Coolest home automation use case

Woah...those look waaaay too high-tech for me. :wink:

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I just finished setting up our bed presence sensor using this post as well and it's my favorite sensor so far. I can understand why no one sells bed presence sensors in a kit since it takes some tweaking to get it setup correctly depending on the bed mattress as they all weigh different amounts but the advantages of knowing everything is set as expected when you go to bed and when you get up and being able to change certain automations from timed to sync with you getting up is worth it.

The minute or 5 in the following are to prevent false positives if one or both of us get up in the middle of the night for a few minutes.

A minute after my wife gets in bed between 7pm and 6am, her reading light comes on and the bedroom lamps turn off if they were on. Then in 5 minutes if I'm traveling or after I come to bed the security system is armed, the bedroom shades are closed if they were open, the security cameras are put into night mode for alerts, the garage door gets closed if it was forgotten open, the locks are all checked and locked if the doors are closed or if one is open our Sonos in the room will alert us, and all of the lights in the house are turned off.

5 minutes after one of us gets up between 6am and 7pm the kitchen and family room lights are turned on, and the security system is disarmed. Then if the other is traveling or 5 minutes after we're both up the bedroom shades are opened, and using a virtual motion device with an Alexa routine, Alexa announces today's forecast.

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Coolest is subjective, but here are some ideas

Dishwasher rule

Washer and Dryer monitoring
See Dishwasher rule thread for links to driver for using an Aeon v1 HEM to monitor washer and dryer

Laundry Status

Could you share details on how you did this? I want to do the same thing.

These Apps:

image

This is the main one:

This kills the routine if it's running when I wakeup and disarm the system:

Then, I have 4 of these (replace vsWakeup1 with vsWakeup2..3..4), etc:

In the Rule Manager, I created the global variables:

Then, I created a dashboard with the various virtual switches and tiles to let me set the global time variables.

On that dashboard, I had a css:

.tile-primary { vertical-align: top }

And changed some template settings:

image

There are also a couple community apps that do this...

I thought there was another, can't find it right now.

Nice work getting the bed presence setup. My wife and I are still loving it. Just in case you didn't see a post of mine, I automated my evening and morning routines via Google Calendar integration. Things happen differently if kids have a school holiday, parent is sick or traveling, etc. For example, I create a calendar entry "parent traveling" that will flip a virtual switch so my bedtime rule dynamically adjusts:

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I have a Zooz Muti-Relay to control my gas fireplace and blower in my living room. Using a button controller, I can turn the fireplace on with a click. After 1 minutes, the fireplace blower turns on. The 2nd floor stairs are open to the living room, so when the fireplace is on, it gets about 85 degrees upstairs really fast. So using a Bond Hub my stairway fan goes on high to blow the heat back downstairs as soon as the blower kicks on.

When I turn off the fireplace using the same button, the blower continues to run for 3 minutes, then shuts off and the stairway fan slows to its normal slow speed.

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I assume there is 1 two many 0 in there? otherwise do you have a mansion!? that's the cost of a small car! Our gas and electric is like £1200 a year.

Thanks, for my wife and I traveling I'm using our combined presence devices that are also used for arming/disarming away rather than updating a calendar. For company I'm using a calendar entry to not turn off certain lights when we go to bed and to not arm the internal cameras at night all of which does happen if it's just my wife and I at home. I'm currently using iFTTT integration to set a virtual switch based on a gmail calendar entry, however I may look at switching to the app your using instead although then I'd have to add another calendar to our calendars and get my wife used to putting certain info on that calendar instead of her normal one by the looks of it.

$120.00 CAD savings for all winter (Dec 1st to Mar 31th) . Don't forget that here in Quebec, most people heat there houses 100% electricity because it's more affordable than gas, oil or other sources of heat. unless you have a wood burning system and have your own forest to get the wood.

My usual monthly billed spanned across the year is around $200. With house heating, 3 car heated garage 5C in the winter, hot tub, electric car, etc. It all adds up, but that is the only source of energy coming in the house.

That's only 2400? You said 12000 :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: looks like it was a typo of 120,00 rather than 120.00 :+1:

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I would be willing to bet @nclark is French Canadian. It's not a typo.

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Actually, I wanted to put a period but for some reason the computer I was at when I typed was on French and it replaced automatically the period with a coma. Sorry for the confusion :slight_smile:

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My electric company here in Missouri now offers a "time sensitive" plan. The cost for electricity from 4-8pm (weekdays) is notably higher than under the "normal" plan. The cost from like 6am to 4pm and 8pm to midnight is a bit less than the normal average. The cost from midnight to 6am is insanely cheap.

I could probably do more. But, I def programmed my Ecobee thermostat for those time periods. The AC kicks on before the 4pm and cools things down a bit--then lets the house get pretty warm up until 8pm--when it goes back to more normal. From midnight to 6am, I chill it down nicely.

I'm usually running the clothes dryer on the weekend, so not a big deal. But, I supposed, I could go nuts with the house lights and such if I wanted to. lol

My annual bill for my house (I'm in Quebec too). Bungalow (2200 SF - 200 SM) with a geothermal unit (heat/cool) and 1 electrical car (about 4800 kWh in 2019, 3743 kWh this year, 11 months). The prices are CAD, for USD, 2019 was about 1250USD and 2020 is for now 1050 USD, including the car (no gas bill :smiley:).
Was interested by Hilo (HQ), but can't apply because of my geothermal unit...
So, globally, 14000 kWh a year for my house.

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You have 2 giant water heaters. How long is your shower?

one is used for the showers, that's true. The second one is a storage for the geothermal unit: it stores the extra heat produced by the geothermal unit ("desuperheater") and then pre-heat the water for the first unit. So, instead of heating a water at 4C, I heat water that is at 25C => less energy used (in fact, same amount of energy, but this energy is free).

About showers, keeping hot water on an insulated tank uses less energy than producing heat on demand (like in Europe). Just checked: the electricity consumed for hot water is not that big, about 9.5% of total electricity used.

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I added an aoetec tri-sensor to my deep freezer. I have a dashboard that shows all of my various batteries throughout the house (iBlinds, sensors, etc). I monitor my battery status from the dashboard, but if any of the batteries drop below 25%, I have a notification from Alexa and sms that I need to order and change batteries

Chuck

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Not to burst your bubble here but more and more cities are charging for water in Quebec. I live in village in a rural area on the south shore of Montreal and we've had a water bill for the last then years I lived here I think they have it since 1997 or so.

Real reason for my reply is how did you set up your french drain water meter I'd love to do that.
Also POWER WALL Wow Being in a rural area we have shortages every other day that is awesome !!
How hard / expensive would you put it on a scale on one through ten compared on a bought solution?
Thanks