This page is all about my smart home, it will be kept up to date regularly. There will be lots of detail where possible. As time goes on when more and more is added to the site, blog posts and pieces on each topic will be added and linked from here. In the mean time as the site is getting up and running contact me and I will prioritize what you want to see more on.
Around 90% of the images on this page are Amazon affiliate links, clicking the image will take you to Amazon where you can purchase the product or add it to your list, by purchasing directly from this site I will receive a small fee from Amazon at no expense to you.
Software
The big one. 90% of my smart home is run entirely from Home Assistant. This brilliant piece of software can access thousands of smart home devices and bring everything all together in one place. There is many advantages to having everything in one place, this means different brands of devices can now work together. The amount of apps on my phone can now be replaced with just 1, my non tech savvy girlfriend doesn’t want to have 15 different apps and have to find the right app to turn on the lights in one room. The levels of customization allowed in Home Assistant opens the doors to completely bespoke solutions to make your smart home perfect for you. The best thing is its completely FREE!!!
The Home Assistant website has plenty of documentation to get you started and the forum is full of solutions to problems, ideas, and information to help you through. If you haven’t already started your Home Assistant setup check out the demo page, its a good place to see how some of the cards work.
Hardware
| Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, 4GB | iuniker Raspberry Pi 4 Case | Samsung 860 EVO 250 GB SSD | StarTech.com SATA to USB Cable – USB 3.0 to 2.5” SATA III Hard Drive Adapter | iLepo Smart HUB USB Charging 8-Port Wall Charger |
As you can see I run Home Assistant from a 4GB Raspberry Pi 4. Raspberry PI devices are super easy to use, have lots of support from various forums across the internet and are very cost effective for purposes such as Home Assistant. My first ever Home assistant set up was installed on a 2GB raspberry Pi 2, this did not last very long and frequently crashed and required installation from scratch a couple of times. A very cheap basic case to house it and keep it dust free is all that is required, I could 3D print a custom bespoke case but in all honesty the time and effort it would take to design & print it is just easier to buy one with next day delivery on Amazon Prime!
Instead of using the usual micro SD card to run from i’m using a 250GB SSD. The SSD is much quicker to read over the usual SD cards which was an issue I found as my smart home grew larger and larger my Home Assistant got slower and slower causing it to become unresponsive and require frequent reboots. To connect the SSD to the Raspberry PI a cable is required, I was not planning on including cables in my write up but this cable is super important, only certain ones work, I went through 3 cables before I found one that works. There was a really good setup guide I followed for this process in setting up the SSD to Raspberry PI written by Tynik available here.
The USB power supply is not an essential item, the sole purpose is to save myself from the amount of power plugs being used by various different hubs. For each hub you may need to buy a new cable for it to fit, I have all these cable tied up neatly and then one power cable back to the plug in the wall. I use the power supply to power:
- Raspberry Pi (with Home Assistant)
- Philips Hue Hub
- Hive Hub
- Netgear 8 port switch
- Raspberry Pi (with Pi-hole)
Network
| BT Smart Hub 2 | BT complete Wifi Disk | Netgear 5 Port Gigabit Switch | Sky Q Booster |
Smart Devices connect to your home network its only right it gets a mention in this write up. As my smart home was getting larger my network was getting slower and required frequent resets and some of my devices would need setting up again. After upgrading to the smart hub 2 with BT and increasing broadband packages the general performance of my internet connection improved but there were still further issues which needed addressing. The BT smart hub can also be integrated in to Home assistant and each connected device becomes a tracker, this is how I have people set up to being home or not.
I have 2 of the 5 port switches in my network. I have one right next to my router which acts as an extension, the smart hub router only has 3 Ethernet ports available which was not enough. The second 5 port switch is located in my lounge, I’m lucky enough to have a house where there are Ethernet cables running between rooms when it was built. The lounge switch has the Sky box, the Xbox & a PC connected to it, these 3 devices were getting really slow on occasions and used the most bandwidth. By connecting these devices by cables the network performance increased and became much more stable since the addition of this switch devices are not losing connection randomly as they did before. If you can connect devices by use of cable you should.
