I haven’t implemented an automatic home stay (sleep) alarm because I don’t have yet a reliable way to deactivate it without manual intervention. A delay could help with accidental tripping, but I don’t want to have to be wary of that. I guess sensing conditions for auto deactivation will be possible later on as I add logic for people asleep/awake states.
I have a lot of the standard light and time based automations.
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Most important cause the wife likes it is announcing over Sonos that washer or dryer are finished.
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Notification via Sonos if garage doors are open for more than 30 minutes after sunset.
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Most important to me is an automation to monitor the loop temperatures in my Geothermal system and switch to AUX heat if temp gets down to 31 degrees entering the loop. Resets after every heating cycle. Poor designed loop was causing ice lenses under my flagstone deck.
My favorite ones:
- Turn on bathroom furnece 30 min before alarm.
- Turn on subwoofer when whatching movie or listening to music, turn off after that, for normal tv I don’t use subwoofer
- Turn on lights when movie stoped/pauzed
- HAVC which consists of AC and gas boiler, use AC to heat when outside temp is above 10 celcius, gas boiler when below.
- Turn on lights when entrance to the attic is oppened, turn them off when closed.
- When we go out ask us if we want to turn on the vacuum.
This are my favorite ones, but I have about 70 automations running right now
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One that has quietly contributed a lot to household comfort is pulling in cool air from the outside when the upper floor tends to get too warm in cold but sunny days. I don’t like to put the thermostat in Auto mode due to the risk of condensation when switching between heating and cooling rapidly. “Free Cooling” to the rescue.
(“Why not simply crack a window open?” Because this area is very dusty, while the intake has a filter; and automation gives better control and uniformity of the temperature inside.)
Other related automations provide “Smart HVAC” by pulling air in when the furnace is active if the outside temperature is towards the target temperature inside.
The house came with a convenient fresh air intake with a damper controlled by a dumb wall switch. Replaced the switch by a smart one and was in business.
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I have three automation worth mentioning:
- The outside shutters of our roof windows close automatically, depending on outside UV-intensitiy and inside temperature.
- In our basement, there is often a high humidity and we have RADON there. I installed a fan, that blows the air out, if the humidity is higher insight, then outside. (based on dew point comparision)
- Most recently, we got a water heater installed, which works with a heat pump. It is in the same room, as our washing machine and where we dry our clothes. The heat pump of the water heater dries the air. In addition, we do have an air de-humidifier, which is in the same room. Water heater and air de-humidifier are connected via Sonoff POW R2. If the water heater switches on, the air de-humidifier switches off. → save energy.
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What a nice topic!
For me the most usefull automations are the following:
- Turn off all lights and smart devices / reduce heating when everybody is away from home.
- Turn off all lights and smart devices when we are all in bed (after a certain time of the day).
- Adapting heating temperature based on outside temperature.
- Media Player auto-pause/resume when watching a movie and standing up to go to the kitchen or the toilet.
- The LED Seek Tracker.
Should anyone need more information about any of those automations i am happy to provide!
Thanks
2 Likes
Just migrated from smartthings… night and day difference… anyway I integrated my Rivian and my garage door with Ratgdo. Now I can prevent my garage door from closing if the rivian is in the garage and the lift gate is up.
Damaged our tailgate several times on the old minivan this way.
If it stops the door from closing on my rivian tailgate just one time then it will effectively pay for my entire home automation setup…
At least that is why I’m telling my wife.
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I guess other than the normal on/off voice commands for lights and things is the automation which turn on/off a bunch (about 15, depending on the season) remote candles. These are all from different manufactures thus different IR codes. I modified the candles using a remote board from some very cheap tea candles thus making them all work with the same remote. With that taken care of one simple command to the IR blaster turns on/off the candles. So with evening approaching a automation runs turning on several lights in different rooms including the candles, then at bedtime when we say good night everything goes off in a somewhat staggered sequence including the candles.
My SO loves the fact she can have all the candles on without getting to within 3 feet and trying to remember which remote works for what set every time and now she can decorate any place in our very open floor plan living room with candles as she sees fit!
One side note to the operator of the HA for your house, you WILL be modifying a lot of candles for each season!!
Which device(s) are you using as trigger to indicate someone leaves the sofa?
