I’ve been running HA for a while, and it’s been working well; I haven’t had to change much in a few months. That being said, it’s fun to tinker with it, and I’m curious to hear what kind of automations the rest of the community is using. What automations are you most proud of? What are your favorite? What kind of interesting automations have you written?
My personal favorite is an automation that displays the current “apparent” temperature on a Hue bulb. It takes an average of the temperature, humidity, and luminance around my property and uses the average to compute an “apparent” (feels like) temperature. Then it applies a cosine function to the apparent temperature (to approximate how people feel temperature change), uses the resulting value to calculate a level between blue and red in CIELAB (a perceptually uniform color space), converts the results to RGB, and sets the color value of the hue bulb. The result is a bulb that changes color so that the change in color (as perceived by the eye) mirrors how the temperature “feels” outside. Ultimately what that means is that we can look at a small lamp with the hue bulb and say “It feels cold outside; we should put on a coat.” It’s probably overkill, but it was a fun programming exercise. We’ve started saying things like “It’s really blue today, I don’t feel like going out.”
I’d really enjoy reading what kind of interesting automations everyone else has written.
My favorite is a script not a automation exactly. I run it (just before I get up for bed) via dashboard button or voice command and it:
- shuts off most of the lights and any screens around the house
- sets the thermostat to bedtime mode
- waits 5 minutes (time for me to get my stuff and get to bed) then
- turn off the remaining lights outside my bedroom
- Calls my autoremote endpoint
Auto remote then triggers a tasker profile that makes my phone
- turn on DND
- set media volume for sleep music and alarm volume for morning (just in case either has been change during the day)
- set a variable that another tasker automation will see the next time I plug in my phone. At which point it will:
- set my screen brightness below 1%
- turn on sleep tracking
I use the Home Assistant companion app instead of Tasker. It has similar access to automate phone stuff
Washer voltage goes from a high value to a low value, then in 30 minutes (when the cycle will be done) turn an rgb lightbulb in a conspicuous location a hellish magenta. No more funky forgotten loads of laundry. Passes the partner test, too.
To all of you reading this who are interested but don’t have home assistant (yet): I just set a timer for as long as the laundry takes. If I can’t go get it when the timer goes off I will place a “memento” somewhere (for example placing something on the ground in my way where it doesn’t belong) so I remember. The “set lighting to hell until I do it” solution sounds neat too, though. =)
A middle ground “normie-tech” I use: after picking the cycle, whip out your phone and start a countdown timer. Mine at least can save such timers and I can name them.
I got fed up that my washing machine lies on its timer: it doesn’t count the drying cycle and then it takes another 3 minutes to unlock the door. So I timed that once. For example a 42 min timer for the quick cycle (30 wash + 9 dry + 3 stupid lockout)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_motor#Applications
The reason for the stupid lockout. Pretty ingenious, but yeah they all lie. The worst offenders are heat pump dryers. I think they’re gaslighting their customers.
What do you use to monitor your washer? I’ve got an older 3 prong circular plug that I can’t find anything that hooks into it.
@Passerby6497
Shelly Pro 1PM that I had lying around. Reports Amps usage fast enough to allow me to cut off electrical heating before the breaker cuts off because of overload.
This results in washer and heating alternating their power usage without triggering the breaker.
Home assistant OS on Raspberry Pi 4.
Less of an automation and more of a scene control, but I have all my light switches set up so that double tapping them up or down turns on or off all the lights on that floor of the house. It’s simple but we use it all the time.
I have an extension on this, in that a triple tap on the switch by the doors, will also lock the doors after 60 seconds.
Ah nice. I just have the switches by the front and garage doors turn off everything instead of just downstairs, so we can hit them on the way out the door. I think triple taps are reserved for inclusion/exclusion mode on my switches, sadly. The delayed lock is a good idea though, might just have to add that.
If the furnace starts pulling more than 4,000 Watts, I get a telegram message that the auxiliary heat is running instead of the heat pump.
I have a sensor in my kindergartner’s bag that lets me know when he gets to school and when he leaves school, also via telegram message.
If someone loiters around my driveway for more than 30 seconds, I get a telegram message with an image.
I haven’t said it back up since I moved but I used to have one that used a combo sensor my washer and dryer doors. If the sensor moved enough for long enough it set a flag that the unit was running. If it want from running to not running for a long enough period of time, and the contact sensor wasn’t tripped, I would receive alerts every 30 minutes or so that the clothes were done and still in the washer/dryer.
Even something as simple as water sensors under the sink if saved my ass. Cabinetry these days is made out of fiberboard and if it stays wet for more than a couple of hours it does horrible things.
The simplest automations are the best. An hour before I typically get up, if the bedroom is too cold, turn on the heater.
How do you control your heater? My house has Cadet in-wall heaters in every room, but all the “smart” controllers I can find for them are incredibly expensive… roughly $400 each. That’s something like $2400 to automate my heating. Maybe an ESP32 with a few relays would work?
It’s a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries split system. The two options I had were an IR blaster or a DIY ESPhome-based module plugged directly into the unit that controls it over the SPI bus. I opted for the latter as it gives full status info in addition to control.
I’ve also got a Samsung unit in another room that I can control. For that one I use SmartThings… not ideal as it goes through the cloud, but I’ll take what I can get.
If you’ve got an old-school heater, you might have luck with some of the smart thermostats designed to be retrofitted into old houses.
Edit: just looked up your heaters online. Since you’ve got a lot of them, and they look pretty old, I’m guessing the smart controllers are just acting as relays. So yeah perhaps an ESP32 relay module would be the way to go! Once you’ve got the code working for one, you could roll them out to the rest. You’d need some confidence working with relays and electronics of course.
I use Kasa switches all over my house and am waiting for them to release their fan controller (it was announced at CES last year, and a thread on the old place says it’ll be out at the end of the month)
I’m excited for my fan to shut off if it’s too cold in the bedroom. Already have a temperature/humidity sensor in there.
I have mostly kasa switches too. I don’t like that they don’t expose the motion sensor in them to HA.
For fans, I’m considering these to replace the ones I have that just don’t work. https://inovelli.com/products/blue-series-fan-switch-zigbee-3-0?variant=42097818992805
The ones I have are complete shit. Their firmware seems to lock up regularly and not even the buttons work. There is no reset button on them, so the only way to restart them is to flip the breaker. And half the time that doesn’t even work.
