I am having a really hard time coming up with good automation for a good morning routine. My actions are very simple, once we are both up, or one person is awake if the other person isn’t home, then turn on a couple of lights and raise the bedroom blinds. Maybe if it’s the weekend turn on the TV or play some music. If one of us is up or moving about while the other sleeps I’d like timed pathway lighting (our bedroom is a cave when we sleep). I also want to avoid false positives - trips to the bathroom, check on the kids, whatever.
My wife and I both work M-F and we generally both get up at the same time except my wife travels frequently and gets up earlier or later on those days. We both have random days where the schedule changes. On these days the routine is very set. The weekends are rule-less. We wake up at whatever time and not always together. The routine we follow upon waking is very fluid.
I realize that saying, “Hey Google, good morning,” would solve my problem but where’s the fun in that? I’m also not going to lengths to try and schedule this all in a calendar. Early on I’d thought about a momentary switch attached to a relay but I’m trying to do this without having to take a specific non-normal action.
Random musings
To get to our bathroom one has to go through our closet/changing room and I’ve considered door positioning as part of a condition/trigger. There’s also a separate door for a powder room that might be useful. There are three doors in total. First, bedroom to closet; second, closet to bathroom; third, bathroom to powder room. I don’t know that there are discrete patterns in door usage but there might be.
The easiest answer would be check home/away and no weight in the bed but this fails if one person is traveling and the other uses the bathroom or one person wakes and the other gets up momentarily and goes back to bed.
I could use pieces of our set morning routine (doors/lights/showers to recognize and trigger but this wouldn’t work well on the weekend when the normal routine might not be followed.
Solving for the weekend gets tough. I could make assumptions like I tend to wake first and my wife is unlikely to return to bed after using the bathroom so if there’s no weight in the bed and the bath room light toggles then trigger. While this assumption is generally true, it’s not absolute. I’ve considered making the weekend pathway lighting only until both phones are no longer charging or assuming that after a certain time bringing the lights up to 10% wouldn’t be the end of the world but all of this feels like cheating the true intent.
Patterns of movement is probably the most interesting idea I’ve had. I suspect that patterns of movement differ between returning to bed and we’re both up and ready to face the day. The biggest downside I see is the inherit delay; at the point I’ve left the bedroom and it’s finally figured out I’m up and turns on the lights then it’s too late.
I realize that this is probably an unsolvable problem within a rule-based system but it’s still a fun problem to solve - how does one figure out when two people are truly up and react quickly enough to matter. What ideas do others have?
