Most "smart" home automation utilities are pretty useless anyway. Their end goal can usually be achieved with "dumb" electromechanical devices. Anything "smarter" than a motion sensor and a relay is probably too smart.
Part of the problem is that "smart" crap becomes hard to avoid if you want non-shitty devices.
We've run into this with refrigerator shopping—we want a counter-depth fridge with what amounts to maybe $50-100 worth of "luxury" improvements in terms of cost to the manufacturer (a little more metal where some have plastic, castors for the drawers so they move a little better, "soft close" would be nice but its absence isn't a deal-breaker, some slightly more thoughtful than usual layout & organization) but all the ones with that kind of thing also bundle auto-opening doors and fancy smart junk and cost double what a mid-range fridge does. We just want to pay slightly (say $200-400) more for a fridge that doesn't feel like a (cheap!) kid's toy, but without a bunch of fancy junk. Such a product does not exist.
Then there's smoke detectors. Do some reading and it seems like they all suck, badly, except Nest Protect, which achieves best-of-a-bad-lot status. I just want smoke detectors that, you know, work, and don't annoy me so much in the kitchen that I end up unplugging that one permanently. Ideally they'd wirelessly trigger one another so I don't have to worry about wires for that. I don't really want or need them to connect to the Internet or to spy on me. Unfortunately sucks-the-least comes bundled with spies-on-you.
I like that I can find out that I left my garage door open even when I'm not home -- and even shut it remotely, if necessary. It's a very practical use case for a 'smart' device.
Not nearly as practical as taking a look at your garage door while leaving though. If you're paranoid you can install a timer with an override switch. Surely telemetry and high-level automation has advantages, but is it worth the hassle, the abandonware light switch which is useless now, the privacy and security concerns that come with network-connected equipment? That is a personal choice and I have to say I'm not a supporter.
Right, but to be human is to be fallible. For example, I left my garage door open all night last night (I was preoccupied when I went in, and just forgot to push the button). I've had a smart garage door for a while, but I just now added a schedule to automatically close the door at 1am, if it's not closed. That has value.
Likewise, my smart sprinkler system monitors the weather and waters the lawn based on the amount of rain we've had. Over the rainy season here, it automatically disabled sprinkling for over 3 months. Sure, I could setup something with a water sensor, or push the rain-skip button each week, but it was nice to not have to think about it.
Yes, but are you sure you're the only person who is able to control the door remotely? That's a big issue with a fair number of "smart" devices: their security is not up to par.
