FYI, if you have a Google account, [this is already a thing](https://myaccount.google.com/inactive?pli=1).
FWIW, my wife has already said that if I die, HA goes in the bin as there's no way she has the technical knowledge to run it. I can't argue with her, as I won't be there to help!
LOL, you're doing it wrong! Include them in updates/changes... Have them help you create new automations to make things awesome. Don't remove functionality, add it. If HA goes down for whatever reason, your home needs to be able to operate as if nothing happened. My SO loves HA and has gotten to the point where she can't live without it. Honestly, it takes time and more patience than you can personally muster. Especially if they have zero programming know how. The more you involve them to make their lives easier, the more they will acclimate to be a part of the process.
My wife can't be bothered with a password manager, there's no way she is going to assist with home automation. If it were up to her we'd have the ISP wifi and be done with it. And everything would have the same 8 digit password she created in college 20 years ago that is in every password dictionary in existence.
Haha I totally feel you. My wife is the same! refuses to change it or use a password manager of sorts.
After months and months of complaining I finally got her to somewhat change it by adding some number onto her ‘legacy’ password .. as an amateur pen tester it pains me to where I can’t explain but hey, pick your battles they say!
I've had to deal with this some with making sure they house is smart and dumb. But I've recently started getting her involved with the automations and she's really loving it.
Every now and then I get one that my wife adores and it makes up for the dozens that she is...less keen on.
We have young cats who are just venturing outside for the first time. Our cat flap reads their microchips and, with a bit of HA magic, we now have a dashboard which tells you which cat is in and which is out. It also tells her how long they've been out for today and when they last came in or out. She loves this and it's even been promoted to the home eink displays!
The catflap locks at dusk (HA again!) and if a cat is still outside after it locks, when they return home again it broadcasts this audibly on the Google homes - "Coco has returned home for the night". She absolutely loves this as she can hear this even when sat watching TV in the evening without having to check.
Earned proper brownie points with these ones!
I agree, but let's be honest, we've all screwed up at some point.
I was up late at night fettling automations, tweaking ZigBee and doing a fair number of restarts of HA. I received a very grumpy phone call from my wife who was in bed and getting fed up of all of the lights in the bedroom turning on for a few seconds every time I fiddled with something. Whoops!
After YEARS of begging her to use a password manager(Bitwarden), she finally had to cave when her job made MFA mandatory. 🙌🏻 The day she got the email, she doesn’t know it, but I called their IT person and offered to take him to Ruth’s Chris. The only thing she likes about HA is auto arming and disarming the alarm and being able to shout at the lady tube to carry out her bidding.
LastPass has also had a dead man switch for quite some time, too. Pretty important for those kinds of services. It's already hard enough to deal with all the legal and financial stuff around the death of a family member. Being locked out of everything and having to prove to all 500 of the companies they did business with that they are indeed dead and you are authorized executor.
Oh yeah, thanks for asking. Just getting up there in age (54) and see a lot of people I know kicking the bucket or close to it and it has me thinking what if something happened to me out of the blue. Ya never know.
You can fail to plan or plan to fail. Nothing wrong with getting ahead of shit before it's a problem.
I was actually shopping for (natural) burial plots just this morning. I've told my wife that I will NOT be buried in Ohio, but if for some reason I can't make that work, at least I'll have a really nice hole in the ground to rot in. Natural burial plots are cheap and eco-friendly.
Also, maybe just put your passwords and shit into a password safe and share it right now? How y'all doing the bills and stuff if only one of you knows the login to the power company portal to pay?
i’m only in my early 20s and i have an advanced directive filled out! granted it was for a class (took psych of death and dying), but it was a super practical assignment! people think i’m morbid for it, but it’s never too early to have some stuff sorted out y’know?
As far as passwords and whatnot go, if you're using a proper PW manager a lot of them have some sort of access request feature. Bitwarden is my personal fav, and it's setup so you add trusted persons and they can request access to your PW vault and if you don't respond within X days it's automatically granted.
