I figured we could all share some of the cooler things we've done to get the conversation moving in here.
Here are some of the automations I'm proud of and get the most use out of.
Blinds and Lighting
- Open and close the blinds (Ikea Fyrtur) according to the light levels outside
- If a window is open, the blind will only close to 50%, but it will close automatically after the window is closed
- Turn all lights off when the blinds are opened, and turn lights on in occupied rooms when the blinds are closed
- Automatically close the blinds in the bedroom and bathroom when the shower is on. Open them after we leave the master suite.
Websites
- (Selenium) Auto login to Amazon to check on the status of my Kindle daily reading streak and notify me if I forget to read. We must keep the streak intact!
- Auto categorize new transactions in YouNeedABudget and mark them as approved, as well as pull my net worth into Home Assistant
- Get my most-listened to tracks and artists from Last.FM and pull those into Home Assistant
- Notify me if there are documents in my Paperless-NGx server that need to be categorized and filed
Reminders
- When I walk in the door, announce any outstanding Todoist tasks marked with the @alert label so I know to do it before I sit down. Examples are to change the furnace filter or Venmo my friend for Youtube TV
- I run OCR on the camera feed from my garage camera to determine whether the bins are in the garage. The bins say Trash and Recycling on top, so I look for those words in the image. If they are in the garage in the evening before trash day, I receive an alert
Media and Torrenting
- Notify me and display a badge in Home Assistant when there is a pending request in Overseerr
- (Selenium) Log into my favorite private torrent tracker website from Node-RED to check whether I need to take any actions
HVAC
- Preheat or pre-cool the house prior to peak electricity pricing going into effect. During peak hours, auto adjust the thermostat to prevent it from running
- Turn the thermostat off if there are windows open. Automatically restore previous setting (cool or heat) when all windows are closed.
- Turn the bathroom fan on after the shower is turned off and no one is around. Turn it off after 80 minutes or the humidity in the bathroom is within 10% of the humidity in the bedroom, whichever comes first.
Misc
- Node-RED monitors the status of my UPSes for my servers. If the battery drops below 50% while the power is out, it initiates graceful shutdowns of my Synology and other servers
- Auto sort the Home Assistant grocery list upon adding a new item
One of my favorites is setup with a large (1242 LED's) WLED strip on my front porch. I have a motion sensor that is setup to trigger a switch to a bright white when the strip is on or if we get home and the presence detection picks us up and sets the strip to stay that way for a certain amount of time. The strip has a few different random settings that it can use when turning on as well so one night it may be a rainbow and another night it may be a solid color that walk around the strip changing one LED at a time. Comes on automatically at sunset and turns off at 11pm but until 6 am the strip can still come on with motion or presence detection.
The other one controls my electric water heater. I have 3 temp sensors, one near the top heating element location, one near the bottom element heating location, and a third on the water output line. The original temp controllers are still in place and set the maximum temp so the tank can never go over acceptable levels even if the ESP8266 fails in an on mode. Then I let the temp ramp down at a certain time of the evening and ramp back up in the morning for use throughout the day. But lets say you come home late and need a shower, when the output temp goes over a certain point after the system has started to ramp down it will kick the heater back into it's regular mode until the temp drops below a certain threshold. It also uses the HA app to track where we are located and I have two zones that keep the water heater going, those are home which just barely covers the property and near home which is within about 30 miles of home. Once everyone who is tracked goes outside of those zones the temp ramps back down to the overnight setting and ramps back up when we get into the near home zone.
I have a ton of other things I want to implement like lights that turn on red automatically after a certain time of day so you can walk around at night and not kill your night vision. Right now I am working on the house as the electrical, plumbing, and a ton of other stuff needed work. But when I am done my cheap old $18K house will be a fully integrated smart home.