Share your automation ideas

I did a few small automation for my car and the charger.

When I plug in the charger at home, it will check the current electricity prices and if below a certain threshold it will setup a plan to charge in those hours.

I also have a button I can press to make a plan depending on how many kwh I need as well as when I need it.

It will then automatically start and stop the charger based on these plans

My automations include:

• Setting the lighting mode to "night mode" based on a threshold of the outside lux level, which is changed dynamically based on the reported weather condition.
• Setting a master brightness inputnumber based on a threshold of the outside lux level, which is dynamically changed based on the reported weather condition. Every room then has it's own inputnumber which is automatically set every time the master brightness changes, and either has additional brightness added relative to the master, or brightness subtracted.
• At 7:30am some Jinja code starts setting a daylight temperature inputnumber which starts adjusting the Kelvin temperature of supported lights in the house. I'm aware that there are various integrations to do this, but they all appear to be based on the actual sun, and as a SAD sufferer I don't understand why people would want that, especially in the winter. My solution guarantees me at least 8 hours of "daylight" regardless of what the time of year is. - The code is ridiculously simple too:

    
    {% set k_end = 5500 %} {% set k_start = 2000 %} {% set t_start =
    today_at('07:30') %} {% set t_end = today_at('10:30') %} {% set cv =
    ((now()|as_timestamp) - t_start|as_timestamp)|int %} {{ k_start +
    (cv/3.0857)|int }}


  

Then the reverse happens starting at 6pm:

    
    {% set k_start = 5500 %} {% set k_end = 2000 %} {% set t_start =
    today_at('18:00') %} {% set t_end = today_at('21:00') %} {% set cv =
    ((now()|as_timestamp) - t_start|as_timestamp)|int %} {{ k_start -
    (cv/3.0857)|int }}


  

My other favourite automation, is something I call Music Walk, essentially when I play music on a group of speakers, as I move about the house when the occupancy of a room changes (camera through frigate, and Zigbee motion) a script is triggered which increases the volume in that room, and starts a timer for 01:30:00 and then after occupancy has been cleared, the timer is reset to 00:05:00 and when the timer finishes - it will run the script that changed the volume originally and set it to 0.1 So it feels like as I walk into rooms the music follows me there, but really it was already playing there - just quieter.

Current favorite is an automatic bathroom vent fan for when i’m in the shower.

For me, my favourites are definetely some light automations, namingly

• motion detectors and window sensors (where there aren't insect nets) turning on and off the lights
• adaptive lighting automations setting brightness and shade based on the time

more than that

• turning down the (usually somewhat loud) music in the bathroom when I open the window to the street
• running the vaccuum when I'm not at home
• heating automations adapting to the weather report, presence, time and user preset

my future idea is to copy a nuki opener with an esp-32.

A bunch of little things:

• when I hit the small button on my inovelli bedroom switch, it turns on my bedside tables, turns off all other lights, and closes my blinds
• when it sees my living room and bedroom tv's on at the same time, it turns off my bedroom. My damn remote triggers both tv's power when I'm in the living room
• flashing my kitchen lights if my deep freezer door is ajar
• opening my blinds in the morning automatically, and closing them at dusk.
• adaptive lighting with hue bulbs

I've enjoyed using it for a room controller for my AV distribution system. one of those perpetually unfinished work in progress projects and money-sinks.

So a few little wall mounted android things running fully kiosk browser, each one with it's own room control panel using the WallPanel add-on from HACS to get a customisable toolbarless view, card-mod for some custom CSS and a few other tweaks, also node-red running to do some logic, sequencing and handling the REST commands that are a pain to implement directly in HA. Each room panel has control over lighting, climate, TV and Audio. Each room has a TV connected to a 8x8 HDMI2.0 matrix with a selection of Nvidia Shields, TV and Sat tuners and an appleTV, along with a dedicated dashboard with weather, rain radar and camera views. This is all done in lovelace with custom navigation buttons instead of a toolbar in a simple grid layout with minimal options per page.

So when a user taps the media icon in their room, they get a list of available sources for the TV, guest rooms only have one Nvidia shield available (specifically for guest users) and the main bedrooms get their personal one. The shared living areas and theatre have access to any source so any user can pull up their dedicated shield with their content, apps and accounts.

This also means that I can push any video source to any room intelligently, so I can have a party mode that mirrors every screen, or use any form of presence detection to send a doorbell image to the nearest TV, or a surveillance feed, I just haven't implemented any of that as I dont need to yet.

The only difficulty is remotes, currently I'm using super cheap hacked OneForAll remotes with custom codes and macros, but if someone selects a source on the touch panel they have to select it again on the remote to get control, so mostly people change source with the remote as I have that set up in a macro. I despise using touch devices as a remote control. If I can get a smarter remote solution worked out I'll do it, it would require a man in the middle to process remote commands from the IR system, recognise the room it is in and the active source in that room and forward on the right commands to the matrix for distribution. possible, but a pain as I'd have to program it from scratch on an arduino or esp32, or more likely one per room.

I've got Emby tied into HA and it auto dims the lights on playback/pause if it's dark with a toggle in HA to override.

A "night mode" button that starts my white noise MPD playlist in the bedroom and sets the speaker zone/volume, turns off all the lights/decorations, turns on one bulb in the living room overhead lights to 1% (just enough to navigate around furniture), and turns the bedroom lamps on to medium brightness with a 10 minute auto-off.

Overhead lights and lamps tied into a common dimmer and can select different modes (lamps only, overhead only, both, etc) and color temps. Overhead lights are set to be proportional to the lamps to keep the light levels even (unless overridden to "Chernobyl mode" which disables the overhead light limiter).

My "TV" is just a PC connected to a large dumb monitor upstairs and a projector downstairs. Wrote a MQTT agent in Python to control turning the screen on/off, volume, and other settings. This is to allow HA to turn the screen/projector on/off .

Have more, but those are the ones I'm using this moment.

Here they are with links to the code

I don't have many, I find home assistant is a tool in search of a need.

• Run the robot vacuum when I leave the house.
• When I arrive home or open the garage door after sunset, turns on the rear porch lights and then turns it off after 15 minutes. (I have a detached garage.)
• Turn on select outdoor lights at sunset.
• Turns off all outdoor lights at sunrise, so if I forget to turn off the lights around my deck they eventually do get turned off.
• I have a button near where I sit in the living room that controls all four lights in the living room.
• I have a button on my dashboard that just turns off all the lights in my house.
• I have a button near my bar that turns on multiple lights and a neon sign. I was intending to add effects and scenes around the bar too so I could press another button and have a show go off.