@Evan Ackert yes I'm really curious to see how the follow feature works. Seems like there could be a lot of ways it might fail but if it does work well then that could be a big step forward.
@@SmartHomeSolver have you considered using a the echo flex and the motion sensor for it? It might solve your problem with your automation at your computer that you ended up turning off. I literally cant trick that thing into thinking I'm not there no matter how slow or little I move around it
Hey, Reed (@Smart Home Solver). That Automated Doorbell suggestion is fantastic. Managed to set it up so Person Detection on a Wyzecam V3 pointing out my front window will trigger Alexa to show the feed on our living room TV. That was pretty magic using just Alexa (not yet a Home Assistant owner), but what I'm wondering is how do I get the TV to turn itself off after. I tried adding the Wait 30 Seconds and Resume actions on the end of the routine, but it insists on my custom action being the final action, from some reason. Keep up the awesome content. You & Mr Hibbert are my go-to channels
You could use room assistant for your music controls and set up some little bluetooth nodes for each room, this can track individual phones movements between room. I've been using a combination of PIR motion sensors to turn on lights and room assistant to keep them on if someone's present. It all ties into Home Assistant via MQTT.
I'm moving into an apartment soon and these will definitely come in handy! I hope you do some more renter friendly videos in the future so I can get even more ideas! :)
I love the calendar integration. I can't believe I never thought to do that for my wake up automation I highly recommend an automation that sets your phone to DND and turns on your office's do not disturb light when you have something on your schedule that is tagged as "busy". I do this using Google Calendar, Tasker, and SmartThings.
The smart calendar is crazy! Can't believe you got that figured out. Reminds me of that episode of black mirror in which a lil digital slave copy of yourself in entrapped in a computer turning on and managing your house according to your needs... Since it's you doing it for yourself 😅
You should put a vibration sensor under your chair and add it to motion sensor light control automation in your office. The vibration sensor will make sure the light stays on
For those persisting with SmartThings you can use IFTTT and a Google Calendar to trigger your wake up events. I created a new calendar called Home Automation and trigger events using hashtags in the subject line of the event. #wakeup, #timeforschool, #walkthedog, etc. this is for no reason other than bogging down the main calendar. Love your work!!
A small thing that I like a lot: When I open the attic, the light turns on but with a 2 second delay. This makes it feel more natural. But more importantly, this also confirms that the light was actually off while the attic was closed. Otherwise you end up with a light-in-the-fridge situation.
Hi Reed! I may have a solution for you for the motion sensor automation when inside the office. You could install pressure sensor pads under your office chair similar to the ones used for matress, so if the pressure sensor detects that somebody is sitting in the office chair, even if the motion sensor will not detect any motion, the lights won't switch off. And of course, if the lights are on and the pressure and motion sensors are not activated for more than 30mins for example, you can have your lights switched off. Let me know if that works for you :P
You are awesome, I love your videos. In the smartthings app menu > labs you can create virtual switches, this was very handy to create a dishwasher "dirty/clean" routine that will announce in the speakers without any custom code. I can set the virtual switch on and off based on the status of the dishwasher, and create announcements when open and switch on or open and switch off. Very handy.
Thanks for your tip on the light level trigger. I have the same Hue sensor and I was trying to figure out how to turn the lights on when I got to a certain light level. Watched this video and then read your article - it's stupid easy to do once I stopped overthinking it.
Custom actions really deserve their own video. I'm the one that found it for Brian @ AYL and it truly has been a game changer. While ring doorbell presses now have auto display on shows, motion does not. Now with a custom routine motion can be automatically displayed on any show, fire tablet or fire tv. I'm using a contact sensor on my garage door to disable guard. When my bathroom motion sensor senses no motion it now sets a timer for 30 minutes so the bathroom fan switches off. Custom actions have really opened up automation for those of us using alexa only without any other hubs.
I think the good thing about Node-RED is that you can choose devices that have built-in automation but can also be used in Node-RED. My solution to your question is to do both :)
For me, Node red is always the way. Not necessarily because HA automations cannot do something specific, but rather for the visual aspect of it all. That's why I keep struggling with the built in automations.
