Not really common automation for HA, but I made medication assistant automations. Its super helpfull for people who take loads of meds. It tracks how many pills left, does android notifications or sets alarm and it also sends an email when its time to reorder meds. Its insane how usefull it is
If the furnace starts pulling more than 4,000 Watts, I get a telegram message that the auxiliary heat is running instead of the heat pump.
I have a sensor in my kindergartner’s bag that lets me know when he gets to school and when he leaves school, also via telegram message.
If someone loiters around my driveway for more than 30 seconds, I get a telegram message with an image.
I haven’t said it back up since I moved but I used to have one that used a combo sensor my washer and dryer doors. If the sensor moved enough for long enough it set a flag that the unit was running. If it want from running to not running for a long enough period of time, and the contact sensor wasn’t tripped, I would receive alerts every 30 minutes or so that the clothes were done and still in the washer/dryer.
Even something as simple as water sensors under the sink if saved my ass. Cabinetry these days is made out of fiberboard and if it stays wet for more than a couple of hours it does horrible things.
I have a binary sensor that turns on when I’m away from home for 30 minutes and off when I’m home for 5 minutes. When I open the door and the sensor is on, music starts playing and the living room lights turn on. Love it.
I made my own that used irrigation valves with a Zooz Zwave dry relay, with Home Assistant to control it. It was a giant pain to find and get everything hooked up right but afterwards it works well.
I’ve since found some zigbee-based irrigation valves in AliExpress that I’ll try out this summer. I think they’re about the same price as what I built per valve (considering all the parts and the time needed). I haven’t had a chance to try them yet as I got them at the end of last summer but they worked well in testing.
Rachio is supposed to have a local API coming soon. The Smart Hose hardware is great quality and I’m happy with their app in the meantime. Waiting to see how they open the integration before I commit heavily.
You might be able to do something with local Zigbee2mqtt or Zwave2mqtt proxies at the cabin, and tie those areas back into the main instance over Wirguard or Zerotier, but you’d need a pretty reliable internet service at the cabin to do so.
I don’t use those proxies myself since ai just use the one local hub, bit it should be possible. Maybe someone with more experience with those proxies could chime in?
I haven’t used Homekit, so I can’t speak to that, but I have had an ecobee for several years now, and it’s integrated into HA.
It’s not clear to me if your setup is “1 heating system for one room, and a second system for a different room”, or if it’s two heating systems for the same area.
In the first case, I don’t think it’ll work - ecobee is only designed to control one heating system. The remote thermometers just tell it what’s going on where they are, so it knows if that room needs more heating or cooling. If they do, then it fires up the HVAC to make that happen. You can tell ecobee which thermometer(s) to use to trigger the HVAC - at night, you probably care about the bedroom more than anything else, while in the day you probably care about the living room more. But it can’t simultaneously control two separate systems.
If it’s the second case, ecobee does, I think, have provisions for two stages of heat, so it’s possible you could set it up to use the second HVAC as stage 2. But I’m not certain about this at all. You might need an additional relay, I’m not sure.
But I think there might be an easier solution that doesn’t require a full blown second thermostat using HA, and this is what I do for our pellet stove (we have a main household HVAC, and a pellet stove for extra heat). Get something like a Shelly 1 and use that to trigger the second heat system. Then put in a temperature sensor - an ecobee remote sensor, bluetooth, wifi, Zigbee, etc., whatever works best for you - and with those two things, you can create a “thermostat” entity in HA, then use a thermostat card to control it. Assuming HA is running and it’s getting info from the thermometer, it works well. Of course you’d mostly access it on a phone or computer, not something mounted on the wall (unless you put a tablet on the wall to view and control HA, but that’s a whole different project).
This isn’t necessary for it to work, but I have a script set up that has logic such as: []If the outside temperature is above 50 degrees, set the thermostat to 50 so the pellet stove shuts down and doesn’t restart. (Don’t need it.) []If the outside temperature is below 45 degrees, set the thermostat according to the rules below. []At night set it to 70 degrees, during the day, 72.
[]If the outside temperature is below 32 degrees, set the thermostat to 78 degrees so the pellet stove stays running.
ERVs should be controlled by humidity, outside temperature, and time. Some come with an automated mode that adjusts run time and fan power with those. It’d probably be difficult to find controls that have multi zone, HA integration, and E/HRV features in one package.
When I did my in floor heating in the master bathroom I went through something similar regarding the zones.
My goal was to be able to control a zone for the shower and a zone for the floor tiles everywhere else independently of one another.
Two separate lines are run in these areas under the floor to one two zone thermostat, on a dedicated line to my breaker panel. From what I found out during my process is that a two zone thermostat controls both zones at the same time.
I could not find any thermostat control panel that controls two lines independently and figured if I ever do a whole home in floor heating system each room would need its own thermostat.
Plus side to a two zone thermostat in a room is if one of the cables is cut in a remodel the other zone still functions.
I absolutely love Zooz. Their customer service is fantastic and products just work, if you can provide proper Z-Wave coverage. If you prefer WiFi, I have several Shelly products behind traditional switches that have been rock solid.
In my extensive experience, use Zooz zen series for the bulk of your switches. Buy inovelli for special switches such as by your front door or anywhere you might want the use of the LED indicator strip and scenes.
Majority of other smart switches will give you issues with dimming flicker. Trust me, I’ve bought thousands of dollars of smart switches. Zooz and Inovelli are great choices.
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