[cjdoc29]

Small QoL things that I do with my automation. I do use Homebridge for things like connecting to my security system and thermostat.

1. Automate all the ambient lighting to turn on half an hour before sunset. Bonus points since we have a dog at home and I feel better leaving the lights on for him.

2. When we open the front door which is some 4ft away from our neighbor across, our TV lowers the volume to 5% and dims the living room's lighting. Gives our place a bit more privacy and hopefully doesn't disturb any of our neighbors.

3. When all of our phones have left the house, the security system arms itself. Also disarms when we get home.

4. When the temperature on the second floor gets to 76F, our motorized blackout blinds drop down on the second floor, turns on the air condition, and turns on our lights. This is TOTALLY a gimmick for me.

One thing I wish I could have are air purifiers that remembers its settings after its power cycled - so I can control it with a smart outlet/switch upon a certain PPM level. I know "smart" ones exist, but I actually draw the line there. I try to stick with things that have are Thread-enabled or are from brands that I trust.

[theshrike79]

1. I'd love to live somewhere where "sunset" or "sunrise" is an actionable thing :D Over here the sun might rise a bit before noon and it might never actually set.

3. I don't arm our security system, but it does set the home to "away" mode, turning off all lights and the coffee maker and other "dangerous" appliances.

4. I'm stealing this one =)

For air purifiers, you can get Ikea's FÖRNUFTIG purifiers that are 100% stupid devices that just start when the power comes on. I'm running them all the time on low power, but I'm considering automating them on the highest power so that they run when we're not at home or not in the room (the loudest mode is kinda loud, the slowest is practically dead silent).

[CRConrad]

Sv. “förnuftig” ~= eng. “sensible, reasonable”.

IKEA’s product names are often annoyingly cute (precocious-kid-like), but I suppose sometimes the products actually live up to them.

[CRConrad]

> 3. When all of our phones have left the house, the security system arms itself. Also disarms when we get home.

Thanks, now I know to first rob you of your phone and bring that with me when I go burgling your home. Saves me the trouble of defeating your burglar alarm myself.

[TheHappyOddish]

If you're stealing their phone, you could probably take their keys too and use the $5 wrench method to obtain their security system PIN.

[bombolo]

> 3. When all of our phones have left the house, the security system arms itself. Also disarms when we get home.

How did you pull this off? My phones go in powersaving mode (disconnecting themselves) even when I set them to not do that. The only way seems to keep the charger plugged.

[thereisnospork]

I send my phone a ping every few seconds to see if it is on the network[0], possibly that is enough activity to keep it from disconnecting? I use node-red personally but probably not a big difference there. Could maybe try just rigging a 'ping -n 1000000' from the command line overnight to see if that keeps the phone awake?

Although I will say it is sometimes frustratingly slow to first connect to wifi, as if it is only scanning every 30 seconds or more when not connected to a network.

[0]For lighting and ambient music to come on when I get home from work.

[tmerc]

I can't remember the details, but I had mobile detection reliably working using arp on my router.

[LtWorf]

I made a software to do actions when devices appear/disappear from the LAN.

https://github.com/ltworf/lapdog

It sends pings and uses the mac addresses.

[Nextgrid]

Wouldn't that affect battery drain?

[LtWorf]

Yes, but a ping every few second shouldn't make much difference. The problem is that phones go into power saving mode.

When using whatsapp from the website, that requires (required? Haven't used it in a while) the phone to be online, I occasionally had to wake up the phone.

[osr]

I use Home Assistant with the Unifi integration that checks if a specific device is connected to my wifi, and since I and my girlfriend always have wifi on at home, this is working very good.

[bombolo]

I know I know. Basically checks the ARP table. But in my experience phones disconnect the wifi when idle, even when told not to do so.

[cjdoc29]

Do you have iPhones? My solution is specific to the Apple ecosystem, but did indeed require some workaround with Homebridge to get it to be truly automated.

[bombolo]

No, android.

[halfnormalform]

Can attest Blue Pure 211+ remembers its speed after being power cycled. And no smart features whatsoever.

[pzs]

On 3: Although you didn't give many details about this, I hope that your security system doesn't disarm when any of your cell phones is close to home, regardless of who happens to be carrying it...

[zamnos]

My physical (schlage) key doesn't have check my fingerprint, so if someone steals that, they get in. If their cellphone behaves the same way, that doesn't seem like a step backwards, security-wise.

Though if my phone's NFC could unlock my door but required my fingerprint before unlocking my door, that would be kinda neat.

[cjdoc29]

Its a trade-off for us. We had a security system for about a year before we realized it was inconvenient to arm/disarm it, so having a geofence ensured we always have it active when we need it to be. Your point is not invalid though.