How does everyone deal with the WAF?

[april.brandt]

@bcopeland

WAF or HAF in the case of @april.brandt is complicated and the variables are different in every household.. For me it was maintaining just enough “manual” control over her environment.

When I started tinkering with home automation, my hubs made one statement. "I do not want do dance, sing, jump, yell, or beg for something to turn on." In his opinion, it's easier to walk to the switch. That being said, I'm 3 years in and take pride in the fact that almost everything automated is based on every day interactions in our household. It's forced me to think outside the box. Dock your phones and mode changes to night, morning, or quiet time depending on how many phones are docked. With this customized automation:

[Project] Homemade Smart Qi Charger ver 2.0

[The following post has been edited to organize the final project.] About a year ago, I posted a project for a smart qi charger. Smart meant that it would trigger a change in my smart home. Well, I'm back for another round. This one is version 2.0. I enlisted the help of my Dad and husband (they ran the saw) and came up with something that looks a little more like something that needs to sit on a table somewhere and a lot less like something with a timer that goes boom. I used some of the…

I use a fair amount of motion sensors throughout. Our bedroom fan helps keep the bedroom cool at night. It changes speed based on @iharyadi 's environment sensor. I've had to loosen up the rules for this because his sensor is way too accurate and fast and had to contend with the fan fluttering. The fan only turns on if someone is in bed. Thus a phone is docked. If everyone is up, (no phones docked0 the mode changes to day and the fan turns off and lights adjust and interact accordingly. The living room lights interact based on our harmony remote. When the tv is on, the lights dim and stay on until the media is turned off and motion is inactive. I've spent a LOT of time observing our habits. Little tweaks here and there to make things more transparent. I have voice control, but it seems that my husband has more success with that wench than I do. She never controls anything I ask her to. Ironic? Yes, I think so. I use alexa mostly for voice announcements. She announces someone at the door and who unlocked one of my locks. I have a dashboard but only for troubleshooting, or if someone wants to get into my house and I am not home. So I find some controls are still necessary, but prefer transparency. I have a considerable number of automations. Too many to name here and the only one that requires any real interaction is a button in the kitchen that will pause the lights from turning off in there if we find we're doing something that requires an exception. Otherwise everything is "contactless" interaction. Yes. I take pride in that. 3 years in and getting even better.

I will throw in this one as well. Home automation also needs to be fun, otherwise we wouldn't do it.

Automated Classic Radio

Soooo ... With everything going on right now, I decided to post a fun project that my hubs and I did together. We inherited an old tube radio about 12 years ago. We've been displaying it in our home ever since. It's always been in the back of my head to revive it in some way. Since the radio actually still works, but the speaker is not hooked up, I didn't want to tear into it too much. I don't think that they're worth a ton of money, but there are a ton of great memories that came with this rad…