this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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homeassistant

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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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I've been running HA for a while, and it's been working well; I haven't had to change much in a few months. That being said, it's fun to tinker with it, and I'm curious to hear what kind of automations the rest of the community is using. What automations are you most proud of? What are your favorite? What kind of interesting automations have you written?

My personal favorite is an automation that displays the current "apparent" temperature on a Hue bulb. It takes an average of the temperature, humidity, and luminance around my property and uses the average to compute an "apparent" (feels like) temperature. Then it applies a cosine function to the apparent temperature (to approximate how people feel temperature change), uses the resulting value to calculate a level between blue and red in CIELAB (a perceptually uniform color space), converts the results to RGB, and sets the color value of the hue bulb. The result is a bulb that changes color so that the change in color (as perceived by the eye) mirrors how the temperature "feels" outside. Ultimately what that means is that we can look at a small lamp with the hue bulb and say "It feels cold outside; we should put on a coat." It's probably overkill, but it was a fun programming exercise. We've started saying things like "It's really blue today, I don't feel like going out."

I'd really enjoy reading what kind of interesting automations everyone else has written.

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[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

My favorite is a script not a automation exactly. I run it (just before I get up for bed) via dashboard button or voice command and it:

  • shuts off most of the lights and any screens around the house
  • sets the thermostat to bedtime mode
  • waits 5 minutes (time for me to get my stuff and get to bed) then
  • turn off the remaining lights outside my bedroom
  • Calls my autoremote endpoint

Auto remote then triggers a tasker profile that makes my phone

  • turn on DND
  • set media volume for sleep music and alarm volume for morning (just in case either has been change during the day)
  • set a variable that another tasker automation will see the next time I plug in my phone. At which point it will:
    • set my screen brightness below 1%
    • turn on sleep tracking
[–] SteadyGoLucky@sh.itjust.works 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I use the Home Assistant companion app instead of Tasker. It has similar access to automate phone stuff

[–] Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 9 months ago

Nice. I've had this going a lot longer than the companion app has existed