I like my automated blinds and z-wave thermostat. Two of my most used pieces of Home Automation kit.
“if we have excess power is turns on pool pumps” - I’ve been pondering this one myself, only turn the pump on when I have excess solar, turn off once I start to pull power from the grid. How have you handled making sure the pump does run on cloudy days? Curios also if your using automations or NR?
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One of my favourite automations is regarding my smart watch.
When I start sleep tracking it:
- Arms the house alarm in ‘sleep mode’
- Turns off all house lights except the bedroom lamp
- Slowly dims the bedroom lamp over the next 3 minutes
There is a condition to ensure the alarm does not get armed if ‘guest mode’ is enabled.
When I stop sleep tracking in the morning it disarms the alarm.
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I have something similar. When I tell Google “Goodnight”…
- it asks me what time I would like to set the alarm for
- it starts a script in HA that locks the front door (on the off chance it isn’t already)
- turns off all lights in the house
- turns on my c-pap
- sends a message to my phone that Tasker picks up and starts Sleep as Android to track my sleep
- and finally it starts a thunderstorm soundtrack on the Google as background “white noise”.
I plan on adding a couple of things…
- arming the alarm when I finish getting all the door and window sensors setup
- a check that will tell me prior to arming the alarm if any doors or windows were left open
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How do you do that?
And how do you capture the response?
When I say “Ok Google, Goodnight”, that fires off a Google routine. The first step asks about the alarm, then it starts a script in HA that does everything up through starting the sleep tracking, then the Google routine kicks in again to start the Thunderstorm soundtrack. I occasionally sleep in another room and used to travel due to work, so this ensures that it gets played on the same speaker I told Goodnight.
I am also curious, how do you get Google or Home Assistant to set the alarm for you?
I am setting an alarm ON the Google Home device, not in HA. If you go into Assistant Setting on an Android Device, you will see a button titled Routines. Clicking this button will take you to another menu where you can setup a series of commands to be executed all from one voice command. I have a Routine called “Goodnight” which first asks about the alarm time I want and then executes a script in Home Assistant that … see Projects that have made life easier and more enjoyable - #98 by atomicpapa above. When it is time for the alarm to go off, it is Google that is handling it. HA has nothing to do with it.
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Nice automations. Thanks for sharing. Can you explain how do you track the price of the pellets on the web?
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Thank you. I will explore that function. We can do a lot of cool things with that.
Hi there,
Did you do some interesting with this?
I’ve set up automations to monitor both temperature and level of charging for mobile phone. If the temperature goes above 40 degree celcius or battery level is above 95 % it will stop charging. If the batterylevel goes below 80 it will start charging (if temperature is below 40 degrees celcius. ½ an hour before standard wakeup it will resume charging.
just for your reference:
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Thanks everybody for these ideas! Unless I overlooked something, I can add one: If my answer or make a phone call, all my AV players go to pause and the TV sound goes to silent.
I actually have a similar one myself. My phone is always on vibrate only, so I have a TTS message (which automatically mutes any music) play throughout the house if my phone rings.
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can you share the automatisation please ? 
Here are mine:
Control landscape and porch lighting based on sunrise/sunset
Lawn Irrigation Controller
- Determines whether to run by looking at last run date, rainfall since that date, predicted rainfall in
the next 3 days. I would like to switch to using moisture sensors throughout the lawn.
Display last time lawn was mowed (gets from sensor on mower)
Display engine hours on the lawnmower (gets from sensor on mower)
3 alarm types, vacation, away, and nighttime. Each do different things.
If a person is detected by any of the outside cameras while any type of alarm is set, delayed sequence to turn lights on so it looks like someone is approaching that area of the house. Last it turns on the floodlights outside. The lights that turn on are based on where the person was detected.
At 11pm nighttime alarm is set.
- Announces any doors opening on master bedroom smart speaker
- Locks garage overhead doors
- Announces if a person is detected by basement cameras on master bedroom smart speaker
If vacation alarm is set
- Adjusts thermostat
- Locks garage overhead doors
- Has lights in the house repeat exactly what they did a week prior
- Alarms if anyone enters the house (siren, alert on my phone, fake 911 call played on smart speakers, all lights turn on)
Alerts on phone and/or smart speakers if:
- Water detected in basement, utility room, kitchen, laundry room, or bathrooms (still need to install a water shutoff valve)
- Refrigerator/Freezer’s temps out of set bounds
- Refrigerator/Freezer’s door left open
- Any door left open
- Garage overhead doors left open
- Someone bumps the safe or tries to turn the handle
- Someone unlocks the safe
- The safe is left unlocked (regardless of whether the door is open or closed)
- Water softener salt level is low and I’m at Costco or Lowes
- Water level in the sump is too high
- Sump pump has run for more than 1 minute (indicates a blockage aka frozen discharge pipe)
- The power has gone out
- The oven is left on for more than 60 mintues
- The oven light is left on after the oven is turned off
- Someone is at the front door
- Someone rang the doorbell
- Water leak is suspected based on water meter readings
- Aquarium temperature is out of bounds
- Aquarium leak detected
If the smoke detectors go off, every light in the house turns on and the smart speakers in every room announce “FIRE FIRE FIRE” at full volume every 3 seconds. Also sends notification to phones.
