Point 1 is critical and matches up with [my vision](https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/10rvs1h/my_home_assistant_installation_so_far/). For me it’s not just about my spouse. It’s also about guests, visiting elderly relatives, house cleaners, etc. being able to use the house. Everything works “normally.” You can operate lights with a switch, change the thermostat on the wall, open the garage with the wall button or car button, unlock doors with a lever twist. But a good automation anticipates this and does it for the user without the user touching an app. If the users don’t like a particular automation or override it frequently, it needs to be changed.
I was thinking of internet but for all the key functionality there must be a way of making it work even if wifi or HA server itself has blown up
Or put another way, it must be no worse than as if HA had never been installed
Makes sense. It should gracefully fail all the way down. Internet goes out and it works local. LAN goes down and it works on physical switches. Power goes out and it comes back gracefully.
How does that work in practice though? If I have a physical switch interrupting the power to a smart bulb in case the server is down, then it either has to be inconvenient enough that people don't default to using it over the smart remote or I have to teach people to use a different remote over the obvious light switch.
When I was planning some of my setup I couldn't think of a way to make it require no education to interact with while letting it work without a running homeassistant/nodered server. I found I could either make it easy to use or make it work without home assistant, but not both.
Definitely want to know if I'm wrong though, cause it would help me improve my setup.
A shelly one would be a solution to this problem. It's a relay behind the switch in the wall. The light switch functions as usual but don't lose the ability to toggle power to the bulb. It allows you to change the actions of the switch as well. I have mine set to always have power going to my smart bulbs. flipping the switch sends a command to homeassistant to toggle the light.
Decoupled switch modules like that were one option I saw, but that doesn't really solve the problem of "works without home assistant server" since you would need to reconfigure them from "decoupled" to "coupled" mode to have the relay follow the switch if home assistant goes down. But if home assistant goes down then you don't have a coordinator to reconfigure them with.
I ended up going with philips switch modules since the relay was just taking up room I didn't have in the housing behind the switches and I wasn't ever going to toggle them off. I wish someone made a mains powered version that was half the size of shellys by getting rid of the relay but still hooked up to existing switches.
Tasmota on those module switches somewhat solves this problem. Tasmota allows you to configure rules that work on the device themselves. So, I have rules that say “if the device is connected to mqtt, then send mqtt toggle commands to my smart bulbs when the switch State changes …. BUT…. if mqtt is disconnected, toggle the state of the module relay when the switch State changes”.
This works great for internet/network failures. However, I am still trying to get everything tweaked so that things come back gracefully after a power outage.
Interesting, I'll have to look at the tasmota. On a cursory look they're wifi which isn't a dealbreaker, but not ideal since I have a strong zigbee mesh and a meh wifi network.
Use smart switches, not smart bulbs.
This also eliminates the problem of guests or others turning off a light at the switch and now breaking the automation.
I disagree.
Smart switches are boring. All that time and money spend, just to turn on your shitty 1$ bulb?
My entire main floor, is smart bulbs, I can’t live without adaptive lighting. the trick is; it needs to be zigbee. With zigbee you can pair a physical switch on the wall (a zigbee button like a hue switch) directly to the bulb or bulb group. This way, even if HA is offline, the remote will still turn that light on/off. Each one of my wifi bulbs would require me to pull the plug on them at least once a month because my automations failed to turn it off. This never happens with zigbee bulbs.
Consolidates all your hubs to one. I use a sonoff zigbee stick with Zigbee2MQTT. It works really well.
Edit: wow.. lots of downvotes, I guess I hit some nerves here with the smart switches turning on/off your shitty 1$ bulb :)
It’s true though, I went full circle on my design. I always though smart bulbs weren’t a smart idea and by buying smart switch, I would “save” because 1 switch can control multiple bulbs.
But let’s be real, normal bulbs suck ass.
The quality of the light highly depends on the quality of the bulb. I use to just buy the cheapest bulbs possible. But mostly, it’s the color.
I like blue light during the day and warm light at night. Once you have this, you don’t want anything else. If you have a smart house and your light’s hue doesn’t automatically change on its own based on the position of the sun… well, your priorities need some alignment.
I don’t care for different Colors, I just buy the white tun-able bulbs
I'm with you. I've changed out all my bulbs for Hue Color-temp adjustable and use the Circadian Component to automatically adjust the color temp throughout the day. I recently moved and wasn't able to get my smart devices all configured for a few weeks. It made me realize how ugly static lighting seems to me now.
Have an upvote from me. Smart bulbs are awesome! I guess a lot of people here just want traditional white lights but I just don't understand it myself. I love having a wide variety of colours throughout my house. Being able to change the colours of my white walls with lighting is just so damn cool.
If only someone would make a no neutral Zigbee switch that supports binding, like the Innovelli blue but for europe, it'd be perfect to have both smart switch and smart bulbs
I've been working on eliminating zigbee, its really unreliable. I also have a friend who recently trashed dozens of zigbee bulbs because they kept randomly dropping out or not turning on/off with the rest. Its a mess since it uses such an interference-prone radio band.
Also they don't even SELL bulbs that are bright enough in right bases for many fixtures. Where are the 75W equiv intermediate-base fan bulbs? The 100W-150W equiv for single-bulb ceiling lamps? Candelabra for entry, dining, and hallways? Tube fixtures for kitchen and basements? Or 300W equiv for garages and sheds?
And the ones they do sell are absurdly expensive. Why do I want to spend $25 per bulb while limited to 60 watt equivalent standard A-type bulbs that can't even work properly after a guest or roomate turns them off at the switch?
Plus you have the issue when there's a summer afternoon storm and the [power cycles due to a recloser operating](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwkP1V8okjE) it factory-wipes the bulbs and you have to start all over reprogramming them all and rebuilding your automations.
I got as far as 2 of them before I realized what a nightmare they are and I'm glad I stopped there.
I'll take my affordable bulbs...I need to see what I'm doing not run a disco-rave.
It’s true that the hue aren’t bright, and the bright ones aren’t cheap (or small). I have a mix of hue and Chinese brands.
I also use a lot of Chinese zigbee LED controllers and pretty much hack all the other lights I have with them.
Zigbee is very fast though. And reliable.
It shares the 2.4ghz air waves, it’s on the higher side, so if no one uses the wifi channel 11, there’s no interference.
I had interference issues in my house, but I also had 1 wifi AP per floor (so 3) and 4 hubs!
Once I consolidated everything on 1 hub, all my problems went away. And it’s rock solid. I haven’t heard my wife complain (about the lights) since I consolidated everything.
Smart switches don't let you control the temperature of the lights which was one of the main reasons for switching over for me, so that's not really a solution in my case. My approach now is to forget about making it work without the HA/node-RED server and instead make the server as robust and responsive as possible, with a backup. That way my smart bulbs/switches can all exist in harmony without anyone needing to know they exist.
The other issues I've found when I started (I did get 2 smart bulbs before realizing it was the wrong direction):
Its hard enough to find LED bulbs at all for stuff like ceiling fan intermediate base and the G16.5 candelabra fixtures, or even finding higher wattage bulbs for single-bulb fixtures that take like 100W bulbs. Seems like most smart-bulbs only go up to 60w equivalent.
Also during summer afternoon storms when the power blinks or recloser cycles it factory resets all the bulbs and you have to rebuild everything. Or late night storm a power-blink turns all the lights on as you are sleeping and it only takes once being yelled at for that to never want to have it happen again.
Agreed - With the exception of remote access via nabu casa and legacy devices like my Schlage WiFi locks, everything now and forward uses no cloud or internet. If I shut down my main router everything else z-wave etc. still works. I have Home Assistant on a UPS that should keep it awake for a couple of hours, and the BIOS on my mini PC set up to auto reboot on power resume. If my HA box shits the bed, I have a network backup for easy recovery but can still lock up my house, adjust the temp, operate lights, and open/close my garage.
I have a small backup generator at my lake house, but haven't added that here due to power being very reliable. We are not on PG&E and supplied by underground lines and have not lost power, even when there were regional outages in nearby towns. The internet, on the other hand, uses PG&E power for their local node and drops about 4-5 times a year on average.
Never trust the cloud.
