Share your favorite automations

I’ve been running HA for a while, and it’s been working well; I haven’t had to change much in a few months. That being said, it’s fun to tinker with it, and I’m curious to hear what kind of automations the rest of the community is using. What automations are you most proud of? What are your favorite? What kind of interesting automations have you written?

My personal favorite is an automation that displays the current “apparent” temperature on a Hue bulb. It takes an average of the temperature, humidity, and luminance around my property and uses the average to compute an “apparent” (feels like) temperature. Then it applies a cosine function to the apparent temperature (to approximate how people feel temperature change), uses the resulting value to calculate a level between blue and red in CIELAB (a perceptually uniform color space), converts the results to RGB, and sets the color value of the hue bulb. The result is a bulb that changes color so that the change in color (as perceived by the eye) mirrors how the temperature “feels” outside. Ultimately what that means is that we can look at a small lamp with the hue bulb and say “It feels cold outside; we should put on a coat.” It’s probably overkill, but it was a fun programming exercise. We’ve started saying things like “It’s really blue today, I don’t feel like going out.”

I’d really enjoy reading what kind of interesting automations everyone else has written.

Yearly1845, (edited )

My favorites are the really simple ones.

My basement and garage lights come on when I open the respective door.

The bedroom lights come on very dim at sunset.

The outside lights turn on at sunset also.

The mudroom light turns on when someone comes home after dark.

“Theater Mode” what turns off lights in the den if my gamer profile turns on.

Everything turns off when I go to bed (looking into automating this, currently just a button in hass).

Everything turns off when everyone has left the house.

ShepherdPie,

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.

Yearly1845,

Yes, although I offload that particular detail to Hue. Everything else is controlled by Home Assisstant.

peter,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

What’s a mud room?

lukecooperatus,
@lukecooperatus@lemmy.ml avatar

A foyer, essentially, but a lot smaller and almost strictly utilitarian. You take off and store your shoes, boots, jackets, etc there.

Yearly1845,

Yes, this exactly thank you. It’s just a little room off the main entry door that holds your like coats and boots and stuff.

Mine isn’t a room so much as an area that’s sort of closed off to the rest of my space, but I still call it a mudroom.

padook,
@padook@feddit.nl avatar

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??

peter,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar
  • if the sun has set and my partner isn’t home from work (phone not connected to WiFi), turn the hallway light on
  • close the blinds when the sun sets, but only if the TV isn’t currently on so as not to make noise during a TV programme
  • when I turn the bedroom lamp on, turn the bedroom ceiling light off
  • if my front door opens when neither me nor my partner are home, send a snapshot of the doorbell camera to my notifications
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