When I arrive home from the gym on my motorcycle, I need to stop, ask Siri to open the gate from my watch and then go. My goal is that I pull into my (Quite long) driveway that HA knows its me on my bike, and opens the gate
Can anyone think of a good way to do this? I do have an extensive LPR setup, however that won’t work for coming home as the plate won’t be read since its on the back
Perhaps something with my phone?
Some kind of other presence detection?
I have many IP cams all around, and 4 facing the driveway so no lack of footage. Should I be trying to do it with detection of a motorcycle arriving, and then confirming something like my phone?
Another thing I can do is have Blue Iris Deepstack trigger on “Motorcycle”, but then how would I get that to control something in HA, from Blue Iris? Anyone know?
I do something similar with my garage door. Here is how I did it:
1.) Set up a virtual switch called “Motorcycle” (or whatever you want).
2.) Set up an automation that triggers when you come home (assuming you have the app on your phone and remote access set up), and the condition that motorcycle switch is on, then open the gate and then after a few minutes, I shut off that virtual switch.
You can add more automations based on that thinking or add more actions. Since this is a detached garage, when I come home, my garage door opens up, the garage lights turn on, the entry door unlocks, and then the entry door to my house unlocks. If it is after dark, the lights between that garage and my house are brought up to 100% brightness.
You can also do this if you have multiple garage doors where each car or a pair of cars are housed in one. You just make that switch be whatever car you want to use.
Consequently, when that virtual switch is on and I leave, there is an automation to make sure that garage door is closed and then the lights turn off inside it.
All you have to do is when you leave, you just turn on that virtual switch. You could even set up an automation to open the garage door/gate as soon as you flip that virtual switch on. Since the automations when you come home shut off that switch after a delay (thus allowing you to back out and leave if you want), you do not have to worry about turning it off. It’s automagic.
Just be careful not to make your house so smart that someone can break in! On the extremely few thing I allow auto entry on I have locked down so that it cannot occur unless very specific circumstances are present other than my geo location (i.e., disabled when the helper “Vacation Mode” is enabled, etc). Just be smarter than you try to make your house, otherwise you might as well leave the key in the door and a sign on it that says “take whatever you want”
A vacation mode switch is a great idea or even a mode (I have night, day, away, etc.)…but one question: What is this thing called “vacation” of which you speak? Lol.
I make almost all my automations dependent on certain states of the house. I have a Sleep Mode state that gets used on almost everything to keep TTS announcements in check but also to know when other automations should break that rule (i.e., a door opens). Vacation mode is a generic term (yea, I’m in the same boat as you, vacations… pfft) but I do travel so it was a good term to use. I actually have an elaborate system around this where I define when it begins, down to the minute, and when it ends, down to the minute, so that I get notified of ALL activity in the house while I’m away but also to do things like warm it back up several hours before I get home.
Off topic I know, but is there any logic where you can do automations as “NOT” being a particular mode? I always have to slip in an “OR” in my condition and then just list every other house mode. It would be a lot easier with just a “NOT VACATION”.
A couple of times my garage door opened and stayed so for hours while we were asleep. Then I refined the automation and set up a wake up alarm just in case it still happened again. Which it did but luckily the alarm worked. Fast forward to the present when I believe this time I got it right.
Good thing that I live in a super quiet neighborhood.
