Home Automation

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Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.

It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.

Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.

Warning: Working with electricity can result in injury, property damage, or even death if it is not done properly. Please keep this in mind while assisting others. If you are not sure about what you are doing, hire a licensed professional.

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Creative hardware override, ideas? (alien.top)

submitted 2 years ago by neoCanuck@alien.top to c/homeautomation@selfhosted.forum

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Hi, I have an automation to turn off the lights at some areas after a certain preset amout of time if no motion is detected. Sometimes folks are too quiet and the lights turn off when they should. this drives my SO mad, and while I share the way to disable the routine in the phone app, I wonder if there what incospicuous options are out there to trigger conditions in automations. I'm looking for something easy to tell from a distance and easy to manually change (no apps required). I guess it could be a simple as another light swich (but I worry some people will get confused by a switch that doesn't turn anything on or off) or something like a fake book/wooden block which works as a switch depending on its orientation (do such thing exists?), a magnetic peg that closes a circuit when inserted somewhere, something like that, any ideas?

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[–] Silent-Piccolo@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

If the room has a door and that door usually is closed when you don't want the lights turning off, you could create a condition that does not allow the lights to turn off when the door is closed. I did this in our bathroom, and it works flawlessly on the technical side when all of the devices all work correctly together and on the people side when people actually close the door. I am currently looking at other ways to add inputs to this automation, but this might work for you. You could also explore using a pressure sensor under a chair in the room as a condition to not turn the lights off, or you could get a millimeter wave motion sensor. You could also have a button on the wall that turns the lights on. A dummy switch would also be turned on when this button was pressed to turn the lights on. You could add a condition that would not allow the lights to turn off when this dummy switch was on. When the lights did turn off, you could have another automation to turn off the dummy switch. I also have this set up in our bathroom.