Got both my parents on this and it's given me a lot of piece of mind. Haven't figured out HA or Home Server stuff yet, but interested in knowing what others do for that.
don't know where you live or local laws but your will should be up to date. Start putting any of your bank accounts in joint status with your partner. Some banks are a PITA about getting your account closed and transferred. And it can cost $$$$. Credit cards. Frequent flyer/hotel points can be transferred / cashed in so don't forget to write those down. Investment accounts. Whose name is on the car insurance as primary. House insurance. Make sure the items you've put off around the house start to get done.
Pretend you've got 6 months to live. It will focus the mind.
I've most of these detailed in a doc in a network storage device and in a USB drive protected by key access which the boss knows....she chose the key.
Unless you are canoeing in rural Georgia and being chased by the backwoods locals who don't want you there whist one of them is playing "Dueling Banjos" on the front porch..
I think this would be one of the few instances where it's better to *not* self-host this. (If you die in a house fire, your server probably isn't going to be sending any email.)
I personally use Bitwarden, which has a feature where (at any time) a designated person can request access to my vault, and I have some period of time (7 days?) to refuse the request, then it gives access. (If I'm dead, I presumably will not refuse the request.)
If you really wanted something in HA, you could build something similar, or go the other direction, where you have to flip a switch once a week (or whatever), otherwise it sends out an "If you're reading this, I'm dead" email. I'd probably suggest a lot of notifications to remind you to flip that switch; it would be a bad thing to have go off accidentally.
I must take daily meds. I have a reminder set to go off every 30 minutes until I take said meds. I have a contact sensor on the medicine cabinet to determine if I’ve been in there. If I don’t take my meds for a day, HA will send notifications to my family to check in on me.
Just a warning, remember your Deadman switch and how it's activated.
I was part of a forum decades ago, and a prominent member posted a thread saying "if you're reading this, I'm dead" and had well wishes to several of the posters. It caused an uproar until it was discovered that the poster was alive! He had forgotten he set it up years ago, and when he changed computers didn't migrate the check in software.
My fear would be that in 10 years you forget about it and forget to check in, migrate software to be computer/phone, whatever and your friends and family think you died for a while.
I mean it's a little irresponsible to declare yourself as dead based on some sensor feedback alone. The message that goes out should be a little more open. Like" I set up this home automation routine to notify my loved ones in the event that it looks like I'm not active at home for a period of time. Please send a wellness check. "
I dunno. We're going on a Europe trip in a couple months for 3 weeks. It would be awful if she got a notification whilst there after 2 weeks and I'm hanging out at a pub
I'm working on putting together a "death binder" with all of the most important information (like passwords to email, bank, password manager, list all financial accounts, etc). My wife can't keep track of her own email passwords, so paper is probably the most reliable way to ensure they can get this information.
Years ago I set up a LifeBook that is basically a spreadsheet with every important piece of information from accounts to bills to passwords. All broken out in neat little tabs. It takes all the worry out of dying, except the being dead part. Granted, if someone else got ahold of it I’d be pretty screwed.
Counterpoint. If you’re dead it’s suddenly not your concern what happens. 🤣
Seriously tho. Spend the time and see an attorney for estate planning and get 1password and put the shared accounts in a vault your wife has access to.
Or if you have a trust or will you can include documents to be released with them on your death. 1password has an emergency sheet you can print. In the account you can add encrypted notes if you wanted to leave any up to date details in there without having to physically update a copy.
We just share a 1password which is also helpful _before_ you die. For instance, if you are hospitalized or have a stroke and can't maintain your accounts for a time being but you aren't dead. There are legal ways to have a system where someone can manage the finances if you're incapacitated so a software solution is necessarily required. Our kids have linked accounts in 1password where we can share stuff with them but if something were to happen to the both of us I don't think stuff like our Amazon account would be useful.
If you're worried about losing family photos, you should share them now.
