The problem with a good running automation is you end up used to them, I forget they’re even there most if the time.
I end up appreciating my once-in-awhile automations more. A couple times a month I need to get up extra early, skip my normal routine and go straight to work. But I’m American, this can’t be done without coffee. The night before I prepare the coffee maker and scan an NFC on the top that turns off the plug and waits for my next alarm, then turns it back on. Once it runs it disables the automation, so I dont accidently burn the house down. Worth a million bucks
In the summer in the northeast US most evenings are cool enough to sleep with just a fan in the window. For the nights that stay too warm past bedtime I scan an NFC on my AC that triggers an automation to shutoff the AC and turn on the window fan at a specified outdoor temp. Saves on electricity and who doesn’t love fresh air??
Do you use Adaptive Lighting for the bedroom lights? I finally made the switch and it’s pretty rad not having to deal with brightness changes throughout the day/night.
The hot water pipe to the kitchen is quite long. We have a pipe loop there with a pump. Back in the days we had an ordinary timer that let the pump run at the usual times when there is hot water demand to be expected.
I now use a Zigbee plug for the pump and added a button in the kitchen to start it manually. In addidion HA starts it in the morning and every time when somebody comes home. Another HA automation turns off the pump after 3 minutes and ensures that it does not start again for 30 minutes.
I’m trying this now, I see it change the state to “printing” but I can’t bring up the device in automations to act on it. If I go into the IPP devices page and try to add an automation from the device page, it tells me no devics are available for automation.
Edit: got it, it was under entities, not devices, in automations. That’s one more thing out of Node Red now, thanks!
It sounds like you’ve added both the light and the button to the devices in the scene, but only the light should be added.
Scenes set controllable devices to specific states and a button is generally not a controllable device (it’s the device that does the controlling). Scenes are also not directly activated and need an automation to activate them.
You’d need to create an automation and specify that ‘when’ the button is pressed, ‘then do’ activate the scene.
I have all the TV inputs automated via voice commands. Eg. If you say “let’s watch plex”, tv turns on if off, input switches, HDMI switch changes, and Plex launches on the shield.
Less of an automation and more of a scene control, but I have all my light switches set up so that double tapping them up or down turns on or off all the lights on that floor of the house. It’s simple but we use it all the time.
Ah nice. I just have the switches by the front and garage doors turn off everything instead of just downstairs, so we can hit them on the way out the door. I think triple taps are reserved for inclusion/exclusion mode on my switches, sadly. The delayed lock is a good idea though, might just have to add that.
If you’re using Voice Assistant, the recog and TTS are much faster and more fluent than what I’ve seen on my own system. I am running it as a VM on an old server, so hardware will matter, of course. Also, you can get remote access with Home Assistant Companion proxying your HA interface very seamlessly. There might be others, but this is what stands out to me.
I’ve been messing around with the MR60FDA1 60GHz mmWave detector in esphome and Home Assistant. Unfortunately it has the same 6m range and 60° field of view you’re looking to get around.
I will say, though, that within range the sensor is quite responsive, and detects static presents quite well. The high frequency gives it sufficient resolution to detect micro movements like fidgeting, looking around or even breathing. My module has fall detection on board, purportedly to sense if a detected person is standing or laying down. Another version supposedly can detect respiration and heartbeet within a couple of meters.
The good thing about 60Ghz is they tend not to interfere with each other, so several units could be arranged with overlapping fields of view.
I’m pairing mine with a PIR module for rapid detection, and to help eliminate false positives on radar hits since radar can see through walls, and doesn’t necessarily expose the distance to the target in esphome.
The 24GHz models have a longer range up to 12m and may have 360° fields of view, but have lower resolution and ranging for micro motions. In the US, they are being phased out for potential interference with aviation though I can’t speak for other countries.
Andreas Speiss posted a good video on YouTube that covered a bunch of different models (link below) that I thought was informative. It will.lead you to some other similar content that might help you to assess your needs and match a product to your application.
I looked further into my assertion that 24GHz radar was being phased out, since something was bothering me about it. It seems 24 GHz Ultra Wide Band (UWB) applications are no longer approved, but 24GHz Industrial, Scientific & Medical (ISM) applications are still approved. Home use of 24GHz radar would be considered ISM, so there is probably no restriction on its use.
Interference never though about that good to know might go 60ghz then and get 3 for 180 degree coverage. Also they can look through walls? Also trough wood or concrete or only the american paper walls? As this would be amazing for my hallway where there is a staircase kind of in the way.
Also what do you mean by fast detection are the radars not enough for someone walking by?
Interference and crosstalk: Both 24GHz and 60FHz mods are tolerant of other emitters in their field of view, so you could pair two of them in the outside corner of your ell, looking towards the ends and a third at the long end of the ell looking back towards the corner and they ought not to interfere. Another possible configuration would be three ceiling mounted emitters looking down, overlapping the fields of view for full coverage of the floor area. A 60° field of view at 2.8m gives you roughly a 5m radius of detection on the floor.
Seeing through walls: “Thin walls” attenuate the signal, but allow enough penetration to detect people through cover. The radar can penetrate thin plastic housings, plexiglass, cloth, drywall, wood paneling, and thin plaster & lath. It cannot penetrate glass, stone, or metal. Same goes for floors. My radar module will detect people in the unfinished room below my home office through the hardwood floor if I angle it down far enough.
Fast detection: I found that while the radar was responsive even to small movement nearly instantly, it takes up to 2 or 3 seconds to acquire and classify a target as a person. Once t locks on, it pretty reliably tracks the person for as long as they are in view. In practice, a person walking into the edge of the field of view at a normal walking pace could cover half the field before they are detected as present. It “feels” a bit slow compared to PIR detection which is sub-second in most cases, but generates a lot of false positives. The technique I am refining is to position the the radar to detect a person entering a room by angling the radar field of view to “lead lead target” and use the PIR to determine the target has moved into a zone where I want action to take place. In essence, I want the lights to trip on when the radar detects human presence AND the PIR sees a hot blob. Then I kick on the light and wait for the human presence detection to go back to unoccupied for 5 minutes before turning off the light. I might also experiment to see if ultrasonic detection is any more reliable than IR, since it wouldn’t be fooled by warm/cold draughts, or by sudden changes in light as from dappled shade or clouds & sun. My concern is I have pets and wouldn’t want to stress them with sound I can’t hear, but maybe they can. Need to research it more.
Its been fun playing with this stuff, but I might note that at this point you can just buy an open platform (as in open source) esphome/HA compatible multisensor presence detector made by the guy who does the Everything Smart Home channel on YouTube. He posted a couple videos talking about it (links below). For me, this is just messing around with something I always wanted to play with, but I’ll probably just buy a kit when I want to hang something functional on a ceiling or wall.
Definitely check out the videos I linked. They’re excellent for helping to understand the pros and cons of this tech in real-world smart home applications.
Everything Smart Home - Building my own smart ho e oresense sensor
Thanks for your reply it really helps the video’s you linked I already found. and found that they where really helpful for understanding. Together with your experience I am probably going to experiment a little to(I like to make my own stuff to so not looking nice is less of a concern as long as it works). Thanks for explaining the few details I didn’t understand. I feel like they are a perfect tool for presence detection that together with something else are exactly what I need. Once again thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge
I have a motion sensor in the bedroom that turns the light on when you enter it (or leave it) and turns it off after some time once there is no motion detected anymore. But there is also a button right next to the door which disables the automation for 10 minutes for entering the bedroom at night when our youngest is already sleeping in the room.
Simple but very useful and even my wife likes it alot.
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