What's your laziest or most ridiculous automation?
16d 4h ago by sh.itjust.works/u/spaghettiwestern in homeassistant
I click a button when taking my pill so I don't take it twice by mistake, it also alerts me if I've forgotten my dose. Not really ridiculous, but I wanted to feel included lol
frog I can't even remember to get my meds renewed let alone take them half the time. 30 days of pills last me upwards of 3 months before I get a new bottle. no wonder I'm so messed up
MedTimer (FOSS) and a 7-day pill organizer changed my life.
As I've gotten older, I've had to upgrade to one with AM/PM distinctions to balance the uppers and downers.
Also, you have ADHD. Talk to somebody about it.
That's genuinely useful.
this isn't bad!!!1one
Do you have it set to tell you after x amount of pills to pickup new ones and/or see your doc for refills?
I have had complex med schedules for an epileptic cat monitored by HA
I need this. Can you share?
My dishwasher automatically selects it's Eco program when powered on. The Eco program uses more water and more energy than the Auto program while also taking almost twice as long. So I have an automation that triggers when my dishwasher is powered on and then selects the Auto program for me - because pressing a button to change the program after loading the dishwasher would be too much to ask.
Thanks for that. Now I need a new dishwasher.
If it uses more water and more energy, what exactly is "eco" about it?
@pfr @homeassistant just remember that this machine needs to clean it's pipes too, just using chemicals for that won't do very well i guess. I'm not saying that this is logical (making this eco mode) but using more electricity for hot water and using more water (for not reusing too much water all over again) is probably the sweet spot for lasting much longer. Which in turn is not in the interest of the company selling these machines. I guess.
@EarMaster
Sensing some confusion out there.
ECO mode, exactly as the name implies, uses less water and less energy.
@EarMaster
Under some specific circumstances AUTO might be more economic but that would be the exception rather than a rule.
It is for me. The user manual states how much water and energy is used for each program. For the Auto program a range is given. The water consumption of the Eco program is almost identical to the worst value of the Auto program. I can measure the power consumption using a smart plug and I know that - at least for my dishes - the Auto program uses less energy than the Eco program.
How did you measure the water going through? Did you hook up an in-line flow meter to the dishwasher? I would be interested to know if my Bosch dishwasher is the same way because I always use Eco.
@JustEnoughDucks @EarMaster I'm not the original poster. I have seen lab test results supporting the LOWER water usage claim in ECO for common devices.
According to my own monitoring via smartplug, my own dishwasher uses about a 20 to 30% less electrical energy when in ECO mode as opposed to AUTO mode. It is a Bauknecht, which is likely very similar to your Bosch device in many ways (Bosch, Siemens, Bauknecht household devices all being manufactured by the same company...).
I can only measure the electricity directly. For the water consumption I rely on the values provided by the user manual.
I am well aware that Eco is supposed to be - well - more economic and maybe eco-friendly, but everything I read and could measure about my specific model indicate the opposite.
Thought of another one...
I bought some TP-Link wifi bulbs that were flaky from the start. After some investigation I discovered that these particular bulbs felt it important to phone home to China every few seconds and became very, very unhappy if the lines were down. After a short tantrum they would reset their wifi connection before regaining consciousness. What that meant in my 3 bulb fixture was that when my “lights off” scene was triggered and my firewall was blocking their corporate masters, one or more of the bulbs was often in a stupor and would remain on indefinitely.
Did I just go spend $25 on some new, decent bulbs that actually worked? Nope - no way some stinking TP-Link bulbs were going to win! Instead I spent hours creating multiple redundant automations that checked for each possible failure state, kept polling the bulbs until their tantrum ended and they regained consciousness, and then turned off whatever bulbs were left on.
Every time I turned off the lights I was able to declare victory. After I felt they had learned their lesson I bought some Zigbee bulbs that actually work.
You're my spirit animal.
This is some shit I would do. Fuck you and your not working, I'll show you who's boss!
I replaced my fridge light with an RGB zwave light and door sensor. This concept has been solved for decades and my solution is worse. But it also turns green...
I got a new fridge last year and the whole back of it (behind the shelves) is lit evenly, I guess with LEDs. Far nicer than a bulb.
Oh that's interesting! What bulb did you use?
I've got a led strip on my toilet door. It turns red when someone is inside (mesured by the wasp in a box principle.
I'm unfamiliar with the wasp in a box principle. Is that the one where you keep a box of live wasps in the bathroom and determine if someone is in there based on how recently you've heard a scream?
