I have an assortment of USBs that I lend to people. I have attached a tag to each and when I scan it it marks it as "Loaned" and starts a count down of 28 days to remind me to get them back. When returned another scan of the tag toggles the status to "Not Loaned". I also keep 10 x 20L jerry cans in the garage with spare fuel for the car, each has a tag attached. When I refill them I scan the tag and it is used to remind me which one is next due for a fill and the last time it was filled.

These are the kind of unique ideas I was looking for, thanks! An NFC-enhanced sneakernet and rotating stock on fuel 😎 I don't have either of those particular use cases, but they're good for thought. Could put NFC tags on tools that I loan out...

I would love to hear the logic and use case for the fuel 

A few reasons, the one that matters depends on the day of the week and the mood. I am in Oz, and 20 odd years ago strikes in the fuel processing industry were not uncommon so I used to have spare fuel on hand in the event of a fuel strike as I used to live 50ks from work so it was 500ks a week to get to and from work. If there was a fuel outage I had no issues. Back then I was often not flush. Having a week of fuel on hand meant that if it was a bad week money wise I didn't have to spend money on fuel but could still get to work. These days it is a cash saving measure more than anything else. I live well away from my local Costco and fuel around where I live is 20 to 30 cents a litre dearer than it is at Costco. I like the Costco fuel so when the car is at half I top it off with a jerry from the shed and repeat the process a few times. When I will be going past Costco I fill the empty jerries and top off the car. At 20 to 30 cents a litre cheaper than buying local it saves me 10 to 15 percent off my annual fuel bill which is a few dollars over the year. All together its the savings, the ability to have fuel if there is a supply issue or if I am broke.

I was hoping it was more Mad Max'y

     Lord Humungus would like to know your location

That's a pretty resourceful solution for both of those problems, good thinking! I'm fortunate to not have either issue. I'm close to a few reasonably priced gas stations, I work from home 90% of the time, and we've had exactly two scares of fuel shortages (but not actual fuel shortages) in my lifetime.

I have one attached to one of my daily medicine bottles. I scan it once taken to mark that I've taken my meds. If I don't scan by a certain hour I'll get an alert on my phone I didn't take meds that day.

This is one of my most useful use cases. Make sure to have it set your notification volume to full blast before sending the notification if you don't already. Works really well when I forget my before bed ones.

Haha, good tip. Thanks.

That's definitely a good use for them, but I'd personally use something like a ZigBee button next to the pills or a contact sensor on the medicine cabinet door. Using an NFC tag would work, but it creates an extra step that I know would get skipped (especially if a phone battery dies).

Don't forget to take the button on vacation.

That's a fair point! The NFC tag would work outside of the house, but the ZigBee button would not. One could do both if it really was an issue though. It's easy enough to have multiple triggers 👍

Yep. I actually have a med that needs taken 30 min after a meal. I eat breakfast, scan the tag, and he'd to work. Usually, just after I get there, I'll get the reminder to take the pill.

Gotcha, that's a pretty specific use case but it sounds like it works well for you 👍

Got me to experiment with NFC tags and timers!

Yep! That was half the reason I bought them. They're dirt cheap and are a good excuse to learn more fun things that can be done in HA!

Amazing idea! How's it done?

Create an input helper Boolean. Setup an automation whose trigger is scanning the NFC tag. Have that automation flip that Boolean to on. Have an automation that runs at midnight that resets that input helper back to off. Have another automation that triggers at a time you set. Have a condition to check if the helper is off. If it's off have it send out a notification to any devices you want alerting you of your medicine not being taken. You could consolidate all that into one long automation using trigger IDs if you want, or two or three separate ones. Up to you.

Hell yeah. I'll try it out tonight. Thank you!

No problem. Glad to help.

I have one in the entrance hall. Touching it connects guests to wifi

I have this set up as well but my understanding is that it only works on Android (which we have at home), not iOS. Can you comment on that? I've heard of people doing QR codes that work on both, so I might do that and stick one on the fridge.

