homeassistant

I've got a few fun ones:

At night, my cat sometimes gets the zoomies, so I have a projector pointed at a wall with a motion sensor. When he goes on his tear through the house while we're sleeping, the projector turns on and plays a video of strings moving on the wall. This tires him out without him screaming at us to play with him. It turns off again after a few minutes with no motion.

The lights and Roku screens in my office are on a motion sensor, but are also linked with a seat sensor so they don't turn off when I'm at my desk. Sitting at the desk also sends a Wake on LAN packet to my computer. Sitting at my electronics workbench changes the lights to bright white with another seat sensor.

Lights (HA), desktop wallpaper (with Wallpaper Engine), and in-computer RGB (using OpenRGB) change from blue/pink during the day to dark red/orange at sunset so being in my office late doesn't mess with my sleep.

A macro button next to my keyboard disables my screens and turns on a fan pointed at my VR area for workouts.

I have a couple of automations running, but my favourite is one of the simpler ones:

When I set an alarm on my phone all lights turn off except for a single night light (LEDs under my bed), and when I then put my phone down on the wireless charger near my bed (I only use that one wireless charger, so the automation just checks for any wireless charger), the light turns off completely and my phone screen turns off.

If I remove the phone from the charger before my alarm's gone off, the night light turns back on, putting it back on the charger turns the night light back off, etc.

The automation does multiple useful things at once:

• I haven't used a light switch at home in forever
• I haven't forgotten to set an alarm in forever
• I get very obvious feedback that my phone starts charging
• I have a night light that's easily turned on/off, without the need for motion sensors in the bedroom that could have false positives
• I have a clear trigger for when I'm in bed, that I'm using for example for my white noise machine that turns on for 45 minutes when I go to bed

I'm tracking my HVAC filter and rest it's 90days with an NFC tag

Loosely followed an online how-to to create a tracking chore list using NFC tags for my son's allowance. Automations to nag him on trash night to gather/take out the trash.

A simple Automation that turns on a fan in the basement when the outside temp is above out AC setting to help distribute cool basement air.

Outside security lights on/off at dusk/dawn

House auto arms/disarms (Alarmo) when everyone leaves or someone arrives (via life 360 integration)

On trash day, after noon if my son scans (NFC) one of the trash cans, the garage door opens to let him in/put them away.

My son gets a notification when he comes home from school if we got mail (aka the mailbox was opened that day)

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

My Air Quality monitoring. I monitoring CO2, VOCs, PM and such. I then have automations run the air exchanger. They say air inside is 5X more polluted then outside I have the opposite.

The ones I use the most are:

• Turning on lights and setting specific scenes when I turn on TVs in my bedroom, living room and theater room.
• Brighten lights whenever Plex is paused or finishes playing, which is great in a dedicated home theater where the lighting is very dark when watching a movie. This has actually helped improve many hang out nights with friends because the moment after a movie finishes is less awkward, leading more naturally into a nice conversation before every heads home.
• Reminder notifications for when washing machine or dryer cycles finish, or when my garage door has been open for more than 15 minutes (unless I override that with a toggle on my dashboard).
• Turning off all of my lights and switches when I leave the house, unless a boolean variable is flipped (e.g. if someone else is at my house w/o me, which is unusual since I live alone). Well, not quite everything, there are a few devices like a couple power monitoring smart pugs that always remain on.

I don't have a lot of automations yet, but a really useful one has been using smart plugs to detect when the laundry machines are running so that Home Assistant can send alerts when they finish.

• All my lights turn on and off based on motion sensors
• Through the unofficial community Mila integration, I control my air purifiers based on different circumstances, like whether the house is empty.
• Collect indoor air quality info from my Airthings to view in Grafana

I've been using Home Assistant for a while but I don't have a ton of IoT devices so I don't have a ton of automations set up.

My most useful though is an alert that triggers when my garage door has been open for ten minutes, and then again every ten minutes after until it has been open for an hour when it will automatically close.

Accidentally left the garage door open all night at least twice before this and thankfully nothing happened but the automation has prevented this at least twice as well.

Also gives me peace of mind in case I accidentally open it when I'm away.

How did you manage to get selenium working with Amazon!? I can't get it to work well. Amazon always thinks I'm a bot and blocks access. Which is right but still.

For me one of my favourites are my extractor fan control in my bathrooms. I have a switch on the fan and a humidity sensor close by. Turn on the shower and the extractor will turn on until the humidity is lowered enough, then switch off. In addition I have a static programmable button to press should you need it for other reasons. I just love the world of entities and how they link together to make something functional.

that's really impressive! i automate my sunsetter shades based on whether it's sunny or not and sunrise/sunset times. not so much for heat control but rather to protect my sofa and eames chair from uv.

next item is to find a button i can use to train the dog to turn on her vornado fan when she's hot 🤣

A few automations are running in my house:

• Turned the nightstand light into a wake-up light, which distinguishes between weekdays and weekends,
• Kitchen light turns on and off based on sunset and midnight with random offset respectively,
• Garbage collection notifications,
• Introduced an extra (wireless) light switch in the hallway, which controls a Shelly connected to the light. The original light switch is still intact, however it is positioned at an unconvenient location.

In the coming period I want to:

• Automate the shutters and combine that with a light sensor.
• Introduce a routine that starts the washing machine and/or drying during the day based on the amount of incoming solar power. Not sure yet how to do this, since the washing machine has a physical start button via touch.

I'm impressed, my best I feel is to turn on the outside fans when a person is detected and the temp is over 86 (I don't know why I picked 86, seemed appropriate at the time)

Which addon did you use for the paperless-ngx integration?

I love my door sensor announcements. Garage opens? Google Home goes "GARAGE OPEN". Front door blows open at 11pm because it wasn't closed properly? "FRONT DOOR OPEN... all home lights come on"

Just security stuff. So much customization that other products don't offer.

My tankless hot water heater is controlled via Home Assistant too. Shuts off the circulation loop at 11pm~630am. Saves a ton of gas!

Turning on heated blankets at night, turn off after I plug in my phone to charge.

Climate control in every room.

Made dumb standing desk is now smart and goes up and down randomly every 45-60 minutes while I'm working.

I built myself an alarm that fades in the lights to help me wake up. The best part of it though, is from a blueprint script I put together, I'll have a selection of random music playing for an amount of time. Both of these things help me to attempt to focus and wake up, because I am otherwise awful at waking up in a decent amount of time.

It works most of the time. Lmao

Absolutely loving the Leaving home automation: Turn off all sockets, lights, set up intruder alarm, start simulating occupancy on random times. And vice versa when I come home but lights adjusted to light/weather/daytime conditions No-brainer and utmost convenient.

Some more automations:

• Start movie: change sound source amplifier, adjust volume, turns off all other music sources and lights in the apartment, turn off motion sensor living room, dimm lights depending on light sensor/daytime and enjoy
• Add to playlist: notify to m3u file, check m3u file for duplicates via shell script, amend file location of each line in m3u file and transfer to other server instance
• “Siri good night” triggers all lights off + TV. Upon iOS event trigger and all lights/TV off, run Kodi library update/clean up, CHMOD movie file location and shut down server, turn off unnecessary sockets, switch to night mode (only specific motion sensors react and turn on low level light)

I have my house switch to night mode after a certain amount of time after sunset. During night mode:

• turning my computer on or off will toggle my desk light.
• if my cellphone is put over my wireless charger it will turn off my bed light (or turn it back on if I remove it).