Is there a collection anywhere of innovating automations? Automations that maybe use abstract thinking to do cool stuff?
I know we’ve got a “share your projects” but is there a similar “share your automations” ?
I’m at a point now where I’ve got the basics working really well. Presence detection, alarm, lights on/off…I’m starting to think of what’s level 2?
e.g. (this is my idea of a level 2 automation might look like)
High humidity suddenly detected in shower room
Shower presumed to be happening
Motion detected near sink three floors away in the kitchen by PIR
Message plays near sink "Don’t turn the tap on now, someone’s showering!!)
This? I have now, but hadn’t before. It’s not exactly what I’m after - I guess I’m after automations which are nifty and go a little beyond “open the blinds when the sun comes up” - even though those are cool and useful - I’m specifically looking for a wow factor, but a subtle one.
I suspect you’re looking for some sort of shared repository of ‘design patterns’. In other words, if you’re automating a garage door, here are some of the best automations for handling that.
I know of no such library of ‘best practices’.
This community forum is overflowing with examples but you need to search for them. You can use the forum’s search tool (upper right hand corner of the screen) or with google, etc.
There are also examples to be found in users’ GitHub repos. Scroll down the cookbook’s page to the configuration file section. Each link leads to a user’s repo containing details about their system (including automations).
If you wish to volunteer to create a curated list of automations, the community would greatly appreciate it.
Honestly, and maybe surprisingly, I have none. Not ‘none to share’ but simply ‘none’.
Although I spend a lot of time helping others here in this community forum, I continue to use a completely different home automation product (Premise); all automation logic resides in Premise. I only use Home Assistant to provide a modern UI (the two communicate via MQTT).
Nevertheless, I appreciate what you’re willing to do and I hope others take advantage of your offer.
I think one of my favourite automations is an ios actionable notification that offers to turn off my sonos alarm on a bank holiday or annual leave in my google calender and then back on at the end of bank holiday or annual leave period.
Its great but nobody notices it apart from when its not working! So wont really hit the wow factor
It’s the other way around; I use Home Assistant to render the GUI.
Premise handles all automations and management of the integrations (I’m using Home Assistant’s terminology; Premise uses different terms but they’re the same concepts).
The UI for managing the automations and integrations is an app called Premise Builder. Its UI is significantly more sophisticated (and feature-dense) than what’s currently available in Home Assistant (very similar to Microsoft’s Visual Studio). Plus Premise employs a few extra concepts that don’t yet exist in Home Assistant (like a Scheduler with a calendar view of all scheduled activities).
depending on what you are looking for i’ve got some packages set up that use some highly templated automations that would go beyond the basics. I don’t know if they would qualify as “out of the box” thinking tho.
You can also check out my repo, nothing fancy but all my automations are documented and maybe some of them are “advanced” enough for you.
I think for you kind of level 2 automations you probably need to go the AppDaemon route, because at one point you’ll likely be stuck with the automations from Home Assistant.
