1. Thermostats. I don't think there's even a debate here. Controlling my thermostats is not only saving me money but waking up in the middle of the night too hot/cold and just reaching over to the night stand and adjusting it is just pure bliss.

2. door locks. While I admit I avoid using the automatic lock as much as possible to save on battery life, the fact its able to lock or unlock when i'm not around and tell me WHO is coming in (based on codes set) is really great.

3. doorbell. even though i don't have one yet, i think it would be awesome to see what types of random people walk up to your front door during the day. might catch the wife having sex with the UPS guy!

4. lights/dimmers/switches. triggering lights has traditionally been done via dusk/dawn/motion doohickeys so the abilty to add some additional triggers via your phone is nice...but ranks lower on the scale of things that can be done with your phone. to be fair, i rank this higher than smoke detectors because i play with the lights all the time to make the house 'hug' everyone based on our behaviors instead of constantly messing with the switches.

5. smoke/CO2 detectors - nice to get an alert remotely when your MiL is watching your dogs when you're out of town and trying to burn the house down because she polished off a 5th of tequila and is trying to grill a steak on the stove.

6. energy-monitoring. unless/until a whole-house system is in place that provides you with a real-time spreadsheet of every motherfricking energy sucker in your house, piecemeal monitoring is not going to be higher up on the list. probably too cost prohibitive to make your house energy smart, but someone should be making a killing having an inline energy monitor.

one that attaches to the line coming into the house would be nice, but i guess you could use your eyeballs and a piece of notepaper to analyze your meter as your HVAC cuts on or on a daily basis to get a better estimate what you're burning overall daily.

7. garage door openers. meh. i got 2 of them and they are nice but we all have vehicles with homelink these days and its very rare i accidentally leave the door open. i guess the point is its nice to know i CAN shut the door from another country if it was left open by accident, but in real world usage, i've found i rarely use it because i am already in the habit of using homelink.

8. water/leak monitoring? not sure how i'd use this yet. its too late to cut off the water if the washing machine hose comes loose and its draining the tub all over the floor and getting a notification remotely will just ruin my day.

9. propane tank monitoring - "for us country folks" who don't want to walk down the hill in 20 degree weather/ice and squeeze past poison ivy and lift the rusty lid up to check how much propane is left so we don't run the tank dry & freeze to death waiting on a delivery. yep, propane is only used in the winter and during ice storms is where usage will skyrocket and thats when you dont want to be out on the slick ice.

10. egg minder

what do you have?

eta i'm running foscam cameras and they don't work with wink yet so i have no comment on that.

the thing that sucks is the foscam API is open and i can pass commands to it via URL string from any computer so it would be really easy for wink to pull these in unless they have been threatened by dropcam to not allow it.

foscam >>>>>>>>>>>>>> dropcam from quality of video to features and price.

This post was edited on 2/5/16 at 2:16 pm