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/witb-wasp-in-the-box-plus-blueprint/721520
Here's the problem, I keep a jar of poisonous gas triggered by a randomly decaying radioactive atom in my bathroom, so all of my wasps are in superposition.
Suggestion for enhancement: Have the LEDs start out yellow and after a couple of minutes turn them red because entry has likely become hazardous.
Or put a mic in the bathroom and make the LEDs yellow for pee sounds and red for fart sounds.
I'm kidding but I actually think this would be fun, but you'd need a way to differentiate sounds.
Need an LLM tuned for violent shitting
Where do you guys find power outlets for all these weird placements of LED strips? :D Outlets in my house is not in great places for something like this.
I lucked out and was simply in a relationship with a gal whom I helped purchase a house with a handy switched power outlet near the ceiling which was likely intended for seasonal decorative lights.
I co-oped the outlet once we got married but I need to replace the piece of tape that keeps the light in with one of these multi-button zigbee mains-powered switches that fit in multi-gang decora plates. I refuse to do wifi unless I can run esphome on it, and I will only trust matter when it runs over thread.
I know there are some zwave rechargeable LED strips but they're pricey
@TheOldRepublic @spaghettiwestern maybe you can make it orange when there somebody in the toilet and red for an odor alert?
You should set up a speaker in your toilet and start to fade in orchestral music when the occupancy time is getting too long.
alias la="ls -la"
ll
This is engrained in my muscle memory and throws me off anytime I use a system without it set
alias l="ls -al"
alias cd.. ="cd .."
alias cd. ="cd .."
I'm a monster.
cd? Let me introduce you to my lord and savior zoxide
-al, heathen.
## ls-o-lot
alias lol="tree -aps"
This is really common where I work but I don’t understand why. On macOS I’m more likely to use ls -1. Do you need to know permissions or file sizes often?
Easily the most ridiculous is the one I made on a motion trigger from the camera pointed out my window to take a snapshot, pass it to ollama/qwen3, and have it compose a haiku about the scene to be read aloud by Pocket TTS.
What a wonderfully ridiculous waste of time and effort. I hope your daughter realizes how lucky she is.
44 automations + 27 scripts and counting, not sure any of them are totally over the top but theres at least 2 dedicated buttons in my house for when the dog needs to take a shit in the middle of the night to turn on specific lights for a short time for him.
Unfortunately I haven't taught him to use them on his own.
Yet.
44 automations? HA!
I have a small home and currently have over 200 automations. Maybe I need to find other hobbies.
600+ automations, 500+ scripts :( My house runs itself, and has its own moods. If it's in a goth persona and feeling miserable (which it usually is when in a goth persona), it'll change some of the light colors to apocalypse of blood.
You win, but you definitely need to find other hobbies.
Oh hell yeah, I'd love to do that but my wife doesn't like when I do mood lighting
Curious as to what you're using scripts for? I have 88 automations and have so far found no need for a single script and I feel like I'm missing a trick somewhere.
Yes, I do have some automations that share functionality but it's one or two actions and it seems redundant to call a separate script.
Scripts are used for a lot of things! Generally any time I want to do the same thing under multiple automations, I use a script as the middleman.
For example, I built a script for turning off all of my lights each night but it has to be fed a time scaling variable to determine specifically how quickly to turn them off (sometimes I want them turned off quickly vs slowly). Automations trigger said script with the right scale factor.
I have air purifiers that I ramp up and down conditionally, they don't have a built in ramping function so I built a script to ramp them to a target % in their allowed 10% increments, over a variable time period. This can be then be called in one line from any automation or script.
When I'm turning off lights each night, I want them to ramp down to a specific level/color/temperature before turning off but only if they are currently on. Rather than build an if statement for every light, a script takes a input list of lights and runs through each one to determine whether or not to ramp.
Finally, my Google Home device is able to call scripts directly, ("hey Google, activate Cozy Time" triggers the "Cozy Time" script) so some things I use Google Assistant to trigger use scripts directly since that was at least easier at the time than using an automation. If I automate the same thing (e.g., a "Cozy Time" button above), I can just call the script from the automation in one line, easy peasy.
Thank you, that's food for thought at least.
Can I ask about your light script? I have a bunch of smart bulbs that either don't support or don't expose the 'power-on behaviour' option, so in a power cut they come on full bright when power is restored, often in the middle of the night.
My HA is on a UPS so I've been trying to have it store the states of lights when the UPS switches to battery power (before they go to unavailable) and then restore those states when power comes back, but it's apparently way beyond my skill set. Curious as to how your "input list of lights" works and whether it could help me...
