I had to monitor the LED status light (cycle complete LED) of my washer with an LDR photoresistor as my voltage sensing power plug wasn’t giving me helpful enough data (it was giving me an accumulated number of power usage over time instead of what the power was at the moment).
1 Like
I have my gas clothes dryer with it’s exhaust vent located close to a window in the dining room. When the window is opened and clothes are drying, sometimes the noxious gasses enter through the window (dangerous CO!). So I plugged the dryer in to one of those enerwave power meter switched outlets, and made an automation that triggers beepers (located throughout the house) and sends me a text reminder to close that window if the dryer wattage is high and that window is open. It is the one automation my wife immediately appreciated.
Also having beeper reminders when doors are left open is nice… a text when the garage door gets opened and closed (no more turning around to verify if I closed the garage on the way out)… day/night exterior lighting (no more programming timers or issues with photocells)… text advice to open/close windows based on interior and exterior temps.
Just think of things you do daily and consider if that can be helped along with automation… this is the most enjoyable part of home automation imho.
1 Like
My vertical blinds quietly open Monday-Thursday at 6:45 am to a tilt open position. See https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3798776. It uses ESPHome and required very little modification of the stock Select Vertical Blinds.
4 Likes
For me all started from me and my wife constantly forgetting to turn off the lights… So I started with lights controlled by motion sensors. Then some more advanced automations come:
- notification on phones when iron is in use for more than 30 minutes. It is actionable, so I do not need to go to attic to switch it off, I can make it straight from notification on the iPhone.
- added Husqvarna automover presence sensor to charging base, so I get notification if mover does not return to base within 2 hours… means something stopped it in the yard…
- opening main gate and garage door when I’m approaching house in car (started from adding garage door sensor and dry switch to trigger opening/closing)
- replaced somehow dumb timer for my sprinkler system to control irrigation depending on rainfall history and precipitation as well as temperature forecast.
- added ambient lighting and motorized blinds to TV room, so when the TV is switched on lights are dimmed and window covered. Additionally all entertainment system is controlled with Logitech Harmony Elite, also integrated with HA.
- home presence simulation - if nobody home it starts 30 minutes before sunset and stops randomly after 11PM switching on/off random lights. It also detects our return to home to stop ‘disco’
- finally I have quite complex lighting in my leaving room (27 bulbs together in 5 groups), so I created several scenes that can be activated with push of the button… (dinner for 2, large dinner, coffee time etc).
- Christmas lights automation to turn them on on sunset and off at 1AM
1 Like
- Every 15 min a reminder that the front gate was left open (after sunset) (TTS - Google Home)
- Grab snapshots every 5 seconds of all my cameras and send them via to all family members (wife, parents, parents in law, …) when the alarm is tripped (Telegram)
- Open the garage door and front gate before I arrive home
- Sleep mode: activated by Google Home: lights in occupied rooms go to a min brightness (if they are brighter at that moment, the brightness is not changed) so we can go to bed with enough light to take the stairs
- Turn off lights in the kitchen after variable minutes of no motion + turn them on when there is motion (variable lux depending on time of day)
- Turn on outside lights whenever the gate is opened at night, and automatically restore them to the previous state after 5 minutes - unless they are manually changed in between
- On warm days: link the sonos that is used our ‘garden-room’ with the one in the kitchen (outside > 24 gr and window open)
- Turn on the sonos at a variable volume (depending on time of day) whenever the alarm is disarmed
- Tune the sonos to a separate channel on friday whenever my wife is not at home (dance music), and revert to the normal channel once she is back
I was hoping to start a list like this, to get more ideas on what to do next…
For me…
- The one most people see and ask about is the integration with our magic mirror (https://magicmirror.builders/), this gives a visual of if the garage/shed door is open, or the dishwasher/washer/dryer are done(https://github.com/jasondreher/MMM-door-sensor3). Gives lots of notifications like when I will be arriving home. And a new one I love when we set a timer on alexa the MM shows the timer (this could not be done without HA but unfortunately I need OpenHAB for this as I dont see how HA can know what I tell Alexa).
- Light automation is a big one for everyone I bet, for me its having the outside lights turn on when we get home, or the lights in the garage (which can be dark) turn on when we open the door to the garage or the garage door. And our bedside HUE lamps come on at night with a random color.
- TTS notifications over alexa when the dishwasher/washer/dryer are done.
- An alarm system, when no one is home or we are in bed the alarm is set, if triggered it will send a picture of the outside camera, or alert me on my new alarm clock.
- New alarm clock with TileBoard (TileBoard - New dashboard for Homeassistant) works great and automation turns it on and off for weekend. Uses tasker on an android phone and mqtt to trigger events.
1 Like
Hello,
I have in my HA some nice stuff I think.