The final 2 parts of my network are the WiFi booster & the sky booster. I have a room converted in my garage which is not connected to the house, the WiFi signal to this room was not good and again devices in this room were dropping off the network. The booster is located as close to the house as possible in the garage and repeats the signal to all the devices in this room, again since this was installed the network in this room is now stable. The Sky booster was the biggest unknown problem I have had, my Sky Q TV’s were lagging, dropping off the network and bringing home assistant and my actual network down. After getting fed up of keep resetting up my 2 Sky Q boxes and just not using them I found the network was the best it had ever been, i reset them up and again the problems came back. After speaking with Sky they said they could see the traffic being caused by the Sky boxes and one in particular was struggling to connect and dragging everything down with it, they sent me a booster and i’ve never seen these problems again. Its also worth noting your main Sky Q box acts as a router for the sky devices and by having this connected by cable also increases stability.
Home Assistant Devices
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| Samsung S20 Ultra | Iphone X | HP 8″ Windows 8 Tablet |
There are 3 main devices we use for Home Assistant in this house. My phone is the Samsung s20 ultra, my girlfriends phone is the Iphone X. Both our phones use the Home Assistant companion app which can be downloaded from google play store and the apple store. My dashboards are all designed to be used from the phone apps, which is our primary use of controlling devices. The apps are a piece of cake to set up. To be able to access your Home Assistant outside of your home network, I would strongly suggest using the Home Assistant cloud by Nabu Casa, for less then £5 a month you have secure access to your Home Assistant.
I have an old tablet that was repurposed to be a walking Home assistant remote. The tablet uses windows 8 and runs Home Assistant via Google Chrome. The tablet sits on a wireless charging dock so that it is always on and has a full battery, Ive also set the screensaver to be our holiday photos so the tablet doubles up as a digital photo frame. I have a dashboard made for this device to utilize the bigger screen.
Although not in the list, I access Home Sssistant through my laptop a lot, this is usually because I am working on Home Assistant and while its open I may as well use it. You can make changes via phone or tablet but you will need a PC to make big changes much easier.
Lights
| Philips Hue White Bulb Smart Lights | Philips Hue White Smart Spotlights | Sonoff Wifi Touch Wall Light Switches | Sonoff Basic R2 | Ring Floodlight Camera |
| Philips Hue Smart Dimmer | Phillips Hue Smart Button | Philips Hue Bridge | 3D Printed light switch covers | OMERIL Motion Sensor Light (not smart) |
Lights are one of the easiest devices to implement in to the smart home. Philips Hue is probably the leading brand for smart lighting but it does come at a cost. I use Philips Hue bulbs almost all over my home with the exclusion of a few places. Philips Hue is automatically detected by Home assistant and can be integrated within seconds which makes this really good for beginners.
In my kitchen & in my gym I have 6 spot lights in each room, to have these set up as Philips Hue bulbs would be very expensive, the alternative is to make the light switch smart. The Sonoff wall switch is a great device, its very reasonably priced at £17 which is cheaper then all decent bulbs. its downside though is that installation is not straight forward, first of all these should not be installed by anyone not familiar with electrics as you need to replace the existing switch on the wall. Second of all if you do not have a neutral wire in your switch box (chances are if your house is over 5 years old you will not) then these switches are not compatible getting a neutral wire is also not an option unless you are willing to completely redecorate a room. Finally the eWeLink app is fairly straight forward to use but the adding of a device can be frustrating experience, the devices are only compatible with 2.4GHz networks which is not uncommon but i had to switch off my 5GHz network, turn off my mobile data from my phone, and use the alternative method of setup which in some cases required multiple attempts. The wall switch is also a very good choice for bathroom switches which are located outside your bathroom, my bathrooms & kitchens have extractor fans which come on with the lights with smart bulbs the fan will constantly be on which will cost money in energy bills but importantly will constantly buzz as an annoying sound.
