I think a lot of smart home discussions underestimate how messy real-world usage becomes once more than one person is involved. I spent about four months building what I thought was a “simple” Home Assistant setup for my apartment, which are; Lights, TV, ceiling fan, AC, blinds. My original goal was reducing the number of remotes sitting on the coffee table. Sounded easy in theory. Reality was different. The first problem was reliability. Everybody online talks about automations like they work perfectly forever. They do not. One failed automation at 2am and suddenly your AC never shuts off or your bedroom lights turn on randomly because presence detection got confused again. Then came the remote control issue itself. I tried using one tablet dashboard for everything. Nobody in my house liked it. Too many taps. Too slow. My girlfriend just wanted actual buttons she could press without staring at a screen half asleep.…