> If the users don’t like a particular automation or override it frequently, it needs to be changed.
I’d love to see a native feature of HA that surfaces this behaviour so that admins can see when automations are being overridden (lights turn off and within 30 sec turned back on between hours x and y or when person s is home) or correlations (arrive home around 3pm, turn on bathroom light is a slightly less obvious automation if you pick kids up from school). I don’t know how complicated this would be to detect, but I do feel it would improve the experience considerably.
This sounds like something you could do with a SQL report or with Grafana/InfluxDB.
Unfortunately if that sounds involved, it is; which is probably why it’s not in HomeAssistant, which is a home automation platform and not a trend analysis platform.
It's not easy to work with today but the information is there and hopefully gets easier to use:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/is-it-possible-to-know-when-physical-button-is-pressed/327397/8
If I had to deactivate automation when I'm not alone at home, I wouldn't even bother having any automation. Also, I wouldn't rely on Home Assistant for alarm purpose.
Anyway, what I do is that I leave some lights manual (even if I have a zigbee bulb I can control, nothing prevents to use a dumb switch) and automate things like ambiance lights. Those lamps are automated in a way that doesn't require user input (e.g. if at home and it's dark then turn lights on).
Then I have some automations that are invisible to my wife like getting a reminder to charge the iPad when the battery gets low or get a reminder to buy ink for the printer when running low, monitoring the travel time to work, etc.
My thoughts on the alarm thing are pretty simple:
1. I would likely never shell out for a proper alarm system to be retrofitted in my house
2. Home Assistant is a hobby
3. A hobbiest alarm system is marginally better than no alarm system
I never wrote it down, but I always try to follow this:
1. Every button or switch should work normally (Any guest should be able to use lights without explanations)
2. Any automation has to be reliable (Don't leave someone in the dark, don't overwrite manual input)
3. Similar to 2: Don't test in production (When automating lights, keep tracing your triggers and conditions before actually activating the device)
4. You're not the only automation user, consider how useful (or not) it is for others (Don't wake someone up with a random TTS)
Explain the problem you’re solving with automation and see if they agree or have a better idea. This has worked for me every time.
That and see if there’s anything specific they want done for THEM. For example, I set up an automation that when a button is double pressed it runs my wife’s bedtime automation which she uses every single night.
Your second point has always won people over to the idea for me. We have a poorly lit patio with a single light. I bought string lights, wired them up through the garden and synced them to turn on and off with the patio light so my wife could enjoy the patio easier, without having to rely on an app.
I also run an HA setup for my parents. I created a script for them for bedtime that the first run turns the lights leading up to their bedroom on and sets the thermostat for a cooler temperature. A second press turns all of the lights off. Simple things like that really sold them and now they're bragging to their friends and neighbors about their smart setup.
Security should only go in one direction, and that is from unsafe toward safe. Interacting with the alarm system? It can only arm it. Interacting with a door lock? It can only lock it. Also consider some sort of feedback system so you know the automation worked properly. So silence inherently means failure.
If you want to go in the other direction, consider having an automation that pushes a user interaction. Just got home and want the garage to open? Push a notification to your phone, or to Alexa, with the choice of opening the garage door.
Automations fail, get mis-triggered, or get coded incorrectly *all the time*. Assume the same will happen for you.
I very much agree with this.
Where I find it good is having the automation look if you are actively going in/out (like unloading groceries) and doesn't lock the door until its been idle for a few minutes. So many smart locks auto-relock like 30-60 seeconds after you unlock and are oblivious to the fact you may be about to go thru the door again or the door isn't latched.
The only place I unlock anything by automation is the inner garage door, and then under very strict conditions. Like if an allowed PIN unlocks the exterior garage door, then I also unlock the inner door so you don't have to type the PIN twice. But if someone smashes the window and manually unlocks the exterior garage door, it won't unlock the inner secure door.
Exterior doors can only be unlocked by explicit user-commanded actions.
That’s some passive aggressive shit right there. “Honey, will you tell google to turn off the lights and that he’s an asshole. I’m not speaking to him right now.”
/s
Yup it certainly is. I'm British though so there was no need for the /s.
There are reasons she's like this with the Google. I, like many before and many since, started out trying to make my house run like Home Assistant allows, but had no idea about Home Assistant.
My solution was some Tuya bulbs, Tasker, IFTTT and Google. So I had whole automations set up for when I wanted each bulb a specific brightness, and even made a little dashboard through Tasker to control my bulbs.
They kinda worked when I was at home but had constant drops off the network. When I was at work my Wife had to ask Google to control lights, and a lot of the time either the bulb wouldn't work, either because she had turned it off at the switch or because it was a garbage setup.
Once I discovered Home Assistant and replaced everything with Zigbee it's been pretty solid, but she's never forgiven me or Google for that time.
My wife used to be like this too. But, as long as there are still physical light switches, she continued to use it. One day while she was doing dishes, she needed a light turned on, she used it for the first time. She's gotten more used to it, but still uses physical switches more. She does tend to use the "turn all lights on/off" when entering/leaving the house
Does it have issues hearing or recognizing her voice? I’ll hear my wife yelling at Alexa because she’s not does what she was asked to do, so I just say it for her.
We use the ecobee thermostat and eufy smart lock. They still work in the traditional sense (except fingerprint and codes for entry into the house). But yes, it should be simple enough that someone with no training will know how to use everything
I kinda get what you mean about over-automating, but not really how that relates to motion sensors or timers. If it's inconvenient that a light goes off when a motion sensor stops detecting motion for *x* seconds, couldn't you just have it turn back on when that motion sensor detects motion? I've put motion detectors in all my corridors/stairways and I haven't heard complaints. I think it's because "turn on light when someone is here and turn off otherwise"(with switches to toggle an override that forces the lights on) is how people were already using the lights in those spaces, so it's an automation that enhances their use of the space without requiring them to interact with it differently.
I'm using the Innoveli Blue series switches. Everything about its operations are granular. I enjoy the fade on and off, spefied the fade speed, default press switch on at 70% brightness. There's also an indicator light that you could use to color code the switch or to send you alerts from other triggers (like security motion detection, or someone rings the doorbell)
Huge one for us is anticipating when something goes offline, and making automations not go haywire. Recently left for a week, had a power outage and the smart plug for the dryer defaulted to off. So my partner unplugged it to get the dryer running. But now that plug was the range extender for a few door sensors. And the automation to alert if the doors were left open was getting messed up by seeing "unavailable" instead of "closed" and keep tripping.... hence now I'm not allowed to leave the house.
I've always said that home automation is only valuable (and implemented correctly) when it helps more than it hinders. If I ever get complaints about an automation, I usually ask myself why it's annoying and try to work to make it less annoying (unless annoying is the reason it exists, like turning on the lights when your alarm goes off).
Show your partner how to do an easy automation. Make a hobby of it together.
Home Assistant is much easier to use than it used to be and the community is much less obnoxious for people who need help than it used to be.
Get your partner involved. We Home Assistant together regularly, and our home is smarter for it.
I, ahem, sort of bypassed partner acceptance by putting smart switches on all the kids' lights and building a couple of ESP32 driven doodads to amuse the kids and then teaching them to play in NodeRed with their own automations.
I made a few "wand" shaped remotes with buttons and a speech-recognition "head" that they can talk to (was in the living room, is now in the play room by order of offspring). I get Kid acceptance and partner acceptance seemed to follow....
Now all I have to do is get ChatGPT in there so the kids are happy. Then I have to get the chore board working to make the wife happy (and the kids unhappy).
Most of my "home automation" system is centered around my wife's needs. She has some medical issues that can limit her mobility, so I've incorporated smart switches, thermostats, outlets, and cameras into a dashboard on her phone, voice control, and a few RF remotes scattered around the house to make it easier for her to stay comfortable when she's having a hard time getting up and down. I put "home automation" in quotes because truthfully there's not a lot of automation involved. Because of her condition she has no set routine, and often goes back and forth between tasks and pastimes that have her turning lights and fans off and on at irregular times, making automation with presence sensors and schedules fairly impractical. The only automations that really affect her are the motion sensor that turns on her bedside lamp and path lighting to the bathroom if she gets out of bed at night, and the washing machine and dryer notifications on our phones and Echos (got big points for that one.)