The Sonoff basic R2 is effectively a WIFI activated relay switch, I have this in my gym located on the first spot light in the circuit. This device can be used to for other power cycling purposes not just lights but this is where I have it in this instance, when building my gym i had access to the loft space above to set this up, you may not be able to install it in to existing lighting set ups unless you have access. Again with this device you will need electrical experience or you will need to get an electrician to fit them for you.
Ring floodlight cameras are bright lights which also have a camera attached, the camera also acts as a motion sensor which can turn the lights on and off automatically. This is an expensive device but it really does light up a large outdoor area.
One of my biggest annoyances with having smart lighting is that once the light is off from the switch the bulbs will not be activated from Home Assistant, if you have the Sonoff wall switches this of course will not be a problem to you. I’ve already mentioned my non tech savvy girlfrend, well sometimes she just wants to press a light switch which not only annoys me when I am trying to activate a light through Home Assistant but it also stops all of my automatons running. To get around this issue I have been use Philips hue switches and dimmers and 3D printing holders for them to sit over and cover the existing light switches, This way there is still a switch there to be pressed but also the power supply to the light is not cut meaning the lights can come back on!
The OMERIL light is not a smart device, however I wanted to include it as it was a cost effective solution to a problem I faced which had a automated function. These are Rechargeable lights with a motion sensor, the charge lasts around 3 months and takes a couple of hours to charge up. these were the perfect solution to my under stairs cupboard which has no light or power supply.
Finally almost all the lights I have have an automation behind them, I use the Ring motion sensors to turn on lights when motion is detected, there is also a door sensor which turns on my garden lights when the back door is opened. I have a power saving mode which means the lights will not come on with motion during this time period to save energy (lights in day light are pointless!). Slowly I’m building up ESP home devices for each room with light sensors which come on when motion is triggered and its dark so that I do not have to keep changing the power save time every few weeks. My Ring indoor cam also triggers motion and turns on the garage lights. The floodlight camera on my driveway does not need an automation, its already designed to turn on in the dark with motion.
Power Sockets
| Meross MSS310 Smart Plugs | Meross Smart Mini Plugs | Sonoff TH16 Smart Wifi Switch |
Meross to me is simple cost effective and functional, for around £30 you get a set of 4 which are simple to set up and work exactly how you want them. I like them, enough said? The MSS310 plugs have an extra feature to their arsenal which is the energy monitoring, this tracks how much energy the plugs are pulling and you can convert that in to money to see how much something is costing you or simply how much energy is being wasted on some electrical items. The plugs themselves are quite chunky and have a bright status light on them which can be annoying but there is a solution to that, the Meross smart Mini plugs. *NOTE the amazon link above for the MSS310 looks to be removed from amazon with no energy monitoring alternative available, link takes you to MSS210.
The Smart Mini Plugs are much smaller in size and do not have a bright LED status light, this makes these a very convenient device. A good example is on one of the bedside tables in the bedroom we have a fan, I have a smart plug on it to turn the fan off in the middle of the night after we have fallen asleep, the bigger MSS310 & MSS210 plugs made the bedside table stick out where the plug stopped the unit going back and the light was bright enough to cause annoyance to a light sleeper. The Mini Plugs made the unit go back almost flush against the wall & removed the bright light. Unless you want or need energy monitoring I highly recommend these Mini Plugs.
The Sonoff TH16 smart WIFI switch is exactly like the Basic R2 described in the lighting section. Cheap device but you need to wire in a cable to the switch and then wire the plug to the other end effectively putting the switch on the item cable. This device also has a temperature & humidity sensor attached which can be useful. Again this switch should only be installed by someone electrically competent. I currently do not use this switch, i brought it as an experiment but have no current use for it although it is connected for the temperature sensor.
Security & Cameras
| Ring Alarm Kit | Ring Indoor Cam | Ring Video Doorbell 3 | Ring Contact Sensor | Ring Motion Sensor |
This is where my 1 app philosophy has a slight deviation, my whole home security package is entirely Ring based. This was not intentional but after getting some good black Friday deals and having the ring door bell to start everything else followed.
