in the home and contextual awareness that an AI could predict all the reasons I might click the switch and at that point using a voice command for the outlier situation would be acceptable.
What we need for now:
- Button support in Google home. Click a button, invoke a response. Similar in delivery of an off/on sensor (high water levels, door open/close, window open/close, although admittedly capturing the length of time a button was pushed would allow for greater usability (i.e. long push the on for dimmer up).
- Manufacturers of wall switches to support two modes of operation (electrical switch mode, and smart button mode). "Electrical switch mode" impacts the current in the line (on/off/dim) and is an event that routines could also act upon (e.g. overhead light is normal non-smart lighting which can be dimmed by reducing the power, but counter light is smart but they can be controlled by the one switch). "Smart button mode" leaves the current in the line at full-on levels but sends the events that routines can act upon.
