Thanks Charan! I still have that watch, but have not turned it on in years. Now I talk to my earbuds or smartspeakers, all without much hacking involved :)
Wow fantastic!!! Few questions regarding reliability... I'm slowly installing some z-wave in my hose using homeseer pc software as the hub. All I have is 3 lights and a 2 sensors so far all in the same small room (for testing purposes). I've had it all setup and working as I want it, with the ability of speech recognition, iphone apps etc. But almost once a month I'm debugging the bloody thing! I find it an all do strange things like certain light's stop responding etc. I'm wondering how you're finding reliability? I don't use the Verde but might consider it, if it's more reliable. You obviously have a lot of devices so I'd really appreciate your thoughts. Thanks. Mike.
I have about 50 z-wave devices, plus 15 curtain motors linked via a z-wave bridge. I've had pretty good luck with the Vera and the z-wave mesh, although I only use the Vera as a z-wave interface, with most of the rest of the automation in MisterHouse. I have a pretty open house with few walls. Vera reports that about 1/2 of the z-wave devices talk directly to the Vera, with the rest using 1 hop thru 5 different z-wave devices. Z-wave definitely has better coverage and reliability then wi-fi. I replaced the wi-fi module in my radiothermostat with z-wave modules and have not had any issues since.
Bruce Winter Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate that a lot. Sounds like a Vera may be worth a try, seem to be able to pick them up fairly cheap these days too. I'm just not sure it's capable of doing all I ask - but better to do the basics and work all the time than having a house with a mind of its own! Thanks again, I shall be subscribing!
You are awesome and so are your projects, working on implementing something similar in my home (not as fancy as yours), I could not hear really well whenever you mentioned what you used for the audio confirmation, I saw some Sonos around (which I own too) but I doubt you use them for that purpose. Thank you! Cheers from Uruguay
+Andres Amegeiras The computer speech comes from a micro (NUC) PC with a small (3 inch) USB connected speaker (earlier video on that PC here: ua-cam.com/video/94Wz4BacBkg/v-deo.html ). The PC sends text to the Google TTS (Text To Speech) cloud engine and receives back and plays an audio file. Surprisingly seems just a fast as a local TTS engine. Some guys use Sonos for speech feedback, but I found there is quite a bit (seconds) of latency and it interrupts the music and doesn't always restart it reliably. Thanks for the kudos!
Charlie Liu Yale Security YRD240-ZW-0BP, $250 from www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HS1O5JG. Battery life seems ok, auto locked daily and the first round of batteries lasted 8 months.
Fantastic, I am quite impressed by how quick everything reacts with how many links in the proverbial chain there are. Internet of things standards are amazing. Do you think it would be possible to add an amazon echo into the mix for some redundancy or would that be too much with the echos limited push capabilities?
+kuzurame I love the echo! I have a couple of other videos about that (misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/09/voice-control-with-amazon-echo.html and misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/10/amazon-echo-smartthings-howto.html ). I also recently discovered a way to pass generic (not pre-determined) commands from echo to whatever home automation device you might have. Will probably post more on that next month.
Those blinds are from stevesblindsandwallpaper.com , motors made by somfy. They use the proprietary somfy radio protocol called RTS, with an zwave -> RTS adapter to allow for the home automation. There are newer motors that support zwave directly that I installed after we moved to another house, info on those here: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2016/08/voice-controlled-curtains-using-graber.html
Hi BruceIt is an amazing project, some months ago I'm working with arduino to control lights and motors, could please tell me how does voice control to handle the arduino? Do you use ESP8266 to control arduino? What elements use to move the curtains?
I've used a number of arduinos and pis, but not the ESP8266 yet. The voice recognition is done on the android watch, phone, or tablet with tasker autovoice and the resulting text is sent to a linux home automation program that then does the matching of that text the closest match of all the pre-defined commands I have enabled. If that command controls an ardiuino, the home automation program then sends the command to the arduino via a web server or the mqtt protocol. There are a few more details on the web page linked from that video, here: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2014/10/voice-control-with-smart-watch.html
Very cool. I've been interested in this topic for more than a decade and I've never seen one done quite as well as this. Do you have a place you can send me to learn the basics. Let's say I just want to start with turning the lights on and off. Where do you recommend I go to learn more about this? Thanks - well done.
