My favourite automation is the one that shuts the TRV (heating) valve on the radiator when the window is open.
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my favorite automations are
- turning on the exhaust fan in the bathroom if the bathroom light has been on for more than 5 minutes and leaving it running for 5 minutes after the light is turned off. There isn't any reason to be in there for more than 5 minutes unless you are making a stink.
- I'm getting ready to do something similar with a humidity sensor and the exhaust fan near the shower.
- Turning off the lights and ceiling fans in the kids rooms when they leave for school (I use owntracks for presence detection).
- like someone else said, dimming the lights when the TV is turned on
- turning on the foyer light when the doorbell rings.
I would post the code, but it’s all in AppDaemon and controlled by one application using a dictionary of rules.
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Why vibration? (hej)
Put a motion sensor and arm it
Simply because my machine is wired directly in the wall, nothing to put a power consumption meter on without opening the whole thing. Could be done, surely, but I’d rather leave it as is.
hejhej!
What hardware are you using to monitor the power consumption?
Not sure of the exact model, but it is a z-wave switch with power metering similar to Produkter för hemautomation & smarta hem | M.nu
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Install a https://www.bauhaus.se/multidosa-rotdosa-70mm-for-installation.html?gclid=CjwKEAjwoLfHBRD_jLW93remyAQSJABIygGpMpzyEEIvr4SO5shSa9f156ZKY3IRrS4Ayku5GApz2BoCxNrw_wcB and a power consumption meter insted
My Kids take turns doing daily chores and it’s always been an aurgument of ‘It’s not my day.I did it yesterday’ type stuff. Mom and Dad are no longer the referees, Alexa (via HASS) is now the definitive source for chore duties.
Alexa, Turn on Responsibilities now settles all arguments and I hear them ask her on a daily basis.
https://github.com/CCOSTAN/Home-AssistantConfig/blob/master/automation/Speech/responsibilities.yaml
It’s simple but SO EFFECTIVE.
CARLO
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- Alarm clock fade lights/radio in and makes coffee
- Similar to alarm, but for weekends using Fitbit ‘new sleep logged’ as trigger - IF no alarm set AND i’m home and it’s morning hours - slowly wake up house and turn on music, attempt to make coffee if it’s ready, etc.
- My plants add themselves to my todo list when they need to be watered
- bathroom exhaust fan turns on/off based on DHT22 humidity sensor
- dim, red lights come on for hallway/bathroom if motion detected at night
- Watching/pausing a movie fades lights in and out
- Lamps turned on/dimmed according to lux levels from windows
- Air circulation - if one side of my apartment is more than a few degrees warmer than the other, turn fan on
- Repurposed Amazon Dash buttons for toggling scenes
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The timer for my hot water circulation pump can only be turned on/off in 15 minute increments. This pumps too much water around because it runs for too long and then again, it doesn’t run often enough.
And when the power is out for a few hours (yup, I live in California so that happens regularly) who knows when the circulation pump will run the next day 
So, I bought a 5-pack of Etekcity power plugs and a Hook gateway.
Still trying to figure out the ideal timing, but for now the pump runs every 10 minutes for 2 minutes - still working on getting night hours excluded, but everything seems to be working fine so far.
And when the electricity goes out and comes back on, it’s all back on the right time.
Only drawback of the Etekcity plugs is that I can’t poll the state so it’s a fire & forget for the commands, but for simple automations like this one I don’t mind too much.
Got a bunch of more ideas where I can use these plugs.
My favorite ones for me are the following:
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I’m an early riser for work and 99% of time it’s still dark in the house - I have lights come on throughout the house at the time my alarm clock goes off so I can see while getting around in the house - however, since I’m usually gone before others are up in the house - I have the same lights go off 15 min after sunrise - all this occurs on weekday/work days only - not weekends, My alarm goes off and out of the corner of my eye, just like clockwork, I see the rest of the house lighting up so I can get ready for work. LOVE it - so simple, but so helpful!
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Play media on Kodi (movie media only) - dim lights - pause, lights come back up - so cool to demo!
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I used the aeotec door sensor and a z wave dimmer switch on our master closet doors in our bedroom - no more lights left on in the closet by the wife = me
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Owntracks to notify my wife via pushbullet so she knows I made it work ok and that I’m half way home on the way home from work so she can kick her boyfriend out - lol - j/k - but that way she can start dinner etc when I’m 1/2 home from work.
Thanks to everyone else’s idea/posts in here - fun seeing what everyone else is doing!
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I assume this is for heating? Perhaps you could build a sensor and place it on the heater?
I don’t know how comfortable you are with programming, but I would try a project with an arduino, a temp sensor and a esp8266 module for wifi. You might even be able to skip the arduino and let the wifi chip handle the sensor on its own.
I am still waiting for my wifi modules to arrive, so I haven’t tried it out yet myself, but there is a lot of tutorials online.
Thanks for the tip, @chrio
But it’s really only for hot water and to ensure that I don’t have to run the kitchen faucet for some time before I have hot water there. A temperature sensor would be overkill for that, although it sounds like a nice project 
My favorite is a MiniMote that have a scen “Night” that turns off my light
A Automation that turns off all TVs/Mediaplayers at 03.00 on weekdays, so if i fall asleep with the tv on, its atleast off when i wakes up.
Notifiys about when washing machine and laudry is ready.
Some lights that turns on when someone comes home, and turns off when noone is @home.
What i would love is a input thing where I can set when I should wake up, and then it turns bedroom light to a low dim, and then dim it up. Havent checked it out yet how i would do this, but is the next thing on the list.
Yeah, a flexible alarm is on my todo list aswell. There is a thread related to that in the share your project section, I haven’t tried it out yet.
It sounds like a good project for an appdaemon based solution too, but I am totally new to that so I can’t say for sure.
I have an appdaemon solution that sort-of works. It’s based off of your google calendar. It looks for a meeting called “wakeup”. Whenever that meeting is scheduled, it turns on the lights in my bedroom. The reason I say sort-of is everything with google calendar seems to be more complicated than it needs to be. But the good side, is I just put in a recurring event for every morning at 5:30 and my lights turn on at 5:30. My kids have different schedules for different days of the week depending on class and work schedules, so their recurring wakeup times are a little different, but it’s all configured in google calendar.
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I would like a device for my car, that plugs into my cigarette lighter, providing a two port USB charger, as well as connecting with my house via WiFi or Zwave as a simple beacon so that I can easily detect the presence of the car. It should have a rechargeable battery as part of it so that even when the car is off, it continues to advertise it’s presence. It only should attach to the network I configure it with, and when it can’t find that network, or the zwave network it is associated to, it should stop advertising for security reasons until it finds the correct network again, or is placed into setup mode.
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One more I would like and I’ll be quiet for a little while. I would like to be able replace the on/off switch on a lamp with a smart on/off switch of the same type. So you need pushbutton switches, twist switches, etc. Either that or I’m going to start taping live wires to the switches so people that try to turn the light off at the switch get shocked. Maybe that way they will learn to stop touching the light and use the control pad, or Alexa.
My most useful one is the central ventilation control. Turns on if the stovetop is turned on (measured by power draw), the humidity in the bathroom is above the adjacent room (with a threshold), or the lights have been on in the bathroom for a while.
Another one I am very happy with is the light control - turns on based on motion detection, and keeps it on for a while, which is extended every time a new movement is detected. But, if the light is changed manually (through app or switch), the automation backs off for a while (also extended by movement in the room), so that it is very simple to override. It also dims the lights to a low level before turning it entirely off.
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