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not so much an automation, but having a washing machine reminder notification when the drier is finished if the washing machine hasn’t been unloaded already
Interesting topic! One of my most useful automations is when I leave work, my actuel ETA is announced at home. The funny thing is that the people at home knows I’m stuck in traffic before I do. 
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Dead man’s switch. 
I use the Bayesian integration to work out whether I’m probably home (surprisingly accurate). If I am, and no motion has been detected for 24 hours, several friends get SOS messages.
Never been activated yet, but if it were to be I’m sure it would be really, really useful. 
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I have something like that for my bike trips far out in bear country. Given a set of conditions my wife will get an emergency notification to call 911.
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Wow. That’s actually a shockingly good (though morbid) idea.
How are you sending the SOS messages?
How exactly are you calculating travel time? This is something that I think would be useful as well… For example, adding a page to the dashboard with travel times from current location to various popular locations. eg: Daycare, Grocery Store, etc.
I’m also curious - what if you decide to stop somewhere on your way home? Does your automation account for this and announce the updated ETA?
I use an automated service called My SOS Family. They have an Alexa skill, so an input_boolean triggers an Alexa routine which launches the app. Everyone gets a text, an email and a robot phone call.
I am using the integration Waze travel time.
It doesn’t give updates but that should be possible.
Hello,
Perhaps it would be good to explain all the parts of the automation. I use PLEX to consume media and i have a plex client installed on my android tv. I have an automation with the following logic:
If Plex client on Android TV starts playing after 20:30 → Send a notification on my phone, if i want to activate the “Cinema Mode”. The Cimena mode is a toggle helper i use and when it’s on, it turns the lights off in the Living Room and turns on the ambilight only if i respond to the message positively.
Now since the Cinema is a toggle, it can be used as a condition to other automations. So to control the play/pause i use normal motion sensors (PIR) in the kitchen and in the toilet that when they detect motion and if the Cinema Mode toggle is on they will pause the movie, and turn on ambient light in the living room.
Now, i wanted also the movie to resume it self when i return to the sofa. For this, i am using an mmWave sensor (LD2410B) that i have mounted on the TV and i count the “still energy”. If the “still energy” is more than 95 for more than 10 seconds, the movie will resume and the lighting will return to the cinema mode. This avoids resuming the movie if i just pass from the room but i don’t stay.
Of course, to finish it all up, if the movie finishes or is stopped by me (plex client ideal) then the lights will turn on, ambilight turns off and the “Cinema Mode” toggle will turn off.
Hope this helps
Kind Regards
M
3 Likes
Nice one. Would you mind sharing how you did this?
I use a slightly different script, but this script should work when you use the MQTT integration for Octoprint, provided you replace the entities with the ones for your printer:
alias: OctoPi Power Off safely
sequence:
- if:
- condition: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.creality_cr_10_smart_pro_connected
state: "off"
then:
- service: button.press
metadata: {}
data: {}
target:
entity_id: button.octoprint_shutdown_system
- wait_for_trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.creality_cr_10_smart_pro_connected
to: unavailable
continue_on_timeout: false
timeout:
hours: 0
minutes: 5
seconds: 0
milliseconds: 0
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 30
milliseconds: 0
- service: homeassistant.turn_off
data: {}
target:
entity_id: switch.octopi_power_switch
mode: single
You can call the script from an automation when your printer disconnects. The script will do nothing if the printer is still connected. The delay is to give the pi some extra time to shutdown after the integration no longer sees octoprint. You could possibly do with a shorter one if you time how long the shutdown usually takes.
This is the automation calling it:
alias: Octopi uit
description: ""
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.creality_cr_10_spart_pro_ingeschakeld
to: "off"
not_from:
- unavailable
- unknown
for: "00:01:00"
condition: []
action:
- service: script.octoprint_power_off_safely
data: {}
mode: single
I have both the printer and the octopi on a smart power switch with power metering. If the printer is idle for a while and the temperature of the bed and nozzle is low, I turn off the printer, and when that happens this is triggered because of it.
Of course, I do the reverse when the printer is turned on (starts drawing energy from the smart plug): I turn the power on for the rpi running octoprint. It will automatically start Octoprint and is also set to automatically connect to the printer.