One more thing…

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I’d really love to see an official Home Assistant companion for Windows. I’ve been using IOTLink for a few months but it can be pretty unpredictable and stop working all together at times

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The Mac app is seriously awesome, I’ve had a lot of fun playing with these sensors. Here’s some automation ideas for inspiration:

  • Use “Active” sensor to get super reliable room presence in your office
  • Use “Active” sensor to set the proper mood for when you work. Turn on desk light strip, play some music, etc. Then turn off when it goes inactive.
  • Use “Active” sensor as an alarm system of sorts. If you’re not home and someone tries to snoop on your computer by lifting the laptop lid or something, flash the lights red and play a “Hands Off!” TTS :stuck_out_tongue:
  • Use the “Battery Level” sensors in your wakeup routine to notify if you’ve forgotten to charge your laptop before leaving for your commute.
  • Use “BatteryHealth” attribute of battery sensor to notify when your laptops battery health changes from “Good” to something worse.
  • Use the “Camera” binary sensor to turn on a bright light or open the automated shades to increase natural lighting in the room.
  • Use the Camera & Microphone sensors to turn on a red light in your hallway so family members know not to disturb you while on an important meeting or recording a podcast (quick plug for the Home Assistant Podcast).
  • Using the History Stats integration you can track the state of the camera/mic binary sensors to determine how many hours you’ve spent in meetings.

Curious to see what other cool ideas people think up in terms of automations. Please share them here if you do.

Great job Zac and Robbie!

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I love the computer snooping one. I trust my cleaning lady and my kids with my life, but…

We’ll we all make mistakes I suppose. So much of my personal life is in here. Especially given once logged in, just about everything is accessible without a password. I use preshared keys for ssh, my browser stays logged into HA, etc. Yeah I’m screwed if someone cracks my MacBook login.

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Awesome work guys!
I’d also like to make a suggestion, I didn’t know about IOT Link so I made my own app, its similar but I think the UX for creating flows is better with my approach, on top of supporting A LOT of different utterances with the custom skill, I’m planning to add google assistant support soon as well (works now with alexa)

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HA thread here:

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Awesome! Linux/Windows companion next? Would love to be able to trigger things directly with shortcuts and system sensors. When I open a game, I run a certain script/scene something like that for example also (gaming mode)

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Before we get too many more questions about a Windows companion app, I wanted to share why one doesn’t yet exist and probably won’t for a while…

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Scratch that, I should read the article! :joy: https://iotlink.gitlab.io/index.html

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Ahh cross-platform would be the best thought though right so something in python or (I know it’s got a rep) electron and ts? Or something in .net even so long as it uses mono

Python feels better in my eyes. One of these framworks might be an option:

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Thanks for this Mac app, but…

But I’m on High Sierra (10.13.x) since my iMac is a late 2009… I know it’s quite “old” but it runs very well

Any chance to get it works with previous MacOS versions?

Thanks

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That’s a great idea! I always forget to move enough when working

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Ok now I want an “on-air” sign outside

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Sadly no chance as the app is built with Apple’s Catalyst which only supports Catalina and newer.

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Already working on one :smiley:

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Very sad… :cry:

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If you’re Windows user you can use this great app https://github.com/PiotrMachowski/Home-Assistant-Taskbar-Menu

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Big thanks for this awesome app!!! Really nice to have these sensors for the macs, is there any chance to get multiple instances of home assistant use this sensors?

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Nice ideas list!!! Thanks :slight_smile:
I added some of them today to my automation!

  • Presence -> color light
  • Camera -> soft color light + pause music on sono (this part isn’t implemented yet)

I love the red light in your hallway, but don’t have the hardware yet.

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I am using the app also on my Mac.

I hope you also will be adding a way to make the lettertype bigger because it’s pretty tiny on a 34" screen

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Agreed. IOT Link does not compare. So I’ll ask …WHERE IS THE LOVE FOR WINDOWS? :slight_smile:

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Yes, that integration looks great, but there are a heap of really juicy sensors in the Mac integration that aren’t covered by lm-sensors such as the “Active”, “Camera” and “Microphone” sensors. I realize it was done on the Mac because of the easy port from IOS, but we can’t have Linux lagging behind :wink:

I switched to a Linux laptop from MacOS this year and I’m sure all the info is available in Linux to get the same set of sensors, but it would be great to have them in one place.

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