Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History

automations

README.md

Automations

This folder contains all of my organized automations along with some explanations of what I do and why.

Please note that automations are not the only way to automate things in Home Assistant. Some of the magic is also managed through scripts, template sensors, custom integrations or add-ons.

Also, I used to have more automations when I was in Canada but since I'm moved mutiple times during the last 2 years I did not had time to bring them all back (some also don't make sense anymore). They are still in a branch I created when I moved.

Since I'm usually documenting way after writting the automations I also sometimes add ideas on how I could have made them better.

WIP/Prototypes

I usually prototype or start my automations using the UI editor, so my WIP automations are usually located in the root automations.yaml file. They should also normally be in a branch and in a pull request so it should be transparent to whoever only looks at my master branch. But sometimes I'm lazy so the file isn't always (well... rarely) empty as it should be.

Set-up

The way I'm managing having this folder with different files who contains automations, and on top of that keeping the root automations.yaml file is that way:

My automations

Air purifier

Those automations are related to my air purifier located in my office. That's the reason why their are all using the input_boolean.working value that indicates if I'm working in my office or not. That value is managed in working.yaml, documented below.

There are 3 automations:

  • Turn on Air Purifier when I start working: As its name implies starts the air purifier when I start working.

  • Turn off Air Purifier when I'm off: Turns it off when I stop working

  • Turn off Air purifier for a while if the air quality is good: In case the air quality is good enough (PM5 under 2 for 5mn), I then turn off the air purifier until it becomes bad (PM5 over 5) for at least 15mn. This is meant to save energy and extend filters life.

Alerts

Those automations are meant to alert me if something weird is going on, eg. an abnormal temperature.

There are currently only 2 automations:

  • Alert me if the temperature is too low: In case the temperature in any of the indoor rooms (including the basement) goes below 10 degrees, alert me through Google Chat and my Google Homes.

  • Alert me if the temperature is too high: Same if the temperature goes over 30 (to be tweaked since I think it happens quite frequently in summer)

I also used to have automations related to noise and moisture but they were using my Minut Point devices but since I can't inteface them with HA I had to get rid of the automations. I also used to have 2 automations related to my freezer, using a door sensor because my daughter used to forget to close it, but I now have a new freezer which beeps so I also disabled the automations. I'm still keeping them all here as reference.

Future improvements for alerts

  • Maybe having different upper values for the temperature depending on the seasons
  • I should group all temperature sensors in a group so that I won't have to list them all in each automation
  • Leak detection

Away mode

Those automations are also related to something unexpected happening at home, but the caveat with the alerts is that those ones should not trigger if somebody is at home. They are mostly related to multiple ways of detecting presence, from the using cameras or motion sensors to lights being switched on.

There are also some tentative for presence simulation.

All those automations are using the 3 helpers

  • binary_sensor.people_home indicates if someone who's tracked (my wife and I) are home. The issue is that it doesn't take into account that my daughter could be home alone, which for now doesn not happen often since she's still young or that we may have visitors (my parents or my in-laws for ex.), which is a case that happen quite often.

  • input_boolean.visitors is meant to solve that problem. It indicates that we have someone visiting and prevents the different automations from triggering.

  • input_boolean.away_mode indicates that the "alarm/alerts" are set. Using such a helper lets us clearly see the status and also let us overwrite it if needed.

All those helpers are exposed to Google home so that we can easily switch/overwrite them.

The different automations are:

  • Switch Away mode on when we are away for more than an hour: This is the automation that switches the input_boolean.away_mode value to on when we are away, this then enables all the other automations. There's a slight delay to prevent the alarm to switch too often, to cover for when we leave our daughter for a short while, or if the geofencing becomes flaky and our home/away presence switches.

  • Switch Away mode off when we come back: This is the reverse automation, setting off input_boolean.away_mode and the alerts. It also sets the media players volumes back to normal since the alerts are raising them to the maximum.

  • Switch motion detection and alarms on when the away mode is on and Switch motion detection off when the away mode is off: These used to switch the motion detection of my Dafang camera on and off when we were home/away, but that's not possible with my new Reolink cameras so I disabled the automations.

  • Motion detected: Sends an alert (via Google Chat), and shout through all the media players if motion is detected by one of the cameras. Mode is single because I don't want the script to restart if motion is continuously detected.

  • Door openned while away: Does the same thing but if a door is opened.

  • Mouvement detected while away: Same again but if one of the motion sensors sees something.

  • Lights switched on while away: Same with lights being switched on, the problem being that we also want to switch on the lights for presence detection, so for now the lights used for the presence are not in this automation.

  • Presence simulation Bureau: Presence detection in my office. It uses randomness for more realness. Starts at a random time between 30 before sunset and 15mn after and ends between 11PM and 11:15PM.

  • Presence simulation Aurore's bedroom: Same thing but with slightly different times (the worst that could happen would be to have all lights switching on and off at the same time).

  • Reboot HA every week when we are away: This one is a failsafe. When I'm away for a long time I want to be certain HA is not frozen, so I like to reboot it at least once a week. I also have a Shelly plug that I program to reboot the modem every week for the same reason.

Future improvements for the away mode

  • Use a scene to set the volume of the media players back when we come back (except it might not work with "all")
  • Switch off the TV after the alerts
  • Switch cameras on/off depending on the away state instead of jsut the motion detection
  • Use app notifications for the alerts
  • Send pictures alongside the notifications when something is detected by the cameras
  • Find a way to have both the lights alert and presence detection
  • Continue to improve presence simulation (TV, or rando; colars in the living room to simulate it)

Car

These are all the automations related to my car and its charger since I only want to charge it during off-peak hours (and later on when producing a surplus of electricity with panels).

