I’ve been using homeassistant for well over a year. I don’t have too too many devices on my network, but I do have all of my downstairs lights, a multisensor, some exterior lights, thermostat, and music players on the system.
Currently I use OwnTracks on both my and my wife’s phones for presence detection. This works great, and some of my favorite automations are the simplest (e.g. turn off all lights and music when we’re away, turn them on when we get home in the dark). My wife is quite comfortable with how everything works, and we rarely need to interact with the UI. Ideal!
In general I don’t control the lights through automations except in these particular situations (coming and going), and when it gets bright in the morning or dark in the evening. I try to do my best (pale) impression of @balloob’s vision for home automation (despite currently using phones for presence detection).
Most of Paulus’ headers map perfectly to my concerns (part of what initially drew me to home assistant):
YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY USER OF YOUR HOME AUTOMATION.
YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO ADAPT TO TECHNOLOGY.
LIMIT THE IMPACT OF FALSE POSITIVES AND NEGATIVES.
With the imminent birth of my child, my house is about to get a lot more busy. The scenario I’m most worried about is when my wife and I are not home, but my child and a sitter are. How do I maintain some of these favorite automations without accidentally turning the lights out (and heat off!) on an occupant? I don’t want to completely abandon turning off lights automatically, but I also don’t like aggressively turning lights off and on based on motion, because there are plenty of times where I want lights on but there’s no motion, or lights off when there is (small house, so this happens very often).
So, my question to the multi-user home automation cognoscenti, how do you maintain automation without irritating and baffling your users?
Well the easiest thing would be create a device tracker for the kiddo. Past that it would be setting up input_booleans for checking on things like, is the kid home.
get a device track (owntrack) for the sitter. This can be a bit intrusive to her privacy as you would see all her movement even when not at your place
generate a device tracker with NMAP. This can detect the mobile phone presence of your sitter and you can do the normal presence detection automation NMAP Presence Detection
generate a device tracker with Bluetooth. This will only work if you sitter always has blueooth enabled
last but not least you can use motion detectors in your house to detect if anybody is there and adjust your automation accordingly
Using motion sensors is the approach I’ve taken. I find this better than using device trackers as it doesn’t (really) rely on 3rd party apps and doesn’t need your internet to be up (I know what are the chances of your internet to be down… until that one time it happens then none of your automations work and you can’t do anything in your house)
If you have a Raspberry PI it’s soo easy. If you don’t want to run cables around your house, a simple (and cheap) WeMos D1 Mini Pro connected to your motion sensor will limit this. Alternatively you get one that runs off batteries…
In my old setup, I had a “Guest” input_boolean I could switch on either through HP, physical button or through Alexa. When on, no automations are turned on, even though my wife and I leave the house. Worked great. Could also be turned on through a calendar sensor, looking for a specific title like “Sitter” or “Parents night out”.
Just started a new instance, and havent reach that part yet, but I will definately reimplement it.
Make a token for the baby. Put it in the changing bag or something else that you know you will take with you out of the house when you or your wife leave with the baby. Or it could go on the keys that you give your sitter.
Have a button (physica; WIFI Button --- for £2.35 or on the UI) that tells the system that there is someone else in the house. So HA doesn’t start the normal ‘house empty’ process. (Although that requires some effort on your part).
Another option is a little more involved would be maybe a calendar integration, where you put the sitter’s timetable (which is good information to store, so not wasted effort) and make HA a behave differently on those days/nights. This isn’t as adaptive as it relies on everyone sticking to their times.
So we have a “child minder” as our little one is now 2. Only for one day a week. I have an input boolean called guest. Which stops all of the automations.
However we still have our main lights (ceiling lights) as dumb, and smart corner/uplighters. So the child minder can still fall back to physical switches for things.
I was thinking of just pinging her phone (as she is on our guest wifi) but she has an iphone, so not the most reliable.
I HEAVILY recommend having an override either physical or widget on your phone, as having the lights switch on when you get home late at night is great, until you have a sleeping baby and just want to quietly transfer from sleeping in the car seat/buggie to crib without waking them with bright lights.
One challenge I failed to mention is that the “sitter” will be many different people. I’m very lucky to have lots of family around, so I expect we’ll have many different people helping out. That in general rules out wifi / bluetooth presence detection imo.
I do really like @Targettio’s idea of putting a beacon of some sort in the changing bag. Theoretically that will be with my child for quite a while, so it will act as a proxy for his presence without having to strap an old cell phone or large watch to my infant.
Otherwise, I just built my first bruh multisensor tonight, so I’ll probably be using a combination of motion sensors and booleans to avoid false-triggers. (I have mostly physical z-wave switches, but it’s quite frustrating if they turn off on you automatically!)
I’m still struggling with how to turn on lights based motion sensors in a way that is not annoying to me (e.g. maybe I was just grabbing a glass of water, I don’t need full lights!) but I can at least use them as a way to prevent false-aways.
I use the motion sensor in combination with time-of-day to switch on a light in my ensuite bathroom.
During the day it goes bright white, at night a less bright blue.
The exhaust fan in the same room also does not switch on at night.
# Ensuite Light by Motion
# =================================================
- alias: Ensuite Light by motion ON
initial_state: 'on'
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.motion_sensor_xxxxxxxxxx
to: 'on'
action:
service: homeassistant.turn_on
entity_id: light.ensuite_light
data_template:
brightness: >
{% if states.sensor.time_of_day.state == "night" %} 80
{% else %} 255
{% endif %}
color_name: >
{% if states.sensor.time_of_day.state == "night" %} blue
{% else %} white
{% endif %}
so there are options, you have to find out what works for you.
I know it’s not really an ‘automation’ as such, but I just started connecting a few Amazon Dash buttons to my system via the amazon-dash ‘app’.
I can now push one button and the system will check and then report back the status of my alarm system, i.e. are all doors and windows closed/locked and if they aren’t, then report back which ones are open. I will set up another one that will set the system to guest_mode = on.
You could use such a button - or something similar - to toggle the input_boolean.sitter_is_in_the_house which then is used as a condition for your automations to e.g. not turn off the lights all around the house.
The dash button could be in the bowl with the car keys, so if you - or your wife - leave the house and the sitter is in, the button gets pushed. This way it wouldn’t even have to be the sitter who pushes the button and regularly forgets about it.
Drawback: if you hand over the baby outside the house and sitter and baby come home it wouldn’t work without the sitter pushing the button - or the baby does
I know people gave you lots of in-depth solutions but just a quick temporary one that may help… use a device tracker through your router (I use asuswrt) give the sitter your WiFi password and just tell her that it so your home automation system knows she’s here based on her being on WiFi and it won’t start turning lights on and off… if you check your WiFi at a time she is connected you will be able to see the MAC ID of her device (or if her name on her device contains her name you will see it in known_devices.yaml) and add her device tracker to a group for presence… I have added all my in-laws for that exact reason… didn’t want the thermostat changing and doors automatically locking while my mother-in-law was babysitting…
So now I have a “family group” that all my home/away type automations check for occupancy because not only my immediate family but also my regular visitors/babysitters show up on my who’s home list…
