I’ve always loved the thought of having a smart home filled with devices that automatically schedule cleaning, lighting, or other features without my involvement. The vision never quite materialized because the smart home is fractured into multiple ecosystems, but it wasn’t until I set up Home Assistant that I was able to get my home devices into something approaching the vision of the future I was sold.
But even then, my smart home is pretty dumb, at least while I’m home. I’ve found that I don’t like lights changing while I’m physically present, or how much noise my robovacs make while they’re cleaning. About the only things that are running while I’m home are notifications if the doorbell camera picks up a package or if the doors open. But that all changes when I leave the house, because the idea of my home rearranging and cleaning itself while I’m not around is intoxicating.
Currently, I’m using a mix of Home Assistant automations and various apps, but I’m going to move everything into HA once I’ve got it running on its own mini PC so I can manage everything in one place.
Turn my lights to a random schedule
And then turn them on when I get home, based on time of day
My current smart home lighting is a mix of My Leviton in-wall smart dimmers and several Philips Hue bulbs scattered around various rooms. This is fine because they’re controlled via Echo Dots in every room when I’m at home. I rarely need or want anything more advanced than changing the brightness or a simple on or off command, and that works for the entire family.
But when we go out, I don’t like the thought of the lights being constantly on, or off at night, because it looks like nobody is home. To fix this, I’ve got randomized schedules set up for every light grouping, with the key element being that they aren’t enabled unless we’re all out. Once both our phones have left the general area, the schedules kick in and start randomizing the lighting to simulate us walking between rooms. These are also scheduled for half an hour before dusk to half an hour after dawn, because our hallways get dark before the light outside disappears. It’s a bit like Home Alone, but with smart lighting that’s only just smarter than the Wet Bandits.
Turn off smart plugs
There’s no reason my TV and other devices need to draw power
Smart plugs are one of the best tools in my smart home for combating wasted electricity, along with a smart meter installed in my breaker box to identify which devices use the most power, so that I can worry about the high-drain devices and not sweat the smaller stuff. I’ve got smart plugs on my TVs, the sockets that charge laptops during work hours, and a bunch of other things that I’ve identified as current culprits.
While I’m home, they can stay on, because the chances are one of the family members will be using them, and I don’t want to interfere with actual usage. But again, once the geofenced area gets triggered by both of us leaving home, those smart plugs turn off, instantly reducing vampire current drain and ensuring no devices are left on while we’re out. The best thing about using phone locations as the trigger is that it can be set to turn back on when either of us gets home, so everything is ready for use again.
Change the thermostat settings
It’s environmentally friendly and better for my bank balance
Nobody in my family likes being at the wrong temperature when at home, and we tend to keep it at a stable setting so that the AC doesn’t have to work too hard during the summer and the heating doesn’t have to strain when it’s cold outside. And even when we do leave the house, we don’t like having it change too far because it strains the system trying to catch up once we’re home again.
It’s always nice to save some cash, though, and we want to do our part to keep the grid happy during peak usage times, so I’ve got a geofenced trigger to change the thermostat settings when we’re out of the house, but only after we’ve been gone for an hour, so that it’s not changing if we only take a short trip somewhere. Added to that is a larger geofenced area for the temperature to return to our preferred settings on the way back home, and it’s a pretty robust system for balancing our needs and the power bill.
Lock all the doors
With corresponding automation to unlock them when I get near
I’m very absent-minded, and one of my favorite smart device segments is locks. Being able to see in the app that things are locked and that the doors are closed is invaluable to me, and I have them on every outside door. And yes, to ensure everything is secure when we go out, the locks are set to lock automatically after a couple of minutes, or after we’ve gone past a certain number of feet from the building. Coupled with some simple door sensors to say if those doors are open or closed, I no longer worry about whether I’ve locked the doors when we go out. On the way home, our smartphones unlock the front door as we get close, and turn on the outside light.
Start the robovacs
They’re so noisy when I’m home
While I know that robot vacuums are no substitute for a good manual cleaning, they’re great for maintaining the floors the rest of the time. But we have wooden floors for the most part, and the rubber wheels on the robovac are incredibly noisy on the floors below, so I don’t like setting a schedule for them to run while we’re at home. I have no worries about setting them free when we’re out of the house, and that’s the perfect time for vacuuming. A quick Home Assistant automation gets things going, both with the Roborock on the first floor and the Ecovacs on the main floor:
alias: "Start Vacuum when Leaving Home"
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: zone.home
from: "home"
to: "not_home"
#Optional Condition: Check time since last clean
# condition:
# - condition: template
# value_template: "{{ (now() - states.input_datetime.last_cleaned.attributes.timestamp | as_datetime).total_seconds() > 28800 }}" #Check if more than 8 hours
action:
- service: vacuum.start
target:
entity_id: vacuum.your_robot_vacuum # Replace with your vacuum's entity ID
All the script needs is the entity ID for each robot vacuum, and then it’ll check if it’s cleaned within eight hours, and start vacuuming and mopping if not. Coming home to clean floors is a fantastic feeling, and not having to listen to the vacuum is even better.
Geofencing is the smart home automation tool that makes my home better
I like keeping my smart home as dumb as possible when I’m home, partly because I forget I’ve automated things, and they make me jump when they trigger, but also like to keep some level of control. But when I’ve left the house, all bets are off, and my smart home can do everything its computers can accomplish. Cleaning my floors, saving energy, and making sure everything is secure are all features I expect from a smart home, and a few small automations accomplish this with ease.