The automations are:

  • Turn on the car's chargeur only during off-peak hours: Switches on/off the plug controlling the car charger depending on the off-peak hours. I'm quite satisfied to have managed to do that in one automation instead of two.

  • Preheat the car: In winter, on school days, and if we are home, if the temperature is low, preheat the car just before when we have to go to school.

  • Lock car when at home for at least an hour: I very often forget to close my car's door so this is a failsafe.

  • Reload Kia integration when it's down: Sadly the Kia integration can but flaky so this aims at making things better.

There's also a bunch of automations related to logging my car consumption but since they don't work at the moment you should just ignore them.

Future improvements for the car

  • Add a failsafe when HA is booted to check on the off-peak hours and set the charger status accordingly
  • Only preheat the car if it's not a holiday (using the calendar integration)

Meetings

Theses automations are meant to switch a light colors depending on if I'm in a meeting and if I'm talking (using the Mutesync device and integration), but since I have set it up since my last move I'm not going to comment on it. It's quite straightforward so it shouldn't be hard to understand.

Night Time

These are old automations that I'm not using anymore and just keeping for reference. There were all meant to switch on some lights and changing thjeir colors to give a hint to my daughter on whether it was time for the night routine or to go to bed.

Others

Miscellaneous automations, mostly (all?) related to lights, which were not fitting anywhere else.

These are:

  • Switch off lights 30mn after sunrise and Switch off lights 60mn after sunrise: Except maybe for my office, all lights should be switched off during the day so this is what those automations do (just slightly later during the Canadian winter).

  • Switch off all lights when we go to bed: Switches off all lights when it's time to go to bed (time set up in the input_datetime.nighttime_end helper) so that it forces us to do so instead of forgetting the time while watching a serie.

  • Switch off all lights when nobody's home for 30mn: There's no need for lights if nobody is home.

Future improvements

  • Not switching off lights if we have visitors

Vaccum cleaner

Here are all the automations related to my vacuum cleaner.

Note that some of the logic is managed in scripts, in the vacuum.yaml file.

Some automations were related to the IFTT integration but since Google removed the option for IFTTT to parce custom commands, I had to get rid of them. Initially they were letting me say "OK Google, Clean the bedroom 3 times", and the string "the betroom 3 times" was passed down to HA, parsed (cf. scripts) and then the right command was sent to the vaccum.

The remaining automations are:

  • Start Cleaning Room: I have a selector name input_select.vacuum_room which contains all the rooms in the house, selecting a room triggers the cleaning of it. I'm not really using it often but keeping it just in case.

  • vacuum Kitchen and dining room when we are away: This one is a very basic automation that starts the vaccum at a fixed time if we are not home. It's not used anymore but kept as a reference. It was good enough when we were both working at the office but not anymore.

  • vacuum Kitchen and dining room when we are away (Covid version): It's the advanced version, named "Covid" because I started to work home during the pandemic. It waits for us to be away for 5mn (the timer is short because I was it to start while I'm bringin my daughter to school in the morning). Then if we do not have visitors, or if its' not too late or too early, if it's a worked day (in which case only 1 of us needs to be away) or not (in which case we need to be both away), and finally if it had not done any cleaning in the last 12h, it starts vaccuming the kitchen, the dining room and the bathroom. This is my most complicated automation, at least in regard to conditions.

  • Update the time of the last cleaning: I'm tracking in input_datetime.last_vacuum the last time the vaccum cleaner has been doing its job, so taht I'm not triggering it more than every 12h. That automation save the time whenever the vaccum is used.

  • Start/stop xiaomi fast scan interval and Update xiaomi map extractor: The Xiaomi integration stops working if it receives too many calls per day and the map extractor one is making a lot of calls if we want to be able to follow the vacuum on the map in real time. So that two automations work together to only update the map when one of the vacuum is in use.

Future improvements for the vaccum cleaner

  • Treat holidays as non-working days (using the calendar integration)
  • Still vacuum even if we are here if no cleaning has been done for days
  • Find a way to be able to tell the vacuum not to vaccum right now but to do it later
  • Use "And/Or" instead of multiple ifs to make the Update xiaomi map extractor automation easier to read
  • Prevent/Delay the vacuum from starting if I'm at home and in a call

Working

These automations goal is to set the value of input_boolean.working depending on different signals to indicate if I'm working or not and impact other automations accordinly.

input_datetime.work_start and input_datetime.work_end indicate my usual working hours.

At the moment:

  • Sets that I'm working when I'm at home: Says I'm working at the begining of my shift if I'm at home.

  • Sets that I'm not working when I leave: I stop working if I'm not at home (went running or just to the school)

  • Sets that I'm working when I come back: Back at work when I'm back

  • Sets that I stop working at the end of my shift: End my working time at the time entered in input_datetime.work_end.

Future improvements for the working indicator

  • Use my computer status and meet status as an extra signal.

Ideas

Some ideas of automations I want to add later on:

  • Detecting if I forgot to take out the trash
  • Good night routine which switches off lights, close curtains, and tell me if a door is open
  • good morning routine, with also a summary of my day (do I have a lunch planned, is it me or my wife who's in charge of my daughters activities, etc...)
  • Detect if a car approches the house (I want to be able to say "I'm waiting for someone, tell me when they arrive")
  • Circadian lights
  • Party mode (setting all lights in music modes if possible, off if not)
  • Reminder if it's past the end of school time and nobody seems to be at the school
  • "You have mail" notification using a sensor in my mailbox
  • Smart heating
  • More proactive notifications with CTA like receiving a chat messages that says "According to your calendar, your visitors should have left, should I deactivate the visitor mode?".
  • Redo what I was doing in Canada with a remote that was switching between different scenes in my living-room (for ref. automations, scripts and scenes)