Black Friday at Consultoría Domótica

As you know, this week is Black Friday and I always do a home-automation special with devices that have an interesting discount. There aren’t just discounts on devices, often there are discounts on apps and subscriptions too, so it’s worth taking a look at those apps or services where we usually think «I’ll buy it later» just in case they’ve dropped in price or are offering some interesting deal, a Lifetime at bargain-bin price or whatever. And that’s precisely what I want to talk to you about today, since I want to do my bit for Black Friday and offer an Express Home-Automation Consultation so you spend money.

The usual Black Friday post

There are still a few hours to go before Black Friday week officially kicks off. It used to just be the last Thursday of November that had a Friday after it also in November, meaning that if the last Thursday was the 30th, since the following day would be the 1st, then that Thursday wasn’t the one used, and instead it was the Thursday before. Emilcar explained this perfectly the other day. But, since there are still hours to go before these days kick off, I’m not going to give you the typical device or service recommendation post just yet, that episode is being saved for next week, and instead of publishing it on Thursday I’ll publish it earlier in case you’re waiting for some specific deal. I know I’ve told you many times, but don’t buy devices that are cheap just because my buddy Paco has one or because I’ve heard good things about it and want to try it out. Buy devices that you actually need and that are at a more interesting price these days. For example, I’ve got several devices in my Amazon cart and on Shellyspain ready to buy when the moment comes. I also take the chance to renew some subscription service that’s running a Black Friday deal, which lets me save a bit on a service I already had and was going to pay for anyway. See, real needs.

The usual Home-Automation Consultation

But going back to the topic I wanted to talk to you about today, some of you already know how the Home-Automation Consultation service works. Basically, it consists of a roughly 1-hour meeting, which can be in person if we live nearby or over video call, where the person interested tells me about their real needs. Most commonly, they’re about to do a renovation soon or are buying a new home and want to automate some things at home, and they’re looking to plan it properly from the start, from the ideal wiring or wifi setup to the electrical panel, where you can install some smart relays instead of putting them behind the switches, or monitor energy consumption, solar panels, etc. Also people with reduced vision hire the home-automation consultation to create alerts that warn them, for example, if a door hasn’t been closed properly, there’s a water leak, or they’ve left a light on. The thing is, we talk for quite a while, I take notes on everything and then I think it over and write a summary document with everything we discussed, my recommendations, some devices that might be interesting, etc. Always tailored to their needs, of course, for instance, I recently had a Consultation with Asier and we talked about garden irrigation devices that connect via Zigbee and the corresponding automations so that those devices check soil moisture and don’t trigger watering if it’s rained recently or if it’s going to rain in the next few hours according to an internet weather service. This Home-Automation Consultation service costs the modest price of €60. I’m not going to get rich off it, but I save you search and research time, plus the trial-and-error afterward. A win-win! As Joan Boluda would say, it’s not a scalable business since it involves trading time for money and, if it were a huge success, at some point I wouldn’t have enough hours to attend to everyone interested… but right now that’s not something I’m worried about, I wish! if we get to that bridge we’ll figure out how to cross it then.

Black Friday on Home-Automation Consultation: The Express Home-Automation Consultation

For these Black Friday days, I came up with the idea of doing an Express Home-Automation Consultation. Basically it’s the same service I was telling you about, chatting for 1 hour, but without the follow-up document, which is actually what takes me the most time — I can easily spend a couple of hours putting together that document with all the links to products, information, recommendations, screenshots of automations. Now that I think about it, €60 seems cheap, the hourly rate comes out to almost nothing, I’m going to have to rethink this! 😀 But anyway, I thought about rolling out the Express Home-Automation Consultation service these days as a sort of Black Consultation, which fits the name too, for €40. That way you can take advantage of Black Friday, we still keep that hour of chatting or beers (ideally the second option, which is way cooler), but afterward I won’t produce the summary document — it’s just that time with me for doubts, requests, questions… or whatever comes up, hey, you never know, I’ve got a lot of sex-appeal in person. What do you think? Could be interesting, right? Go on then, let’s see if it works as a push to review those automations that fail on you every now and then and you don’t know why, to set up the smart lock on your front door the right way and not like Emilcar did, or to plan the electrical setup for the blinds in your new home knowing you’ll want to automate them so they come down on their own when it’s about to rain, keeping your windows from getting dirty. To take advantage of this Express Consultation, the idea is that anyone who contacts me during the ‘official’ Black Friday days, which run from November 21st to December 1st, through my email carlos@sahuquillo.org or through Telegram or any other means, and is interested in this Express Consultation, well, we’ll keep that €40 price and schedule it for any other time — it doesn’t have to be exactly during these days. Sorry to be the one creating new needs for you, although in this case it works out for both of us!