So last week I had a Proxmox fuckup and lost everything. I learnt the hard way what living without backups is like and I don’t recommend it.
Silver lining is that I don’t have to tidy up all those old automations and entities anymore.
Anyway it made me realise what I’d miss if I didn’t have them, because I didn’t have them.
I’ve been really really tired this week. I get up at 5am and start work at 6, and while I don’t like it, I usually cope with it better than most and have comments about how “It’s too early for you.” But not this week.
I’ve put it down to losing my connection between my alarm clock and HA. I use SleepAsAndroid and have done for a long time. Back when I started it was because it connected to Tasker, but over the years I’ve moved to HA and still use it.
SleepAsAndroid with Tasker was done with web hooks but I use the MQTT integration with HA. This means it’s connected when I’m home but not in network when I’m away, so it can’t fire the messages, which is what you want.
Previously I used Node Red to set up this automation but I haven’t reinstalled it yet, I’m seeing if I can do it all on HA, then it’s one less thing and I can automate in the app.
I spent a while this morning trying to figure out how to reintegrate it with HA and struggled, but eventually I found an integration in HACS which meant I just had to change my device identifier in the alarm app by adding /MyName to the end of the SleepAsAndroid topic so it reads SleepAsAndroid/MyName, add the HACS integration and then add it again in the Integrations pane, with MyName plumbed in.
Then I added a blueprint from the add ons page and left the house to go on a day trip.
In and amongst the day trip I’ve been making my automation on the HA app via the blueprint, and have come home, loaded a bowl and set my alarm for 1 minute time, then smoke the bowl and wait…
Success!
Hopefully I’ll have more energy this week when I wake up to my lights turning on, instead of complete darkness and a strange noise.
Now what would you miss that isn’t obvious (like motion activated lights)?
My 10 year old son’s most missed automation was the house telling him to go to bed. He noticed he was just chilling in bed with YouTube and it was well past his bedtime and asked me to set it up again.
Basically I automated bedtimes years ago so the house tells them to go to bed and an hour later turns their lights off. Didn’t think they’d miss that but they did.
next step: an hour later the tranquilizer sentries activate
Any recommendations for tranquilizer sentries that work with HA?
I’m holding out for matter over thread, personally.
I prefer to give them the Benadryl earlier in the evening.
My son walked in to us talking about “Head Count” (number of people you fucked) the other day and we all convinced him we were talking about how old we were when we tried alcohol.
“But Mum said 1, that’s like really young”
“Ah but back in our day we had Rum put on our dummies to help teething”
Also chloroform on their pillow-cases gets to sleep in minutes.
It was whiskey they used according to my Mum.
I have an automation that keeps track of which kid’s turn it is to empty the dishwasher. Keeps track of when dishes are done with a power meter on the dishwasher itself.
Double tap on the light switch nearby announces whose turn it is on the kitchen speakers.
Sunset routine every evening, steps through over 150 separate RGB values over 45 minutes. Improved our sleep.
Turn off the cable box every night since the dwvs love to install new updates at 3 Am which iniitaites a restart, which, in turn, illuminates the entire bedroom. An unforgivable sin.
Recently: decided we’d get curtains and make everything smart. It wasn’t a bank buster to get a couple gizmos. Night is dark and daytime the curtains open when my wife comes home - giving her the natural light she covets. Makes our humble 1000 Sq ft seem larger, besides.
Now replacing our Google hub with an old old tablet. The S4 seems almost perfect and wallpanel is great. Especially if coupled with ha-Floorplan.
Sunset routine every evening, steps through over 150 separate RGB values over 45 minutes.
Did you use the built-in Flux integration for that? I broke mine recently and it’s a real pain having to do it manually!
What did you to move the curtains?
Switchbot Curtain 3 for curtain rods. I like them, but carefully made sure they’d never have to climb the telescoping part of the rods. That… That it didn’t seem awesome at.
All I did was extend the rods to the side maintaining symmetry and made sure the ridge was at mid-point.
Our house has 5 heating & 2 AC zones that I installed Ecobee thermostats on. Three rooms also have skylights that can be opened. When we open the skylights the thermostats all turn off, and when closed they turn them back on to the mode they were previously set to.
Our house is set back in the woods on a long driveway. When either me or my wife arrives home after dark all the driveway / walkway lights turn on. And when we’re both away they all turn off.
I also have a “bedtime” button on my phone that turns off all the lights, locks the doors, turns off our WiFi speakers, puts all the Ecobees into sleep mode, etc.
