Some of our favorite smart home automations

The best home automations are the ones that you don't think about. If you're visiting family or staying in a hotel, you notice that the automatic thing didn't happen. Here is our list!

• Automatic lighting schedule: Lights come on when it's too dark and go off when it's light. When no one is in the room, the lights are off. Rarely having to reach for a light switch is nice. It's such a basic thing, and it's usually the first thing people automate, but yes, it's nice.
• Automatic curtain schedule: We have the Aqara Curtain Driver E1 (opens in a new tab) on our street-facing curtains, and like with the lights, they're on an automatic schedule. They open and close at the right times, and it's not something we think about.
• Arriving home automations: We turned on presence detection in Home Assistant. That is, Home Assistant uses our phones to know when we're away or home. When someone arrives home, the locks automatically unlock so we can just come straight in. If it's after dark, Home Assistant turns on the lights for us.
• Bathroom motion lighting: The downstairs bathroom doesn't have a window or any natural light, so it's always dark. We have an automation that detects motion when someone walks in, and it turns on some toe-kick lights. Not bright but enough to use the bathroom without having to turn on the big light.
• Controlling the house with voice: This isn't an automation per se, but we like to voice control devices. It's "Siri, open the curtains," for example, or "Siri, turn off the kitchen" as I'm walking to the sofa with my bowl of cereal.

Ok so that's it! Those are the things we notice when we're not at home. What are your favorite smart home features?