There are ton of options for doing home automation, more growing every day. In a few years maybe we will have more standardized options, as the bigger players (e.g. google, apple) are getting involved. For hardware, I use mainly z-wave devices, controlled with a vera ( getvera.com ). You can get similar from Lowes, Home Depot, or smartthings.com, but the software is all different. To enable the vr via android wear today, you have hack a bit, but I expect in a few years it will be easy and commonplace.
First at all- your house is in sane, congrats :) Second thing, I am running business in home automation in Slovakia (www.homesystem.sk) and currently I'm working on exact same thing. But do you think I'd the voice control really the way to go? You know what I mean, if you have friends over, you taking to them, isn't it kind of dumb to talk to your wrist? Because I'm thinking if the pressing the shortcut on your watch isn't better...
Hi Milos. Voice -vs- touch screens both have pros/cons. The con of a watch touchscreen is navigation. The screen isn't big enough to offer many options, so you would have to deal with several levels of menus before getting to the object or event you want to control. The con of watch VR is using it in a noisy environment. I think the watch VR would be much faster than touch menu navigation. If you had just a few common events/objects, then a touch option to those would be good. Easy to allow for both! Bruce
Moto360. It was one of the first android watches, looks like they still make it, but not sure I'd recommend it. I now use in ear pixel buds for home voice control via google assistant.
hey mr. Winter i would like to know your thoughts about the analoque smartwatch i ordered on the internet: casio eqb-501xd-1aer. so what do you think of it? its a pretty stylish but simple smartwatch though.
Probably not the watch for me. The only reason I would wear a smartwatch is if it did VR (for home control) and a text/voice output interface (for notifications).
Tasker with the AutoVoice and AutoWear plugins. The end result is tasker sends a web get command to my home automation system to execute the command. I use MisterHouse, but most systems support control via http get or similar. These days I don't wear the watch since I have open room command control via Alexa and Google Home. It would still be useful if I'm away from home, but that isn't enough reason for me to put on a watch (I don't like wearing stuff). In those cases I can still execute the same voice command with AutoVoice on my phone.
I don't mean to get in your personal life but I love technology like this And was wondering what is it that u do for a living I'm just a young guy with no direction right now and was hoping u could steer me in the right path
+Craig Freeman Hi to the 'young guy' Craig :) I'm got a degree in Electrical Engineering and have been working for IBM, designing integrated circuits for 30+ years now. Engineering, in most any field, can be a fun and rewarding career, highly recommended! Bruce
I feel as though I just looked into a mirror that amplified time and money. Nice execution. If you have not thought of it before, place user ownership on each service you've enabled/disabled in such a way that is thoughtful. Since I'll never actually have the time and money to execute this type of automation to the extent that you have, before a more gross amount of options exist, this seemed like as good a place as any to drop that often overlooked detail, to the universe.
HELP : Guys, so ive set up taker to turn on/off my hall room lights. THAT WORKS ! But no response from google. How can I get google to say the response I want ? I did add this in , in the response section but still nothing. I tried this on two different devices. Any suggestions ? appreciate your reply.
I know that my google home will by default respond with "Sure, turning the xyz on". But I haven't had a working android wear watch for a while, so not sure how to help there.
Hey thanks for the quick reply. good to know that it works with google home. But ive seen a few videos now where its been done on the phone. I tried my sumsung note 5 and galaxy tab and added the response, but it performs it but no response :( trying to re search to see if anyone else has this issue.
I also get the same happy 'Sure, ...' response when I do a on/off command with my Galaxy S8 phone with google assistant. If are using tasker autovoice, getting that reponse might be tricker. If you have Android 6 or 7 (marshmallow or later), you (in theory) can install assistant instead or in addition to the tasker autovoice.
Bruce Winter yeah i am using tasker and tasker voice. triger an event " turn on light" response " ok, turning on lights" it is working when i say turn on lights and the lights turn on, but no response what so ever.
I have tasker/autowear simply doing a http call to my home automation setup, so whatever you can control with rest/http type calls should be good. Most of my lights are on zwave, directly controlled by smartthings, but indirectly controlled with MisterHouse, which is what responds to the watch/phone http calls.