I turned to coffee maker on from my bed this morning :-)
I have a wireless button next to my couch that toggles on and off the lights, and double click it to toggle the fan.
I added a bottom to my Apple Watch to toggle my garage doors, and chicken cook door.
All my light switches have a double click action programmed in for whatever is convenient at that location. Single click for the overhead lights, double click for the movie lighting, long press toggles the fan.
My solar panels send me a text when my battery bank is getting close to full and then triggers my car charger to turn on so that the excess power gets dumped into my cars instead of going to waste
Single Zigbee remote button push to go to bed. Turns off the computers, sets all thermostats back to auto mode (in case they were set manually), arms the house alarm, turns off all interior lights other than in the bedroom, locks all the doors, and pauses all music devices in the house.
I just moved into a house with my friend and he gave me full reign to smart home the house. Every light has an Innr Zigbee bulb, which are great for having colors during parties and color temperature throughout the day (Adaptive Lighting in HACS), as well as motion controls in the hallway (which has a broken 2 way switch) and kitchen. The front porch light turns on when I come home if I’m on foot, and the back porch light comes on if I’m driving. The lights in the living room turn down if something’s playing and it pauses if I leave the room. We’ve got an old android tablet I stole from the trash on the kitchen wall for a shopping list as well as an overview of the house. They washer and dryer have vibration sensors so we get an alert on our Google homes when our load is finished (we’re both forgetful as fuck). I had an extra contact sensor left over from the doors that I put on the mailbox, so we get a nice AOL “you’ve got mail” when the mailman comes.
Frankly I don’t know how I survived without automation. I forget things so much less now.
My hallway is shockingly dark when not lit, and the recessed light is so damn harsh I decided to install LED strips up in the corners. But I didn’t want to switch them, so the lights are motion controlled and conditional based on time. During the day, they’re full bright but with a nice color that’s not harsh. At night, only 6 leds light up a nice green so they don’t blast your eyes in the dark.
I have similar control over the kitchen lights but kept the recessed lighting in there. Full bright during the day, dimmed at night.
When the home alarm is triggered, all lights go full bright.
When the garage door is opened, the garage lights turn on.
When the temp in the living room is below 65 in the morning, or at noon, it kicks the heater on until it hits 70.
In the evening, when the outside temp falls below the inside temp, I get sent a message to open the windows. This only triggers in warm months because that crossover doesn’t happen in the cold months. It’s just always warmer inside than out. Similarly, in the mornings, when the temp outside becomes warmer than inside, I get an alert to close the windows. I use Aqara temp sensors on my front and back porches to grab the temps, so it’s very local and takes into account the radiant heat built up from the direct sunlight and works really well. This also has me thinking I might be able to work my contact sensors into the automations too…
I’ve got a contact sensor on my bedroom door to alert me if anyone enters while I’m not home.
My crawl space is encapsulated and I have a large dehumidifier down there. I have a smart switch connected to it so I can have some easy control and monitor power usage. I also have a temp and humidity sensor down there with alerts for if either temp or humidity change too much.
I set up LED lighting on my front porch and have HA turn it on an hour before sunset and off an hour after sunrise. I set it to different colors usually based on holidays, but have it set to a purple that I really like otherwise. Way less harsh than the white porch light.
And of course I can control nearly all the lights in my house from my phone or with Siri.
Most of my automations are lighting-based, so my favorites are both simple in theory but I can’t imagine going without them:
1.) When I get home (or near home) and it’s after dark, the living room lights and the TV turn on.
2.) Not really an automation on its own, but when I lay down to bed I turn off my bedroom lights through the HA app. I’m so used to it that the thought of turning the bedroom lights off at the switch then fumbling through the dark to bed sounds barbaric at this point.
I work night shift and use blackout curtains and earplugs to improve my sleep during the day. Rather than cranking the volume on my alarm so it’s loud enough to consistently wake me up, I use Home Assistant to turn on some smart bulbs as my alarm. When I started, and even now if I have to be up extra early, I also have an audible alarm set to go off a few minutes after the lights come on - just in case the light doesn’t wake me up, but at this point my brain has gotten used to waking up to the lights, and I usually wake up and turn off the other alarm before it goes off.
Another useful automation for me is I have a buggy Samsung PC monitor that has all sorts of annoying issues; like not consistently waking from deep sleep which requires a hard power cycle to correct, and when it is asleep there’s some weird high pitched whine that beeps when the standby light flashes. I use a couple of smart plugs with power monitoring and monitor my PCs power draw to turn the power to my monitor on and off at the wall depending on if the PC is on.
