Hi everyone! My fiance I just bought a house, and I am in the process of planning out our new automation routines.
I figured this would be a good kickoff. I'm wondering what your most-used---or perhaps favorite---routines are. There's no limit to their simplicity or complexity, so feel free to share whatever
Here are a few of mine, to kick things off:
When I open the closet door, the closet light goes on automatically.
Every time motion is detected in the cat's litter box (under the stairs), increase a counter. When this counter hits 100, send an alert to clean out the litter box. We have one of these, so we don't need to change the litter very often.
Fade on the porch light for 15 minutes before sunset, and keep it on for one hour after sunset, then, fade it off for 15 minutes, unless we have guests expected (right now, I have a switch for this. If anyone has better ideas, I'm all ears). Do the same, but inverted for sunrise.
My dimmers set the room's brightness to follow their level in select rooms.
I recently bought a Samsung Button that was recently released. That made it really easy to add a Good Morning / Good Night controller to turn off all of the lights, set the thermostat, make sure the door is locked, and turn on the noise generator at night. Does the opposite in the morning basically.
We also have a switch in the center of the house that I call the magic switch. If it's on all of my "main lighting group" is on, and off when it's off. These are all lamps with simple on/off so it's simple.
Those are just the creature comforts I can think of right off the bat.
Circadian Daylight. This makes such a huge difference in my day to day life---especially during North Dakota winters, where the light is scarce.
A. I want to change this so that if the brightness is changed manually, a switch turns on (I have a virtual switch for each device's Circadian Daylight instance) so Circadian Daylight will stop changing the brightness on that device. Does anyone have an idea of how to accomplish this?
(I can't implement this until I move) If carbon monoxide is detected in the garage, open the garage door and send an alert.
One of my favorite automations I have set up are path lights at night. When my house is in sleep mode and certain motion sensors are active they turn on path lights for different areas of my house. Right now I have master bathroom, kitchen and kids bathroom path lights set up. It is pretty basic but I love this automation.
Does anyone use room-based temperature automations? I'd seen people in the SmartThings forums using vents that automatically open/close, but then you have to deal with improper pressure in your HVAC system.
I just had an alternative idea that should accomplish the same thing---instead, use a register booster when you need to swing the temperature in one direction or another.
Another automation---using a pressure pad, if the Recycling/Trash bins are at the house on trash/recycling pickup days (pulled from Google Calendar and IFTTT), turn on a light for each (until they're taken off of the pad and put onto the street). I'm going to make a lighted word sign for this eventually, but right now a light will do.
My path lights are pretty simple. When my Master hall detects motion it turns the master hall lights to 10%, it turns on the lamp located just outside my kitchen and also turns the kitchen lights on to 10%. After 5 mins it shuts the lights back off. Its really nice at night when I wake up and go get a drink that all these lights come on and turn off automatically.
