iOS alarm-app (with watch-integration), that integrates into Home Assistant (lights, climate, sleep cycles, etc.)

I would like to be able to give a command such as:

“I want to sleep for minimum 8 hours and maximum 9 hours”.

… And then iOS alarm clock (and my Apple Watch), my lights, heaters, the morning news and everything would adjust accordingly.

UPDATE: This can also be two input-fields, such as ‘minimum sleep’ and ‘maximum sleep’ - it doesn’t need to be a voice command.

The extra curve ball is, that I ideally would like to use an app (or a means of waking me up), that monitors my sleep and wakes me up outside REM or deep sleep (therefore the interval).

To build on that dream, I was hoping to setup my newly acquired Home Assistant, to:

  • Turn on the heaters 15 minutes before I wake up.
  • Gradually turn on my Hue lights, 15 minutes before I wake up.
  • After I have turned off my alarm, Home Assistant should play the news.
  • After that, Home Assistant should play some music via Music Assistant.

This is a cascade of a setup, all tying into one another.
I have been doing some of it manually (my pre-Home Assistant days), where I:

  • Set the alarm
  • Adjust the Hue lights in that app
  • Adjust the heaters in that app

… and then go to bed. It’s really nice to wake up to, but it’s sooooo annoying having to do all that, like an animal, every night.

Question 1: Does anyone have an iOS app, that can fit into this?
Question 2: Does anyone have any suggestion on how to go about piecing together this system?


Solution consideration 1: Find a good premium iOS app

In order for this to work, I needed to find an alarm clock that had an API.
But I can’t find that. I watched several reviews and articles and ending up trying:

  • Pillow
  • Sleep Cycle

But my dream crumbled here already.

Solution consideration 2: Just make an ‘I’m up’-button in Home Assistant.

This way I can adjust my heaters, turn on my lights and put on the news, when I’m up. It’s not what I want, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Solution consideration 3: Make a (simple) Apple Watch app

If I made a simple Apple Watch app, then I could make this functionality, where I set these variables from that app.

I can’t give you answers for every part of what you want to achieve here, but I will suggest that iOS shortcuts can be used to set helpers in Home Assistant, meaning you could have a “wake up time” helper and use Siri or a Shortcut on your homescreen to set the HA helper to a specific time, then run scripts/automations based on that helper.

The Shortcuts app can also “Find Alarms” and filter by label. So if you create an alarm with the label “Wake up” (or whatever), use a shortcut to find that alarm, get the time it’s set for then send that to a HA Helper, you have half the equation there already.

You will ultimately be limited by the intelligence of voice assistants when it comes to commands like this but iOS shortcuts are decently powerful so it’s a place to start.

EDIT: Siri can also ask for variables in Shortcuts meaning you could artificially make her more intelligent by getting her to ask for your wake up time, how long you want to sleep for, etc, but that’s a little more finnicky.

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I have a similar automation running since almost a year.
I run a shortcut on my phone before I go to bed and input the time when I want to wake up. The shortcut then creates calendar entries for Light (10 minutes before), Heater (1 hour before) and alarm.
Home Assistant then reacts to the calendar entries.
On my apple watch I have to run a seperate shortcut which grabs the alarm entry and creates an apple watch alert.

That works fine, but I would also like to have a dynamic alarm depending on sleep state etc., that’s currently not possible with my solution.