The Ring alarm is a simple alarm device, which is set to go on or off based on which mode is selected and what sensors you have set up for each mode. Generally door sensors are set to trigger the alarm during Home mode (I use this at night) and all sensors (motion & door) to trigger in Away mode. The alarm siren its self is very quiet, its sounded from the base station and if i close the front door which its located next to you can not hear it outside…. However that being said the main purpose of the alarm is to send an alarm ring on your phone to alert you. Since I got the alarm Ring have now released an outdoor siren, I will get one soon but it should really come with the alarm base station pack.
The Indoor Cam came free with my alarm kit, I have it set up in my garage to allow me to leave it open for deliveries when I am not home, the camera allows to see inside the garage and also speak to the courier if required. The device also has motion detection with a custom area control, this has become useful as I use it to turn the lights on in the garage automatically when I walk in.
The Ring doorbell is a solid choice and does exactly what you would want it to do, I currently have the doorbell 3 but do not intend on upgrading to the 4 as there is very little difference. custom motion area control, live video, 2 way talk, & recording what else would you like from a doorbell? I’m lucky enough that my old doorbell had a 5V power supply which I connected to the doorbell, I would find it annoying having to keep changing the battery, although I hear it does last a good period of time.
Finally I have plenty of Motion & door sensors, these are quite expensive for what they are however i got lucky and got them all for £10 each during a sale when Ring released the newer V2 stuff. The sensors are not just used for my alarm, they are again also used for turning lights on automatically around the house when you walk in to a room.
The Flood light camera I’ve already spoke about in the lighting section. this works exactly the same as the other cameras.
So back to the 1 app philosophy deviation mentioned at the start of this section. There are Ring integrations available for Home Assistant, I use 2 of them. The Ring integration is available from installation on Home Assistant, however this integration is not compatible with the alarm or the motion and door sensors, however you can still use motion detection on the cameras & doorbells, its also shows the last recorded event from each camera. The other integration is a great piece of work from tsightler which uses MQTT to control the alarm states & make use of the door and motion sensors. So with these 2 integrations being used its still not possible to see a live view from any camera or activate the microphone to be able to talk through them which is the main purpose of a smart video doorbell and the ring cameras so you still need to use the Ring app for these features. Ring do this for security purposes to keep your feeds safe from hackers so I think I can get over requiring a 2nd app for the important stuff in my house!
Heating
| Hive Multizone Pack With Hub. | Hive Radiator Valves (TRV’s) | ElectriQ 2000w Glass Wall Heater Wifi |
Before I went on to smart heating devices my house was already set up with 2 heating zones, upstairs and downstairs. As a result the Hive multizone was perfect to replicate my 2 existing thermostats for smart ones. The multizone allowed me to have 2 thermostats that I can set independently via Home Assistant. This also allows me to create automatons such as I have the heating come on before my alarm goes off which is different most days. You can also set up a schedule to come on and off at set times in the Hive App or via the Hive website, something I’m looking to integrate in to Home Assistant in some way.
To go one step further from 2 Zone heating I acquired a series of TRV’s during a Hive sale and have now got control on almost all of my radiators in the house, this allows me to set the temperature independently in each room. By shutting off rooms I do not need heating I find not only do I save money on gas bills but also the rooms I do want heated heat up faster.
The ElectrIQ heater is one of the best smart device purchases I’ve made. It was very reasonably priced and gave me heating outside in my Gym that was converted from half of my garage. The heater can be turned on and off as well as setting a temperature up to 49 degrees C. I have the heater set up with an automation to turn off after a certain time in case i forget to turn it off. I set the heating to come on before I go out for a workout in the freezing cold to take the edge off.
Entertainment
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| Samsung Smart TV’s | Sky Q | Spotify |
| Broadlink Smart Home Hub RM Mini3 | Amazon Alexa Devices | Microsoft Xbox Series X |
You will probably find a lot of the devices in your home already are Home Assistant compatible.
