I mean. I tell HA "To play that song I like" and it plays "Lone Digger" by Caravan Palace. Back in the olden days of Google Home I had a routine called "shut up" that would turn off the mic if I told it to (if a show or audio playing mentioned "hey google".
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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A couple of years ago I lived in a house with a few friends that we rented from one of their parents. They had a somewhat extensive homeassistant setup. We set up a couple of fun automations.
-Enter 8675309 on a keypad by the door - Play the song at full volume
-Enter 911 - Play police sirens at gradually increasing volume
-Enter 420 - Play that one sample of Snoop Dogg saying "smoke weed every day."
-Leave the fridge or freezer door open for more than five minutes, start playing Dare to be Stupid by Weird Al at full volume and set all of the lights to red.
When I first setup my Christmas tree lights on a smart switch I created an automation with Google Home where you'd tell Google to turn off the Christmas tree, Google would respond "Ho ho ho... ho"
I set up a smart plug to turn a lamp on when I started a print on my bambu printer and then it turns it off when it finishes. More so testing the automation stuff, but I eventually want to do more things.
turn on fan to exhaust fumes
well maybe not silliest but the funniest automation backfire i have. the silly part is the name.
i had an automation that called "MLG PRO" that would adjust all my living room lighting to green and purple and play a goofy THX-like sound when i woke up the xbox. what i didn't realize is that the xbox updated itself nightly.
i happen to sleep in the living room as well. a couple of nights after i had set up the automation i was woken up by colorful lights and the custom sound at like 2am. i was certain the aliens had finally come to take me away. what a confusing way to wake up...
Dealt with something similar with my rgb bulbs in my bedroom. Flashed ESPHome on the bulbs and since they were on light switches I set them to come on as a shortcut. Need the light on and don't have your phone? Just flip the switch off then back on. Have a power flicker or an outage you get bright lights from 7 rgb bulbs set to full blast. Wake up to burn your retinas bright light at random times of the night.
I use the bulbs as a wakeup sequence that shows weather via color and temperature as well. Then some others light up in order 25% every couple minutes. Then turn off after a certain amount of time. If I sleep through it I'm generally sick or that tired and need the extra rest, I use my phone's alarm function for the have to be up and moving fallback.
I had a Marvin Gaye protocol. All the lights in the house would go out, certain lights would come back on dimly and Sexual Healing would start playing.
My fancy toaster came with dire warnings to not leave it plugged in when it's unsupervised, presumably because the cut-off on the mechanical timer can fail. Instead I plugged it into a smart socket with an automation to kill the power if there's a continuous draw for more than 4 minutes.
Not for fun but probably my most pointless. Other than when I was testing it I don't expect this automation to ever fire.
That did used to be a reasonably common failure scenario for mechanical toasters. I would have hoped it’s not anymore
I built a pressure plate in my bed so when I get in bed after the sun has gone down it puts my adaptive lighting in sleep mode, and turns off all the lights in the house.
I never understood how people can do this unless they live alone.
I specifically have two automations that I run as I'm getting in bed (manually, either through a widget on my phone or via voice command): one for if I'm the last person in bed and one of my wife is still up and hasn't come to bed yet so it doesn't turn out all the lights on her.
Even though I live in a studio apartment, when my doorbell goes off (dumb doorbell with a tiny mic next to it) I have HA set the alarm volume to max on both my phone and tablet and send an alarm trigger. It sounds like a bunch of sirens going off whenever someone rings the doorbell. But it's not entirely pointless, because I wear noise-cancelling headphones all the time whenever I'm home, so there's always a chance I won't hear the doorbell going off.
Nabu announces, "The great fire orb has retreated" every evening at sunset.
This is fucking glorious! Hahaha
It's not pointless, but needlessly silly: as part of the alarm system, in addition to the standard siren, the home audio system turns on and plays Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" at full volume.
At 7pm on school nights, one of a number of versions of "Hushabye Mountain" is played, if music isn't already playing.
I have an NFC take at the bottom of the stairs that I scan before going up for the night. It turns off all the appropriate lights downstairs, bedroom lights on upstairs, sets the air filters, etc. But it also has the voice assistant tell me good night and to sleep well. Because I apparently need that to happen.
None of that is pointless. It sounds useful and reassuring.
I guess he means the NFC could be a simple push button. The rest, I agree. I would need something similar
When my girlfriend is over and the freezer door is open, I play ice ice baby. It never fails to cause some eye rolls
I'm using a few numpads as simple remote controls for HA, and I got a bit carried away and set 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 to set the alarm clock time for the following morning.
