It’s nice to start your tv with your voice, but the true smarthome is automated.
And I’m looking for your best practices and do you use sensors or not? And if yes, which sensors?
Also what’s the best solution for home/away? Or wakiing up/going to sleep? And I’m interessed in the triggers not in what you’re automating.
I’m already convinced that less is more here also. you don’t need a lot of automations, you need the right ones.
I use Harmony hub with IFTTT to manage that thru my google home.
I use a ChromeCast for almost every media enjoyed in my home, so all automation triggers are centered around the CC.
So e.g. when my CC starts playing it triggers the avr, tv and the tv light. Conditions help with what has to start in which case. Hope this make sense.
Lighting automation are (for me) a bit more challenging, I used to use the sunset state with an offset but this has proven to be too simple. Now I got myself an Aeotec Multisensor 6, which has a light sensor, this works way better but still only one sensor seems insufficient. In my case 3 or 4 would be better but they are expensive 
I agree. Automation > remote control.
I like using the arm status of my security system (exposed via Envisalink). Armed away means we’re gone (turn off non-essentials). Exiting (the beeps while you’re leaving the house) means turn on the lights in the garage because that’s likely how we’re leaving the house. Disarmed means someone just got home.
Day and evening modes are set by light levels, morning lights in the winter by detecting motion downstairs. At the moment bedtime is manual or by voice, Maybe some kind of bed pressure sensor?
Yes, ideally everything should be automated. The only thing I have to do that’s not completely automated is tell Alexa I’m going to bed.
My lights are set to turn on around sunset and I trigger a “bedtime” script before I go to bed by voice where the lights, fans and TV are turned off (except for my porch light, which shines through my window, so it is just dimmed and then turns off a little after sunrise) and my alarm is set. I’ve also got an automation to turn my lights on when Dark Sky reports cloud coverage above a certain level, but that’s not a great way to determine whether or not it’s actually darker inside apparently. I’m going to get some light/motion sensors in the next few months to fix this.
Slightly off topic, but how frequently you are pooling your light sensor? Mine is read only once an hour and I would like to increase its frequency. Just can’t figure out how…
OK, just figures that out:
USB Power
On USB power, you have limitless use of configurations, you can easily ignore the wakeup interval, and ignore the amount of battery power you need to save. I would suggest these settings:
Parameter 101 [4 byte] = 241 // report all sensors
Parameter 111 [4 byte] = 30 // set report interval of all sensors to every 30 seconds.
@aimc and others. What really made a great difference for my nighttime routine is the Eight Sleep mattress cover. There is even an HA Component for it. Not cheap but works fairly well. It has presence sensors that monitor both sides of the bed. Now my "Good night’ routine is triggered when I go to bed at night (this can vary greatly from day to day). I also have a morning routine, where the bedroom TV will not come on if my wife is still in bed. My bedroom curtains also only open once I am out of bed or at 10:00AM the latest, so this way it will still show that someone is home even if we are away for the weekend. I also created an input_boolean that checks at 6:00AM if I am in bed and will set a flag until 9:15AM, this way I can check if we were home or not the previous night. I am planning on trying to setup an automation for this winter, that if I spent the night, and temperature is below 35 degrees and it’s a workday, to start my car. As I said, although a little pricey, it serves a lot of purpose.
Cool - I’ll certainly check it out - thanks 
Hi, I’ve set it to 15 minutes (in seconds), seems to work for me, for now, maybe it needs adjustment in the fall when it gets darker quicker. You can set it throught the Z-Wave panel, I’m assuming you have a Z-Wave sensor.
So I just got the Eight sleep tracker and am loving it, I was wondering how long you find it takes between getting in bed and actually triggering your goodnight automation and also how long it takes to recognize you’re out of bed. Ive got some ideas for some automations to do with it however other than getting up to use the bathroom at night the lag might hamper them
Excellent topic! Regarding triggers, I am very conservative regarding turning things (i.e. lights) off automatically. I just think I would find it very annoying if a light went off when I did not expect it to, even if it was actually plenty bright out from the sun. That’s why my trigger for turning off all interior lights is both my wife and I being at least 1 mile away from home.