First of all I have light automations for all windowlight using the sun. lights on 15min before sunset and turns of 23:00 and light on if movement is detected after 05:00 and turns off when sun goes up.
Second I have pellets burner in my house for heating and hot water. For that I have tempsensor checking the temp inside boiler. If temp goes under 65C I get at push notification to my phone. Also in this system I have an UL-sensor monitoring the pellet storage, if pellets storage goes under 10% I get notification.
Also I made a button that I press every time I have cleaned the burner, from that I can track how many days have gone since last cleaning, and if days is more than 10 I get a notification.
Im currently tracking 4suppliers that deliver wooden pellets to me, and for this I have made 4sensors that gives me the todays price everyday as a notification. And sometimes they have sale and sell it for half price. And if that happens I get a notification directly when they updates there price on the web. When I have this function I do not miss low price and this year I have saved ~$200 on this function.
I have a dog who is out in the garden during the workhours, for her I have made an homemade 3D-printed auger feeder that delivers food at 12:00 every day (If she is there). Also there is tempsensor and heatingelemnt inside doghouse that will keep a nice temp if it´s cold outside. (I live in Sweden so temp can get really freezing)
I have tempsensor in basement there we have our laundry, during winter its getting around 15C so I have installed an hot water convector. If temp is below 18 that’s activates the water pump if temp goes below 18 and closes again when temp is 22. Fan is always running even if it´s not heating.
I have a big pool 40´000liters, its hard to get a nice temp in that one in Sweden.
So I have 3 sunheters on the roof that’s heating it up. But here I noticed that’s if its colder in the air than the water the heaters ar cooling the water instead of heating. That’s not what I want. Therefore I installed an 3-way electronic valve that I controlling from HA. 1 temp in the pool 1m down, 1 temp on the roof in the sun, 1 temp in the inlet to the pool.
From this I can control my valve to close/open when the air temp is warmer than the water or vice versa. This is really effective and I can use the pool more during the season.
All my yard has camera surveillance, I get notification if there is movement. Every day at 12:00 i save a snapshot, this is just for fun so I can make a time-lapse over the years and see the changing over time.
I have z-wave doorbell. When button at frontdoor is pressed, camera take snapshot and delivering that as a notification to mine and my wife’s phone 
Two of my four kids takes medication every morning so for that I have made an automation that talks to them via TTS every morning during breakfast.
That’s the biggest automations I have right now and its working really great. And best of all it´s working so well that’s it has been wife approved 
12 Likes
Don’t want to Necro this thread out of no-where but I have a few handy automations for my HASS install, but always looking for more!
“Door chime for front and back doors”
Door sensor triggers, it sends a notify.alexa_media to my kitchen and basement echo dots and tells me “back door (or) front door has opened” Super handy for knowing exactly when people come and go.
When the doors open Turn on the corresponding porch light. Handy for leaving late at night or early in the morning.
When the door closes, turn off the porch light after 120 seconds, goes for both lights on both porches.
A handy counter I made out of an alexa button to count how many cigarettes I’ve had today. I can also reset this counter and get a readout from alexa.
Garbage/recycling reminder for 2 days before, and the day before. This was actually 4 different automations. 2 for garbage, 2 for recycling.
If someone knocks at my front door, alexa notifies me with a alert. This was a bit tricky, but doable and really not that hard, just took some hot google action.
if my stock rises or falls to a certain point, send an alexa notify.
If my phone battery is fully charged, and still on the charger, breath the basement lights green.
if my phone is below 20% battery, and no charging, breath the basement lights red.
notify me via my phone if any door is opened when I am not home.
alexa notify about the current status of my EUFY robovac. HASS will tell me when it has started cleaned, or when it is returning to base for charging.
Turn off all lights when no-one is home
turn off outside lights at 1am
and motion sensors for pretty much every light, front door (inside and out) back door, basement, bedroom. The bedroom motion sensors are kinda tucked away and only activate at specific times of day (when we’re not sleeping)
Love love love all of this.
2 Likes
Thought of some more I use:
Telegram text every Friday afternoon with a list of any batteries that are <30%. Some devices don’t report battery level, and only report 0% when the battery is near dead. Those devices text me immediately when they go to 0.
Telegram reminder if device tracker sees nobody home and alarm is not armed.
Telegram message listing all perimeter openings left open when nobody is home.
Added a ‘xmas light’ input boolean to turn off the front yard plug at 10pm if the xmas lights are installed (700W worth of old school C9’s, costs a lot more if I run 'em 'til sunrise… same plug runs walkway lights sunset/sunrise most of the year).
Sprinklers open for 2 seconds every 2 hours if outside temp is below freezing (prevents bursting pipes).
1 Like
I’m glad that users are continually posting their ideas. I was hoping it would become an ongoing thread. I have some more things to add in the next few days when I get around to finishing them up. Keep it coming!
