Anyone have any cool HA light related Home Automations they want to share? I’m setting up some flashing of the lights as people walk up to the door but am hoping to get more than 10 flashes flash:long.
1 Like
You could write a script to turn the light on and off and use the delay option to put a certain amount of time between the on and off service calls. Not sure how many times that can be repeated in a script but it wouldn’t take long to test.
See here for an example:
It’s been a couple of years, but it’s that time of year again. Any thoughts on any cool automations for the holidays. Right now, I’m planning on using the movement sensor from my ring doorbell to trigger some hue lights to flash different colors and maybe have alexa play some sounds or say some things. Anyone else have anything??
I am doing a raspberry pi with motion sensor inside a pumpkin.
Currently this would trigger lights inside the pumpkin to flash in a cycle and a small speaker to play a scary sound from a list.
This year i am hoping to do the lighting and sounds on a bigger scale using HA to trigger a scene of flashing lights in various colours across entire room, then sounds to come from the Alexa speaker in the room.
Although cycling through colours is ok, i want to do a lightning flash sort of thing, however struggling to see how to pull this off in HA. (Hoping the pi could then send the on command for that script)
2 Likes
Well, let’s revive this thread!
I’m wanting to recreate the 2017 “Lets Get Spooky” effect from Google Home. Randomly dimming and flickering lights on/off, and playing some randomized sound effects on all the different speakers throughout the house.
Google brought back the command, but left out all the different smarthome devices control. So this year all it actually does is play the sound effects on the one speaker you give the command to.
Has anyone done this type of automation they’d be willing to share?
this year im going to try somthing for halloween.
i have the bruh/dr zzs leds around my facia of the house so they will be on halloween setting, and when somone activtes the line crossing on my hikvision it will turn to lightning mode, i will also have some skeleton in my car with flashing lights that activate on the line crossing too.
when they press my doorbell (amazon dash button) it will trigger a script to play spooky music on the alexa which will be behind my door, and also i have made a mqtt powered smoke machine, using a d1 mini and tasmota with a solid state relay to trigger the remote wire.
give them a blast of smoke lol
1 Like
sounds good, how are you getting sound onto the alexa device? I have a raspberry pi with sound files on i was trying to bluetooth to an echo. However so far this has been intermittent success, sometimes works great, other times i get a bluetooth connection error. (using built in bluetooth on a RPi Zero W)
I did the same thing with the LEDs (although, I do need to add a few more strings around the yard this weekend). I’m using an EcoLink PIR as a boundary line to trigger the lights.
It allows you to use your Echo as a media device in HA. I’ve been testing it for a few weeks and so far, it’s awesome and has worked pretty well.
Just going to use the alexa tts media player package to do the music
1 Like
I haven’t seen Alexa TTS within Home Assistant before, can you point me to a thread on it? I see a few but none that seem to be what i would want.
Home Assistant function to play the sound via speaker X when triggered from sensor Y or play via speaker X when Home Assistant receives remote command Y
Many thanks
I’ve got this automation.
When someone is pressing the doorbell it will turn all the lights off at the front door and inside, and then start to play some knocking and a little girl talking in the background.
Then after 30 seconds it will light up again 
And ofcourse it will send me some pics and the camera will record everything that night!
Mohahaha.
- alias: Dorrklockan Halloween
id: dorrklockan halloween
initial_state: 'off'
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.dorrklockan
to: 'off'
action:
- service: switch.turn_off
entity_id: switch.rest_utebelysning
- service: light.turn_off
entity_id:
- group.theus_rum
- group.hallen
- light.vardagsrum__trapp
- service: media_player.volume_set
entity_id:
- media_player.entre_speaker
data:
volume_level: 0.8
- service: media_player.play_media
data:
entity_id:
- media_player.entre_speaker
media_content_id: https://mydomain.duckdns.org:8123/local/halloween.mp3
media_content_type: music
- service: script.turn_on
entity_id: script.dorrklockan_snapshot #Snapshot 1
- delay: '00:00:02'
- service: script.turn_on
entity_id: script.dorrklockan_snapshot #Snapshot 2
- service: script.turn_on
entity_id: script.dorrklockan_snapshot #Snapshot 3
- delay: '00:00:02'
- service: script.turn_on
entity_id: script.dorrklockan_snapshot #Snapshot 4
- delay: '00:00:29'
- service: light.turn_on
entity_id:
- group.theus_rum
- group.hallen
- light.vardagsrum__trapp
- service: switch.turn_on
entity_id: switch.rest_utebelysning
I was thinking of a smoke machine aswell, but my wife stopped me and said it was overkill…
3 Likes
Missed that i could tell speaker what to play by local file like that. (been using spotify previously)
Will get Echo set as a media player and start on this!
Thank you very much
No problems!
you have this working?
I have the Alexa TTS @code-in-progress linked but cannot get it to play a local file.
(TTS is awesome though for other projects)
still work in progress, but this skull started its life as a £4.99 B&M bargains plastic toy, i added in the d1 mini and leds and my mqtt controlled smoke machine and sound is played through alexa media player using bluetooth to a mini speaker
sounds are from a album on amazon called halloween haunted house - pro sound effects library.
youtube vid is uploading at the mo so might not be available yet
2 Likes
Loving this thread!
So got my lights flashing and a thunder crack sound over the alexa speaker.
My last step is a wrapper to read current state of lights, do my animation, return lights to how they were.
Any ideas on best way to do this?
Plan is to make 3 or 4 options and set them in a random loop when motion is detected. Currently I have the below;
thunder:
alias: Thunder
sequence:
- alias: lights
service: script.turn_on
data:
entity_id: script.flash_loop
- alias: sounds
service: media_player.play_media
data:
entity_id:
- media_player.living_room
media_content_id: "Powerful Thunder Crack - Scary Halloween Sound Effects"
media_content_type: "AMAZON_MUSIC"
- alias: lightsOff
service: script.turn_off
data:
entity_id: script.flash_loopI’ve got two spare Yeelight wifi bulbs - will be putting them inside the front door, either side.
Then I’ve got my xiaomi/mija gateway further down the hall.
Finally, there will be a mija ‘button’ outside - “Press me”
- alias: EVENT - Halloween doorbell
trigger:
platform: event
event_type: click
event_data:
entity_id: binary_sensor.switch_158d000241b2e9
condition:
condition: time
after: '16:00:00'
before: '20:00:00'
action:
- service: xiaomi_aqara.play_ringtone
data:
gw_mac: "78:11:DC:E1:F8:CD"
ringtone_id: 3
ringtone_vol: 50
- service: light.turn_on
data:
entity_id: light.ylstudycb1, light.spare2
brightness: 255
effect: "Strobe epilepsy!"
- service: light.turn_on
data:
entity_id: light.gateway_light_7811dce1f8cd
brightness: 255
color_name: green
- delay:
seconds: 5
- service: light.turn_on
data:
entity_id: light.ylstudycb1, light.spare2
brightness: 255
color_name: lime
transition: 5
- service: light.turn_on
data:
entity_id: light.gateway_light_7811dce1f8cd
brightness: 255
color_name: red
transition: 5
- delay:
seconds: 30
- service: light.turn_off
data:
entity_id: light.gateway_light_7811dce1f8cd, light.ylstudycb1, light.spare2Just filmed a little youtube video on my Halloween lighting set up.
Enjoy!
2 Likes
here was my setup for halloween 2018
5 Likes