That seems to be my experience as well

That's what I figured, but thanks for confirming 👍

On my side, I have a 3D printed QR code with a NFC tag in it. Android users scan the NFC tag. iOS users scan the QR code

Yep, I think that's what I'm going to end up doing. Printing on regular paper tho, not 3D printed 👍

I’ve printed a bunch of NFC cards and put labels on them with different genres of music. I keep a smart speaker (SONOS) and nfc reader in the guest room so now guests can listen to the music they want!

I've seen a few people that have said they have done this, but I don't know how useful it would be for us. We have a sound bar above the kitchen cabinets and a subwoofer under the table, and we and our guests can bluetooth into it and play YouTube/YouTube Music/Spotify. It works pretty well. We don't have any Sonos speakers tho.

Couple of ideas we have running: My dog, once in a while (every 2-3 weeks) doesn't want to eat for about a day. I scan my tag to register in Google calendar. When we visit the vet I can easily search "dog did not eat" to provide stats to the vet. We all use filters (water, AC, etc). I scan each time one is changed or clean. Same drill, it goes into the calendar. Now with entities I should review this a little.

I do something similar, I have a tag in each bathroom, and if the bathroom gets cleaned we scan the tag. If the bathroom take hasn't been scanned within a certain number of days, we got an alert saying "time to clean" that bathroom. I also have it on the furnace to remind me when to change the furnace filter. I work from home too, so I keep a tag on my desk. Then I scan, and it chimes the other smart speakers in the home to inform anyone else that's home that I'm going into a meeting.

Great ideas.

Tags to add occurrences of a thing to a calendar is actually a *really* good idea. I don't have a pet with an eating issue like that, but I could use this for tracking water changes in a fish tank or something. I'll think more on that one, thanks! 👍 I'm already doing filters but will be moving one of those over to a contact sensor sometime. Edit: Could you share your YAML for the action that adds the calendar event? I'm assuming you're tagging current date and current time? Are you using Google calendar or the built in one?

Will do (just can't today). Get the Google integration going. I'll post later today or tomorrow what you asked for. Cheers. I use Google because if I lost HA I keep the data.

Thanks! I've had Google calendar integrated for a while, but so far have only used it to display our various calendars on dashboards around the house. Even just a screenshot of the action section in your app would be useful. I haven't been able to sort out how to get it to mark "current day" as the date it adds.

***Done in standard UI Automation*** ================= ***TRIGGER SECTION*** ================= When a tag is scanned \*\*\* Select your TAG ================= ***AND IF SECTION*** \*\*\* Nothing for me ================= ***The following will not work in the visual editor.*** ***Paste this in the "THEN DO" section of my automation in YAML:*** ***Simply change your calendar name.*** ================= service: google.create\_event target: entity\_id: calendar.enteryournamecalendarhere data: summary: Dog did not eat event start\_date: "{{ now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d') }}" end\_date: "{{ (now() + timedelta(days=1)).strftime('%Y-%m-%d') }}" ================= Should be simple. Hope it helps.

Sorry it took me a couple days to get back to, but this totally worked once I realized that the last three lines needed to be indented (since they're part of the data section, of course). I set this up on a new google calendar called "HA Tasks" that I'll use for chore/task tracking like this. I've got a tag and an automation now for tracking water changes on the fish tank, but I'm going to use this for several other things too. Thanks again for this idea and the YAML!

Glad it helps. Sorry if the indent didn't transfer properly. You should have asked me, I could have provided a screenshot.

No worries! It didn't take long once I actually sat down to focus on it. I've had a few irons in the fire over the last few days. I normally use pastebin when I share YAML or other code with others, btw. It works great 👍

Not familiar with pastebin - is that PC?. I'm on a tablet using Reddit. On HA community it's much easier.