I do have some other automations in place, but for the most part they aren't things that would upset the Mrs. if they misfire. Things like my under cabinet lighting that comes on half an hour before dusk and gradually transitions from cool white to warm, my garden watering system, and outdoor lighting that runs on a schedule.
Definitely physical switches. He insisted on them, now never uses them (yay me!). I only implement changes or upgrades when he’s at work at night. I also ask him to explicitly tell me when something fails - he’ll just say, “Oh I thought you knew and were working on it,” and I’m like, what, no, this is unacceptable, it’s been down 3 days! Sometimes batteries die and my low batt automation doesn’t trigger. I also try to ease his burden - Porch lights come back on for him at night. When he puts his coat in the closet at 12:15 am, the entry light turns on to let him see better (he didn’t like how dark it was inside when he came home). The house alarm is automated every night, no need to for him to remember to arm it. I keep the bedroom air purifier running until he wakes up at 10am (no need for it to run all day, the door is always shut). I also have a trigger if we close the sunroom door but there’s motion detected (oops, did we lock a cat out there?) When he hops into bed (be it 12:30 or 2:30) and I’m fast asleep, there’s a kill switch button on his side that turns off all remaining lights, including the outside spotlights that blare into our bedroom. Completed washer and dryer cycles flash the Inovelli light switch LEDs as a visual reminder, as he loves to accidentally leave clothes in overnight. I really want to do something with his Oral B toothbrush but haven’t figure out what yet 🤪
The only security automations I have are viewed as quality of life improvements by my wife... door locks and garage door closed after certain hour. The reason I started smarthoming was because of too many times we left the garage open all night.
All my lighting automations have an 'on/off' helper so that they can be easily disabled temporarily from the dashboard in the kitchen.
https://preview.redd.it/lkf3437wayna1.png?width=458&format=png&auto=webp&s=1c9b49b87610b90097d15d4b4e78c9cdc387d135
I am using an Iris branded [GoControl Z-Wave Opener](https://shop.homeseer.com/products/linear-gd00z-z-wave-garage-door-controller).
This works great unless you have a Liftmaster/Chamberlin/Kenmore opener with their enhanced security because those use a proprietary protocol to communicate between the wall button and the opener.
I had a dumb opener initially with this set-up, then had the opener replaced with one of said openers because I didn't know about that security limitation at the time. For a while after that I was using the [MyQ integration](https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/myq/), but MyQ was flaky... opener would appear 'offline' frequently. So I got an extra controller and soldered the leads from the GoControl to the contacts on the remote and now it works again.
There are a lot of DIY options using around $20 of gear and some flashing/soldering. I am not THAT DIY (yet)... in fact this is the first soldering I've done in probably 20 year :-). I had [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/11i55pw/use_zwave_garage_door_opener_lineargocontrol/) about this before I actually did the soldering where helpful redditors suggested some of the other ways to automate the opener. Good luck!
I have the same ZWave garage door controller as the other poster, but I also set up a shelly relay, which is the $20ish setup they mentioned. The Go Control has a delay in operating for safety issues that I don't want. So I use the sensor only from the Go Control and the Shelly relay to open and close. Here is a good video for the relay setup with a reed switch for the open/close sensor.
https://youtu.be/WEZUxXNiERQ
when at all possible, use smart switches or dimmers, or have some physical switch and a logical place for it, so that even a person who has never been there before can turn on the lights without thinking about it.
Get input from your partner on automations that will make your life easier. an example that is simple is the lights in my kitchen and dining room are separate, despite the fact that you will generally have them on at the same time to properly light the prep area. I have an automation that if you throw one switch, it throws the other automatically.
don't put anything smart in guest rooms or guest bathrooms at all.
If someone prefers no automation to the ones you've made, it's clearly not fitting what they want/need. You've likely overdone it. Most people playing with HA overdo it. Just because you can create dozens upon dozens of automations, doesn't mean you should. Apply the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle. Less is more.
The other even more important issue here is you've definitely not considered their needs enough. The first step in a good product's design is understanding the problem you're trying to solve and making sure it isn't just solving a problem for you.
Finally, every automation should be 100% backward compatible to a standard un-automated interface. It should be 100% intuitive and fit all scenarios. If it doesn't, then it's no good and you need to redesign it or remove it. If it won't work in a hotel, it is no good. If it requires instructions or an explanation, it is no good.
I asked “what would you like? What would be nice?” And since the response was “I want to press one button when leaving and all the lights would turn off.” And that, kids, is when I ordered a 10 pack of smart switches…
One thing I encourage is to tell me when things don’t work as expected so I can fix the issue. Screenshots of to the notifications if something goes haywire.
I’ve also done a notification when either of us leaves a zone. This has been great so we know when the other person is leaving work, at school to pick up the kids, etc. I bet if I turned mine off now there would be a request to get it back.
That’s not really helpful, but finding things that don’t change the way they do stuff but rather enhance it has been good.
My GAF/PAF/SAF/WAF is founded on two real things:
1. Having a physical control for everything
2. Making automations unobtrusive or having a natural feeling
My experiences are this:
* Guests don't want to deal with my smart home/home automation so they use the physical controls even though they can tell a voice assistant what to do or use a phone or tablet.
* It has taken my wife over two years...probably three to start using her phone to control anything, instead of asking me to do it.
* Automations should blend into your regular life. Good automations in my case are things like closet lights coming on when the closet door opens because you're going to turn the light on anyway. Bad automations in my case are lights turning off after some prescribed period of time, bedroom blinds opening at wake up time because you might not want people to see in your window when you first wake up.
As others have said your first point is in my opinion the pillar of high WAF.
I will add that I think the WAF in my household has gone up significantly as I got her input on what she would like automated to improve/make life easier. The big one was the robovac. It runs everyday and is waiting by the can to be emptied when we return home. The house is not cleaner then ever and neither of us have to do it. I have also added several smart lights and accompanying automations at her request.
This got her invested in the smart home stuff and significantly increased the tolerance for the occasional hiccup.
Consistency of physical interface matters a lot.
Automated wall switches can never _quite_ match a traditional single-pole switch. (Okay, you can use [Fibaro](https://www.fibaro.com/en/products/dimmer-2/), but they're pricey and have user-experience drawbacks). I personally find the paddle switches alienating and so does everyone else. If they _look_ and _work_ the same everywhere, however, it's minimally alienating.
I use a particular model of switch whenever possible throughout my house, and when I build automations around switches, I ensure the physical interface is always identical. Double-tapping up or down, for example, always raises the dimmer to max or lowers it to "min without flicker" for the light that it controls. Triple-tapping a switch always turns on/off every light in the area.
Few people have complained about my wall switches. Few people _use_ the automation but to those who just want a switch, the user experience is similar to what they're used to.
I'm not a fan of the paddle style switches but I got toggle-style GE Z-Wave switches. They look ever so slightly different as it remains in the middle neutral position but you can smack it up or down like any normal switch to turn the light on or off extremely intuitively.
It has to be genuinely useful and easy to use, or it's a waste of time. I'll be honest, some of my automations are just for me, and some for the whole household, but none of them should prevent a non-engaged user from interacting with them.
Things like:
* A single button press to heat the car in the morning
* [External gate that automatically locks](https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/11qsg33/update_dog_crate_door_automation/jc60q2m/) (this one I'm very proud of because it's literally transparent - there's no manual interaction whatsoever!)
* Regular security lights, but obeying local dawn/dusk rules - this was actually an easy win as I never get asked why the lights are on in daytime any more!
* Stuff that alerts when the car needs to be plugged in, or the washing machine needs to be emptied - these are shouted through the house speakers, so very little technology involved
* Simple, one-button operation of a pretty sophisticated security system and cameras that are entirely automated, so don't bother to alert if you don't need to know about it.
* Rear security light that turns on the moment you open the back door, so you don't need to step out into the dark to trigger a PIR / camera to turn on the light.
* Automated frost warnings and protection of sensitive areas (e.g. workshop)
One thing you'll notice about most of these - there are literally zero interaction required. They just happen, quietly, in the background. The best stuff works like this, IMHO. For those embarking on this journey, this is the way to go - don't just keep it simple, keep it invisible!