Turns on water heater recirculator pump in the morning for showers (unless vacation alarm set)
If you are showering outside of normal showering times, double pressing shower room light switch turns on recirculator pump for an hour.
Double pressing light switch at top of basement stairs turns off all basement lights
Single pressing light switch in office turns on lights, double pressing turns on lamps.
Another secret thing I do in the office turns off the camera because I don’t like being on camera all day (turns off port on PoE switch).
Turns off lights/fans around the house when presence is no longer detected
Turns on SOME lights when you enter room.
Turns on pantry light when you open the door and turns them off when you close the door (or after 10 minutes has passed)
Track water, electricity, and gas usage in Energy dashboard
Announces doors opening on office smart speaker if presence detected in office. Switch in UI to disable this for when I’m in meetings.
After basement TV has been powered on (accumulative over the day) for 50 minutes, displays message on TV warning that it will turn off in 10 minutes. After 60 minutes of accumulated use, it turns off power to the TV and does not reset until the next day. Yes, I have a teenage boy.
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This topic is very inspirational, I falled in love for HA and I am always wondering “What else can I do?”.
I am not an advanced user but let me share the list of things that I have done that are really useful for me:
- Automatic lights, this is the most basic thing for everyone but I have to list it here as it is probably one of the most useful things to do. I have a move sensor in every room and automation that when move is detected after sunrise and before sushine, turn on lights and turn off when there is no longer movement. I also have other automations that in the night make lights softer.
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Cat: My cat is essentially living most of his time outside and he doesn’t have a litter in my house. Sometime when I go to work I forget to let him go out and when I back home in the evening sometime he pee around. I installed ESPresense in every room and in the garden, I bouht a cheap BT keyfinder (1€), open it, take the chip and mounted the chip on my cat’s collar.
I have now an automation that when I leave the house, if the cat is detected in the house, send me a Telegram message telling me tthat I forgot the cat in the house. VERY USEFUL for myself.
I also have an automation that records the “Cat last seen” so that if I am worried as I don’t see him since long time (sometimes I don’t see him for 2 days), I can check last time he was next to the house or in my garden. - Smartphone BT: As I have ESPresense in every room, this is also detecting my Smartwatch position in the house, unfortunately this works only if the smartwatch is not connected to my smartphone. I have an automation that when I arrive home turn the smartphone BT off and when I leave home turn it on.
- Alarm: I setup my home alarm automation so that, when I am not home, if the door is opened or if more than one move sensor detect movement (I have multiple move sensor everywhere, I created a template sensor counting if more than one detect movement, this has been a game changer to avoid false positive), send me a Telegram message telling me what triggered the alarm (Door, Movement, …) and sending me a smapshot of every camera I have.
- Shopping: I have an automation that when I enter a supermarket zone (I create a zone for every supermarket around here) send me a message on my phone with the shopping list.
- Alexa Echo Show Displays: I always hate that alexa’s display are ALWAYS on. I have an automation that every 15 minues turn off all display (Also saving energy)
- Water Boiler: My water boiler to make Tea/Coffee make the water way too hot before turning off itself. I made an automation that turn it off after 2/3 minutes of warming
- Cinema: I have an automation to start the cinema mode, this will open the projector cover, turn on the projector, connect the hifi stereo to it and turn off the lights. Soooo coooool !
- High consumption: If the house is using too much watts, the power cuts, this is very annoying. I made an automation that announce on all Alexa if my house is using too many watts for more than 2 minutes so that I can turn something off before the power is cut in all the house.
- Pool: I have an automation that activate and disactivate the pool filter pump.
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Remember stuff: I have an input boolean for things I have to reme
mber to do regurlarly like take out the trash, water the plants, etc… Those recurring tasks are in HA calendar that activate the input boolean (and my wall tablet show I have this task to be done), also announce the task on Alexa. -
Wall Tablet: Even if most says that in a smart home you shoudn’t interact with an app, I think that in reality sometime you have to, or it’s handy.
I installed a Wall Tablet and created a tablet view. The wall tablet is cool to see and useful to me.
In the top bar I have links to subviews to handle:
Clima - Air conditioning system and control of the smart valvles installed in all heaters.
Plugs - Show the real time watt usage of every soket, I can also turn those off and on from this view
Security Cameras
Move sensors
Alarm
and a few buttons to activate/disactivate stuff
In the central portion I have quick lights control, quick AC control and view of security camera. All cars are swipe card, so I can swipe lights to control the lights of the second floor, swipe security cameras to show the other cameras.
Picture map of the house from which as well I can control the main stuff, if I swipe I can go to the second floor or to a nicer 3D view.
One cool thing is that I used conditional to display my ESpresense position (the blue man in the picture) and Cat’s position (the white cat face). This is sort of useless but cool. Sometime this helps me to know where the cat is in the house.
The bottom bar is mostly an informative bar showing tablet battery level, current internet speed with speedtest, size of HA database, free space on the raspberry, link to energy dashboard, link to a subview where I can check the status of every battery, button to announce “Food is ready” on all Alexa, button to turn on music everywhere, and again our room positions.
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could you please share more info on the “Has lights in the house repeat exactly what they did a week prior” I feel like that should be an automation blueprint where one can select lights to take part in the automation. I think there would be lots of interested 