Here is the full script in case it's helpful. took a hot second of searching to set everything up, but now it's really easy to use. When you call the script inside an automation it has input fields just like if you're calling a built-in function like light.turn_on
For your specific use case though, it may be easier to just take advantage of the built-in Scenes function. You can use an "entity snapshot" with "Scene: Create" a scene of the current state of your "bad" lights when the power goes out, then "Activate" that scene, perhaps with a couple of seconds transition time to smooth things out as soon as power is restored.
I use a similar scene based function to create flashing colored light alerts based on certain conditions.
alias: Light conditional smart dimming (Kelvin)
sequence:
- repeat:
for_each: "{{ lights }}"
sequence:
- variables:
light_state: "{{states(repeat.item)}}"
timescale: "{{states('input_number.timescale')}}"
- if:
- condition: template
value_template: "{{light_state == 'on'}}"
then:
- metadata: {}
data:
brightness_pct: "{{target_brightness}}"
transition: "{{transition_rate * timescale}}"
kelvin: "{{color_temperature}}"
target:
entity_id: "{{repeat.item}}"
action: light.turn_on
fields:
lights:
selector:
entity:
multiple: true
filter:
- domain: light
name: Light(s)
required: true
target_brightness:
selector:
number:
min: 1
max: 100
name: Target brightness (%)
default: 1
required: true
color_temperature:
selector:
color_temp:
unit: kelvin
min: 1500
max: 7000
name: Color temperature
required: true
default: 2200
transition_rate:
selector:
number:
min: 1
max: 600
name: Transition rate
description: Transition rate, scaled by 'input_number.timescale'
required: true
default: 100
description: Dims the target light(s) if they are on - Kelvin setpoint.
icon: mdi:lightbulb-auto-outline
mode: parallel
max: 15
Got a little help from CGPT so it might not be perfect, but this seems to work from my limited testing:
triggers:
- trigger: state
entity_id:
- input_boolean.ups_power
conditions: []
actions:
- choose:
- conditions:
- condition: state
entity_id: input_boolean.ups_power
state:
- "on"
sequence:
- action: scene.create
data:
scene_id: light_states_backup
snapshot_entities: |
{{ states.light | map(attribute='entity_id') | list }}
- conditions:
- condition: state
entity_id: input_boolean.ups_power
state:
- "off"
sequence:
- action: scene.turn_on
target:
entity_id: scene.light_states_backup
data: {}
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 10
milliseconds: 0
- action: scene.delete
data:
entity_id: scene.light_states_backup
mode: single
I've only tested it by toggling the UPS boolean manually and not actually cutting the power, so I'm probably going to need to add a delay, or a retry loop or something to make sure the scene applies consistently but so far so good! Thanks for the inspiration.
snapshot_entities: | {{ states.light | map(attribute='entity_id') | list }}
This is the only part I'm unsure about, seems like a clunky way to get all of the lights, but if only certain ones are causing problems, I'd just put the problem ones here as a list (or create a light group in HA and only call that group
Also, input_boolean.ups_power feels like ChatGPT is assuming you have a helper for the current power status, but I would just call directly from the UPS entity. You should be able to clean this up in the GUI.
That first line is what CGPT helped me with. I wanted something that I don't need to modify when I add or remove lights, so this just gets everything. Ideally I'd just get the lights that don't have the power restore feature but most of my lights go via Hue and that doesn't expose the feature to HA at all.
The input_boolean is a thing I already had setup. The UPS fires a webhook event when it goes in and out of battery mode and there's a separate automation that switches the helper based on those.
Thank you. I've also never used scenes beyond what comes built-in with Hue! This is all good stuff.
My house's fridge has a horribly designed freezer that is just a huge drawer with a smaller drawer inside. It wastes a huge amount of freezer space.
It also doesn't close all the way periodically. If you're not paying attention, it freezes up the coil, and melts all your freezer food.
I mounted a door sensor switch to the side and it sends my phone an email if the door been open for more than five minutes.
What brand?
Would the phrase "Never by a household appliance made by a cell phone company" apply in this case?
Whirlpool it's about 15 years old now.
Modern fridges just...do that.
My fridge sends a push notification if the door is opened too long.
The issue with that is that all of them require internet access for that, and there's no way I'm connecting my fridge to the internet.
Mine just starts dinging if its left open for too long. Same wiþ þe fridge doors. Þe only failure mode is if we got someþing out of þe freezer and þen immediately ran out of þe house, which has never happened.
We have that function on ours. Still been left open a little bit without beeping.