I have 3 Samsung smart TV’s all linked in to Home Assistant, Each TV has a remote I can use like for like with the physical remote control. You can stream things to the TV and set up automations to change source, volume and turn off at set times.
Sky Q is one of my favorite integrations, created by RogerSelwyn this integration gives you control of Sky Q boxes to act as a remote, show whats playing with images, and see the TV guide through the media browser. I have all my favorite channels set up as buttons so I can press the button and the channel will change to it automatically. One thing i want to do eventually is set up automatons to change to my favorite shows when they start.
Spotify is as exactly as you imagine, I have playlists set up as buttons and when the play list is selected it plays on all my Alexa devices.
Alexa is the remaining 10% of my smart home, I have a device in most rooms to be able to call functions and play music as already stated. Using the Intent integration I can call Home Assistant functions that Alexa can not do, for example I can say “Alexa, Ask Home Assistant to set channel to Sky Sports Main Event” and the channel will change on my main sky box to this channel. I also use the TTS function to create notifications that are spoken by Alexa.
Xbox One & Series X are also set up with Home Assistant. The most useful function for me is that when i turn the console on the source on the TV changes and the volume goes down to a lower volume automatically. As with Sky Q you can select a game from your library in the media browser to load up.
Finally for this section I have a home cinema in my gym, this device is not a smart device so the broadlink hub makes the device controllable through Home Assistant. The broadlink device is an IR signal sender which mimics a remote control, you teach the device each button you need from the actual remote and the device remembers the signal and can be called remotely from Home Assistant. I can set the source I require and set the volume to the correct level for my workout music automatically.
Cleaning
| ECOVACS Deebot Ozmo920 Robotic Vacuum & Mop |
Currently I Have 1 cleaning device the Deebot Ozmo920, this is a multi-purpose hoover and mop. The key function for me with this device is the room mapping, the device uses a laser to map out its surroundings as it works, you can then create zones within that map to send the hoover too. I have each room set up so that if for example I’m cooking in the kitchen and make a bit of a mess on the floor I can just call the hoover to come and clean just the kitchen. Generally the Deebot Ozmo920 does a fairly good job, however my advice would be to set an automation to clean regularly maybe every other day. If the dirt is left to mount for over a few days it can take a few cleans to get it good or you may have to run round with a normal hoover. Same can be said for the mop, if the floor is wet for example wet foot prints the mop will remove the dirt, however if the dirt dries the mop really struggles and doesn’t clean very well. To get over this issue I have an automation so if my weather integration says its raining and the front door opens Ill receive a notification from home assistant asking if I want Deebot to mop the floor, you can click yes on the notification without needing to open the app.
The Deebot allows you to setup 3 floors which you can move the device between, the correct floor will be picked up automatically. However I am getting lazy and forgetful and keep leaving the hoover on the wrong floor to what I want it so I’m currently in the market for a 2nd device which needs to be hoover only. I did get a Deebot N79S however I sent it back because it did not have the same floor mapping tech as the Ozmo920 (something I should have checked first!) the performance looked to be pretty good but I wouldn’t have been able to set up individual room cleaning and without mapping the hoover would never have cleaned the entire upper level making it pointless to me.
Car
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| BMW Connected Drive 4 Series | BMW Connected Drive 1 Series |
Quite a simple purpose for this integration, this is simply used to tell me how much fuel is in each car, are any doors or windows open and to lock the cars if required. Eventually using waze which tells me my commute time to work I will set up a notification to remind me to leave for work earlier to get fuel if I require it, or there is traffic I need to avoid. I have the lock function set up in my night mode automation to lock the car just in case I’ve left it open.