If someone knocks at my front door, alexa notifies me with a alert. This was a bit tricky, but doable and really not that hard, just took some hot google action.
Like, Physically knocks on the door and doesn’t ring the doorbell?
I’d be interested in this, 90% of the time people dont ring my doorbell and just knock, which we can’t hear very well due to our porch door being a heavy old wooden one that muffles the noise.
Yes, Physically knocks. It’s a bit long winded, but it works for the most part. It flashes my basement lights and everything. I use the knock sensor knocki. A quick google search will show you that, they are not the best solution, nor the cheapest, but for what I paid ($10 per sensor) they get the job done. I am looking into a more reasonable/and responsive solution, but from what I have seen knocki gets the job done for me.
2 Likes
I actually have one more that I’m trying to part ways with, I bought a pack of 4 from someone who no longer needed them once they got them, I’d be willing to work with ya one it depending on shipping. otherwise, yea, they are sort of a burden for the price. BUT, I will say that I believe a cheaper solution could be crafted from scratch with custom components. Either way, 10-20$ from me, or build your own for about the same, but building your own would be better for various reasons like responsiveness, but from my experience, and judging from talking to knocki’s support team via facebook, and even having words with their CEO, they have plans to do some updates to make them more viable. Just ideas here.
I’ve just looked into it and by the looks of it, if I get a “SW-420” vibration sensor, a ESP32/8266 and some power I should be able to set something up in ESPhome. I just never thought of it previously!
Even found an example
I’m in the UK so imagine I’d be looking at a fair whack of postage, probably just as easy buying an ESP32,SW-420, Project box and USB power bank for similar cost.
2 Likes
I have heard of ppl using an ST multisensor (has an accelerometer, reed switch, and temperature) for this purpose. I have one of those multi sensors and can vouch for it being sensitive enough to pick up a typical door knock. Another possible diy method would be rigging an esp with a mic and audio processing, but that would certainly be harder to do well.
I use a zooz outlet, which has a delay of no more than 15 seconds for power consumption. On/Off is nearly instant, but the power consumption reading takes a few seconds to update, which should be no issue for your use case.
Hi,
thanks for the write-up, sounds amazing. One question to the movement detection for light:
- Which device do you use for the detection?
Greetings to Sweden.
Aqara. I have bought several, they work really well for me. I have connected the motion sensors with Aqara Hub, whereas the Aqara Switches I am using as zigbee devices w Deconz, which enables me to control stuff not from Aqara.
However for me I am using the Aqara sensors to control Aqara bulbs, so did not need to setup node red for this as automations in the hub are very simple.
I started with HASS about 2 months ago. Learnt to take it easy the hard way, and now taking it one step at a time.
Due to working from home (Covid-19) for 8 weeks now, I had some time to observe my wife and try to provide for some automations. Not all done yet. The WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is something a lot of us have to take into account.
I mostly use Tasmota flashed sonoff devices for my lights (sonoff basics), and for wall switches the Sonoff touch T1 and T2. MQTT has proven to be my most stable integration combined with Sonoff. For WAF, most lights also need to have a manual switch.
My first WAF success came with the following:
In a single switch socket, I put a double switch (Sonoff T2). The non connected switch, when manually activated, has a simple automation behind which does the following: Switch off all lights in the living room, turn off the tv, turn on a single ceiling light for 5 minutes, turn on the light near the bathroom for 5 minutes. This is executed with a manual touch of the switch, and is exactly the sequence my wife used to do it all manually. First acceptance is in ! Now on to movement sensors, which are on the bench test using ESP8266’s also flashed with Tasmota.
Waiting for some more Sonoff T1’s, then I will use 2 of them to create hotelswitch in my garage, one switch on a spot where I do not have wiring. One will just work as a slave to the other, they more or less follow eachother by state changes, and only the main will actually drive the lightbulb.
Garden lights run off a battery, which is charged by 2 solar panels. 3 loops of lights in the garden which can be enabled separately. I steer it with a nodeMCU (again flashed Tasmota) over mqtt. Based on the month AND state of the battery either all loops turn on after sunset, or just one or two loops. Sort of seasonal limitation, as during winter months I do not get enough charge during limited daylight, and it saves the battery from fully draining.
I am lucky to have a BMW with connected drive. Although that system itself is very very very slow in response, I can do some nice things with the BMW Connected drive integration. The most simple but usefull automation is the following: This is a lease car, so whan I fill her up at the gas station, I need to key in my current mileage. Something I always forget to take a reading before walking in to slide the card. When my car PLUS myself show location presence at my regular gas stations (zones in hass), hass sends a notifiction to my mobile with the actual car mileage…
Keep on sharing your ideas, I need much more !
grtz
John
5 Likes
Hi Sparks, do you have any more details about your solar garden lights? I am keen to do something similar but was trying to figure how to run power. If your setup runs successfully on solar that is promising.