5 Smart Home Ideas You Really Should Have Thought Of

This video is sponsored by Paperlike, all opinions are my own

If you're looking for some really cool Smart Home ideas that work with Amazon Alexa, or Home Assistant, or in fact Google Home, or Apple Homekit then the same principles apply for most of these, and almost all of them can be implemented VERY cheaply and in some cases entirely for free!

BUY THE PRODUCTS FEATURED IN THE VIDEO
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. By buying through any of the links below I will earn commission at no extra cost to you :)

AJAX ZIGBEE SPOTLIGHTS & RGB REMOTE

FLIC TWIST

LOCK COVERS (MARRIAGE SAVERS)

CHEAP WIFI CONTACT SENSOR FOR GAMEPAD

=============================
BUY ME A BEER
==============================

THE ULTIMATE SMART HOME LIST!
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. By buying through any of the links below I will earn commission at no extra cost to you :)

SWITCHBOT PRODUCTS

CONBEE STICK (ENABLES ZIGBEE DEVICES TO CONNECT TO HOME ASSISTANT):

OUTDOORLED STRIP (REQUIRES TUYA ZIGBEE HUB OR CONBEE STICK AND PI)

AQARA ZIGBEE MOTION SENSORS AND DOOR SENSORS (REQUIRES AQARA HUB OR CONBEE STICK & PI):

AQARA LIGHT BULB E27 (REQUIRES AQARA HUB OR CONBEE STICK & PI):

AQARA LIGHT SWITCH (REQUIRES AQARA HUB OR CONBEE STICK & PI):

AQARA BATTERY REMOTE LIGHT SWITCH (REQUIRES AQARA HUB OR CONBEE STICK & PI):

FLIC BUTTONS (SMART BLUETOOTH BUTTONS):

BUY A RASPBERRY PI HERE (TO HOST HOME ASSISTANT):

BROADLINK RM4 PRO (TO CONTROL INFRARED DEVICES SUCH AS TV & RF DEVICES SUCH AS PROJECTOR SCREENS)

ZIGBEE PLUG SOCKET (REQUIRES ZIGBEE HUB SUCH AS HUBITAT OR SMARTTHINGS):

REMOTE CONTROL CANDLES (INFRARED CAN BE CONTROLLED USING A BROADLINK RM4 PRO)

DECORATIVE BULBS FROM SHELLY

ZIGBEE SPOTLIGHTS & RGB REMOTE

ROBOROCK ROBOVACS

SOMA SMART BLIND MOTOR:

4K HORIZON PRO PROJECTOR IN THE BEDROOM

AMAZON ECHO 4TH GENERATION:

ECHO SHOW 10

0:00 - Intro
0:48 - How To Connect Existing Outdoor Lights to Alexa
3:14 - How To Turn XBOX On Using A Contact Sensor & Alexa
6:13 - How To Track Your Family Using Home Assistant
8:07 - How To Stream ANY Doorbell To Your TV
10:50 - How To Use Flic Twist As A Light Switch

#alexa #applehomekit #homekit #googlehome #googleassistant #futuretech #technology #smarthome #smarthomegadgets #smartgadgets

[JerryBowley]

Similar to your "Neesha has arrived safely at work" automation, I've created Zones in Home Assistant for each of the hospitals in our city. Each member of our family has the Companion app on their phone, so I've created an automation that will alert us if someone enters one of those zones and stays for longer than 7 minutes (eliminates false positives if someone happens to drive past a hospital). I should mention that our children are all of driving age, so the fear is real. 😆

[metalhead]

That has to be the only ad I've actually wanted to watch in years, great production levels, keep it up!

OH MAI GERD HE'S DEEEAAAAD!

[ThisBrownGeek]

Whoever wrote the comment about extended slapping, please get a life lol. I remember the extended slapping joke and it made me laugh… a lot (seriously)! Don’t stop being you Paul, you’re amazing!

[sirdrums]

I got the geofencing notifications for me and my wife as well. We both receive a home assistant notification whenever we enter/leave home, our works and some other frequent visits. It saves us from separately sharing location or send a message we arrive.

Also, I've got a small overhead light right outside the entrance door. I have it set up to turn on whenever my wife or I arrive home after dark so we can open the door inside. It will turn off after the door has been closed for 5min. This light also turns on whenever we pass through the inside motion sensor and open the door in the nighttime. This serves to properly close home and to welcome guest into our home.

Next, we have a couple of automations that will turn on a small indoor water fountain from 7am to 11pm, only if either or both of us is home. If we both happen to leave home in this time slot, the fountain will turn off... And will turn on again when we arrive and open the front door (only if isn't past 11pm).

Finally, we leave our cat a small bulb that will only turn on when nobody's at home and is nighttime, and will turn off whenever we arrive home.

Big wall of text here, but I do love sharing my smart home automations!

[TheRealXyzven]

“Why break the habit of a lifetime”…. Omfg, BRILLIANT!