Dog
| Automatic Pet Feeder (Powered by Tuya) | Wyze Cam Indoor v2 |
So the dog gets his own section. I have an automatic pet feeder for dry food, this device is not strictly compatible with Home Assistant despite being a Tuya device (again I didn’t do my research when purchasing!). However to get around this you can set up a feed as a scene in Tuya which you can call from Home Assistant, I have an auto feed set up to automatically dispense the food I want at set time. I have a camera on my device but its useless as this function can not be used in Home Assistant, so buy the cheaper one without! I have a toggle switch to turn the auto feed on and off but I’m looking at getting some form of tracker so if the dog is not home then food will not be dispensed. I have also set up notifications to remind me when to refill the feeder back up when it gets low.
There’s a camera inside the dog crate where he sleeps to keep an eye over him if we have popped out or hes disturbed in the night. This camera is RTSP compatible but I haven’t got to it yet, I tried it once and corrupted the SD card, a new one has arrived I just need to get to it.
Sensors & Buttons
| Node MCU ESP8266 | Light Voltage Sensor | PIR Motion Sensors | Dallas Temperature Sensors | Push Buttons |
I have various sensors and buttons connected to ESP8266 boards to create my own smart devices. These devices are predominantly used as sensors to detect motion, temperature, and light in each room, some of these devices have buttons added as well which allows me to have physical buttons to call automations and routines. Eventually each room will have a device with the required sensors in that room to allow greater automation.
The light sensor is used to detect how much light is in each room, this is used to decide if the light needs to be switched on with motion or not. this will also be used for automated blinds in the future.
PIR sensors detect motion, if a room does not have a motion sensor already (I use Ring Motion sensors in a lot of rooms already) then the device for that room will contain one to switch the lights on with motion.
Temperature sensors are used in the couple of rooms where I do not have TRV valves.
In the bedrooms the devices have buttons are located on the bedside table, this means I can press one of the buttons on the top to turn off the lights, activate the night mode automation or even toggle the house alarm.
All these devices I power via micro USB to the mains, however I do have batteries I plan to use for some devices which do not require being active 100% of the time.
The devices all have 3D printed cases to house the sensors and stop them looking like school projects!
Other
| Samsung Galaxy Smart Tag |
I brought the Galaxy smart tag in the black Friday sales as something to play around with and see if it could be useful to Home Assistant. In general no, there is no direct link between the device and Home Assistant but you can create a virtual button in Samsung Smart Things which can be activated when the button on the tag is pressed, this virtual button can then be included in Home Assistant. I’ve currently got the button on the tag to toggle my house alarm, this means I can turn the alarm off easily without getting my phone out before getting out the car and having my hands full. Despite being a tracking device there is not tracking function in Home Assistant.
Navigation & Control
My Home Assistant dashboards have been designed to be mobile friendly and still be clear and easy to use. The first image is my home page when I open the Home Assistant Companion App, Its simply a navigation page to get me where I need to be. This page also shows the status of both of us who live here, this is used for automations mainly but does help if we need to check if anyone is home quickly while at work for example. ** UPDATE ** I have since written a piece with more images of my dashboards and some little explanations available HERE!
The middle screen above is my floor plan view, this is the most commonly used page we both use. From this page we can see all the lights, set the heating for each floor, toggle all the TV’s, toggle some of the smart plugs, View the status off all external doors and windows, view the last motion from each camera via pop up and also feed the dog and control the hoover also by use of pop ups. This is all the common actions we use in Home Assistant and visually its easy to find what we need as its in the correct real life position.
The final screen above on the right is one of my device pages, I have a page for each type of device. The devices with pages are lights, heating, Plugs, security, battery levels, car, PC’s, hoover, dog devices, Home Assistant and energy monitoring. The page shown is the heating page, I have the 3 main thermostats for each floor and the outside room, I then have more thermostat cards but smaller for each individual rooms and then finally an overview map showing the temperature in each room. For this particular page on heating I plan on adding further functions such as control to be able to change heating times easily without editing automations.