For you presence detection I would look into room assistant using a couple raspberry pi zeros. It can use LE Bluetooth from your phone got not only detection but proximity. You can mesh multiple together in didn't rooms and it will use distance from sensor to determine room location
Reed, you need some donation links set up bud. You’re one of the few channels that put a lot of work in and you don’t actively run Patreon or some other active donation channel and think that needs to change. Do it bud!
I have been using the Smart Life app to do most of my more complicated automation. You can set up IFTTT type scenarios and use phones and presence sensors.
Thanks for your videos. If you use BLE beacons you can know who is in the room, the beacon can send Room Id to your phone and you can react according to this. Good Luck!
Tip for your thermostat since you're using Home Assistant now. If you replace your thermostat with a cheapo esp8266 based relay, and have a thermometer somewhere in the apartment, you can use Generic Thermostat integration. That's what I did and it works like a charm! No more dumb heating for me.
Hey man! For my office lights, I use a motion override switch combined with a working from home switch, when Work from home goes on, motion overwrite for my office as well, including music in my entire house. The work from home automatically goes on if there’s motion in my office between 08:30 and 09:30. It also switches off automatically when I leave the house or if after 17:00 there hasn’t been any motion in the office for 30 minutes Oh... And since work from home overrides the motion sensor with the override mode, it also turns the lights on in my office, but only if the main lights in my house are on. I have a dashboard for my office, but it’s the most automized room in my house, i never touch a button. Thought it would be good to share, seems like you can use it to get rod of having to press a button on your dashboard to turn on your office lights :)
I would always go with home assistant. I think its the only platform that works well with all the others. FOr example node red has a full addon for home assistant. in which you can use practically everything node red has to offer in to home assistant. Also all samsung devices i have tested can be fully integrated into HA. Also homekit has a full working integration in HA.
For lights turning off with no motion in my home office: I don’t have Samsung at all, I’m WiFi only with Alexa and a Wyze sense kit. I only have the lights turn off with no motion during certain hours, but when I work late I have no issues cause I don’t move enough to trigger the motion sensor. But then I moved the sensor to sit right on my desk in front of my mouse. Now my subtle mouse moves are enough, and it also still catches me whenever I walk into the room which is the only other motion I’m watching for in the office.
You should switch to the red light scheme for getting out of bed at night and trigger it to also play Moving Mountains by Two Steps From Hell. Would make an amazing April Fools Day prank.
3 года назад
Quick tip: I have motion sensor aimed right at my "mouse hand" - this way, my lights dont just go off when I am working on PC :D
That’s a good point. I have a wireless charger that I use on my desk during the day so the NFC tag makes it so I don’t accidentally trigger the automation.
@@SmartHomeSolver You can add multiple conditions such as certain currently connected bluetooth devices or the time period during the day in which you want the automation to execute so as to not execute on the wrong charger. In the end it just depends on person preference of weather you would like to spend the extra time and effort patching hardware with software. Hopefully one day we will have a reliable solution to per room presence detection.
I’d be really interested if you came up with a solution to only running the automation if it’s you in the room. Originally I thought of a camera but maybe you don’t want cameras watching all the time. Another thought would be to use WiFi extenders such as the tp-link ones that can be setup to be almost like a separate network which can then be used as a second presence sensor in home assistant. Both have there pros and cons and I’d be interested I’d there was an easier solution.
nerver used it myself, but I think something like room assistant will do the job. www.room-assistant.io/ you can use esp32 chips that scan the bluetooth connection of your phone. Thay way it knows where in the house you are. I personaly use a guest mode input boolean. This will disable unwanted automations.
iOS and Android both have gps tracking available in the app that logs to a local home assistant server I’m not sure of the accuracy of it, but you can set up zones for home and work that can trigger when leaving home or even arriving at another location. You could write an automation to ping and check your phone’s rough position with 2-3 keyfinders like Tile and Apple airtags ( Airtags are still unreleased but I don’t doubt it’s already wholly integrated into iOS shortcuts , Siri, and HomeKit. There’s be no need to event set up a complicated home auction in the first place )
I tried the Wifi route for iPhone and Android presence detection, it was definitely not reliable. I found that Bluetooth is much better. (Use Bluetooth the detect your device's MAC address within range. No need to actually connect etc...) Nice job with all the use cases! I really enjoyed the video.
