Wife Acceptance Factor

Before starting down this journey, you should always keep in mind the Wife Acceptance Factor, or WAF. The term was originally coined by audophiles relating to the likelihood that a wife would approve of the purchase of expensive audio equipment.

With home automation, the WAF not only applies to the cost of equipment, but also if your automation is ready for prime time. You may be willing to accept broken or partially working automation, but wives usually aren’t. The last thing you want is to cause friction in your relationship by being heavily urged to rip your work out.

As an example, our old food pantry had a pull-string light. I moved the pull-string out of the way, put in a wifi light bulb, and had a door sensor turn the bulb on and off. This scored major points, but when the door sensor’s battery went dead or my server went down, there was much frustration and I would always move to fix it pretty quickly. Thankfully that only happened two or three times a year.

Some considerations to pass the WAF:

• Does your automation accomplish a task with less steps than before?
• If the automation is down, is it still possible to do those actions the same way as before automation was added?
• Is the automation reliable enough that it can be counted on? Inconsistent automation is more frustrating than no automation

Grading scale: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/8d56aj/wife_acceptance_factor_waf_101_grading_scale/