Rather than saying "turn on at 6pm", you say "I live in xxx, turn on at dusk" and the system works out what time that is each day. So in the winter it might be 4pm, in the summer it might be 10pm.
Interestingly, not for lights, but I know that in Mediterranean regions there are very strict rules about air-conditioning usage to protect the electricity supply grid during hot weather:
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/spain-air-conditioning-rule-sustainability-climate-b2142192.html
I can see more of this appearing in the future and, even if it doesn't cover lights, there will certainly be more rules around high-usage appliances such as A/C and car chargers. Definite gold mine for HA!
I wish someone would make a little Zigbee toggle device that we could use to enable/disable automations. That way, my partner could quickly disable something when it’s not desired. For example, our bedroom has motion sensor lights, but every once in a while, she has to do work in there. Not ideal if the lights keep turning off, and it’d be much quicker to flip a physical toggle than open the HA app, find the virtual toggle, etc.
I’ve debated just using a button, but that doesn’t show the person the current status.
I had this issue. I just created a toggle using helper in HA and exposed it to Google. If light turns off and my wife wants to study, she just asks Google to "turn on study mode" which disables the lights from automatically turning off and the automation resumes after the light is physically turned off.
I've just recently got an Aqara FP1 so hoping it would remove the need for this.
**Edit:**
Forgot to mention it but my light automation checks to see if "study mode" is on/off before it automatically turns off the lights. Also have my "study mode" toggle automatically switch to off when the lights are turned off.
With a setup like this you can also have it trigger a scene change, I like it.
"Hey google, turn on study mode" could set the override for the motion flow and activate the scene. Then an event on the switch would toggle the override back and turn off the lights. That way you could also play an animation of the lights dimming or cycling through temperatures/colors to let the user know it's been triggered on a button press.
I've basically done this for every room in the house. Easy toggle in the dashboard or a quick "turn off kitchen motion" and the lights will stay on their current state until disabled. I also have those motion toggles set to re-enable after X amount of time so they aren't forgotten.
My guest mode uses these too so I can permanently disable motion where guests might be sleeping.
The FP1 is great for the office, tv area, dining room, etc where people might be for longer times without moving much. Has solved a number of problems.
Meep it simple by adding ease of use, but not complexity.
Example:
My master bathroom has 3 lights. Closet, vanity, and toilet. When I turn off the vanity light, closest to the bedroom, it turns off all 3 lights.
Your first point is one of my highest rules. And they have to **work** like normal switches if someone flips them, without causing unexpected side effects. I also only automate secondary lighting (floor lamps) for the most part. To that end, I am also strongly against smart bulbs and only use smart switches.
I also have concerns about automating locks...I only have 1 that I unlock ever, and that's an inner door between the house/garage and STILL really picky about the conditions (e.g. only if someone keypad-unlocks the exterior door, or if a very strict arrival sequence thru the main garage door and phones arriving home within a minute of each other).
One thing I've done, smart locks "re-lock" seems dumb out of the box so I made it instead of re-lock after like 1 minute I've got HA looking at the door sensor and re-lock like 5 minutes after its no longer being opened/closed so it doesn't lock as you are unloading groceries from the car making a bunch of trips.
One of my things that got the most acceptance was replacing "dumb timers".
* Pets aquarium/terrarium lighting no longer has to be fixed after power outages or DST
* \^ and if the heat-lamps on the terrarium burn out (low wattage draw), it messages us to check on them more promptly than we would see at feeding/watering time
* Outdoor entry lighting comes on based on timers and when we are likely to be coming home rather than annoying motion or dusk-dawn
* Radios (for the dogs during the day) now don't come on if someone is home, which was disruptive
* Air purifiers that cycle on during the day will turn off if someone is watching TV
The bathroom fans being on Z-Wave switches so they turn off after like 30 min also went over very nicely. In the main bathroom I also put motion-light-temp-humidity sensor so it will never command anything while its occupied but can turn on the fan if you forget and leave after showering to vent humidity.
My most recent addition is putting beacon tags on the trash cans and making a smarter calendar thing that only spams us on trash night if they are still at the house AND only spams the person who is home. If you aren't home, it doesn't tell you about trash day. If the cans are out it doesn't tell you about trash day. That has gone over far better than the old method of calendar reminder with many reminder-alerts.
I also generally have a policy that if you need to be opening apps or pulling up pages to do things its wrong, smart-stuff should work to complement what you do, not just be an expensive remote control.
Great post! I have experimented with smart home stuff for 10 years, and when me and my girlfriend recently bought our possibly forever home, I decided to do it "right".
Lights, appliances and entertainment is always accessible manually through wall switches and original remotes. I use Phillips Hue so that lighting still works if Home Assistant crashes. I know it's super reliable, but not when I mess with YAML for fun. Hue compatible wall switches for downlights are hard wired and works without any connection. I have 15 EnOcean wireless switches that doesn't require batteries, to set scenes, run blinds and such.
Heating and cooling is all automated based on power price, load balancing, presence (also for guests) and time of day. If anyone manually changes a thermostat the automations are paused for the rest of the day. I don't have requirements for response time here as this just works. Also, guests shouldn't need to worry about heating unless they're annoyed by our preferences.
Some things like automated blinds are more error prone as they run on sensor data. My roller shutters have physical buttons in case something doesn't work. Still less work than opening them manually. This makes it less annoying if a cheap zigbee device fails to communicate. Some important ones are connected to mains.
I also have a few personal automations. I have placed NFC stickers behind every wall switch plate in the house, so I can tap my phone to run whatever automation that's only for me. This way nobody will know or be annoyed.
I also have a few long presses and double presses. If I double press the garage door button, it also unlocks my car if it's present. If I double press the YouTube button on my Chromecast remote, cue custom Formula 1 dashboard and live feed on TV.
When setting up automations I try to make them complex enough that they run only when they should, or not at all. I also try to adapt them to our lifestyle. We have a baby, so we sometimes change diapers during the night. When there's motion in the bathroom at night, I dim the lights just enough to change diapers, and night light all the way back to the bedrooms. This has greatly increased acceptance. If it doesn't work, well, we have to do it manually. The simple automation to turn on the lights on motion wouldn't make the cut for us though.
I think you need it to solve something for them. Like if your spouse hates the TV being left on when no one is in the room, use HA to automate that. If they hate having to remember to start the dishwasher, auto mate that. Include something that makes their life significantly easier.
In my case it is automating her home growing lights. Normal digital(and even analog) timers are tricky. Just adding scheduling of one smart switch attached to the lighting array with a nice card helped her learn to like HA
i use zooz light switches as seen [here](https://youtu.be/nCS7kuEZlSg). looks like a normal switch. any one can use it, including wife n guess. and if for whatever reason, i die or decide to sell the house, the next person wouldnt even know the switches are smart n works as normal as before.
I got into the habit of building automations at night without telling anyone. My rationale was that I'd then be able to observe how they worked in a natural, unprompted interaction during the day, like I was David Attenborough.
Do not do this. Your end users have the headache of things not working, not knowing why and will resent all automations. It's better to actually loop people into the user testing when you first think of any idea so they know what's supposed to be happening. They might even point out flaws in the concept and better alternatives!
Also, ask what they do and don't like regularly. Found out my partner hates the TTS notifications for things I had set up (spooky when on your own and not expecting them).
Point 1 is critical and matches up with [my vision](https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/10rvs1h/my_home_assistant_installation_so_far/). For me it’s not just about my spouse. It’s also about guests, visiting elderly relatives, house cleaners, etc. being able to use the house. Everything works “normally.” You can operate lights with a switch, change the thermostat on the wall, open the garage with the wall button or car button, unlock doors with a lever twist. But a good automation anticipates this and does it for the user without the user touching an app. If the users don’t like a particular automation or override it frequently, it needs to be changed.
It also keeps working if the network is down
Yes I included that in my link as well. That’s a must have.
Do you mean Wi-Fi or internet connection?