For the motion lights to stay on while you are sitting at the pc: use Ping Ane create a sensor for your PC. If motion sensor = clear and PC is online do nothing. If motion sensor = clear and PC is offline - turn off the lights.
I wonder if you could use that thing that mounts over a dimmer switch and physically slides up and down sideways on your thermostat to change the temp, because when I caught a glimpse of your thermostat, it looked like it might be one of those that has the little arm that you slide along the top.
I decided to use Hubitat when I set up my smart home, but due to unreliability have been considering switching to HA. Some automations work very inconsistently which is VERY frustrating to say the least. Great ideas and loved the skit at the end! 😊
Thanks for the video. Informative and entertaining. It was good, in all sincerity, to know that I don’t want to do any of those things except use a sensor for lights in the middle of the night. I’ll just do the rest manually. I’m still watching for other tips and info though so keep them coming!
for the following music automation, you can use room assistant, (need to have RPI in each room you want) and you can follow your device (phone / smart watch) using Bluetooth tracking. (I have few automation that are being triggered by my phone location and it work good)
For the music there is this think called Room Assistant. It uses Bluetooth and the new update uses BLE and works on Apple devices. Not sure how well it works, but you could check it out.
You should definitely try Room Assistant as someone suggested already. You can use several Pi Zero around the house. Since you are wearing a smartwatch you always carry a bluetooth device with you which can picked up by the Pis and pin point your location inside the house.
For TV I'm using YeeMe plugin for KODI. Xiaomi bulbs and celling light with LAN mode turned on. Plugin allows for actions (on/off fade ) triggered by play/stop/pause.
With the study/office light. You can have a condition to detect if computer is on/off by checking the network (HA nmap integration). So if the computer is on, the auto light on/off automations won’t run.
Alexa cannot trigger routines from Philips Hue Motion Sensor, despite it appears as a device. It only works if you remove the Hue sensor from the Hue bridge and then pair it to an Echo device with zigbee hub built in
Regarding the presence detection you might want to use beacons. These are small Bluetooth devices that can be detected by your smartphone where nearby and then trigger automation. The drawbacks: you need to have your smartphone with you.
Just found your channel. A lot of great content. My wife and I just bought a condo and I'm looking forward to throwing some smart home and automation things into it. Subbed and looking forward to more content!
You could use a wemos as Bluetooth sniffer in each room wich read Bluetooth beakons between your mobile phone and the wemos to check if the right person enter the room for the musik to switch
Hey Reed Would it be easier to connect Smartthings to HA using the HA intergration instead of connecting all the devices to HA? I have 84 devices connected to ST, getting HA setup this week then import my devices to HA so hopfully should not have too many issues without making things to complicated Really enjoy your videos, please keep up the good work BIG FAN!!
Thanks Stephen! I think it will depend on what type of device is connected to SmartThings. If it’s Z-Wave and Zigbee devices then yes I’m leaving those connected to SmartThings and using the ST integration with HA. Now something like LIFX lights will be much faster to control connected directly with HA. I’m in that process myself and it’s a mess but I made a custom dashboard on HA and even though I have some duplicates between ST and HA it hasn’t been too bad. There is a little bit more too it as well and I think I’m going to make a video on that process to go into more depth. I appreciate your support!