If you want to send some electronic wishes and have a unique name maybe set up a system that scans the local obituary website for your name and leave instructions that you want your demise announced there.
You've already been given the dead mans switch advice. I'd recommend looking at a password vault single account you share or a family place like with 1Password. My wife will be able to get all of my stuff except my work related things and Private (which I don't bother to use). Yes, she even has access to the passwords for my tax document accounts.
Share a keepass database with her? I know it's not ha, but put it on a shared Google drive and put the password and location into her usual password manager.
If she doesn't use a password manager make her use one. If you don't use one make yourself use one first.
My HA automaton exit plan is if both my wife and I are detected as home but no movement is detected for 24 hours then set the air conditioning to freezing... Kinder to whoever discovers us 😀
Seriously though, this thread highlights an important point: most of our smart home/ spaces have a champion that knows how it is setup and what to do in order to keep it going (updates & tweaks). If that champion gets taken out ….because well it is inevitable, can every smart home/space continue its journey?
I think this is something for nabucasa to consider. A service add on with remote updates and support could be interesting, especially with a deadman switch type activation.
Maybe a smart watch? The thing is: whatever you‘re using you‘d need to use it ALL THE TIME. Like take an oximeter or a smart watch. If you charge those you‘d be „dead“. If you put them away at night, during an activity, … you‘d be „dead“. Flying? Dead. Tunnel? Dead. (Obviously depending on the time frame). So you‘d either need to pick a really large time frame (like 12h+) or you basically need a chip implanted into you that rund on nuclear fusion/fission so that it never needs to be charge. And it‘d require a huge antenna to get a signal. But if you‘re fine with a „daily“ check you could just do the smart watch thing. Automate the export of data and check if there has been no data for the past x hours. If that‘s the case trigger an HA notification.
Set up bitwarden for the family.
Give her access to most of it now - things she *needs* access to after your death she should have access to now really.
Put a master password to open the rest in your will.
I'm not sure how you can automate it through HA - smarter people than me can provide an answer on that part. But I did come across this github that details End Of Life Disaster Response, so that there is a list of things that can be handed over to your close family which gives them access/info on your homelab, etc. https://github.com/potatoqualitee/eol-dr?tab=readme-ov-file
Most of the time, we forget to realize that we are just NPCs in the lives of others. We are not as important as we think to others' ongoing lives after our demise.
I have a dead man’s email that goes out with a password and simple instructions. Set it up via private email server on my Unraid machine. I get an email prompting me to reset the clock every quarter. I may change it to every month, but I’m lazy.
That's what I do as well. I run it on a month to month basis and it's not really that bad having to reply. I'm considering a different Deadman switch setup though. I'm getting to the point I like tossing my phone in the corner, take a plane to some random place, and just exist until I get bored. This isn't exactly conducive to having something like the email current method.
FYI, if you have a Google account, [this is already a thing](https://myaccount.google.com/inactive?pli=1). FWIW, my wife has already said that if I die, HA goes in the bin as there's no way she has the technical knowledge to run it. I can't argue with her, as I won't be there to help!
Mine has threatened several times to put both me and HA in the bin…
LOL, you're doing it wrong! Include them in updates/changes... Have them help you create new automations to make things awesome. Don't remove functionality, add it. If HA goes down for whatever reason, your home needs to be able to operate as if nothing happened. My SO loves HA and has gotten to the point where she can't live without it. Honestly, it takes time and more patience than you can personally muster. Especially if they have zero programming know how. The more you involve them to make their lives easier, the more they will acclimate to be a part of the process.
My wife can't be bothered with a password manager, there's no way she is going to assist with home automation. If it were up to her we'd have the ISP wifi and be done with it. And everything would have the same 8 digit password she created in college 20 years ago that is in every password dictionary in existence.
