HOME AUTOMATION

My Favorite Smart Home Automations

As I wrote in my Home Automation Story post, I use Home Assistant to automate my Smart Home. I’ve done the usual things like installing smart light switches and outlets and have certain lights come on and go off at set times. The easy stuff. But I have a few automations that I’m really happy with and proud of. Better still, it has a high AF (Approval Factor) from my wife.



Why I Chose Home Assistant OS

For setting up Home Assistant, there are several choices: Home Assistant OS, Home Assistant Container, Home Assistant Supervised, and Home Assistant Core. I chose Home Assistant OS for a few reasons. First Choice Home Assistant Container For those that know me, you’d probably be surprised that I went with Home Assistant OS. I’m a tinkerer and like to have full control over my systems.



Withings Sleep Tracking Mat with Home Assistant

I have really been wanting to get bed occupancy working with Home Assistant for a while. I have some lights around the house that are triggered by motion detectors. Especially for the one in the bedroom, I thought it would be nice if I could disable the motion-activated light whenever someone is in bed. Additionally, I thought it would be a good idea to disable some other triggers if both of us are in bed (like motion sensors elsewhere in the house that the cat would set off) or disabling turning on the bathroom fan automatically (due to humidity) if someone is sleeping.



Local Control

When it comes to Home Automation, many solutions available rely on “The Cloud”. These solutions have issues ranging from cloud services being inaccessible to companies stealing your data to companies ending support for a product you may rely on. To quote DigiBlur, “Get your shit out of the cloud!” The Issues Many Smart Home devices use “The Cloud” and a Smart App on your phone to manage them. However, what happens when the cloud provider decides to shut down their service, breaking all of your devices like Lowes did with its Iris product in 2019.



My Story with Home Automation and Home Assistant

I started with Home Automation in December, 2017. It started slowly. But as we started to see the benefits to what home automation can do for us, it quickly became almost an obsession. Now I have a Home Assistant system with a couple hundred devices, almost 100 automations, and some cool technology that has really enhanced our lives. Background So, my Home Automation journey starts like may others: I bought one smart plug.