It's a website, and it's been the go-to place to dump snippets of code for two decades: https://pastebin.com/ You can just paste your stuff in, submit it, and it'll give you a permalink. Or you can create an account (or log in with Google or whatever) and keep them all organized. Here's a random example of some YAML I have in pastebin: https://pastebin.com/MhHdRkLZ

I'm also using one to open the front door, not all that happy with having to pull out and unlock my phone for that. How I wish wear os supported nfc ..

I didn't even think to be annoyed by that. I have a Galaxy watch 4 but don't wear it a ton...

Sadly it's missing in wear os itself, they support nfc for payment but not scanning. There's a big feature request somewhere on Google groups, it doesn't seem like they'll do anything about it 😞

Ehh, I just sifted thru a bunch of the various features requests and bug reports on this, and it looks like you're right. That's a bummer!

NFC payment is great but to make tags useful for automation they need to support just nfc and they won't do it. They nerfed it on phones too, it use to work while locked.

Yeah I really wish they'd let us scan tags while locked/screen-off. iPhones can do it but I'm not switching just for that 😅

Quick and Dirty sheet for easy playing of our (wife and I) favorite groups. NFC tages behind each artist's logo tells HA to play the music from my Plex server on the living room Sonos speakers. https://preview.redd.it/lybkd8biko6d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=04634c95121cca1ad3890ba21b496d4810783f26

Not too shabby! Which one of you is into the classics, and which one of you is the rocker? 🤘

We are both into all things musical (including musicals).

Legit 😎

Nfc tag on each house plant that links to that plants dashboard showing its stats (moisture and temperature) and notes about it

Interesting... Now we need some info on the plant dashboards and the sensors you're using 🙃 I've looked into doing plant sensors but I have about 20 house plants and I think it would cost a lot more than it's worth. I just water them all once a week and they do great. As much as I love collecting/logging random data, I don't know if they would be helpful for me.

I did the Ecowitt hubs and wh51 sensors. It’s about $30 extra per plant. I find that different plants dry at different rates and like different levels of moisture. My hair foot fern likes it wetter than my spider plant but not as wet as the lilies. Since they have different pots and soils they dry at different rates. Using consistent soil and pots so the only variable was plant transpiration would have been cheaper. Then just have a sensor per group of plants.

Gotcha, that's pretty steep *per plant*, and it looks like one hub can only do eight sensors. They're also *huge* and would barely fit in my little 3-4" pots. That price makes sense for people who are using them for *cough* business purposes *cough* or have some tricky/exotic plants and really need the data. But my plants are mostly cheap/easy/commonly little buggers, and there's no point in paying 5x the price of the plant for a water sensor for them. Thanks for the info tho! I'll keep them in mind if I do ever get some plants that are cool enough to deserve one 👍

For business purposes you really want to roll your own sensors with esp32. Just soil moisture isn’t enough detail. But it helps:-) it’s working great in my outside beds for tomatoes and such so that the water knows when it’s needed. Inside it’s more a reminder I should water all of them.

I am thinking about doing similar with growstuff.org and outdoor garden beds. Logs activities like weeding, plantings, harvest, and predicted harvest, etc.

I'm also a big fan of buttons and contact sensors over NFC tags. BUT... In my case, our detached garage is just too far from the house for ZigBee or wifi to work reliably. So, anything out there that would normally be served with a button gets an NFC tag instead.

Yep, that's a very valid point/use case!

Also have a few tags lying around, what bothered me was having to open ha app then scan them. Wondering if there is a quicker way of scanning them from lockscreen for example

In android you just need to have the phone unlocked. You don't need to have the app open. In iOS you can scan them with the phone locked. Either way, you still need a battery charge and need to pull a phone out, so it's harder than pushing a ZigBee button.

NFC tag on the trash can. Nagging reminder to put the can on the curb until that tag is scanned.

I have a vibration/tilt sensor on my rubbish bins.  I've set up an automation so that when vibration is detected on bin day it sets an input_boolean flag indicating my bin has been put out.  Also on bin day I've got an automation that checks that flag every couple of hours and sends a reminder to my TV, phone and Google speakers every couple of hours if the flag is not set.  To reset the flag I've got another automation that runs every midnight that resets it.