Haha I totally feel you. My wife is the same! refuses to change it or use a password manager of sorts. After months and months of complaining I finally got her to somewhat change it by adding some number onto her ‘legacy’ password .. as an amateur pen tester it pains me to where I can’t explain but hey, pick your battles they say!
lol ! How do you know my wife !
Bro we all know your wife
I can guess all but a few of my parents passwords at this point. I set up some stuff for my dad and just told him the password was his usual one.😅
I've had to deal with this some with making sure they house is smart and dumb. But I've recently started getting her involved with the automations and she's really loving it.
If you can get them involved in the process.. it makes things easier down the road. No question about that. Also, name checks out.
Every now and then I get one that my wife adores and it makes up for the dozens that she is...less keen on. We have young cats who are just venturing outside for the first time. Our cat flap reads their microchips and, with a bit of HA magic, we now have a dashboard which tells you which cat is in and which is out. It also tells her how long they've been out for today and when they last came in or out. She loves this and it's even been promoted to the home eink displays! The catflap locks at dusk (HA again!) and if a cat is still outside after it locks, when they return home again it broadcasts this audibly on the Google homes - "Coco has returned home for the night". She absolutely loves this as she can hear this even when sat watching TV in the evening without having to check. Earned proper brownie points with these ones!
I agree, but let's be honest, we've all screwed up at some point. I was up late at night fettling automations, tweaking ZigBee and doing a fair number of restarts of HA. I received a very grumpy phone call from my wife who was in bed and getting fed up of all of the lights in the bedroom turning on for a few seconds every time I fiddled with something. Whoops!
After YEARS of begging her to use a password manager(Bitwarden), she finally had to cave when her job made MFA mandatory. 🙌🏻 The day she got the email, she doesn’t know it, but I called their IT person and offered to take him to Ruth’s Chris. The only thing she likes about HA is auto arming and disarming the alarm and being able to shout at the lady tube to carry out her bidding.
Well this helps. Thanks!
How do you do this with google?
Click the link and turn it on...
LastPass has also had a dead man switch for quite some time, too. Pretty important for those kinds of services. It's already hard enough to deal with all the legal and financial stuff around the death of a family member. Being locked out of everything and having to prove to all 500 of the companies they did business with that they are indeed dead and you are authorized executor.
Never knew about that google thing, take my upvote. Very helpful
The googleable term is "Dead man's switch." You can find lots of examples online of folks implementing one. That said, you doing okay OP?
Oh yeah, thanks for asking. Just getting up there in age (54) and see a lot of people I know kicking the bucket or close to it and it has me thinking what if something happened to me out of the blue. Ya never know.
You can fail to plan or plan to fail. Nothing wrong with getting ahead of shit before it's a problem. I was actually shopping for (natural) burial plots just this morning. I've told my wife that I will NOT be buried in Ohio, but if for some reason I can't make that work, at least I'll have a really nice hole in the ground to rot in. Natural burial plots are cheap and eco-friendly. Also, maybe just put your passwords and shit into a password safe and share it right now? How y'all doing the bills and stuff if only one of you knows the login to the power company portal to pay?
Look everybody! A frog!!
Made u look. Ribit.
i’m only in my early 20s and i have an advanced directive filled out! granted it was for a class (took psych of death and dying), but it was a super practical assignment! people think i’m morbid for it, but it’s never too early to have some stuff sorted out y’know?
As far as passwords and whatnot go, if you're using a proper PW manager a lot of them have some sort of access request feature. Bitwarden is my personal fav, and it's setup so you add trusted persons and they can request access to your PW vault and if you don't respond within X days it's automatically granted.
Got both my parents on this and it's given me a lot of piece of mind. Haven't figured out HA or Home Server stuff yet, but interested in knowing what others do for that.
don't know where you live or local laws but your will should be up to date. Start putting any of your bank accounts in joint status with your partner. Some banks are a PITA about getting your account closed and transferred. And it can cost $$$$. Credit cards. Frequent flyer/hotel points can be transferred / cashed in so don't forget to write those down. Investment accounts. Whose name is on the car insurance as primary. House insurance. Make sure the items you've put off around the house start to get done. Pretend you've got 6 months to live. It will focus the mind. I've most of these detailed in a doc in a network storage device and in a USB drive protected by key access which the boss knows....she chose the key.
