Suggestions To Automatically Configure Scenes/Moods

Good day,

I know this question may go in many directions, but perhaps it will help other people just starting out with automation. We all know that a little advance planning is easier than changing it later, so I’m mulling over some high-level concepts before I start automating, and I’d like any suggestions or advice from those who’ve already dove in…

My basic idea is to have various conditions set “scene’s” or “moods”, and use them to determine what automates.

For instance… How would we define something like a “High Alert” condition. Let’s say you have lights that turn on as you walk around the house at 3:00 AM to use the bathroom or get a drink. That’s great. But what if you wake up to the dog barking because someone is outside? Do you want your would-be killer to know what room you’re in and watch you look out the windows? I envision a switch by the bed that if you pressed it, would set a “High Alert” scenario. In that case, the outside lights would turn on, and your automated lights would be smart enough to not go on as you investigated what’s going on… So from the beginning it’s important to first configure over-arching “scene’s” that define how the other automation’s happen. I don’t want to start defining lights to go on when motion is detected and change them all later. I wan’t to first have the “scene’s” available to select as a condition of the automation. So how would one accomplish this?

I know there are probably multiple ideas on how to go about this, so suggestions would be great.

Thanks in advance,
Steven

I’m doing something similar that I’ve named “Activity Modes”. For instance, one mode is “Traverse”, which disables motion detection notifications whenever we’re leaving (manually triggered) or coming home (triggered when entering “Home Neighborhood” zone). Other modes are for specific areas; e.g. “Driveway” disables motion detection notifications from cameras in that area and turns on/off (or brightens/dims) lights in that area within predesignated sun and time constraints.

I initially used scenes in conjunction with input_booleans (since scenes don’t have on/off states), but then replaced the input_booleans with an input_select to streamline and simplify coding as well as conserve space in the UI by having a single drop-down list instead of several buttons. The input_select states are the conditions for the various Automations. However for quick access (such as a “High Alert” mode) an input_boolean (toggled from a switch by the bed, for example) could still be used to select a certain mode from the input_select. I use a button with tap_action to toggle the input_boolean and hold_action to choose from input_select.

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