Hi Again ! ive spent the last two days trying to get " Google " and "Tasker" " autovoice" to work together and I cant seem to get it the way you have, so well done ! Works with google now, where I can say "turn on the light" and it will, but with no response. I can get it to work with google assistant, but you have to say " Ask Tasker" to "turn on the lights " but the response kinda works. I really do admire how you got it to work seamlessly with all your devices and the responses come up with no flaws. ! Am I missing something ? would love any sort of feedback from you :) Love the house, you motivate everyone to have a better brighter future
You can do almost anything with Tasker and the amazing auto* plugins. You should be able to program in some sort of response that at least Tasker got the command and passed it on. But the easiest solution is to upgrade to google assistant (or google home), which have the 'sure, turning xyz on' response built in. It comes on by default on my S8, but there are articles on how to get it installed on older devices like this one (I have not tried this); www.theandroidsoul.com/how-to-install-google-assistant-on-galaxy-s6-s5-note-4-and-note-5/
Bruce Winter i tried google assistant but again you have to say ok google, ask auto voice to turn on the lights. but cant find a way around that... how did you set it up with tasker and google assistant ? iiftt join and tasker ?
I'm currently using Smartthings with "The Google Assistant" SmartApp. I also have the Google Home phone app. With those installed, Tasker and IFTTT are not needed, although you can use them also.
you can now prevent autovoice from also doing a google search with your voice command. You can also change the prompt so google responds to something other than "OK Google" !!!
Thanks for the update. I confess I have not been wearing my watch recently, as I usually have an Amazon Alexa or 'Hey Google' home within earshot. Will probably try again if/when a next generation smartwatch becomes irresistible :)
I could control any device connected to my smarthome, in the same way you can to that now with Alexa, Google Home, and Siri. In fact, I no longer wear the watch because one of those other devices are usually within listening distance.
Yep, I have got one of those, and several bunch of Echos (comparison video at ua-cam.com/video/Izp3K5vSWo0/v-deo.html ). I found they work so well that I don't wear my watch much anymore. Cross room voice commands are amazingly reliable now, so the only remaining advantage to the watch is the visual feedback.
Hello. I'm your biggest fan I really love your project and I was hoping to make one using my Windows PC. I'm a complete novice in the field of programming, so after after hours and hours of trying I couldn't get it running on my PC. So I was hoping if you could make a detailed instructional video on how to install and it running on a Windows computer. I did try following the instructions on misterhouse.sourceforge.net/ but they were all greek and latin to me. Cheers. :)
+Marcus Underwood Hi Marcus, There are 2 main parts to this. 1: the android watch and android phone software needed to do voice recognition (VR). 2: the hardware/software needed to interface to the home. For 1: I use an android watch and the tasker and auto* apps. For 2: I use a mix of misterhouse and smartthings. Tasker, auto* apps, and misterhouse are all tricky for a non-programmer to setup and use. A detailed instructional video would help a little, but would still be hard for most people to follow. But the good news is this smarthome and internet of things arena is is changing pretty fast now. The big players are putting significant resource into making solutions that are practical for your average person to install and use. For example, the Amazon Echo coupled with a philips or smartthings hub is a pretty easy way for a non-programmer to do across-the-room voice control of lights/appliances. I'm expect more of those sorts of easy options will become available in the next year, like the watch based VR control that I demoed in this video. So hang in there and keep your eye on the tech blogs for updates.
This video looks like Tony Stark vloging from his mansion...
You've made a Perfect Residence !!!
You must get a ton of Vaj. It's nice to see another person who is doing well financially but still humble such as myself.
Nice view! I see you aren't in Med City any more. I need to put this on my list of winter (no pun intended) projects.
Wow, impressive! my ears perked up once you said "Homebrew" hehe. True geek! ^ _ ^
Watching this in 2022 and still feels so advanced to this day n age. I salute your knowledge and master mind for creating all these. Inspiration. !!!!
Thanks Charan! I still have that watch, but have not turned it on in years. Now I talk to my earbuds or smartspeakers, all without much hacking involved :)
Wow fantastic!!! Few questions regarding reliability...
I'm slowly installing some z-wave in my hose using homeseer pc software as the hub. All I have is 3 lights and a 2 sensors so far all in the same small room (for testing purposes). I've had it all setup and working as I want it, with the ability of speech recognition, iphone apps etc. But almost once a month I'm debugging the bloody thing! I find it an all do strange things like certain light's stop responding etc. I'm wondering how you're finding reliability? I don't use the Verde but might consider it, if it's more reliable. You obviously have a lot of devices so I'd really appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.
Mike.