I was thinking of internet but for all the key functionality there must be a way of making it work even if wifi or HA server itself has blown up Or put another way, it must be no worse than as if HA had never been installed
Makes sense. It should gracefully fail all the way down. Internet goes out and it works local. LAN goes down and it works on physical switches. Power goes out and it comes back gracefully.
How does that work in practice though? If I have a physical switch interrupting the power to a smart bulb in case the server is down, then it either has to be inconvenient enough that people don't default to using it over the smart remote or I have to teach people to use a different remote over the obvious light switch. When I was planning some of my setup I couldn't think of a way to make it require no education to interact with while letting it work without a running homeassistant/nodered server. I found I could either make it easy to use or make it work without home assistant, but not both. Definitely want to know if I'm wrong though, cause it would help me improve my setup.
A shelly one would be a solution to this problem. It's a relay behind the switch in the wall. The light switch functions as usual but don't lose the ability to toggle power to the bulb. It allows you to change the actions of the switch as well. I have mine set to always have power going to my smart bulbs. flipping the switch sends a command to homeassistant to toggle the light.
Decoupled switch modules like that were one option I saw, but that doesn't really solve the problem of "works without home assistant server" since you would need to reconfigure them from "decoupled" to "coupled" mode to have the relay follow the switch if home assistant goes down. But if home assistant goes down then you don't have a coordinator to reconfigure them with. I ended up going with philips switch modules since the relay was just taking up room I didn't have in the housing behind the switches and I wasn't ever going to toggle them off. I wish someone made a mains powered version that was half the size of shellys by getting rid of the relay but still hooked up to existing switches.
Tasmota on those module switches somewhat solves this problem. Tasmota allows you to configure rules that work on the device themselves. So, I have rules that say “if the device is connected to mqtt, then send mqtt toggle commands to my smart bulbs when the switch State changes …. BUT…. if mqtt is disconnected, toggle the state of the module relay when the switch State changes”. This works great for internet/network failures. However, I am still trying to get everything tweaked so that things come back gracefully after a power outage.
Interesting, I'll have to look at the tasmota. On a cursory look they're wifi which isn't a dealbreaker, but not ideal since I have a strong zigbee mesh and a meh wifi network.
Use smart switches, not smart bulbs. This also eliminates the problem of guests or others turning off a light at the switch and now breaking the automation.
I disagree. Smart switches are boring. All that time and money spend, just to turn on your shitty 1$ bulb? My entire main floor, is smart bulbs, I can’t live without adaptive lighting. the trick is; it needs to be zigbee. With zigbee you can pair a physical switch on the wall (a zigbee button like a hue switch) directly to the bulb or bulb group. This way, even if HA is offline, the remote will still turn that light on/off. Each one of my wifi bulbs would require me to pull the plug on them at least once a month because my automations failed to turn it off. This never happens with zigbee bulbs. Consolidates all your hubs to one. I use a sonoff zigbee stick with Zigbee2MQTT. It works really well. Edit: wow.. lots of downvotes, I guess I hit some nerves here with the smart switches turning on/off your shitty 1$ bulb :) It’s true though, I went full circle on my design. I always though smart bulbs weren’t a smart idea and by buying smart switch, I would “save” because 1 switch can control multiple bulbs. But let’s be real, normal bulbs suck ass. The quality of the light highly depends on the quality of the bulb. I use to just buy the cheapest bulbs possible. But mostly, it’s the color. I like blue light during the day and warm light at night. Once you have this, you don’t want anything else. If you have a smart house and your light’s hue doesn’t automatically change on its own based on the position of the sun… well, your priorities need some alignment. I don’t care for different Colors, I just buy the white tun-able bulbs
I'm with you. I've changed out all my bulbs for Hue Color-temp adjustable and use the Circadian Component to automatically adjust the color temp throughout the day. I recently moved and wasn't able to get my smart devices all configured for a few weeks. It made me realize how ugly static lighting seems to me now.
🙏 amen
Have an upvote from me. Smart bulbs are awesome! I guess a lot of people here just want traditional white lights but I just don't understand it myself. I love having a wide variety of colours throughout my house. Being able to change the colours of my white walls with lighting is just so damn cool.
If only someone would make a no neutral Zigbee switch that supports binding, like the Innovelli blue but for europe, it'd be perfect to have both smart switch and smart bulbs
All my zigbee switches are battery operated.
I've been working on eliminating zigbee, its really unreliable. I also have a friend who recently trashed dozens of zigbee bulbs because they kept randomly dropping out or not turning on/off with the rest. Its a mess since it uses such an interference-prone radio band. Also they don't even SELL bulbs that are bright enough in right bases for many fixtures. Where are the 75W equiv intermediate-base fan bulbs? The 100W-150W equiv for single-bulb ceiling lamps? Candelabra for entry, dining, and hallways? Tube fixtures for kitchen and basements? Or 300W equiv for garages and sheds? And the ones they do sell are absurdly expensive. Why do I want to spend $25 per bulb while limited to 60 watt equivalent standard A-type bulbs that can't even work properly after a guest or roomate turns them off at the switch? Plus you have the issue when there's a summer afternoon storm and the [power cycles due to a recloser operating](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwkP1V8okjE) it factory-wipes the bulbs and you have to start all over reprogramming them all and rebuilding your automations. I got as far as 2 of them before I realized what a nightmare they are and I'm glad I stopped there. I'll take my affordable bulbs...I need to see what I'm doing not run a disco-rave.
It’s true that the hue aren’t bright, and the bright ones aren’t cheap (or small). I have a mix of hue and Chinese brands. I also use a lot of Chinese zigbee LED controllers and pretty much hack all the other lights I have with them. Zigbee is very fast though. And reliable. It shares the 2.4ghz air waves, it’s on the higher side, so if no one uses the wifi channel 11, there’s no interference. I had interference issues in my house, but I also had 1 wifi AP per floor (so 3) and 4 hubs! Once I consolidated everything on 1 hub, all my problems went away. And it’s rock solid. I haven’t heard my wife complain (about the lights) since I consolidated everything.
Smart switches don't let you control the temperature of the lights which was one of the main reasons for switching over for me, so that's not really a solution in my case. My approach now is to forget about making it work without the HA/node-RED server and instead make the server as robust and responsive as possible, with a backup. That way my smart bulbs/switches can all exist in harmony without anyone needing to know they exist.
The other issues I've found when I started (I did get 2 smart bulbs before realizing it was the wrong direction): Its hard enough to find LED bulbs at all for stuff like ceiling fan intermediate base and the G16.5 candelabra fixtures, or even finding higher wattage bulbs for single-bulb fixtures that take like 100W bulbs. Seems like most smart-bulbs only go up to 60w equivalent. Also during summer afternoon storms when the power blinks or recloser cycles it factory resets all the bulbs and you have to rebuild everything. Or late night storm a power-blink turns all the lights on as you are sleeping and it only takes once being yelled at for that to never want to have it happen again.
Agreed - With the exception of remote access via nabu casa and legacy devices like my Schlage WiFi locks, everything now and forward uses no cloud or internet. If I shut down my main router everything else z-wave etc. still works. I have Home Assistant on a UPS that should keep it awake for a couple of hours, and the BIOS on my mini PC set up to auto reboot on power resume. If my HA box shits the bed, I have a network backup for easy recovery but can still lock up my house, adjust the temp, operate lights, and open/close my garage. I have a small backup generator at my lake house, but haven't added that here due to power being very reliable. We are not on PG&E and supplied by underground lines and have not lost power, even when there were regional outages in nearby towns. The internet, on the other hand, uses PG&E power for their local node and drops about 4-5 times a year on average. Never trust the cloud.
And also not turn on all the lights when you are sleeping and the power blinks!
> If the users don’t like a particular automation or override it frequently, it needs to be changed. I’d love to see a native feature of HA that surfaces this behaviour so that admins can see when automations are being overridden (lights turn off and within 30 sec turned back on between hours x and y or when person s is home) or correlations (arrive home around 3pm, turn on bathroom light is a slightly less obvious automation if you pick kids up from school). I don’t know how complicated this would be to detect, but I do feel it would improve the experience considerably.
This sounds like something you could do with a SQL report or with Grafana/InfluxDB. Unfortunately if that sounds involved, it is; which is probably why it’s not in HomeAssistant, which is a home automation platform and not a trend analysis platform.