Never used it, I always just set the alarm time through the UI
my daughter's heart shaped mirror (DIY pixel strip) rotates a rainbow for her to get out of bed
I have the same thing for my son (well, not a heart but the great A'tuin)
That's definitely a basic necessity and not pointless.
In alarm away mode, if motion sensor in the middle of the house is triggered without having set off the motion sensors elsewhere, disable that sensor until alarm disabled.
Friggin' hyperactive cat, doing leaping zoomies.
Interesting. Our sensors don't see the cats. Unless I place once of the basement ones directly opposite the stairs; it can apparently see them if they're a couple of feet away at sensor eye level.
But the one that sees people in the kitchen doesn't see the cats on the counters when they get up there in the night.
I think if they saw the cats, I'd have to figure something else out, because our's get everywhere.
When I plug my phone in to charge, it says “Oh yeah, stick it in me, baby”.
Yes, I am a fully grown adult.
And I can do what the fuck I want (regardless how much my partner requests I do not do what the fuck I want).
My colleagues iPhone says "I've got the power!" and I'm a little pissed that he still hasn't managed to play the music snippet I provided him.
I did almost exactly the same, except it was "Hit me with your rhythm stick"
I have "yeah, gimme the juice." set for that.
My Chromecast slowly stopped turning on the sound system and TV via CEC so instead of buying a new one, my family knows there's a red button in the theater room. It cuts the power to the Chromecast via a smart switch and then power cycles the TV and sound system. Saved us $100 and the world some e-waste.
Ooooh! Totally not useless, but I have a version of this.
I have a cheap, but powerful, amp for the home audio system, and discovered it burns out if left perpetually on (yeah, I'm on my third). So I got a wall switch that's turned off after 10 minutes of no audio streaming to that snapclient.
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Giant halloween window eyes that randomly wink every few mins.
All year? Please tell me "Halloween eyes" is just "scary eyes" and that you do this all year.
One of the dumb things my girlfriend and I do is call out one another for forgetting about Dre.
I have a Home Assistant automation that simply sends the following message as a notification to her phone:
"Reporters are on the scene in [redacted], where earlier today, blue collar workers encountered a Florida woman who forgot about Dre."
I didn't set any triggers, just manually ran it while she was at home after our air conditioner was serviced.
Our assistant speaker tells us... "Your shit's clean" and "Your shit's dry" a few minutes after the washer/dryer stop (just using power consumption stopping). Useful I guess but generally you can hear them stop. It was more for comedic value than anything else.
I have a couch light turn on when I sit down at a certain spot on the couch after sunset at 30% using an "Everything Presense sensor" totally to play with my wave tech
My laundry automations send phone notifications to my girlfriend.
"Front load washer's got a big, wet load for you."
"Dryer's got a hot load ready for you to take."
We have notifications sent to all our phones when the washer is done, and based on who's home, there's also a tts announcement on certain speakers.
Same. Ours also uses a timer to re-check in 15 minutes if nobody is home. That way one of us gets alerted when we’re actually home and can do something about it.
It also doesn’t alert us between 11pm and 8am so we don’t get woken up if we start a late night load.
Due to two things:
- The fact that our washer and dryer are actually out in our garage.
And,
- We live in a very hot and humid area, which accelerates mold and mildew.
We just don't start loads that will be unattended, even for a few hours. Because laundry left in the washer for even as little as an additional 45 minutes will need, at a minimum, to be rewashed, or possibly even just completely thrown out, as our clothes would have begun to get very mildewed indeed.
Yuck. Makes me glad ours are in our relatively dry basement. But with them down there we used to forget about loads we started until I set up the notifications.
When I turn the coffee maker on (or off), it's light also gets turned on (or off). I couldn't just used the same switched socket for both, but I had one free so here we are.
I'm considering a similar one.
Our kitchen ceiling lights now have a Shelly relay in their circuit. I'm considering a smart bulb in the rangehood - unusually, it fits a full-size A60/B22 bulb, so basically any standard smart lighting is an option - so it can be synced with the rest of the kitchen lights.
Also who wouldn't want to be able to have green light while cooking?
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A device was occasionally failing and I wanted to know about it fairly quickly. I didn't always notice push notifications, so I made my room light cycle through the rainbow. It's hard to miss.
At one of my jobs of scripting, I remember hearing about somebody using "eject" Linux command to make an adjacent computer reboot.
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