I have about 50 z-wave devices, plus 15 curtain motors linked via a z-wave bridge. I've had pretty good luck with the Vera and the z-wave mesh, although I only use the Vera as a z-wave interface, with most of the rest of the automation in MisterHouse.
I have a pretty open house with few walls. Vera reports that about 1/2 of the z-wave devices talk directly to the Vera, with the rest using 1 hop thru 5 different z-wave devices. Z-wave definitely has better coverage and reliability then wi-fi. I replaced the wi-fi module in my radiothermostat with z-wave modules and have not had any issues since.
Bruce Winter
Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate that a lot. Sounds like a Vera may be worth a try, seem to be able to pick them up fairly cheap these days too. I'm just not sure it's capable of doing all I ask - but better to do the basics and work all the time than having a house with a mind of its own! Thanks again, I shall be subscribing!
You are awesome and so are your projects, working on implementing something similar in my home (not as fancy as yours), I could not hear really well whenever you mentioned what you used for the audio confirmation, I saw some Sonos around (which I own too) but I doubt you use them for that purpose.
Thank you!
Cheers from Uruguay
+Andres Amegeiras
The computer speech comes from a micro (NUC) PC with a small (3 inch) USB connected speaker (earlier video on that PC here: ua-cam.com/video/94Wz4BacBkg/v-deo.html ). The PC sends text to the Google TTS (Text To Speech) cloud engine and receives back and plays an audio file. Surprisingly seems just a fast as a local TTS engine. Some guys use Sonos for speech feedback, but I found there is quite a bit (seconds) of latency and it interrupts the music and doesn't always restart it reliably.
Thanks for the kudos!
what brand and type is that television, and are you using the moto 360 1st or 2nd generation? ps: now i have seen this video i am a big fan.
+Jasper Janssen
Thanks :) TV is nothing special, a 2012 55" LG 55LM6700. Moto 360 is 1st gen.
Hey Bruce, can you link me to the exact model of the front door lock?
Charlie Liu
Yale Security YRD240-ZW-0BP, $250 from www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HS1O5JG. Battery life seems ok, auto locked daily and the first round of batteries lasted 8 months.
Fantastic, I am quite impressed by how quick everything reacts with how many links in the proverbial chain there are. Internet of things standards are amazing. Do you think it would be possible to add an amazon echo into the mix for some redundancy or would that be too much with the echos limited push capabilities?
+kuzurame I love the echo! I have a couple of other videos about that (misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/09/voice-control-with-amazon-echo.html and misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/10/amazon-echo-smartthings-howto.html ). I also recently discovered a way to pass generic (not pre-determined) commands from echo to whatever home automation device you might have. Will probably post more on that next month.
Very cool use of the 360. Nice work. Beautiful house
where did you get the curtain? They are awsome
Those blinds are from stevesblindsandwallpaper.com , motors made by somfy. They use the proprietary somfy radio protocol called RTS, with an zwave -> RTS adapter to allow for the home automation. There are newer motors that support zwave directly that I installed after we moved to another house, info on those here: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2016/08/voice-controlled-curtains-using-graber.html
can you control it when you're not in your house? (with internet obviously)
Yep. The watch talks to the phone and the phone talks to home, either via wifi or via the cell network, just like other phone internet traffic.
+Bruce Winter thank you!
this is soo cool even in 2018
what job does this man have
Hi BruceIt is an amazing project, some months ago I'm working with arduino to control lights and motors, could please tell me how does voice control to handle the arduino? Do you use ESP8266 to control arduino?
What elements use to move the curtains?
I've used a number of arduinos and pis, but not the ESP8266 yet.
The voice recognition is done on the android watch, phone, or tablet with tasker autovoice and the resulting text is sent to a linux home automation program that then does the matching of that text the closest match of all the pre-defined commands I have enabled. If that command controls an ardiuino, the home automation program then sends the command to the arduino via a web server or the mqtt protocol.
There are a few more details on the web page linked from that video, here: misterhouse.blogspot.com/2014/10/voice-control-with-smart-watch.html
Man this is So cool. Good work.
Amazing setup! Hoping to do something similar although on not so grand of scale.
I love this video. I'm just holding out for a new moto 360
Very cool. I've been interested in this topic for more than a decade and I've never seen one done quite as well as this. Do you have a place you can send me to learn the basics. Let's say I just want to start with turning the lights on and off. Where do you recommend I go to learn more about this? Thanks - well done.