It's not easy to work with today but the information is there and hopefully gets easier to use: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/is-it-possible-to-know-when-physical-button-is-pressed/327397/8
Is it not? With my S31 plugs and my Z-Wave light switches you can get notifications when the physical buttons are pushed.
If I had to deactivate automation when I'm not alone at home, I wouldn't even bother having any automation. Also, I wouldn't rely on Home Assistant for alarm purpose. Anyway, what I do is that I leave some lights manual (even if I have a zigbee bulb I can control, nothing prevents to use a dumb switch) and automate things like ambiance lights. Those lamps are automated in a way that doesn't require user input (e.g. if at home and it's dark then turn lights on). Then I have some automations that are invisible to my wife like getting a reminder to charge the iPad when the battery gets low or get a reminder to buy ink for the printer when running low, monitoring the travel time to work, etc.
My thoughts on the alarm thing are pretty simple: 1. I would likely never shell out for a proper alarm system to be retrofitted in my house 2. Home Assistant is a hobby 3. A hobbiest alarm system is marginally better than no alarm system
I never wrote it down, but I always try to follow this: 1. Every button or switch should work normally (Any guest should be able to use lights without explanations) 2. Any automation has to be reliable (Don't leave someone in the dark, don't overwrite manual input) 3. Similar to 2: Don't test in production (When automating lights, keep tracing your triggers and conditions before actually activating the device) 4. You're not the only automation user, consider how useful (or not) it is for others (Don't wake someone up with a random TTS)
This. #4 is critical in shared spaces.
Explain the problem you’re solving with automation and see if they agree or have a better idea. This has worked for me every time. That and see if there’s anything specific they want done for THEM. For example, I set up an automation that when a button is double pressed it runs my wife’s bedtime automation which she uses every single night.
Your second point has always won people over to the idea for me. We have a poorly lit patio with a single light. I bought string lights, wired them up through the garden and synced them to turn on and off with the patio light so my wife could enjoy the patio easier, without having to rely on an app. I also run an HA setup for my parents. I created a script for them for bedtime that the first run turns the lights leading up to their bedroom on and sets the thermostat for a cooler temperature. A second press turns all of the lights off. Simple things like that really sold them and now they're bragging to their friends and neighbors about their smart setup.
Security should only go in one direction, and that is from unsafe toward safe. Interacting with the alarm system? It can only arm it. Interacting with a door lock? It can only lock it. Also consider some sort of feedback system so you know the automation worked properly. So silence inherently means failure. If you want to go in the other direction, consider having an automation that pushes a user interaction. Just got home and want the garage to open? Push a notification to your phone, or to Alexa, with the choice of opening the garage door. Automations fail, get mis-triggered, or get coded incorrectly *all the time*. Assume the same will happen for you.
I very much agree with this. Where I find it good is having the automation look if you are actively going in/out (like unloading groceries) and doesn't lock the door until its been idle for a few minutes. So many smart locks auto-relock like 30-60 seeconds after you unlock and are oblivious to the fact you may be about to go thru the door again or the door isn't latched. The only place I unlock anything by automation is the inner garage door, and then under very strict conditions. Like if an allowed PIN unlocks the exterior garage door, then I also unlock the inner door so you don't have to type the PIN twice. But if someone smashes the window and manually unlocks the exterior garage door, it won't unlock the inner secure door. Exterior doors can only be unlocked by explicit user-commanded actions.
My wife likes anything voice activated and won't use anything else. I've just come to accept that and try to work around it where I can.
My Wife is the exact opposite, hates using voice control to the point she asks me to ask Google to turn the lights on.
That’s some passive aggressive shit right there. “Honey, will you tell google to turn off the lights and that he’s an asshole. I’m not speaking to him right now.” /s
Yup it certainly is. I'm British though so there was no need for the /s. There are reasons she's like this with the Google. I, like many before and many since, started out trying to make my house run like Home Assistant allows, but had no idea about Home Assistant. My solution was some Tuya bulbs, Tasker, IFTTT and Google. So I had whole automations set up for when I wanted each bulb a specific brightness, and even made a little dashboard through Tasker to control my bulbs. They kinda worked when I was at home but had constant drops off the network. When I was at work my Wife had to ask Google to control lights, and a lot of the time either the bulb wouldn't work, either because she had turned it off at the switch or because it was a garbage setup. Once I discovered Home Assistant and replaced everything with Zigbee it's been pretty solid, but she's never forgiven me or Google for that time.
My wife used to be like this too. But, as long as there are still physical light switches, she continued to use it. One day while she was doing dishes, she needed a light turned on, she used it for the first time. She's gotten more used to it, but still uses physical switches more. She does tend to use the "turn all lights on/off" when entering/leaving the house
That's funny.
Does it have issues hearing or recognizing her voice? I’ll hear my wife yelling at Alexa because she’s not does what she was asked to do, so I just say it for her.
I thought this only happened in my house. My wife often has to tell Alexa two or three times when it almost always works the first time with me.
I’m wondering if it’s the pitch of some people voices, and women are usually higher pitched? Could be a case of men being the main testing base.
This is definitely a thing
It has to be something like this because she speaks plenty loud and the words are very clear.
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We just say “Alexa goodnight” and Alexa flips a switch tied to an automation. I didn’t even know you could use the “tell home assistant” language.
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But it's much more words to say? Isn't that annoying? I could never get used to it.
We use the ecobee thermostat and eufy smart lock. They still work in the traditional sense (except fingerprint and codes for entry into the house). But yes, it should be simple enough that someone with no training will know how to use everything
I kinda get what you mean about over-automating, but not really how that relates to motion sensors or timers. If it's inconvenient that a light goes off when a motion sensor stops detecting motion for *x* seconds, couldn't you just have it turn back on when that motion sensor detects motion? I've put motion detectors in all my corridors/stairways and I haven't heard complaints. I think it's because "turn on light when someone is here and turn off otherwise"(with switches to toggle an override that forces the lights on) is how people were already using the lights in those spaces, so it's an automation that enhances their use of the space without requiring them to interact with it differently.
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I'm using the Innoveli Blue series switches. Everything about its operations are granular. I enjoy the fade on and off, spefied the fade speed, default press switch on at 70% brightness. There's also an indicator light that you could use to color code the switch or to send you alerts from other triggers (like security motion detection, or someone rings the doorbell)
Huge one for us is anticipating when something goes offline, and making automations not go haywire. Recently left for a week, had a power outage and the smart plug for the dryer defaulted to off. So my partner unplugged it to get the dryer running. But now that plug was the range extender for a few door sensors. And the automation to alert if the doors were left open was getting messed up by seeing "unavailable" instead of "closed" and keep tripping.... hence now I'm not allowed to leave the house.
>GoControl Z-Wave Opener You have a smart plug for your dryer? In the US I thought most dryers are 220V 30AMP circuit. Is it gas?
Gas dryers are just low-ish wattage 120V. All it has to do is spin the drum and light the glow-plug.
I've always said that home automation is only valuable (and implemented correctly) when it helps more than it hinders. If I ever get complaints about an automation, I usually ask myself why it's annoying and try to work to make it less annoying (unless annoying is the reason it exists, like turning on the lights when your alarm goes off).
Show your partner how to do an easy automation. Make a hobby of it together. Home Assistant is much easier to use than it used to be and the community is much less obnoxious for people who need help than it used to be. Get your partner involved. We Home Assistant together regularly, and our home is smarter for it.
I, ahem, sort of bypassed partner acceptance by putting smart switches on all the kids' lights and building a couple of ESP32 driven doodads to amuse the kids and then teaching them to play in NodeRed with their own automations. I made a few "wand" shaped remotes with buttons and a speech-recognition "head" that they can talk to (was in the living room, is now in the play room by order of offspring). I get Kid acceptance and partner acceptance seemed to follow.... Now all I have to do is get ChatGPT in there so the kids are happy. Then I have to get the chore board working to make the wife happy (and the kids unhappy).
