* zwave motion sensors that can turn on the stairs lights at night when I start to walk down
* door/window sensors that will automatically turn the AC off if they are open for more than a minute.
* several methods of presence detection for anyone in the house, and ensuring the doors are locked, lights out, and garage doors down if nobody is home (after an announcement on the google homes just in case anyone somehow is still home)
* automatic notifications to my wife's phone when i'm on my way home after work so she would know when to start dinner (we don't use this one any more as I work from home, but it beat getting phone calls and me guessing how long I was from home every day!)
* notifications that show an image of who is at the front door when there is motion there
* an alert if a door in the house is left open for more than 1 minute
* a vibration sensor combined with a tiny hall sensor on the door of the washer/dryer to notify me when laundry is done (trying to measure power usage on 220v wiring was looking to be more annoyance than it was worth, so i went a different route!)
And one of my favorites that i'm working on right now:
* a system to measure rainfall amount and only turn on the reclaimed water sprinklers when it's not enough, but adjust the runtime accordingly.
Your option was likely much less expensive, but aeotec does make a clamp-on energy sensor[0]. It's made for reading your whole-home energy but it should work for your purposes. But like I said, your solution was likely much cheaper (these are about $99).
And then I was back at square 1 for the washer, which turns out uses little enough energy in a lot of cases to be hard to tell when it's "done" vs when it's just pausing between cycles or swapping water out.
I also wanted to have the notifications continue until you actually empty it, and that required a door sensor anyway!
I really want to get one of those for the oven though, my wife tends to worry that she left the oven on (she never has!) and something like this connected to it might help ease that worry. And I REALLY don't want to do anything invasive to the oven, as that's one thing that i REALLY do not want accidentally turning on or shorting out.
But until I get around to replacing it, I also have normal IP cameras out front. So i combined the API from Ring with the IP cameras that let you access the video stream to take a snapshot on motion or a doorbell ring, and use HTML5 notifications to send it to all my devices.
They are battery powered, but i've had the oldest ones for almost 2 years now and haven't had to replace the batteries yet, and when I do I can get a pack of like 10 for $15 so it's not bad.
All of the light switches are zwave as well, and they go in the wall behind the toggle switches, so from the outside you can't see any difference.
I get most of them from amazon, and i've used a bunch of vendors over the years. Aeotec, ecolink, linear, and a few no-name brands.
It's not sold any more, and it's not zwave plus, but I have like 12 of them and they are by far the best i've used. They are small, run consistently 100% of the time, have good range, and more.
I have 2 of the aeotec nano switches which are zwave plus, but they are also $60 so it's almost double the money...
I've also used fibaro but ended up removing it because there was a delay between when i flipped the toggle and when it would turn the light on, and that was not okay in my book.
I am looking to replace the light switches with zwave-plus modules simply for the extra security, but i'm not in a massive rush.
In the sensors world, i use ecolink's door window sensors. They are cheap and work well enough, although I did have 2 out of about 20 that were bad and needed to be replaced shortly after installing them.
I am also trying out zooz 4-in-1 sensors for motion right now. They work pretty damn well with a lot of control over sensitivity and range, so I'm happy.
For the garage doors I use linear/gocontrol's GD00Z-4 modules, and my door locks are kwikset with a zwave plugin board, and there are a few plugs around the house from various companies that all have worked perfectly so I don't really have anything bad about them (ge, aeotec, r-tech)
You could hook into the buzzer circuit for this notification.
So where possible, I shy away from any modifications to the device itself that aren't extremely simple to undo.
A vibration sensor and hall sensor on an esp8266 is cheap, works consistently, and is VERY easy to take off if I don't want it any more.
I did hook into a humidifier once kind of like this, I hooked the esp8266 up to the on-off button, but I try to avoid it if I can.
[0]: https://github.com/topics/home-assistant-config [1]: https://github.com/robbiet480/Home-Assistant-Config
- i built a bed occupancy sensor so hass knows if we're in bed or not, and disables automations that would otherwise be annoying (mainly the motion-detected lights in the bedroom)
- i come home and say "hey snips, i'm home" which turns on the tv and sets kodi to a plugin that i tend to use.
- i have a snips.ai command (hey snips, let's party) which turns on my lifx bulbs and makes them change colors
- also whenever Eric Prydz comes on my living room kodi, those party lights come on
- i have an announcement go out over snips.ai tts when my 3d print starts (so i can go ensure the first few layers are good) and when the 3d print is done. I also have snips commands to tell me how much time is left on my 3d print job, and if the temperature of the nozzle spikes too high.
Does it also supply instant spandex and leg warmers?
Do you use a pressure sensor or PIR for that?
Snips is straight forward as mostly it is integrated into my home assistant, but with a lot of custom voice commands to pull specific data
I find their telegram (https://t.me/snipsair) pretty useful to ask poke around. Looking for their Discord because Dev community is mostly there! Plus i believe you get rewarded for helping em in their token. Not so much into Crypto but it seems to have some viable utility in their ecosystem.
Arduino Hobbyist here, usually lurking on /g/
- Scripts that open/close curtains depending on sunset/sundown and whether we're on holiday (presence simulation)
- My seedling box - it's an Ikea rack with styrofoam in which I have LED grow lights, a heating element and a fan to control temperature and which simulates different lighting conditions, to start seedlings and to do first fermentation of wines
- Monitoring/reporting of solar power generated
- Automatically switch off devices that use a lot of standby power but are only used occasionally - printer/copier, that sort of thing. I made the money the switches cost back within a year.
Furthermore, the company had great service. I wanted these rails when they were just on the market, and I told my installer what I wanted, but he didn't know about the zwave type yet. So I called my local Forest office (in the Netherlands) and they immediately put me through to an engineer who gave me the SKU for the installer to order, and he also gave me excellent advice on how to configure things (in a technical way, not in a 'this is what the manual says' way) and on the different options. They have different types, with different motors, depending on the curtain length. He said 'try the light one first, I think they'll work fine for your length. If they don't work as you want, you can just swap out the motors, it's all compatible. Just tell your installer to return it to <address>, label it <this guys name> and have your installer call me on <guys' cell phone nr> if he has any questions.' That was such a breath of fresh air, being used to companies that jerk you around from one call center lackey to another, reading you prepared scripts with snippets of the manual that you've already read half a dozen times.
Sounds like a lot of money, but out of all automated things, the curtains are the things of which I most often think 'that is very convenient, glad I spend the time and money'. Most other HA things are fun to play with, but not really all that important (in my experience).
- I have my outdoor lights turn on when the sun goes down and turn off 4 hours after sunset - If it is after sunset, if it detects mine or my significant other connecting to the wifi, it automatically turns my Nest from away mode and turns on lights inside. - It will automatically turn off all my lights and my nest to away mode if it detects that no one is home.
There is a lot more flexibility to it (i.e. it can send you an email if someone gets home and you are not home, things like that).
You can do a lot of those, I do not know how much work you have to do in it, but you can make your own "sensors" and it will integrate into home assistant.
I've also made temperature and other sensors using esp8266 boards, but that wasn't quite worth the time spent.
What are some of the more useful things people have found they are able to accomplish with this, and what was the best way to go about them?
Ideas I currently am toying with: presence sensors to turn lights on/off, somehow measuring the voltage used by appliances (washer/dryer, dishwasher, etc) to notify me when they finish running, a camera in my backyard that uses basic image processing to tell when my dog squats and I have to go pick it up.