6 Simple Yet Effective Smart Home Automation Ideas!

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Home Assistant has so many different and powerful options for automations that sometimes it can be difficult to know where to start. So, today I want to show you 6 automation ideas that I use in my smart home to save me time and help me remember!

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00:00 - Intro
00:18 - First Automation
02:33 - Second Automation
03:55 - NordPass
05:24 - Third Automation
06:36 - Fourth Automation
08:16 - Fifth Automation
09:24 - Sixth Automation
10:47 - Outro

[EverythingSmartHome]

Let me know your best automation ideas down below, love hearing the amazing suggestions! 👇🙏

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[TheHookUp]

My problem is that I legitimately go to YouTube to do research for my job, but once I hit the front page I completely forget why I went there in the first place and end up watching an hour of YouTube. Then I'll tab back over to what I was working on before, remember that I needed to look something up on YouTube, go back to the front page, rinse and repeat.

[aidanbazan]

If I may make a recommendation for your shower one: It works, but I have found a better way. Use the humidity sensor to set up a derivative helper. That helper tells you how fast or how slowly the humidity is rising/falling. When it rises above x% per minute, turn on (turns on way quicker that waiting for set percentage, and if its just a humid day it won't accidentally trigger), and then turn it off when the derivative helper has been between -1 and 1 for 5 minutes so that when the humidity has stabilized it turns off. I've found it to be better personally.

[ironcrafter]

My favorite automation is definitely my music button. One press and it plays music depending on the time of day. If it is late it would play a loft mix, and earlier in the day it would play something more upbeat. Finally when I press the button on Friday it plays my happy mix and sets my lights to a fun effect.

[iainharkis]

One of the cool things I've started doing with the local calendar is automating my 'Guest Mode'. I've got a bunch of automations that I don't want to run or wnat to run differently if we've got people staying over. I've got an input toggle helper that lets me turn guest mode on and off which is used as a condition in the automations. Originally, I was manually just triggering this when we had guests, but with the local calendar, I now just create an event for the duration we'll have people staying. Then an automation that flips the helper when the event starts and turns it off when they leave.

[xXDeadJesterXx]

I really appreciate how you have the sponsor timer. I'm not often in the market for the sponsored item so it's nice to be able to quickly find the end.

[SlackerLabs]

For those that use home assistant as your alarm you can have the vacuum automation ignore motion sensors. That way alarm is still armed and only door sensor will trip.

[jackmikemotown]

Honestly, one of the reasons I got into automation was because of things like this. Hell, my first ever automation was just to turn the lights on when it got dark out, cause it would just sit in the dark for hours on end before I realized. People talk about automations like this making us lazy but, the ability to augment my life and help me do things, especially things i would otherwise frequently forget, has been one of the best things for my quality of life

[tolisl]

A useful automation that paid off this winter it was my smart thermostat. I have retrofitted my old thermostat using a shelly 1 relay so I can trigger the hot water valve on and off since I have radiators and there is a central heating system for all the apartments in my building. Then I used the smart PID integration found in HACS to control the temperature with a 0.1°C accuracy. Then with the help of an automation I set the temperature accordingly. 18°C when no one is at home, 19 for sleeping, 20.5 constant during the day when we are at home. My bill went up to 1/3 of that of the previous year and also had the smaller amount of hot water used in the entire building

[sdfhjklhsfdjdsflhkds]

Good find on the Presence Simulation Lewis!

I was doing something far less sophisticated with my automation schedules and random offsets in Node-RED, , but I like this approach better and will give it a try. Installing via HACS as I type.

[derbohmann]

I should definitely think of an automation like your adguard automation. Thanks for the idea 👍🏼

[bruceyv]

For my extractor fan, I have it compare the humidity in the neighbouring room and turn the fan off 20mins after it has reached the same humidity

[peterfrost]

Thanks Lewis, , a few things there were an 'oh wow' moment. Love your stuff x.

[jasonflt]

yes i like these videos, gets me think about my HA and improve on things. Keep it up! thanks

[turbochip]

I've slowly been making my way through your video's randomly it seems. I have to say they are great. I have a couple of automations you might find interesting. the first similar to your shower uses a zooz sensor to determine when the exhaust fan should be turned on. Right now, I simply compare it's humidity against a similar sensor in the bedroom to determine if the humidity is over 10 % higher. if it is, it turns on the exhaust fan and turns it back off if it's within 5% of the sensor in the bedroom. That way it takes into account the wild swings in humidity we get around here by comparing it against a baseline that should be similar to the humidity for the rest of the house.
I also have the same sensors in each room, controlling ceiling fans. I setup helper slider controls for each room that act as a type of thermostat. When the temperature sensor reports it being warmer than the high slider, it turns on the ceiling fan. When it's below the low slider, it turns off the ceiling fan. This way it's customizable for each room of the house. I need to build a custom card around this but I haven't gotten to it yet. I just cut and paste the yaml.
The next and I have to say one of my favorites, is when the light has been turned on in the toilet for over 5 minutes, the exhaust fan it turned on ( because if you have been in there over 5 minutes, you are making a stink and need the fan). Then 5 minutes after the light has been turned out, the fan is turned off. Hopefully by then the stink has dissipated.
Finally I run a home based mobile business. Our supplies are stored at my house and from time to time if we have to bring work home we use my garage as a shop. I really don't need to have the security cameras in my garage recording my employees working all day, chewing up my disk space. I see anything of value they take out of the shop on my outdoor cameras. So espresense detects their keyfob, it turns off the recordings in the garage but leaves them on everywhere else. When they don't register for over a couple of minutes, then the recordings start back up.
Right now I do all of these automations through appdaemon. My past life was as a programmer so this was easier to pickup than yaml and when I started NodeRed didn't exist. I can see the attraction of NodeRed, it reminds me of PLC ladder logic.
Thanks again for all the videos. You have given me several new ideas to spend money on. LOL

[JaguarInfinity]

Thanks for some great ideas! I personally really liked the battery monitor and presence simulator :)

[parstalberg]

Nice! Almost have a version of my own on all the 6 automations but will tweak a few with your twist.
The presence simulation I also trigger when I turn the vacation alarm on. I use s lot of actionable notification on the phone. Usually they also is to turn of a started automation. One I have is that I set an event on Google calendar that starts my heater in the car everyday if the temperature is below 4 degree then I can turn that off if I'm not going to work.

[NielsNL]

Hi, thanks for showing this configurations you use with Home Assistant. I would love to have that second idea of yours is it somewhere to pickup and use?

[petermarton]

Thanks for the ideas! Do you have a step-by-step tutorial about the first atumation (the robot vacuum one)? I am struggling with it, especially with the actionable notification...

[vaderaguk]

That battery blueprint is awesome! Been looking for a way to do that for a while.
Only thing is, when I test run, it seems to notify even if there are no low batteries - will this occur every day?