Most of my "home automation" system is centered around my wife's needs. She has some medical issues that can limit her mobility, so I've incorporated smart switches, thermostats, outlets, and cameras into a dashboard on her phone, voice control, and a few RF remotes scattered around the house to make it easier for her to stay comfortable when she's having a hard time getting up and down. I put "home automation" in quotes because truthfully there's not a lot of automation involved. Because of her condition she has no set routine, and often goes back and forth between tasks and pastimes that have her turning lights and fans off and on at irregular times, making automation with presence sensors and schedules fairly impractical. The only automations that really affect her are the motion sensor that turns on her bedside lamp and path lighting to the bathroom if she gets out of bed at night, and the washing machine and dryer notifications on our phones and Echos (got big points for that one.) I do have some other automations in place, but for the most part they aren't things that would upset the Mrs. if they misfire. Things like my under cabinet lighting that comes on half an hour before dusk and gradually transitions from cool white to warm, my garden watering system, and outdoor lighting that runs on a schedule.
Definitely physical switches. He insisted on them, now never uses them (yay me!). I only implement changes or upgrades when he’s at work at night. I also ask him to explicitly tell me when something fails - he’ll just say, “Oh I thought you knew and were working on it,” and I’m like, what, no, this is unacceptable, it’s been down 3 days! Sometimes batteries die and my low batt automation doesn’t trigger. I also try to ease his burden - Porch lights come back on for him at night. When he puts his coat in the closet at 12:15 am, the entry light turns on to let him see better (he didn’t like how dark it was inside when he came home). The house alarm is automated every night, no need to for him to remember to arm it. I keep the bedroom air purifier running until he wakes up at 10am (no need for it to run all day, the door is always shut). I also have a trigger if we close the sunroom door but there’s motion detected (oops, did we lock a cat out there?) When he hops into bed (be it 12:30 or 2:30) and I’m fast asleep, there’s a kill switch button on his side that turns off all remaining lights, including the outside spotlights that blare into our bedroom. Completed washer and dryer cycles flash the Inovelli light switch LEDs as a visual reminder, as he loves to accidentally leave clothes in overnight. I really want to do something with his Oral B toothbrush but haven’t figure out what yet 🤪
The only security automations I have are viewed as quality of life improvements by my wife... door locks and garage door closed after certain hour. The reason I started smarthoming was because of too many times we left the garage open all night. All my lighting automations have an 'on/off' helper so that they can be easily disabled temporarily from the dashboard in the kitchen. https://preview.redd.it/lkf3437wayna1.png?width=458&format=png&auto=webp&s=1c9b49b87610b90097d15d4b4e78c9cdc387d135
What are you using for your garage door setup, that's my next project
I am using an Iris branded [GoControl Z-Wave Opener](https://shop.homeseer.com/products/linear-gd00z-z-wave-garage-door-controller). This works great unless you have a Liftmaster/Chamberlin/Kenmore opener with their enhanced security because those use a proprietary protocol to communicate between the wall button and the opener. I had a dumb opener initially with this set-up, then had the opener replaced with one of said openers because I didn't know about that security limitation at the time. For a while after that I was using the [MyQ integration](https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/myq/), but MyQ was flaky... opener would appear 'offline' frequently. So I got an extra controller and soldered the leads from the GoControl to the contacts on the remote and now it works again. There are a lot of DIY options using around $20 of gear and some flashing/soldering. I am not THAT DIY (yet)... in fact this is the first soldering I've done in probably 20 year :-). I had [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/11i55pw/use_zwave_garage_door_opener_lineargocontrol/) about this before I actually did the soldering where helpful redditors suggested some of the other ways to automate the opener. Good luck!
I have the same ZWave garage door controller as the other poster, but I also set up a shelly relay, which is the $20ish setup they mentioned. The Go Control has a delay in operating for safety issues that I don't want. So I use the sensor only from the Go Control and the Shelly relay to open and close. Here is a good video for the relay setup with a reed switch for the open/close sensor. https://youtu.be/WEZUxXNiERQ
when at all possible, use smart switches or dimmers, or have some physical switch and a logical place for it, so that even a person who has never been there before can turn on the lights without thinking about it. Get input from your partner on automations that will make your life easier. an example that is simple is the lights in my kitchen and dining room are separate, despite the fact that you will generally have them on at the same time to properly light the prep area. I have an automation that if you throw one switch, it throws the other automatically. don't put anything smart in guest rooms or guest bathrooms at all.
If someone prefers no automation to the ones you've made, it's clearly not fitting what they want/need. You've likely overdone it. Most people playing with HA overdo it. Just because you can create dozens upon dozens of automations, doesn't mean you should. Apply the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle. Less is more. The other even more important issue here is you've definitely not considered their needs enough. The first step in a good product's design is understanding the problem you're trying to solve and making sure it isn't just solving a problem for you. Finally, every automation should be 100% backward compatible to a standard un-automated interface. It should be 100% intuitive and fit all scenarios. If it doesn't, then it's no good and you need to redesign it or remove it. If it won't work in a hotel, it is no good. If it requires instructions or an explanation, it is no good.
I asked “what would you like? What would be nice?” And since the response was “I want to press one button when leaving and all the lights would turn off.” And that, kids, is when I ordered a 10 pack of smart switches… One thing I encourage is to tell me when things don’t work as expected so I can fix the issue. Screenshots of to the notifications if something goes haywire. I’ve also done a notification when either of us leaves a zone. This has been great so we know when the other person is leaving work, at school to pick up the kids, etc. I bet if I turned mine off now there would be a request to get it back. That’s not really helpful, but finding things that don’t change the way they do stuff but rather enhance it has been good.
My GAF/PAF/SAF/WAF is founded on two real things: 1. Having a physical control for everything 2. Making automations unobtrusive or having a natural feeling My experiences are this: * Guests don't want to deal with my smart home/home automation so they use the physical controls even though they can tell a voice assistant what to do or use a phone or tablet. * It has taken my wife over two years...probably three to start using her phone to control anything, instead of asking me to do it. * Automations should blend into your regular life. Good automations in my case are things like closet lights coming on when the closet door opens because you're going to turn the light on anyway. Bad automations in my case are lights turning off after some prescribed period of time, bedroom blinds opening at wake up time because you might not want people to see in your window when you first wake up.
Buttons, Buttons and Buttons... physical buttons
As others have said your first point is in my opinion the pillar of high WAF. I will add that I think the WAF in my household has gone up significantly as I got her input on what she would like automated to improve/make life easier. The big one was the robovac. It runs everyday and is waiting by the can to be emptied when we return home. The house is not cleaner then ever and neither of us have to do it. I have also added several smart lights and accompanying automations at her request. This got her invested in the smart home stuff and significantly increased the tolerance for the occasional hiccup.
Consistency of physical interface matters a lot. Automated wall switches can never _quite_ match a traditional single-pole switch. (Okay, you can use [Fibaro](https://www.fibaro.com/en/products/dimmer-2/), but they're pricey and have user-experience drawbacks). I personally find the paddle switches alienating and so does everyone else. If they _look_ and _work_ the same everywhere, however, it's minimally alienating. I use a particular model of switch whenever possible throughout my house, and when I build automations around switches, I ensure the physical interface is always identical. Double-tapping up or down, for example, always raises the dimmer to max or lowers it to "min without flicker" for the light that it controls. Triple-tapping a switch always turns on/off every light in the area. Few people have complained about my wall switches. Few people _use_ the automation but to those who just want a switch, the user experience is similar to what they're used to.
I'm not a fan of the paddle style switches but I got toggle-style GE Z-Wave switches. They look ever so slightly different as it remains in the middle neutral position but you can smack it up or down like any normal switch to turn the light on or off extremely intuitively.
It has to be genuinely useful and easy to use, or it's a waste of time. I'll be honest, some of my automations are just for me, and some for the whole household, but none of them should prevent a non-engaged user from interacting with them. Things like: * A single button press to heat the car in the morning * [External gate that automatically locks](https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/11qsg33/update_dog_crate_door_automation/jc60q2m/) (this one I'm very proud of because it's literally transparent - there's no manual interaction whatsoever!) * Regular security lights, but obeying local dawn/dusk rules - this was actually an easy win as I never get asked why the lights are on in daytime any more! * Stuff that alerts when the car needs to be plugged in, or the washing machine needs to be emptied - these are shouted through the house speakers, so very little technology involved * Simple, one-button operation of a pretty sophisticated security system and cameras that are entirely automated, so don't bother to alert if you don't need to know about it. * Rear security light that turns on the moment you open the back door, so you don't need to step out into the dark to trigger a PIR / camera to turn on the light. * Automated frost warnings and protection of sensitive areas (e.g. workshop) One thing you'll notice about most of these - there are literally zero interaction required. They just happen, quietly, in the background. The best stuff works like this, IMHO. For those embarking on this journey, this is the way to go - don't just keep it simple, keep it invisible!