There are ton of options for doing home automation, more growing every day. In a few years maybe we will have more standardized options, as the bigger players (e.g. google, apple) are getting involved. For hardware, I use mainly z-wave devices, controlled with a vera ( getvera.com ). You can get similar from Lowes, Home Depot, or smartthings.com, but the software is all different. To enable the vr via android wear today, you have hack a bit, but I expect in a few years it will be easy and commonplace.
Try searching Tasker tutorials. There's a channel dedicated to this
Yo' this is like Tony Starks house.
First at all- your house is in sane, congrats :)
Second thing, I am running business in home automation in Slovakia (www.homesystem.sk) and currently I'm working on exact same thing. But do you think I'd the voice control really the way to go? You know what I mean, if you have friends over, you taking to them, isn't it kind of dumb to talk to your wrist? Because I'm thinking if the pressing the shortcut on your watch isn't better...
Hi Milos. Voice -vs- touch screens both have pros/cons. The con of a watch touchscreen is navigation. The screen isn't big enough to offer many options, so you would have to deal with several levels of menus before getting to the object or event you want to control. The con of watch VR is using it in a noisy environment. I think the watch VR would be much faster than touch menu navigation. If you had just a few common events/objects, then a touch option to those would be good. Easy to allow for both!
Bruce
like the watch any know name ?
Moto360. It was one of the first android watches, looks like they still make it, but not sure I'd recommend it. I now use in ear pixel buds for home voice control via google assistant.
@@BruceWinter thx it look cool and thx for good vid
hey mr. Winter i would like to know your thoughts about the analoque smartwatch i ordered on the internet: casio eqb-501xd-1aer.
so what do you think of it? its a pretty stylish but simple smartwatch though.
Probably not the watch for me. The only reason I would wear a smartwatch is if it did VR (for home control) and a text/voice output interface (for notifications).
it's awesome!!
what's your app?
Tasker with the AutoVoice and AutoWear plugins. The end result is tasker sends a web get command to my home automation system to execute the command. I use MisterHouse, but most systems support control via http get or similar.
These days I don't wear the watch since I have open room command control via Alexa and Google Home. It would still be useful if I'm away from home, but that isn't enough reason for me to put on a watch (I don't like wearing stuff). In those cases I can still execute the same voice command with AutoVoice on my phone.
I don't mean to get in your personal life but I love technology like this And was wondering what is it that u do for a living I'm just a young guy with no direction right now and was hoping u could steer me in the right path
+Craig Freeman Hi to the 'young guy' Craig :)
I'm got a degree in Electrical Engineering and have been working for IBM, designing integrated circuits for 30+ years now. Engineering, in most any field, can be a fun and rewarding career, highly recommended!
Bruce
+Bruce Winter thank u so much I really appreciate it coolest guy ever
I feel as though I just looked into a mirror that amplified time and money. Nice execution. If you have not thought of it before, place user ownership on each service you've enabled/disabled in such a way that is thoughtful. Since I'll never actually have the time and money to execute this type of automation to the extent that you have, before a more gross amount of options exist, this seemed like as good a place as any to drop that often overlooked detail, to the universe.
very impressive
nice work :)
HELP : Guys, so ive set up taker to turn on/off my hall room lights. THAT WORKS ! But no response from google. How can I get google to say the response I want ? I did add this in , in the response section but still nothing. I tried this on two different devices. Any suggestions ? appreciate your reply.
I know that my google home will by default respond with "Sure, turning the xyz on". But I haven't had a working android wear watch for a while, so not sure how to help there.
Hey thanks for the quick reply. good to know that it works with google home. But ive seen a few videos now where its been done on the phone. I tried my sumsung note 5 and galaxy tab and added the response, but it performs it but no response :( trying to re search to see if anyone else has this issue.
I also get the same happy 'Sure, ...' response when I do a on/off command with my Galaxy S8 phone with google assistant. If are using tasker autovoice, getting that reponse might be tricker. If you have Android 6 or 7 (marshmallow or later), you (in theory) can install assistant instead or in addition to the tasker autovoice.
Bruce Winter yeah i am using tasker and tasker voice. triger an event " turn on light" response " ok, turning on lights" it is working when i say turn on lights and the lights turn on, but no response what so ever.
Very well done, thanks for sharing.
Zway compatible?
