What's your coolest, favorite, or most approved Home Automation event/rule?

[AndroidDev01]

I'd love to know the cool things people have been doing!




I also posted this on reddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomati...ents/4r23gr/_/

[rmasonjr]

Love these threads to see what others are doing!

Sent from my SCH-R970X using Tapatalk

[Eman]

Lacation based

I think it would all depend on one's taste (likes). It's really hard to choose but I think hands free (location tracking) made things even cooler when firing events. Once things are automated, then the feeling is just left to the beholder.


Eman.

[waynehead99]

Putting alerts on the washer and dryer. Crazy how my wife doesn't take all day to do the laundry now

[AndroidDev01]

Putting alerts on the washer and dryer. Crazy how my wife doesn't take all day to do the laundry now

What do you use? Vibration sensor, power monitor?

[waynehead99]

Power monitor on both. The washer I just use an aeon smart power plug. The dryer since its 220, I use a aeon whole house energy monitor. I have the clamps inside the dryer around the wires. The thing is completely inaccurate for any usable energy data, but works perfect to see the dryer is done.

[AndroidDev01]

Power monitor on both. The washer I just use an aeon smart power plug. The dryer since its 220, I use a aeon whole house energy monitor. I have the clamps inside the dryer around the wires. The thing is completely inaccurate for any usable energy data, but works perfect to see the dryer is done.

Have you ever tried a Aeon Labs ZW078-A? It appears to be designed for this task specifically.

[waynehead99]

Have you ever tried a Aeon Labs ZW078-A? It appears to be designed for this task specifically.

That would work too. But a gen 1 energy monitor can be found on eBay for 10 to 20 bucks nowadays and I had one laying around and was bored one day.

I also have an issue with the dogs and the doorbell. I use an ardiuno tied to the door bell that controls a relay. We can control if the doorbell rings or not. Either way I also I have it set to send a text to the wife and I if someone presses the button. Really nice if we are in the back yard and expecting guest.

I have some of the lights around the house tied to the weather to turn on if the clouds start rolling in. I have found this to work better than trying to use a light sensor for my needs. I also have house modes for schedules, but this allows the lights to come on earlier on days it's raining.

Probably the most used by the wife, yet mostly unaware of it (best kinda automation imo) is the Windows and doors tied to the heater and whole house fan. If they are left open for longer than 2 minutes, the AC shuts off and stays off until the house is sealed up again. Also depending on the temp outside in relation to the inside, if the windows are opened, the whole house fan turns on. It also counts the number of windows opened and adjust speed accordingly.

Just some more ideas.

[AndroidDev01]

That would work too. But a gen 1 energy monitor can be found on eBay for 10 to 20 bucks nowadays and I had one laying around and was bored one day.

I also have an issue with the dogs and the doorbell. I use an ardiuno tied to the door bell that controls a relay. We can control if the doorbell rings or not. Either way I also I have it set to send a text to the wife and I if someone presses the button. Really nice if we are in the back yard and expecting guest.

I have some of the lights around the house tied to the weather to turn on if the clouds start rolling in. I have found this to work better than trying to use a light sensor for my needs. I also have house modes for schedules, but this allows the lights to come on earlier on days it's raining.

Probably the most used by the wife, yet mostly unaware of it (best kinda automation imo) is the Windows and doors tied to the heater and whole house fan. If they are left open for longer than 2 minutes, the AC shuts off and stays off until the house is sealed up again. Also depending on the temp outside in relation to the inside, if the windows are opened, the whole house fan turns on. It also counts the number of windows opened and adjust speed accordingly.

Just some more ideas.

Wow turning off the heater/ac is amazing. Never would have thought of that. I need to implement that!

Sent from my moto x

[Uncle Michael]

Also depending on the temp outside in relation to the inside, if the windows are opened, the whole house fan turns on. It also counts the number of windows opened and adjust speed accordingly.

That's definitely a cool feature that I'd love to have. (All I need is window sensors and fan speed controllable by HS. )

[jhearty]

The washer/dryer finished announcement is one of my favorites, in part because it was super easy to implement. I have a gas dryer so used the same power meter Wayne described for his washer on both my washer & dryer, and the events took about a minute each to write.