As with the device pages I have a page for each room in the house which acts like a remote control when you’re sat in that room, all the devices from that room in one place at your finger tips. At the top of each page is a picture of the room with small icons to act as buttons and show status of lights, plugs, TV’s etc. Below that is my sensor bar where I show the condition of the sensors in that room, so for the living room shown in the image it has a motion sensor, a temperature sensor and a door sensor. Then I have buttons for simple functions like toggling lights, toggling plugs, sending the hoover to clean the room, and show the TV remote for that room. Then the heating control for that room is shown as a thermostat, in this room I have 2 radiators. Next up is the media devices, simple functions like selecting a source, a channel, or volume can be done for the TV. Sky Q status is also available, this shows whats playing and allows you to turn it on or off. Like the TV remote link in the function bar I have an equivalent for the Xbox controller. Alexa also has basic control so again volume can be controlled and if anything is playing it can be stopped, along with this there are a small selection of Spotify playlist images, selecting one of the images will play that play list in that room. Finally for the room pages i have all the battery levels of device in that room listed and also all the ring device statuses.
The middle screen above is my Home Assistant page, this shows various stats about my network, the raspberry Pi performance and also home assistant counts and information. You can also restart Home Assistant and create a back up if you need one.
The Last screen showed here is one of my media screens, this one is for Spotify. From this screen I can adjust all the volume levels on all my Alexa devices, Play a playlist on all devices and also play internet radio through a single device or all devices. This is good for open house parties and when moving around the house a lot, for example when cleaning.
As mentioned earlier, I have a tablet running Home Assistant. This screen is used as the home page for this device, the pages created for mobile are a little jumbled and not displayed the same on the tablet.
Top 5 Automations
| Automated Lights on Motion | Feed the Dog at Set times of Day | Night Mode | Wake up Routine | Home Welcome |
Automated lights, a very simple yet effective automation. As you’d expect this is the most used automation in my set up, and each room has its own automation to keep it simple. The automation works simply by having the motion sensor in that room as the trigger, a condition based on my energy saving time period (starting to migrate to light sensors) and then the action to turn on the lights for that room. Depending on the type of sensors used will depend on the wait time without motion before turning off, Ring motion sensors sleep for 5 minutes after they detect motion to save battery so these are set to 8 minutes to allow for the sleep. My ESP home motion sensors are set to 5 minutes because they can detect motion every few seconds. After the wait time if no further motion is detected the light turns back off again and the automation ends.
Feed the dog is another simple automation, the trigger is one of 3 feed times input as a helper. There is a condition that another helper this time a toggle is off to continue. The feeder then puts out the food for the dog automatically and sends a notification to both our phones to say the dog food is being served (in case we left it on by accident!). Once dispensed the counter for remaining food is reduced by 1, if there are less then 3 feeds remaining a notification to refill the feeder will again be sent to both of our phones.
Night Mode is a simple automation just with a lot of actions, its triggered by press of a physical button on one of my ESP devices, and can also be triggered by a button in the companion app. All lights, Plugs and media devices all turn off, The cars are locked, the alarm will switch to home & armed and a notification via Alexa in the bedroom will alert us if any doors or windows have been left open downstairs.
Wake up routine is a complicated automation that has taken a few attempts to get it right. I work different times of days so I’ve got the trigger for this automation coming from my Google calendar which has my work timetable, 120 minutes before work the heating will come on at my required temperature, 90 minutes before work Alexa will alarm, the lights will come on at 10% and every 2 minutes increase by 10%, If its after 7am the bedroom TV will come on and turn on to Sky news. 15 minutes after the alarm sounds and the previous has happened another alarm will sound which is my get out of bed alarm. This automation was perfect when I lived alone a couple of years ago but now with my girlfriend not wanting to be woken up at the same time this one needs to revisit to the drawing board, there will be different actions depending if she is in bed or not still (I still have no idea how I am going to do it yet!).
Welcome home is a very simple automation, its simply triggered by one of our phones connecting to the WiFi (BT Integration). The person who has just got home then receives a notification saying Welcome home, The temperature of the 3 main heating devices, and if the other one of us is home or not. It as simple as that, it has no real purpose its just a nice addition.