I have tasker/autowear simply doing a http call to my home automation setup, so whatever you can control with rest/http type calls should be good. Most of my lights are on zwave, directly controlled by smartthings, but indirectly controlled with MisterHouse, which is what responds to the watch/phone http calls.
You have so nice house
Hi Again ! ive spent the last two days trying to get " Google " and "Tasker" " autovoice" to work together and I cant seem to get it the way you have, so well done ! Works with google now, where I can say "turn on the light" and it will, but with no response. I can get it to work with google assistant, but you have to say " Ask Tasker" to "turn on the lights " but the response kinda works. I really do admire how you got it to work seamlessly with all your devices and the responses come up with no flaws. ! Am I missing something ? would love any sort of feedback from you :) Love the house, you motivate everyone to have a better brighter future
You can do almost anything with Tasker and the amazing auto* plugins. You should be able to program in some sort of response that at least Tasker got the command and passed it on. But the easiest solution is to upgrade to google assistant (or google home), which have the 'sure, turning xyz on' response built in. It comes on by default on my S8, but there are articles on how to get it installed on older devices like this one (I have not tried this); www.theandroidsoul.com/how-to-install-google-assistant-on-galaxy-s6-s5-note-4-and-note-5/
Bruce Winter i tried google assistant but again you have to say ok google, ask auto voice to turn on the lights. but cant find a way around that... how did you set it up with tasker and google assistant ? iiftt join and tasker ?
I'm currently using Smartthings with "The Google Assistant" SmartApp. I also have the Google Home phone app. With those installed, Tasker and IFTTT are not needed, although you can use them also.
Cool man... fantastic!! Lee Chardes Theotonio Alves look this.. Android and Arduino in action..
You should try this with amazon echo
Nice house btw :)
you can now prevent autovoice from also doing a google search with your voice command. You can also change the prompt so google responds to something other than "OK Google" !!!
really awesome setup BTW
Thanks for the update. I confess I have not been wearing my watch recently, as I usually have an Amazon Alexa or 'Hey Google' home within earshot. Will probably try again if/when a next generation smartwatch becomes irresistible :)
Can I see tutorial from you to make just one thing like turn on light or turn on pump? 😂 sorry for bad english
I could control any device connected to my smarthome, in the same way you can to that now with Alexa, Google Home, and Siri. In fact, I no longer wear the watch because one of those other devices are usually within listening distance.
after seeing your house! I hate you lol. Great video brotha and great explanation of things. keep up the good work your inspinspirational.
:) Thanks Emilio. If it makes you feel any better, we no longer live there, although the house we moved to is pretty nice also.
haha i hope you took all your cool home automation gadgets with you. I look forward to learning more from you. keep those great videos coming :).
Christine
thats cool and all but like 0,2% of wear users can afford all this stuff
You should pick up a Google Home.
Yep, I have got one of those, and several bunch of Echos (comparison video at ua-cam.com/video/Izp3K5vSWo0/v-deo.html ). I found they work so well that I don't wear my watch much anymore. Cross room voice commands are amazingly reliable now, so the only remaining advantage to the watch is the visual feedback.
Hello. I'm your biggest fan
I really love your project and I was hoping to make one using my Windows PC. I'm a complete novice in the field of programming, so after after hours and hours of trying I couldn't get it running on my PC.
So I was hoping if you could make a detailed instructional video on how to install and it running on a Windows computer. I did try following the instructions on misterhouse.sourceforge.net/ but they were all greek and latin to me.
Cheers. :)
+Marcus Underwood
Hi Marcus,
There are 2 main parts to this. 1: the android watch and android phone software needed to do voice recognition (VR). 2: the hardware/software needed to interface to the home. For 1: I use an android watch and the tasker and auto* apps. For 2: I use a mix of misterhouse and smartthings. Tasker, auto* apps, and misterhouse are all tricky for a non-programmer to setup and use. A detailed instructional video would help a little, but would still be hard for most people to follow.
But the good news is this smarthome and internet of things arena is is changing pretty fast now. The big players are putting significant resource into making solutions that are practical for your average person to install and use. For example, the Amazon Echo coupled with a philips or smartthings hub is a pretty easy way for a non-programmer to do across-the-room voice control of lights/appliances. I'm expect more of those sorts of easy options will become available in the next year, like the watch based VR control that I demoed in this video. So hang in there and keep your eye on the tech blogs for updates.
l way before your time you made a Google home before Google home
Ok Google feed the dog
rich guy