Another one I like is if someone is in the toilet with the door closed for more than 2 minutes, the exhaust fan comes on for a few minutes.

I also did the window open-heat off trick with announcement reminder included. Related, if any doors are open too long an announcement reminds us a door is open, quite useful with a grandchild in the house these days.

John

[BlairG]

One of our coolest things is our pet Water dish. It's one of those recirculating fountain type with a reservoir on the back. Here we hooked ours up with zwave and when the water level gets low it will notify us with a few voice reminders and send a text to our cell phone. Great WAF approval.

[randy]

Putting alerts on the washer and dryer. Crazy how my wife doesn't take all day to do the laundry now

That is the #1 in my household as well. We light the LED rings on a couple of Aeotech switches - red for dryer, blue for washer and magenta for both. This tells her at a glance what is running. Michelle also gets a pushover notice and chime in her iPad when either are finished. She also likes the time savings and also knowing when to get things out of the dryer before they wrinkle.

There are lots of other things that are counted on and taken for granted. Like you and others have said, turn off HomeSeer and the complaints will be fast and furious.

To me the "coolest" is hot water and heat management. Our natural gas usage is about 20% lower in the summer and 10% in the winter with automation controlling the boiler. We no longer have short burn cycles, the hot water "sleeps" during the work day and overnight and the heat knows when we are home or away.

Location based automation is also promising. HomeSeer knows where each of us is and what vehicle we are in/on. It even makes reasonably accurate predictions of our heading home and when we will be here. I haven't leveraged any of this into meaningful events other than a garage door that opens and closes automatically. I am still testing a number of ideas to see if they can be both useful and reliable. It is nice to have that information in the arsenal.

Speak events and voice control are in the baby steps phase. There is a resistance to both, but there is beginning to be some inkling of acceptance.

The new HomeSeer switches with scenes are also well-received, but I have to be careful to make the controls consistent enough to not be confusing. I bury some special events in double tap and triple tap scenes for my own use, but single tap and long press are fairly universal.

As has been discussed before, there is a line dividing automation and control, but they are equally important. The many MiniMotes and new HomeSeer switches fall into the control category, but are popular in the household. The biggest change in the last 6 months has been a notable increase in the request for "things to do stuff". Now that it is understood that it takes only a few seconds to change the default brightness of a dimmer or the function of one of the controls, I have a partner who is now getting things the way she wants them as opposed to my dictating how they work. Now I just have to be careful not to screw anything up and make sure things work consistently and reliably.

The latest request is for a "Ring" or one of the equivalents. The idea of being notified that someone is at the door, seeing who it is and being able to interact remotely really appeals to her for security. I like the idea of redundant or complimentary systems as well. We have a dedicated security camera system, a dedicated security system and HomeSeer. The Ring type device would be another layer. While we will likely put it in and use iPhone apps at first, the real success will be dedicated wall mounted tablets that launch the app when someone is at the door, then revert to simple and functional information and control devices. That would be a lot easier if HSTouch designer worked as it should. Maybe we will get that at some point.

To me the holy grail is still seamless voice integration. Echo has proven to be very capable of understanding voice commands, now we need natural and intuitive voice control through Echo. We seem to be hovering around the halfway point right now.

[mrhappy]

...The latest request is for a "Ring" or one of the equivalents. The idea of being notified that someone is at the door, seeing who it is and being able to interact remotely really appeals to her for security. I like the idea of redundant or complimentary systems as well. We have a dedicated security camera system, a dedicated security system and HomeSeer. The Ring type device would be another layer. While we will likely put it in and use iPhone apps at first, the real success will be dedicated wall mounted tablets that launch the app when someone is at the door, then revert to simple and functional information and control devices. That would be a lot easier if HSTouch designer worked as it should. Maybe we will get that at some point.

I don't know if you have seen the DoorBird thread but I have written a plugin for that unit (the ring devices do not appear to have an API), it is a work in progress and will not have two way voice comms via HS (the app is for that) but you can get notifications and download images from the unit.

[AshaiRey]

The highest WAF i got is a virtual device called 'migraine switch'
If that one is activated by voice or any other way then there will be no audio throughout the whole house, no doorbell, no phone ringing, nothing. When friends do call by phone they get a friendly answer that my wife has migraine. Anyone else calling is directed to a voice box.