What are your House Modes?

Configuration
1

Currently starting the build of my new instance and am setting mine up but I’m wondering if there’s things I haven’t thought of. Using a dropdown helper I have the following:

  • Active Mode: Users are home, all automations including TTS are available

  • Do Not Disturb Mode: Users are home but TTS is disabled, notifications are to be sent to mobiles and TTS is held in a delayed notifications sensor to be played later. All other automations work normally. Examples of when this is handy is work meetings, watching movies, in the middle of calls.

  • Event Mode: Similar to do not disturb mode but the automatic lighting in the house is disabled. This allows for scenes to remain active and is handy for parties or if I’m working on something and I want the light to stay bright despite it being say 10pm where more relaxed lighting would normally take place.

  • Guest Mode: Similar to do not disturb again but this also disables automations I wouldn’t want guests to be able to trigger. It also switches the wall tablet to a interface which is less complicated and has less data available for viewing.

  • Nightowl Mode: Similar to active mode however automatic home shutdown procedures don’t occur at night

  • Protected Mode: This is an away/holiday mode that will enable all alarms and simulate someone being home at night.

  • Streaming Mode: This is similar to event mode however It also enables good lighting in my office for streaming. I may remove this and just use event mode and just have an additional lighting automation for OBS.

I also considered cinema mode but similar to the way I’m going with streaming mode, I’ve just rolled that into Do Not Disturb Mode.

2 Likes
2

I have an input_select.house_mode that can be “Awake”, Asleep”, “manual”.

Manual disables all automations except alarms.

Asleep sets things like motion lights to a dim level, turns of things downstairs, sets a lower thermostat level etc and sends an alarm if downstairs windows are open etc etc.

Awake switches off things upstairs, sets motion lights to a brighter level, sets the thermostat to day schedule, opens the shades (if it’s light enough outside) etc etc.

I have a separate input_boolean.guest_mode as it can exist with all states of house-mode.

I don’t need a house_mode settings for presence as, like guest_mode, home/away can both exist with all house_mode states and is determined by people’s phones as devices.

3

Ah yeah, definitely have my own version of manual too although I have that as a separate master switch toggle.

4

Nice list. I added Holiday Mode. It can be interesting to reduce energy consumption for heating and warm water.

1 Like
6

This. Don’t constrain yourself to a single mode value. Many of these things legitimately overlap, so using separate input_select or input_boolean values is really helpful.

7

I just started something similar. Actually, what I really want to copy is the UHAS plugin I used in Fibaro HC2.

Home/Away/Vacation
this it the top level, if the home is Away, all lights are disabled, so no chance for a sensor to pickup a bad reading. Also, at Away, all shutters go down.

Day/Night/Dusk
second level, for all rooms. Pretty self-explanatory, I am actually might leave Dusk out

Normal/Sleep/Cinema/TV/Party/etc
each room separately. in UHAS there were about 8 modes (work,music, reading, cooking), I mostly used these. I can see a bigger house needing more states like that.

The point of the 3 levels, is that all the rooms switch over to night mode, then you can have some rooms in sleep mode, while others stay on.

8

I used to use toggles in that regard however whilst things overlap, they also can conflict so I prefer to allow for overlap on some features of modes rather than spending time automating toggles to rule out conflicts.

9

Can definitely see the benefit of segregating out for rooms, for me this would likely impact nightowl mode the most. For sleep modes the only thing that holds me back there is I would forget to engage it so often

10

House Modes:

Normal
Away
Guest Away
Guest Home
Party Mode

Do not disturb is a separate boolean that can be turned on in any of those modes.

Each room has its own lighting modes:

Manual
Automatic
Watch Movie (only some rooms)

And there is a separate “preserve night vision” boolean to stop me being blinded if I get up late at night.

Climate has three modes:

Automatic 24/7 (winter months)
Scheduled (shoulder months)
Manual (summer, nine times out of ten opening doors and windows for air flow is enough).

1 Like
11

How does Guest Away differ from Guest Home?

With climate could this be automated under 1 automation based upon climate sensors?

12

Guest Away - I have a guest staying but I am not home (sometimes for a year, e.g. house-sitter looking after the place).

Guest Home - I have a guest staying and I am home.

You can do whatever you want. I find the three automations based on season work well for me. The 24/7 and schedule automations changes the set temp based on me being away or in bed and peak or off-peak electricity rates plus a boost before I get home from work. But the climate device uses it’s own thermostat to control the climate based on this set temp.

13

In addition to some of the modes listed above, I have 2 types of Guest modes.

  • Guest Mode
    This is used for a single day/ evening visit for friends where lights (especially outside lights) will turn off later at night, some TTS notifications will either not play at all or will be sent as a message to my phone/watch. Etc.

  • Guest Extended
    This is mostly for guest that will come and spend more than one day with overnight stays. For example, night lights will stay on at a dimmed level all night to help with nocturnal trips to the bathroom or kitchen. TTS notifications will not play before 10AM and kept to a minimum. Also they will be disabled if we are not home as not to freak any guests thinking that there are intruders.

14

Screenshot 2024-08-15 120242 status

I have the following modes:

  • Morning - Fades up bedside lamps. After one hour, house goes to home mode
  • Bedtime - Turns off common area lights, turns on fans and nightlights
  • Night - Turns off everything but ceiling fans and night lights
  • Home - Adjusts thermostats and turns on key lights depending on luminescence
  • Away - Adjusts thermostats and turns off all lights, fans and media players
  • Guest - Disables automations

The current mode is displayed on the house status section of my dashboard. Pressing the corresponding mode button activates that mode, but if the house is already in that mode the button press won’t activate it again. The ‘home’ and ‘away’ modes automatically trigger based on presence.