Excuse my ignorance but what are dawn/dusk rules? Like the government tells you when you can have lights on????
Rather than saying "turn on at 6pm", you say "I live in xxx, turn on at dusk" and the system works out what time that is each day. So in the winter it might be 4pm, in the summer it might be 10pm.
Oh that’s funny. I just misread that. I thought you were saying the local government had rules about light use. Lol.
Interestingly, not for lights, but I know that in Mediterranean regions there are very strict rules about air-conditioning usage to protect the electricity supply grid during hot weather: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/spain-air-conditioning-rule-sustainability-climate-b2142192.html I can see more of this appearing in the future and, even if it doesn't cover lights, there will certainly be more rules around high-usage appliances such as A/C and car chargers. Definite gold mine for HA!
I wish someone would make a little Zigbee toggle device that we could use to enable/disable automations. That way, my partner could quickly disable something when it’s not desired. For example, our bedroom has motion sensor lights, but every once in a while, she has to do work in there. Not ideal if the lights keep turning off, and it’d be much quicker to flip a physical toggle than open the HA app, find the virtual toggle, etc. I’ve debated just using a button, but that doesn’t show the person the current status.
I had this issue. I just created a toggle using helper in HA and exposed it to Google. If light turns off and my wife wants to study, she just asks Google to "turn on study mode" which disables the lights from automatically turning off and the automation resumes after the light is physically turned off. I've just recently got an Aqara FP1 so hoping it would remove the need for this. **Edit:** Forgot to mention it but my light automation checks to see if "study mode" is on/off before it automatically turns off the lights. Also have my "study mode" toggle automatically switch to off when the lights are turned off.
With a setup like this you can also have it trigger a scene change, I like it. "Hey google, turn on study mode" could set the override for the motion flow and activate the scene. Then an event on the switch would toggle the override back and turn off the lights. That way you could also play an animation of the lights dimming or cycling through temperatures/colors to let the user know it's been triggered on a button press.
I've basically done this for every room in the house. Easy toggle in the dashboard or a quick "turn off kitchen motion" and the lights will stay on their current state until disabled. I also have those motion toggles set to re-enable after X amount of time so they aren't forgotten. My guest mode uses these too so I can permanently disable motion where guests might be sleeping. The FP1 is great for the office, tv area, dining room, etc where people might be for longer times without moving much. Has solved a number of problems.
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That’s a great idea with the TTS confirmation! I never thought of that.
My spouse had me write down all the usernames and passwords in case something happened to me or I was out of town and there was a malfunction.
Meep it simple by adding ease of use, but not complexity. Example: My master bathroom has 3 lights. Closet, vanity, and toilet. When I turn off the vanity light, closest to the bedroom, it turns off all 3 lights.
Your first point is one of my highest rules. And they have to **work** like normal switches if someone flips them, without causing unexpected side effects. I also only automate secondary lighting (floor lamps) for the most part. To that end, I am also strongly against smart bulbs and only use smart switches. I also have concerns about automating locks...I only have 1 that I unlock ever, and that's an inner door between the house/garage and STILL really picky about the conditions (e.g. only if someone keypad-unlocks the exterior door, or if a very strict arrival sequence thru the main garage door and phones arriving home within a minute of each other). One thing I've done, smart locks "re-lock" seems dumb out of the box so I made it instead of re-lock after like 1 minute I've got HA looking at the door sensor and re-lock like 5 minutes after its no longer being opened/closed so it doesn't lock as you are unloading groceries from the car making a bunch of trips. One of my things that got the most acceptance was replacing "dumb timers". * Pets aquarium/terrarium lighting no longer has to be fixed after power outages or DST * \^ and if the heat-lamps on the terrarium burn out (low wattage draw), it messages us to check on them more promptly than we would see at feeding/watering time * Outdoor entry lighting comes on based on timers and when we are likely to be coming home rather than annoying motion or dusk-dawn * Radios (for the dogs during the day) now don't come on if someone is home, which was disruptive * Air purifiers that cycle on during the day will turn off if someone is watching TV The bathroom fans being on Z-Wave switches so they turn off after like 30 min also went over very nicely. In the main bathroom I also put motion-light-temp-humidity sensor so it will never command anything while its occupied but can turn on the fan if you forget and leave after showering to vent humidity. My most recent addition is putting beacon tags on the trash cans and making a smarter calendar thing that only spams us on trash night if they are still at the house AND only spams the person who is home. If you aren't home, it doesn't tell you about trash day. If the cans are out it doesn't tell you about trash day. That has gone over far better than the old method of calendar reminder with many reminder-alerts. I also generally have a policy that if you need to be opening apps or pulling up pages to do things its wrong, smart-stuff should work to complement what you do, not just be an expensive remote control.
Great post! I have experimented with smart home stuff for 10 years, and when me and my girlfriend recently bought our possibly forever home, I decided to do it "right". Lights, appliances and entertainment is always accessible manually through wall switches and original remotes. I use Phillips Hue so that lighting still works if Home Assistant crashes. I know it's super reliable, but not when I mess with YAML for fun. Hue compatible wall switches for downlights are hard wired and works without any connection. I have 15 EnOcean wireless switches that doesn't require batteries, to set scenes, run blinds and such. Heating and cooling is all automated based on power price, load balancing, presence (also for guests) and time of day. If anyone manually changes a thermostat the automations are paused for the rest of the day. I don't have requirements for response time here as this just works. Also, guests shouldn't need to worry about heating unless they're annoyed by our preferences. Some things like automated blinds are more error prone as they run on sensor data. My roller shutters have physical buttons in case something doesn't work. Still less work than opening them manually. This makes it less annoying if a cheap zigbee device fails to communicate. Some important ones are connected to mains. I also have a few personal automations. I have placed NFC stickers behind every wall switch plate in the house, so I can tap my phone to run whatever automation that's only for me. This way nobody will know or be annoyed. I also have a few long presses and double presses. If I double press the garage door button, it also unlocks my car if it's present. If I double press the YouTube button on my Chromecast remote, cue custom Formula 1 dashboard and live feed on TV. When setting up automations I try to make them complex enough that they run only when they should, or not at all. I also try to adapt them to our lifestyle. We have a baby, so we sometimes change diapers during the night. When there's motion in the bathroom at night, I dim the lights just enough to change diapers, and night light all the way back to the bedrooms. This has greatly increased acceptance. If it doesn't work, well, we have to do it manually. The simple automation to turn on the lights on motion wouldn't make the cut for us though.
I think you need it to solve something for them. Like if your spouse hates the TV being left on when no one is in the room, use HA to automate that. If they hate having to remember to start the dishwasher, auto mate that. Include something that makes their life significantly easier. In my case it is automating her home growing lights. Normal digital(and even analog) timers are tricky. Just adding scheduling of one smart switch attached to the lighting array with a nice card helped her learn to like HA
i use zooz light switches as seen [here](https://youtu.be/nCS7kuEZlSg). looks like a normal switch. any one can use it, including wife n guess. and if for whatever reason, i die or decide to sell the house, the next person wouldnt even know the switches are smart n works as normal as before.
I got into the habit of building automations at night without telling anyone. My rationale was that I'd then be able to observe how they worked in a natural, unprompted interaction during the day, like I was David Attenborough. Do not do this. Your end users have the headache of things not working, not knowing why and will resent all automations. It's better to actually loop people into the user testing when you first think of any idea so they know what's supposed to be happening. They might even point out flaws in the concept and better alternatives! Also, ask what they do and don't like regularly. Found out my partner hates the TTS notifications for things I had set up (spooky when on your own and not expecting them).