Some of our favorite smart home automations
2 min read
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 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?
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@michaelharley I've been dreaming of / planning to do automated curtains for over a decade but haven't done anything towards it yet. I dream of a possibility to go to bed with curtains closed and wake up to natural sunshine.
@michaelharley I can't remember if it was in earlier discussion with you or someone else but my favourite automation is starting my media center (AV, projector) and dimming lights whenever I power on my PlayStation.
@hamatti @michaelharley
@bhhaskin @michaelharley I would need to purchase curtains, find some kind of engine that works with them and then build it.
I've been lazy on all fronts.
@hamatti @michaelharley do you have blinds currently? They can be fairly straightforward to motorize
@bhhaskin @michaelharley I have no curtains of any kind. Haven't had for years because I've been so lazy to build this contraption.
@bhhaskin @michaelharley When I've had blinds, I did consider some sort of electro magnet solution where there would be a heavy weight to pull the blinds up in the morning by turning the magnet off but never experimented with that.
@hamatti @michaelharley they sell kits that do conversion for blinds. They don't work for all blinds though.
@bhhaskin @michaelharley The curtain driver Michael mentioned might work with the curtain tracks I have.
@michaelharley The "arriving home" automation is the bees knees. Unfortunately, my Schlage front door lock is on the fritz so I've had to manually fumble for the front door key for a while now. I miss the automatic unlock feature so much, and I should def get it fixed.