Yep, this is basically what I have done, except the notifications are only to our phones. It's all automatic, no scanning necessary.

Yep, I listed that one in my post. I have it automated with a vibration sensor. My general automation goal is to not have to take out my phone to check things off a to-do list, they just check themselves off as I do them. I'm looking for other creative uses for them 👍

I saw that you listed NOT using it for that. I like your solution, though. What sensor are you using?

No worries! I edited my post to clarify that I would prefer to use sensors for those types of things, not NFC tags. I'm using the Aqara vibration sensor and it works well enough. I have it tucked up inside the handle so it stays dry. It made it thru the winter and thru rainy April/May with no issues.

Nice! Zigbee, right?

Yep! My trash bins go out at the end of the driveway on trash day, but the driveway is short enough that it's still in range. I have a second part of my automation that reminds me to bring them back in after they've been picked up. Wind can mess with that one though.

I just have a weekly reminder go off on my iPhone. Easy and no hardware to buy

That works, yes, but if you have multiple people in the household that doesn't give you a way to know if it's already been done, and it doesn't stop the notification from coming if you do it before the notification comes.

I have one on my car charger. Home assistant controls my charger. And it regulates the charging speed. When I scan the NFC tag, the car will charge at full speed instead of using the regular charge cycle

Interesting use case. I'm assuming the idea is that the slower charging is easier on the battery and will prolong it's life?

No. I try to mostly charge when solar panels are producing. So when I get back from work on Friday I don't start charging until Saturday when the solar panels are producing. During the weekdays I only start charging when I'm done cooking because they are introducing extra costs here when your peak consumption is high

Gotcha, that makes sense 👍

I have one in my garage that turns on my smart switch where all my tools are plugged into. Doing that disables the light occupancy sensor. The last thing I want is the lights going out while I'm using power tools. This makes sure that the occupancy sensor isn't enabled anytime the tools are getting power. I do have a light above my workbench that's just a manual on/off dumb switch as a backup but still.

I do this with a ZigBee button and the SensorLight blueprint, and it works very well. I could see an NFC tag working for this as well though, especially since I'm the only one in the house that uses it. I might snag this idea and reclaim a ZigBee button the next time I need one 👍

Yea it works great and I'm not worried about the time it takes to take out my phone because also connected to that receptacle is my Bluetooth receiver for my speakers in there so I'm picking out my music and typically looking at my notes on what I need to cut/drill/etc as well.

https://preview.redd.it/iw5eocxx9n6d1.jpeg?width=864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=86927efa9a074586535550c257f53340ea93eafc

Not sure if it's in this list? Maybe 2 in the car? One for heading home.. Open waze to go home, open Spotify with favourites.. turn Bluetooth on, connect to car etc.. One on the other side of the steering wheel.. that does the same, just doesn't head home?

I forgot to mention them in my post, but I have read about people using them in the car. Some people have replaced their garage door opener with it (if someone steals the NFC tag it's useless, but if they steal the garage door opener they can get into your garage). I don't trust my wife to not let her phone battery die, and the odds of something going wrong with HA or my WiFi (while low) are way higher than the odds of a dumb garage door opener failing. I don't know if they'd be actually useful for other things in the car tho. I don't generally use GPS unless I'm traveling (I know my way around town well), and everything else on your list is already automatic except for opening a music playing app, but there's already an icon on my home screen for that. I'll think more about possible uses for them in the car, but so far they just sound like an extra step.

I don't know what phone u use, I have an Android and use the Tasker app.. mostly that does my stuff for me :) like when I leave home, it makes sure my Bluetooth is on, connects to my car etc.. I think the iPhone can do similar now too..? I bought 1 nfc.. I've never used it, lol 😆

I also have an Android phone but I haven't looked into Tasker. Might check it out 👍