I am a busy dad who works long hours, with a girlfriend who also works full-time and an almost 2-year-old who runs around the house like a squirrel on a caffeine/sugar rush. Doing things manually when they can be automated seems lame and a chore in today's world.
Imagine coming home after a late night out. Your hands are full with a sleeping toddler in your arms and tonight's leftover food in your hands. Now you’ve somehow got to get the door open and turn on the lights. Oh god, the cats are rushing the door because they’re hungry and haven’t eaten in the last 10 minutes. Even worse, it’s hot in the house because I set the A/C to 78 before we left. Now the toddler's room is going to be hot for the next 30 minutes before it finally cools down.
No more, I say to myself! I need to automate all this! Hence, my journey into Home Assistant and automation. In this article, I will break down two automations that have made a real impact on my life.
Away Mode:
Having Home/Away modes can save you both time and money! I consider this one of my most if not my most critical automation. I am just sharing my Away automation here for now as my Home Mode is a bit complex and deserves it's own article! Here is a brief list of things my away mode does:
- First checks that no one is home based on Conditional phone location
- Turn on/off lights
- Adjust A/C to 78 when leaving and 72-74 when on the way home
Make sure you use conditons to check if each person in your home is Away before running the automation:
Here is a break down of the actions section with associated conditions:
Reminders
Reminders are so critcal to my life. As someone with a TBI, if I don't have a timer or calendar entry or a reminder, typically it doesn't get done. That is why I love using Home Assistant for reminders. It ensure I am not the only one in my family that gets the reminders which helps keep us on task and honest!
Here is a simple one we use:
Conclusion
I limited this article to just 2 automations to avoid information overload, but I plan to continue sharing both simple and more advanced automations in future articles so stay tuned!
If you wish to see all my code in more detail you can do so on my github. I look forward to sharing more of my life and how automation helps me going forward!