Also, wonderful Paul, nothing ever happens to the roadrunner, it’s always that Coyote that gets the pain. 🤣

[dfgdfg_]

I kinda wish I lived near you so I could *ohhh the zigbee!*, just once, at the shops 😅

[Stephen-Jones]

Mega bonus points for using a Red Dwarf reference 🎉🎉

[BMWMike]

Me and my wife have the notifications when we get to work. Also, when we are near home so we know to move the car out of the drive to arrange who leaves earliest for work the next day. We also have "Husband has left the curry house. Expect farts"

[meredithd]

Paul here's one you might like, when my front door is opened within x-minutes of me returning home, Alexa greets me, gives me some updates on the house (like thermostat and robot vacuum last activity) and then asks "would you like me to get the PS5 ready for you?". If I say yes, Home Assistant switches on the PS5, the TV backlighting, IR candles and changes the TV to the right input. If I ignore or say no nothing happens. I did this using the Alexa Actionable notifications.

I've also used the same method to have Alexa heat up water in an electric kettle for tea. Makes the house feel like it's really "smart"

[jeffpixelated]

Two thumbs up for the use of an obscure Red Dwarf clip!

[CarlosBunn]

Smart wifi lights are such a gateway drug

[endaf]

FFS I just spat out my tea at the "abusing my self" gag 😂😂😂

[ALaModePi]

"I've made loads of really cool automations over the years.": Aside from the platform fan-boys who absolutely _must_ tell you what platform they're using and why you should be using it too, this is perhaps the most common way that home automation enthusiasts can cause their friends, relatives, and people standing in the grocery check-out to glaze over in the eyes and try to find some way of being anywhere else.
I'm not sure it's a full solution but I restrict myself to mentioning or showing one automation to folks who, for some reason I can't fathom are rather uninterested in home automation. It helps if they're the ones who bring it up.
On the other hand, the folks that are here are already interested in home automation (unless, of course, they're here for head's exploding and doing things on the fly.) So, they've tacitly given you permission to turn on the deluge of automation ideas.
Your videos often give me ideas of what I'd like to buy, but this one gave me ideas of automations I would find useful and could do myself. (So, mission accomplished. Good work.)
I have a set of automations that I'll mention that's about mid-level:
It's for lighting the back porch/deck. The standard operation is to turn the deck light on when motion is sensed and turn it off after there's no motion for two minutes, but only if it's between dusk and dawn. However, sometimes we sit outside on the deck, and I'd like the lights to stay on. So, I have a virtual switch that determines whether motion or lack thereof will switch the light. I've added one more automation that switches off the lights and turns motion triggering on at 11:30 pm in case I forget to turn the lights off or turn motion sensing back on.
Presence sensing with notifications: I do this too for the same reasons you mentioned. Home assistant lets you set up "zones, " each with a location. I have an automation that lets my wife and I know when we arrive at and leave several common locations. This information also shows up on the dashboard so we can see where the other is at a glance. (It's sort of like Mama Wheazley's clock.)
Thanks again for some neat automation ideas. I'd like to see more of that.

[geekless]

That was a fun video and some solid ideas! Thanks!

[donnelson]

A very easy routine I setup that I like is my “You’ve got mail” routine. Basically I put a contact sensor in my mailbox & setup and Alexa routine to announce in the house “You’ve got mail”, & a blue light turns on in my office incase I forget. Also I dont get those scary road runner cartoons anymore on Saturday mornings, been watching you for a few years on Saturdays. Lol

[timmehwimmy]

Morning dude! Fully agree with you about sharing food!

[jonsmith]

I'm most proud of automating keeping my girls in their room at night unless they need to go potty. Yes this has been one thing added on top of another.

First I started with a smart switch for their lights making it turn off if turned on between specific times. They found out that they could just have the light on before that time so they started going to bed early so they could stay up (you will find a lot of these are cat and mouse).

I then turned off the lights at a specific time and that worked for a while until they found a race condition when they turned the lights on and off quickly enough the lights wouldn't have enough time to respond and would see that the lights were off when they were on.

I then added a routine to check if the lights were on or off and turn them off if they are on. They of course found out it was easier to just set the switch to setup mode.

I then setup a routine to check if the switch was online and if it wasn't check if another switch on the same circuit was online and if it was turn off the power at the circuit breaker. I then set up a routine of the breaker if off in the morning turn it on. They started getting up and going to the bathroom and turning the lights on and playing in the bathroom.

I then setup the bathroom so the light only stays on for 10 minutes then turns on the fan for 5 minutes then turns the fan off (this happened throughout the day as well which helped save on electricity and water and paid for itself). I then setup the light so if it was offline it would be turned off at the circuit and the circuit would also be turned on in the morning. I also realized they were coming out into the main room to get items to play with so I put up a camera that can detect people. If a person comes into the main room through one zone and enters another zone then the camera will play a recording of me telling them to go back to their room. If the person is still there after a minute or moved into another room it will again tell them to go to bed and start counting down from 5 to 0. If it gets to 0 and someone is still visible on any cameras an announcement is made that we need to go handle putting the kids back to bed. Before they could figure out that not looking like a person would circumvent this i got a presence sensor that does the same thing and they haven't figured out how to defeat this one ... Yet

[anthonyjhicks]

You inspired me to sort out my outdoor bulbs. You are 100% right - you forget about them as we're always so focused on inside. Trying out the Ajax bulbs with your affiliate links.

[qstudiomusicandproductions]

😁look at this way if there’s ever any little Hibberts running around you’ve got the dad jokes covered!

[anthonyhill]

Informative and entertaining … brilliant presentation.