Top 5 Integrations & Add-ons
ESP Home, this Add on which is now managed by the creators of Home Assistant really opens the doors of home automation and creativity. The power to create your own custom devices has really taken my smart home to the next level and makes my automatons even smarter.
Ring MQTT by tsightler has been another add on that has taken my smart home to the next level. This add on has brought all of the Ring devices in to my set up which has given me a lot more control on automations without having to make ESP devices when I already have perfectly good ones. A hell of a lot of work has gone in to this add on and it deserves all the limelight it can get.
Google drive back up is another key add on. When making changes you should always back up first, however sometimes its easy forget and then you break your Home assistant. With the google drive back up I have a back up taken each day and located off of my SSD, so if my Home assistant was to fail I can restore it to the previous day. Commonly especially with SD cards they can give up and you will loose all of your Home Assistant including your back ups.
Alexa Media Player integration adds a link between Home Assistant and Alexa devices. The media player gives you the ability to send TTS (text to speech) notifications, play music, set volume, play sounds, and even call Alexa routines and flash briefings. To me this is an important link between my 2 main smart home instances.
Finally the browser Mod helps with keeping my dashboards clutter free and stop a lot of navigating. Using the browser mods on my picture element cards means when a symbol is pressed a pop up window appears with any further information and buttons on, this keeps my floor plans simpler such as pressing the vacuum symbol pops up buttons with the functions I have set for the hoover.
Future Projects
| Automated Blinds | Take Away Food Integrations | Gym Equipment | Amazon Ordering | Kitchen Appliances |
I have a mixture of Venetian blinds, roller blinds and curtains. Once I have some free time I will play with some different types of devices available for roller blinds and curtains already available to automate opening and closing based on daylight outside. The Venetian blinds are going to be more challenging, this will probably require more of a bespoke ESP home solution providing I can find a small motor which will fit in the top of the blinds and be powerful enough to open and close them. I will Blog progress and ideas once this gets underway.
Saturday night is takeaway night, but having too much choice means spending ages deciding before ordering. Uber Eats and Just Eat both have APIs which opens different possibilities for what an integration could do. Certainly order tacking and status is possible from what I’ve already seen, but I think there is also possibility to order from a preset favorite meal, wouldn’t it be good to have a simple button to order a surprise meal chosen at random from your favorites? I’ve never written anything for Home Assistant before but this is where I want to start. If anyone already knows of these integrations or interested in helping with an integration contact me. Not all these projects may have successful outcomes some of these may just be dreams never achieved!
Its a thought I had quite a while ago, I have aging gym equipment which functions well but is very basic with segment displays. What if I was to add my own sensors and displays and integrate it with Home Assistant to track progress and link with other devices. You could have the lights flash every time you have ran a kilometre on the treadmill, Have an up beat playlist kick in when slowing down on the exercise bike, or simply if motivation is a problem not have the lights turn on around the house until you’ve done 30 minutes exercise that day. Very likely to be a raspberry PI based project.
Amazon auto ordering is something that used to work with dash buttons but these seemed to have disappeared. Id like to make some virtual “dash” buttons within Home Assistant to order some basic items such as toilet paper or coffee pods when required. There is no direct link available to do this to my knowledge however I have read its possible to mimic talking (by use of TTS I assume) in to your Alexa to order it that way as if you are talking to Alexa where you can order things. This is something I will look in to very soon.
Id like to get myself more smart kitchen gadgets, I currently have none but have seen a smart air fryer, kettles and coffee machines. I have thought about taking my Tassimo coffee machine apart to try automate it to make a coffee for me in the morning however there is no way I could swap the pods over half way through! Any recommendations of must have smart gadgets do let me know!
Feedback & Share
Please feedback to me if this page has been useful to you or if there is anything else you would like me to add. My Hope is that it has given you ideas of what you can do with your own smart homes. Send feedback and comments to me using the form below. Please also share with your friends who may also benefit from ideas.
AG AUTOMATING 