@@SmartHomeSolver Thanks Reed, really enjoy watching every one of your videos, I would really like to see a HA & Smartthings video from you, I hope your new house is going well, looking forward to more smart home videos Thank you for all your time and effort into the videos, it has really kelped me out
I’m struggling with SmartThings compatible buttons since Samsung decided to dissolve their products. Since you got me started with smart things perhaps a video about smart things compatible items. By the way great job as always
Just another random idea for you: It looks like SmartDry just implemented triggers/routines for their Alexa skill. I've now automated my dryer to turn off using a SwitchBot button pusher to press my "turn off" button on my dryer when my SmartDry sensor senses that my clothes are dry. This saves a little bit of energy which is nice. If anyone wants to implement this, just remember to install their new Alexa skill named "SmartDryDevice".
On the topic of music following you, not maybe as smooth as a motion sensor, but if your smartwatch has an NFC function, you could place a tag at the door/hallway which you could "swipe" by when walking into a room to program the music to follow you into that room. Giving the option not to do it, if someone else is just walking into a room. Maybe a solution :)
for the office lights turning off cause of the motion sensor in the room what if you set it up the same way you have the wireless charger for your phone in the kitchen. that way if your office motion sensor doesnt detect motion but the nfc is near the phone the light will stay on. although im sure there are lots of diffrent solutions just to find the one you like most
One possible way to get the system to recognize you as you enter the room would be if you had a camera that was set up using AI-Tool and deepstack. You would need to train Deepstack using a custom model that would know if it was you vs. another family member, you could also use the same concept so that when your driveway or doorbell camera sees you or you could train it to recognize your car(s) it would set off a coming home routine. You could then tie this into HA or whatever other system you were using.
Definitely going to integrate some of these ideas into my set up! I wonder if it's possible to connect an Apple Calendar to perform similar smart HomeKit functions as you have here...
Hi Reed! Any suggestions on how to automate routines to enable and disable? For example, I have my bathroom lights on a motion sensor with white for day and dim red for night. The problem is that I don’t always go to bed at the same time each night. I have a routine where I tell Alexa it’s bedtime and she turns off all my devices. I would love that routine to be able to disable the white light routine and enable to the red light. Then switch back with my morning routine! Any ideas?
Why not use the buildt in position-tracking in the home assistant app? I have been toying around with settings for tracking home/away with wifi myself, but never got it reliable. The home assistant app takes care of that by actually using your phones position
I use flic button with home assistant to turn on/off light instead of nfc tag. Work relatively we, except recently ha some time freeze and not responding when I click flic
For automation for the office your computer knows if your on it or not so you should be able to feed that data to the system that the computer is in use and not to turn off the light. For example if your lights turn off when the monitor turns off due to you no longer being at the computer.
For presence sensor room by room you can use Bluetooth tracker You place esp32 in each room and the one with the strongest signal means you're in the room I've not tested this, just thought about it, I don't even know if it would be possible
I have the problem with my Samsung 7Series tv that is connected to my SmartThings hub. If it has been off for a while it will be offline on the hub and therefore i cant use my voice to turn it on. Also, i have a strip light connected directly into the TV. Works well so that it turns off all livingroom lights when the tv turns off and visversa when the tv goes on. But if i ask google to turn all lights off i always get the "cannot turn tv strip light off as its offline" :D
Thanks for your useful videos. Just a question, why don't you ping your Samsung smart TV to know if it's on? That's what I'm doing with my LG, using node red it's very easy
Great vid!! Is there anyway to make the sounds repeat over and over like an alarm? I have it working and as long as I keep copy pasting, it will play, but looking for something better? Thanks!
Also if you are on iOS 14.2 or earlier you can disable shortcut app notifications by going into screen time > show all activity > scroll to notifications and click shortcuts and turn it off (if it doesn’t click switch to week or day) and sadly this resets if you restart your phone
An idea to help setup room to room automation. You could use your phone location vs your wifes phone Location to make sure only your home. Then setup everything how you have it already.
RE: the office motion sensor. Have you considered adding a vibration sensor to the bottom of the desk or chair and using that for presence detection in the office?
Hey Reed, this is what I call a nice video. I recently got an Hubitat and will try those automations. Your daughter is so cute, we always enjoy her participation on the videos, she is the cherry of the cake.