I hear you. Sometimes my teens never notice. The beeping annoys me from the other side of the house but my teens right there can’t hear it
Our's is annoying. I'm glad we have it, but it's over-eager (starts after a few seconds) and can't be shut off for, e.g., cleaning. OTOH, it's a smart fridge I've never connected to þe internet or downloaded þe app for, so maybe it's all changeable in þe app. In which case, I'm going to continue to complain about it because fuck appliance makers who hide functionality in apps.
Mine does this for the fridge but not for the freezer, which is confusing.
Ah. Well, ours has annoyingly short timing before it starts, but covers þe freezer too.
So instead of adding a door sensor I should have bought a new fridge?
I don't understand your point ..
Maybe not but I'm surprised yours doesn't. It's been a common feature for a while, and how long do modern fridges last? Like 5 years?
Mine does that too, but LG's app required fine location permissions to be always on. No way in hell I'm going to let LG track my every move so I can be alerted when the fridge door is open or the washer's done. They'd have to buy me dinner first.
Mine is turning on a fan when an exercise video is played. Pressing a button is way too difficult.
I used to do this for lighting and fans whenever my VR headset turned on.
I'm working on a button to push when we feed the cats per my wife's request. It doesn't do anything when push because she can't figure out why she wants the button
I've thought about doing this too. You would have the button trigger some identifier like a phone notification, screen, or even a light and then reset itself after so many hours or at scheduled times to know if they've been fed.
We have to give our cat a pill in the morning and evening so it would help us know if the other (or someone else like a relative babysitting) had already given it to him in addition to the feeding schedule.
That sounds familiar. I bet she's trying to get you to build a cat calorie counter.
I mean, for myself I have a button that creates an alarm on the phone for the next meal. Because I'm forgetful and have a whack schedule, but have to shove food in the stomach before it dissolves itself with acid.
With cats, though, a regular schedule might be better. A friend has an automatic feeder, and their cats straight up know when they should be fed. However, some automatic feeders can be dangerous to cats.
My cats get dry food in the morning and wet in the evening. For the dry I got an automatic pet feeder. I do need to put a sensor or something inside it though because it's cheap, it doesn't have Wi-Fi access so I have no idea when it's empty lmao
Laziest eh? Probably the one that deletes completed items from my shopping list when I leave the supermarket, because I got sick of doing it manually.
Most ridiculous would be the NFC tag I have on the lid of my cold brew coffee jug. I make a batch so rarely that I can never remember how much coffee to add, so scanning the tag makes my Google Home say; "You want 80g of coffee per litre, or 6 scoops."
That's a good idea I'm gonna steal it. You should make a blueprint.
Not too crazy but I have automations based on whether external doors are open: if it’s hot and it’s cooler outside and someone opens the door then the fan near it gets turned out. Similarly if the heater is on but someone leaves a door open longer than one minute (conservative) the heaters will shut off. And all the air fresheners shut off if the doors are ever open.
We have a ZzZ script which slowly turns off the TV and lights.
It works from one end of the house through the kitchen, then lounge, then up the stairs, the idea is it follows me to bed turning off things as I'm walking...
A separate script tells me that it's time for bed (as I find finishing the day difficult).
Not as fancy but an hour before my bed time my small stained glass lamp turns on as a reminder I have an hour left. 5 minutes before bed my phone goes into night mode. At bed time all the lights in my room shut off. It's been way more effective than my ADHD ass having no idea what time it is and staying up super late.
Not sure this belongs, but my most proud automation is an automatic water bowl for my dogs. It automatically drains, rinses, and fills 16 times per day so they always have fresh water. They deserve a better life than my lazy ass can give them.
:O it's hooked to the tap and a drain I assume? How big is that?
Correct! It connects to a sink drain the same way a dishwasher does. It is actually a bathroom sink, the kind that sits on top of the counter. We have had three Great Danes at one time so trying to keep up with a clean water dish was really impossible. We no longer have large dogs but the desire to keep them in clean water persists.
Super cool. I'll have to keep that in mind for behind my kitchen wall 🤔
What a clever idea! Is the dirty water drained from the bottom of the bowl or is it pumped out?
Pumped from the bottom. The basin sits on a raised box that holds the internals, including a pump for draining and a water valve for filling. Basically it uses a timer that commands the pump and a sump circuit for the fill valve detecting high, low, and overflow conditions.
The pump runs for three minutes every hour for sixteen hours between 0600 and 2200. The three minutes is enough to drain the entire thing with enough time for the clean fill water to rinse the basin and be drained away before stopping the pump and letting the fill top it off with clean water.