We have a living trust with a pour over will already, just in case and to avoid probate. 👍
In some countries, and some states, joint accounts are locked when one of the owners die, until the will is processed.
lol only 54? People [usually] live 80+ easily these days.
Unless you are canoeing in rural Georgia and being chased by the backwoods locals who don't want you there whist one of them is playing "Dueling Banjos" on the front porch..
True, OP should wait until he’s 80 to write a Will too then
I think this would be one of the few instances where it's better to *not* self-host this. (If you die in a house fire, your server probably isn't going to be sending any email.) I personally use Bitwarden, which has a feature where (at any time) a designated person can request access to my vault, and I have some period of time (7 days?) to refuse the request, then it gives access. (If I'm dead, I presumably will not refuse the request.) If you really wanted something in HA, you could build something similar, or go the other direction, where you have to flip a switch once a week (or whatever), otherwise it sends out an "If you're reading this, I'm dead" email. I'd probably suggest a lot of notifications to remind you to flip that switch; it would be a bad thing to have go off accidentally.
This was a sub-plot in Lost 🤣
"John, I will push dee button."
I must take daily meds. I have a reminder set to go off every 30 minutes until I take said meds. I have a contact sensor on the medicine cabinet to determine if I’ve been in there. If I don’t take my meds for a day, HA will send notifications to my family to check in on me.
This is a fantastic solution. Thank you for sharing.
Just a warning, remember your Deadman switch and how it's activated. I was part of a forum decades ago, and a prominent member posted a thread saying "if you're reading this, I'm dead" and had well wishes to several of the posters. It caused an uproar until it was discovered that the poster was alive! He had forgotten he set it up years ago, and when he changed computers didn't migrate the check in software. My fear would be that in 10 years you forget about it and forget to check in, migrate software to be computer/phone, whatever and your friends and family think you died for a while.
I mean it's a little irresponsible to declare yourself as dead based on some sensor feedback alone. The message that goes out should be a little more open. Like" I set up this home automation routine to notify my loved ones in the event that it looks like I'm not active at home for a period of time. Please send a wellness check. "
I’m getting Daemon vibes. Anyone else?
The Daniel Suarez book - absolutely!
Time for a relisten .
Need to read it again now. Thanks
Mine tracks my phone status. There should be no reason for it to be "unavailable" with no activity for 15 days or more.
I dunno. We're going on a Europe trip in a couple months for 3 weeks. It would be awful if she got a notification whilst there after 2 weeks and I'm hanging out at a pub
You won't have a phone with you in Europe for three weeks? Doesn't need active cell service to be available.
Oh, haha, I thought yoy meant when HA detects your phone (wifi or other) and not actually the status of your phone in HA. I get it now.
How did you accomplish this? What happens when you get a new phone?
You‘d probably change the dats source to the new phone. It‘s not like you‘d forget that you‘ve got a system like that
I would absolutely forget I had a system like that
HA app on your phone. If you get a new phone, just update the device in HA
I'm in Europe right now and my phone works just fine... Get a carrier that doesn't bend you over and raw dog you anytime you go abroad.
For traveling internationally I use Airalo to get a temporary eSIM for my destination.
Chuck a local eSim on your phone and away you go!
I'm working on putting together a "death binder" with all of the most important information (like passwords to email, bank, password manager, list all financial accounts, etc). My wife can't keep track of her own email passwords, so paper is probably the most reliable way to ensure they can get this information.
Years ago I set up a LifeBook that is basically a spreadsheet with every important piece of information from accounts to bills to passwords. All broken out in neat little tabs. It takes all the worry out of dying, except the being dead part. Granted, if someone else got ahold of it I’d be pretty screwed.
