10 VERY Practical Home Automation Ideas!

Home automation ideas should be ACTUALLY useful... and these 10 are! 🙌

(affiliate links)

DISCOVER MORE

FOLLOW ME

0:00 Intro
0:26 Bathroom blinds
1:25 Showering automation
2:46 Front room lights
3:38 Skip automation with notification
4:42 Automated dinner music
5:15 Garage lights
6:59 Charge the Tesla reminder
7:29 Kid pick up reminder
8:11 Garage open light indicator
8:41 Doors are open alert
9:35 Spouse approval problems

---------

MUSIC
Doctor Momentum by Slynk
The End by EVA

[SmartHomeSolver]

I use a few different smart home platforms and there’s a TON of information, so I hope it helps! Happy New Year 🎉

[blakemitchell]

To stop waiting for warm water, I bought a hot water recirculating pump, plugged it into a smart plug, and set up a rule for the motion sensor under my bed that when it senses motion (my feet either getting out of bed or walking past the bedroom into the bathroom) then it turns on the pump for 5 minutes to get hot water through all the pipes in the house. It has been my favorite automation that I have. No more waiting for hot water.

[BJCMXY]

In terms of privacy, it's actually better for the blinds to default to the opposite direction, and even better, the light bounces onto the ceiling, which increases the ambient lighting over all, and it also means people cannot actually see anything since the default angle of view is the ceiling where it would be an anomaly of Physics for anyone to occupy a ceiling.

[craigst]

A really handy automation I use is using a humidity sensor in the ensuite. If my lights are on in the bedroom, I usually like them on dim when waking up or going to bed, but bright if I'm getting dressed. Rather than using a time of day setting (which wouldn't take into account days off), I have my lights set so that if they get switched on (or are already on), and the ensuite humidity is above a certain level, the assumption can be made that I've just had a shower, and want bright lights in the bedroom so I can get dressed.

[Thesheriff]

I set up automations to turn on the Christmas tree when someone arrives, turn off when everyone leaves, and turn on before we wake and off late at night. My wife kept thinking the tree is never turning off and wasting power since she literally never sees it off. It’s great!

[danielbaulig]

Instead of/in addition to using your garage door to suppress your pickup notification, you can also integrate your Tesla into your smart home. The Home Assistant Tesla Custom component pulls in virtually all data available to you in the Tesla app into your Smart Home including if the car is driving, parked, charging, battery state and most recently also navigation target. The latter is especially powerful for automations regarding leaving or returning home.

[lilstubthumb]

I'm just impressed with how clean your house is with kids.

[NDayOnline]

This is the first video on home automations I've seen where each automation idea is actually practical. Super great vid! Thanks for making this.

[greatpix]

I just put some opaque vinyl covering over the bathroom windows. It lets lots of beautifully diffused light in but you can't see anything. It was cheap to do too. I put the same in on the strip of window next to my front door too.

[erichecht]

I’ve been trying to use HA’s built in calendar to trigger or disable automation for when my kids have school (or not). Things like whether their alarm goes off and countdowns for bus arrival. I must be doing something wrong with how I use the calendar functionality so if you’re up for doing some automations with that, I’d definitely love to see them and learn from you!

Keep up the great work!

[AquariumThoughts]

I use humidity sensors in my bathrooms to turn on the fan like others mentioned. I believe it's good to let the fan run a little longer anyways to remove any excess moisture still in there. But I do like the whole setting routines to play music and such.

[MAMDAVEM]

Great stuff, these are the sorts of automations that a true SMART home rather than just an AUTOMATED home should have. The out-take reminded me of the visual joke about opening up the fridge to see if the light remains on 😂 It also reminds us to think about potential unintended consequences when we write our automations.

[mathieugoy]

Hi, a lot of nice and fun automations as always.
Howerver, I can see one obvious automation you didn't setup yet and it's a shame because it would save a lot of water: a hot water circulating pump (sorry if I don't the proper English term for that).

Basically, you get a pump that will circulate your hot water in a closed loop so you will get instant hot water when you get into the shower.
I decided to automate that myself:
When someone gets into one of our bathrooms and turns on the ceiling vent, it willl turn on that pump. Turning off the vent will turn off the pump.
Saving roughly 10gal per day with that!

[greatpix]

I always loved what Casey Neistat did with the front door to his office, putting a video camera where the peephole is and mounting a flat panel TV/monitor next to the door and he get's an almost life-size view of who is there. That system is on as long as he's in the office. I would add, and maybe Casey has with this system. a method to record for review after I got back.

[MyNameIsBigMac]

I have an automation pretty much exactly like your garage lights! I have it set up in NodeRED with an additional condition in line with turning off the lights. This checks if the light was manually turned on at the wall switch. If it was, the light does not turn off automatically. I have this setup for a few of the lights in my home because it is nice for when the turn on conditions fail and for visitors who may not realize the lights are automated.

[dukeplc]

I have my HA (using node-red) do a "perimeter check" every night at 8:00 pm. My Echo devices announce the state of each door and gate. If they are open or unlocked they are closed and/or locked (where possible). Front door (rarely used) has a dead bolt indicator to show that the door is closed/locked -- I converted a door/window sensor to detect the dead bolt position. The patio and driveway doors have Kwikset locks and are locked automatically if left unlocked. The driveway gate opener closes the gate if it is left open. The other gate is manually closed and locked and its lock status and position are monitored and announced. Garage door position is announced and if left open the echo will ask if I'd like to close it. As you stated, this automation is the one that makes using HA feel as though it provides value and not just entertainment.

[ohmsMTL]

Your bathroom automation for the blinds is brilliant. Love it!

[xXDeadJesterXx]

I love these. I didn't know about the timer in HA, I'll have to check that out. For the ending skit, the third time Aly checked, she should have been like all of our wives and manually turned the switch off, lol. But then again you probably also have a smart switch so that wouldn't really be a problem.

[FritzHTS]

You ever thought about using a leak sensor to run automations for when someone is using the shower? I put an aqara leak sensor to trigger Alexa to ask me if I want her to play music. 100% wife approval

[WoottonRivers]

I recommend the Aqara FP1 presence sensors. They make automating turning OFF lights so much easier.