Similar to aimc, my evening modes are triggered by light levels (from an aeon labs multisensor- conveniently even with the lights on full brightness it measures 0 lux, so I don’t get cross-talk between my lights and the sensor!) with a condition that someone is home. In the morning, I have a motion sensor that turns on the lights if it’s dark and it detects motion. This works seamlessly when walking downstairs in the winter.
One automation I’m going to struggle to trigger is going from my “evening active” (e.g. cooking, cleaning, and eating) to “evening relax” scenes. The areas for both of those activities are rather open, so motion is tough to trigger on, and one of us might be watching tv before the other, in which case we don’t want the kitchen lights to dim. Any suggestions from any one?
My main ones are,
Certain lights turn on 30min before sunset
If either my wife or I arrive home after sunset lights turn on
If I am home and there is 90%or above cloud cover a LED strip running down the hallway turns on
A tts over ceiling speakers lets the kids know 10min before bedtime to brush teeth and charge ipads
A tts at 5pm picks a random childs name to have a shower (stops them arguing who goes first)
To be honest, I never really measured the time it took to trigger my goodnight routine as in the past, it was only to turn lights off. I know that it wasn’t instantaneous, but I didn’t care as long as the lights were off the next day. Right now I am in the middle of transitioning this task from the eight sleep to setting up the “Home” mode of my alarm system. I just installed SimplySafe and since I want some lights to turn on and light the way to the bedroom, this is a better trigger for me and this way, it reminds me of setting up the alarm before bedtime.
As far as the morning routine, I will know more this coming weekend as I just fixed the issue with my curtain rod, so I’ll be able to determine how long it takes before getting out of bed and getting the drapes open for me. I’ll keep you posted.
Well, it all depends what your expectations are … for me, sleep tracking is not a must have, but a good conversation piece. It works fairly well, with some occasional glitches. I sleep fairly well, so it’s not like I need to monitor sleep like I would an EKG machine.
Also I am not a fussy guy and can’t say that I find the mattress pad uncomfortable, as a matter of fact, never thought about it until I read the reviews.
The 2 items that do it for me is being able to warm up the bed (each side independently) and presence detection. I like to watch the news when I first wake up, but my wife completely hates it. So I have a trigger to start the TV at 6:35Am, but only if my wife is out of bed. That has worked flawlessly. I also had a goodnight sleep (that I am redoing right now with another method) that always worked as soon as I went to bed, but It didn’t matter on timing.
I will be testing a new wake up routine this morning with my drapes, I can keep the group posted on this if there is any interest.
But lastly, I liked the idea that I can set a flag (input boolean) that will stay on for a few hours after I am out of bed that verifies that I did in fact sleep at home the previous night, (and not traveling for work) so that certain types of automation will only trigger after verification.
This is what i’m interested in as well.
Thanks for the details.
Great topic.
I use beacons and own tracks for presence detection. Lights turn on when I arrive home or when I enter rooms at night based on presence.
My pc wakes up when I enter the office with the light turning on 20 mins after sunset
I use harmony remote through HA to trigger tv and media players and to set the ‘watch tv’ light states. When I pause Netflix the lamp goes bright and kitchen light turns on. When I start watching again the kitchen light turns off and lamp dims. When I turn the tv off at night all the lights that are on, slowly turn off over 5 mins and my bedroom lamp turns on.
When I go to bed my lamp is already on then turns off when my iPhone State is charging. If the room is fully occupied (ie my wife is in there too) then all the house lights and devices turn off.
In the morning HA triggers an alarm which starts playing music through the google mini in my bedroom. I also receive an actionable notification on my phone. I can press snooze or ‘awake’. if I press awake HA turns on my lamp (if it is dark) and sends me the weather report through my google mini. My lamp turns off after HA turns on my ensuite light, followed by my kitchen light, ten minutes later.
I can also use my room presence to trigger HA to start playing my mucic playlist when I enter a room.
Using presence detection HA knows if I am home, just left, away, just arrived or away for more than 24 hours and then triggers automations to manage device states based on home occupancy states.
I know there are more but that’s all that comes to mind at presence.