I have an announcement play every 30 minutes to yell at me in a harsh voice "Drink Water God Damn It!" I forget to hydrate a lot. I've tried many other reminders, but none of them worked well. Turns out I just need someone to yell at me.
My son also has ADHD and my wife and I are that voice for him. I'm not sure where he gets it from. On an unrelated note, the days where I forget to eat are my most productive, so it's a good thing you don't need an 'eat God damn it" reminder.
I started drinking more water when I got a sport bottle with one of them built-in sipping straws. It's just near me most of the time, so I take some sips just to occupy myself for a few seconds.
Previously I drank a lot of tea, wherein the sign that I need to get more tea was when the cup was empty. But I'm off caffeine now.
My kitchen has 4 different lights in it, and often a random one will be on.
One light is on a 3 way switch with a switch at either entrance, if I hit that switch (then realize I turned on an extra light, instead of turning off one of the other lights) and turn it back off within 2.5 seconds then it will turn off and other of the the lights in the kitchen that happen to be on.
Every time I accidentally trigger this automation it makes me smile because it's silly
Thanks for that. You reminded me of something similar I posted here.
I have alerts that push out when the fridge door is open.
And another that flashes all the lights in the house when the doorbell rings.
Turn the lights on and off in the basement. The kids kept playing with the lights and arguing over it, so I automated the whole floor and blocked the switches off.
Arguments immediately stopped.
"Good night" turns off all the lights in the house. I guess it's silly/lazy because at midnight all the lights turn off anyway.
Does meal prep count because I don't really like cooking?
I get notified whenever a band on or adjacent to the ipecac label is about to play in stockholm.
I made an automated sandwich maker. The automation turns it on, sets a timer, shows the timer on tv, turns it off when the timer goes off, pauses the tv and turns lights in kitchen on, if after sunset. Ridiculous? Jup. But also super cool.
I have 4 lights in my room that I use for different things. Ceiling light, light above my bed, lights hanging from the high part of the vaulted ceiling (these are yellow glass really pretty but kinda dim great for before bed) and a small stained glass lamp.
I have an automation to turn on the small stained glass lamp at 7 because that's when I should be getting ready to get in bed, wind down, read a book, something like that. At 825 my phone goes into sleep mode, night light and night mode activated. At 830 all the lights in my room turn off and my fan turns on.
At 330am my alarm goes off and the stained glass lamp turns on and the fan turns off. It's dim enough to not be blinding but bright enough I won't just turn my alarm off. At 340 the yellow lights come on to make sure my ass gets up. As I'm walking out of my room, I can double tap the light switch down and it will turn off all 4 lights and the fan if any of the above are on.
I also have a button hanging by a command strip on my night stand that can control everything for when I'm too lazy to open the app on my phone 😂
Salesman at the door button and routine exported to HomeKit. My doorbell camera shows a PiP of a person detection on my AppleTV. If I say "Siri salesman at the door" then HA will briefly turn on the flowerbed sprinkler zone to chase it away. Never gets old.
@spaghettiwestern I get notified whenever my favorite coffee brand price changes in the supermarket.... ☕😎
Hmmm, I was previously thinking that I need to monitor the dynamic delivery price of my preferred supermarket. But now it dawned on me that I should probably have scripts check when all my favorite groceries are in stock, because typically something is inevitably missing, dammit.
Mostly the ones that send a post from one social media app to another.
"It's dark in here" sets a scene where all the lights in our living room are set to bright white.
@spaghettiwestern The two that made me dive into the home assistant rabbit hole:
-
When the rabbits are out around sunset (door sensor on their cage) lights turn red and my and my wife's phone get a notification. Too many times we remembered that the rabbits were loose while it was pitch black. Not too good with black rabbits...
-
Fixing the mess that is my Marantz receiver, communicating with my TV over hdmi and lately my wiim streamer. Turn it on and off depending on need, controlling zone 2 as well as turning on power for the zone 2 amplifier when it's used in the receiver. The ridiculous part here is that it's necessary - these things should just work!
Did you post about this in the home assistant sub looking for recommendations on how to do this on Reddit awhile back? If not someone else did because I distinctly remember a rabbit notification and light setup lol. Wild the random info my brain retains 😂
@greatwhitebuffalo41 I don't think I did. Most of this is straight forward. Honestly the hardest part was pairing the door sensor.
Well somewhere someone decided to do something very similar! That's kinda neat.
Got an Alexa as a gift. I use it to turn the living room light on and off. Basically a high tech Clapper.
Get rid of that thing immediately, it's recording everything you say and sending it to Palantir
Yeah, well, Palantir is really bored.