1 Like
15

@seeharrison - I really like the look of this setup/card. Any chance I could persuade you to share your code? - Great Work!

16

Home has:
Wake, Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night, Late night, Pause, Away

Alarm has
Home/Away/Stay/pause

Each room has
Vacant, Occupied, Engaged (occupied with a longer burnout clock), Hold (Occupied, no clock), Pause, Cleaning, Automatuon

The house clock is always running a default loop and various things impact the main schedule like: vacation, day of week, daylight savings and the sun drift as it gets later in the fall (northern hemisphere)

The security system overrides the clock if it is in paused or away. Otherwise the clock runs. Paused at house level overrides security and all room modes. (sets everything to pause this is the whole home panic button)

All automations are ultimately driven off room occupancy and run through the timer matrix so it basically becomes.

Room x is now occupied, it’s ‘afternoon’ so run roomx-occupied-afternoon scene.

Yes it was a headache to setup. But three years later. It’s starting to pay off

17

Cool topic.

Home: We, the permanent inhabitants, are home. Automatic lights. Routine stuff.

Away: We are away. Turn off lights, aircons, media systems, etc. Enable security features (alarm, warn when the main gate is opened, which wouldn’t trigger the alarm, turn on bright lights if motion is detected).

Night: night lights (dim red) upon motion. Stay/home/night alarm.

Vacation: We’re home, but not on the default routine.

Guest: We are away, but someone else is home. This disables certain features that are only for us.

Contractor: Someone’s working here, e.g. our cleaner, or during renovations/maintenance. Set lights to full brightness and don’t override. On cleaning days, it’s turned on automatically.

18

Absolutely! Here is the code for the dashboard. Let me know if you have any questions or need more info on the inner workings of the actual modes.

Cheers!

type: vertical-stack
cards:
  - type: horizontal-stack
    cards:
      - type: custom:mushroom-template-card
        primary: '{{ states(entity) }}'
        secondary: Mode
        icon: mdi:home
        entity: input_select.mode
        icon_color: |-
          {% if is_state(entity,'Morning') %}
            yellow
          {% endif %}
          {% if is_state(entity,'Bedtime') %}
            orange
          {% endif %}
          {% if is_state(entity,'Night') %}
            gray
          {% endif %}
          {% if is_state(entity,'Home') %}
            green
          {% endif %}
          {% if is_state(entity,'Away') %}
            red
          {% endif %}
          {% if is_state(entity,'Guest') %}
            blue
          {% endif %}
        tap_action:
          action: none
        hold_action:
          action: none
        double_tap_action:
          action: none
        multiline_secondary: false
        fill_container: true
        layout: vertical
  - type: horizontal-stack
    cards:
      - show_name: false
        show_icon: true
        type: button
        tap_action:
          action: call-service
          service: input_select.select_option
          target:
            entity_id: input_select.mode
          data:
            option: Morning
        entity: input_select.mode
        name: Morning
        icon: mdi:sun-clock-outline
      - show_name: false
        show_icon: true
        type: button
        tap_action:
          action: call-service
          service: input_select.select_option
          target:
            entity_id: input_select.mode
          data:
            option: Bedtime
        entity: input_select.mode
        name: Bedtime
        icon: mdi:bed
      - show_name: false
        show_icon: true
        type: button
        tap_action:
          action: call-service
          service: input_select.select_option
          target:
            entity_id: input_select.mode
          data:
            option: Night
        entity: input_select.mode
        name: Night
        icon: mdi:moon-waning-crescent
      - show_name: false
        show_icon: true
        type: button
        tap_action:
          action: call-service
          service: input_select.select_option
          target:
            entity_id: input_select.mode
          data:
            option: Home
        entity: input_select.mode
        name: Home
        icon: mdi:home
      - show_name: false
        show_icon: true
        type: button
        tap_action:
          action: call-service
          service: input_select.select_option
          target:
            entity_id: input_select.mode
          data:
            option: Away
        entity: input_select.mode
        name: Away
        icon: mdi:walk
      - show_name: false
        show_icon: true
        type: button
        tap_action:
          action: call-service
          service: input_select.select_option
          target:
            entity_id: input_select.mode
          data:
            option: Guest
        entity: input_select.mode
        name: Guest
        icon: mdi:account
1 Like
19

Much appreciated! I just glanced at the code and so far so good. Thanks again!

1 Like
20

Interesting, normally vacation modes are similar to away modes but I hadn’t thought about a vacation mode where the occupant stays home.

Do you have a mode for if guests are coming over and you’re home. So perhaps not firing TTS?

21

I saw these mentions from others here, but no, I don’t. I haven’t come across anything in our case where things need to work differently if we have a guest over. Our guest room doesn’t have any automations, I should add.

Perhaps it’s specific to cases where people use TTS and voice commands.

I really dislike TTS — broadly speaking, being broadcast or voice command accessible around the house (for UX reasons, not privacy).

On the off occasion I need voice commands, I’ll just tell Siri on my Apple Watch (HomeKit → HA). Instead of TTS, I have a system of personalised notifications to mobile devices.

EDIT: I should add that I have physical controls on basically everything, so I don’t need to explain anything to a guest or have them use an interface they’re unfamiliar with.

1 Like