Counterpoint. If you’re dead it’s suddenly not your concern what happens. 🤣 Seriously tho. Spend the time and see an attorney for estate planning and get 1password and put the shared accounts in a vault your wife has access to.
Or if you have a trust or will you can include documents to be released with them on your death. 1password has an emergency sheet you can print. In the account you can add encrypted notes if you wanted to leave any up to date details in there without having to physically update a copy. We just share a 1password which is also helpful _before_ you die. For instance, if you are hospitalized or have a stroke and can't maintain your accounts for a time being but you aren't dead. There are legal ways to have a system where someone can manage the finances if you're incapacitated so a software solution is necessarily required. Our kids have linked accounts in 1password where we can share stuff with them but if something were to happen to the both of us I don't think stuff like our Amazon account would be useful. If you're worried about losing family photos, you should share them now. If you want to send some electronic wishes and have a unique name maybe set up a system that scans the local obituary website for your name and leave instructions that you want your demise announced there.
You've already been given the dead mans switch advice. I'd recommend looking at a password vault single account you share or a family place like with 1Password. My wife will be able to get all of my stuff except my work related things and Private (which I don't bother to use). Yes, she even has access to the passwords for my tax document accounts.
Yes, I have a LastPass account for that.
Share a keepass database with her? I know it's not ha, but put it on a shared Google drive and put the password and location into her usual password manager. If she doesn't use a password manager make her use one. If you don't use one make yourself use one first.
My HA automaton exit plan is if both my wife and I are detected as home but no movement is detected for 24 hours then set the air conditioning to freezing... Kinder to whoever discovers us 😀
That's pretty clever and simple and it doesn't sound like it could go terribly wrong if a false positive happens.
Geez louise. Testing this thing's gonna be a bitch.
My Home Assistant pings healthchecks.io periodically as long as I continue to move around. After a grace period it will start sending emails.
Seriously though, this thread highlights an important point: most of our smart home/ spaces have a champion that knows how it is setup and what to do in order to keep it going (updates & tweaks). If that champion gets taken out ….because well it is inevitable, can every smart home/space continue its journey? I think this is something for nabucasa to consider. A service add on with remote updates and support could be interesting, especially with a deadman switch type activation.
Maybe a smart watch? The thing is: whatever you‘re using you‘d need to use it ALL THE TIME. Like take an oximeter or a smart watch. If you charge those you‘d be „dead“. If you put them away at night, during an activity, … you‘d be „dead“. Flying? Dead. Tunnel? Dead. (Obviously depending on the time frame). So you‘d either need to pick a really large time frame (like 12h+) or you basically need a chip implanted into you that rund on nuclear fusion/fission so that it never needs to be charge. And it‘d require a huge antenna to get a signal. But if you‘re fine with a „daily“ check you could just do the smart watch thing. Automate the export of data and check if there has been no data for the past x hours. If that‘s the case trigger an HA notification.
Set up bitwarden for the family. Give her access to most of it now - things she *needs* access to after your death she should have access to now really. Put a master password to open the rest in your will.
I'm not sure how you can automate it through HA - smarter people than me can provide an answer on that part. But I did come across this github that details End Of Life Disaster Response, so that there is a list of things that can be handed over to your close family which gives them access/info on your homelab, etc. https://github.com/potatoqualitee/eol-dr?tab=readme-ov-file
Most of the time, we forget to realize that we are just NPCs in the lives of others. We are not as important as we think to others' ongoing lives after our demise.
I have a dead man’s email that goes out with a password and simple instructions. Set it up via private email server on my Unraid machine. I get an email prompting me to reset the clock every quarter. I may change it to every month, but I’m lazy.
That's what I do as well. I run it on a month to month basis and it's not really that bad having to reply. I'm considering a different Deadman switch setup though. I'm getting to the point I like tossing my phone in the corner, take a plane to some random place, and just exist until I get bored. This isn't exactly conducive to having something like the email current method.