What are your House Modes?

I do find TTS helpful mostly because i often leave my phone in other rooms etc. Its handy for notifications like weather alerts if I’ve got washing outside, lets me know when my phones fully charged, lets me know who is calling my mobile so i don’t need to go get it and check etc.

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No doubt it’s useful for you and others. :slight_smile: I just haven’t found a real benefit for it in our household, but I’ll give what you’ve said more thought.


Trying to work out how I’ll handle modes when it comes to a home shutdown routine at night, this is what I have so far

I’m recreating my house modes. This is probably the third more serious remake.

House mode is set separately
The purpose is to avoid manual input as much as possible and being able to fine tune it easily.

I noticed that I had three variables continuously changing automations. (Example in parenthesis)

  • Presence (Home, Away, Guests)
  • Light (Dark, Dull, Bright)
  • Event (Night, Morning, Breakfast, Day, Dinner, Evening, Bedtime)

I used to have them set in three variables. Instead replaced them with one. So it’s HOUSE_MODE = Home_Dull_Morning

The house mode variable is then changed either manually or by automation. Some examples.

  • Light is set by time, sun calculator or illumination
  • So morning goes on about an hour before wake-up.
  • Presence is set by either person entity, alarm, or occupancy

This is all run as a single automation and does not “trigger” any other automation. It does however notify my phone so I can see if it matches reality or not.

Automations
Other automations checks house mode, to know what to do.

Updating this, I’ve also added some additional aspects to Guest Mode. Guest mode now also enables the Guest alarm to be able to be used, it locks all the computers by default and turns on the family filter in adguard.

I’ve removed nightowl mode entirely and will just have home assistant ask me if i wish to stay in active mode. Sleep mode has been introduced which is a do not disturb mode which automatically arms the home alarms and turns off all devices too.

I’m currently using input_booleans with an automation that enables a single mode button, and disables all other modes off. But, the response time is very slow when it tries to switch over.

I’m wondering if input_select would be a better option?

i prefer select, mostly because it saves me from having to create automations where "If this turns on then that should turn off and if that turns off then that should turn on for every single mode in the house.

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I think it depends on what your modes are. In my case, multiple modes can be active concurrently. For example, I have contractor and housekeeper modes that acts independently from whether we are home or not.

How does your contractor mode differ from a guest mode? I feel like the automation list would be similar between them.

The contractor mode would be for any contractor that’s not our housekeeper. This is something I turn on manually as needed. The housekeeper mode is turned on and off automatically, based on a schedule, and triggers other things like turning on lights at 100% brightness.

Hi all… anyone integrating Security system and doing logic checks (Is … closed/open/off/on/etc) and enabling/disabling/customizing mobile phone push notifications based on House Mode state?

… meaning, not just setting basic things like lighting.

In my legacy/current automation system I have a several complex Security House modes. I’m struggling to figure out how to replicate it with HA since or if I need to look at Node Red.

HA seem less capable or significantly more complex/manual to do it in HAs automations. For example, in my old system I rely mainly on Groups but HA’s Groups are mostly useless (Make Groups Useful - they lack near everything needed) and I cant do anything needed with them.

Nor does tags or anything else I’ve found in HA give me that functionality.

HA Groups do not provide info on what Entity has changed, when or how… and thus cannot trigger an automation based on an Entity state and know what Entity caused the trigger. Nor does HA’s tags, categories, etc.

If you’ve done this without requiring a ton of YAML coding (which I have no experience with) - or have YAML examples specific to this I can learn from, please LMK. Much appreciate you help!

Yes, if my gate or garage doors are opened with nobody home. Doors and windows are caught by the alarm system.

Without seeing specifics, it’s not easy to help. It would be best to create new topics.

See above: Create new topics.

I think I’ve seen something in the works for this, but I will need to go search for that. For now, you need to list the entities, in which case you can detect which one triggered an automation. You will otherwise need some templating, or have to listen to (trigger on) the raw event bus events.

@parautenbach I posted this a week ago, no one jumped on…

For Home Alarms with my Modes - Protection Mode is house fully armed and prescence simulation engaged.

Guest Mode - I want to have this enable the ability for the Guest Alarmo Code but there doesn’t appear to be a toggle switch in automations for this option.

Sleep Mode: Home alarm without motion sensors.

Sheez, I’m sorry. :man_shrugging: