Smart homes are full of potential, and you can get really creative with the automations you run within your home.
Below are what we consider to be the 10 Essential Home Automations. No matter what your smart home should definitely have these automations running, as they help you save time and energy.
What makes an automation essential?
These automations are classed as being essential because of the convenience that they offer you, your family, and your guests. After all, convenience is the main reason for creating a smart home, along with the other benefits of saving yourself time and energy.
These automations are guaranteed to help you during your day-to-day routine, and will automate some of the boring tasks within your home, to help you focus on the important stuff!
1.) Motion Lighting
Obviously we need to start this list off with motion lighting. Smart lighting is the most popular smart home category, and is usually the first thing we discuss with our clients.
When you start creating your own automations, you will probably start by creating a basic motion light automation. This works by placing both a motion sensor in a room with either a smart switch or smart bulb. Your automation would then turn the light on whenever motion is detected in that room, and turn the light off again when motion hasn't been detected for a set period of time. We also like to add a fade to the light going out. That way you can tell when the automation has stopped detecting you, and if you are still in the room you can move around a little to trigger the sensor again, instead of being plunged into darkness.
We can advance this automation even further by introducing lux levels. Most smart motion sensors will have a built-in lux sensor, so you can measure the ambient light level within the room. If not, you can purchase a smart lux sensor separately and place this in the room too. Using this lux level data you can determine how bright it is in the room, and set a condition within your automation to only turn the light on if it is below a certain brightness. This way, if the blinds are open and the sun is beaming into the room, the light will not turn on. This simple condition prevents you from wasting energy, and makes your automation that little bit smarter.
2.) Adaptive Heating Schedule
Being able to schedule your heating is a basic feature that both smart and traditional heating systems have. However, creating an adaptive schedule that only heats your home under very particular conditions to suit your daily activities and lifestyle is entirely unique to a smart home.
You may have your heating set to come on at a particular time in the morning for when you get up, but realistically you are not getting up at that exact same time every day. Using a smart home you can create an automation that turns the heating on 30 minutes before your alarm goes off on your phone. You can then implement some conditions into the automation to check that you are home, and that the temperature is below a certain level before actually turning the heating on, as to not waste energy by unnecessarily heating the home.
Throughout the day the heating will take care of itself by constantly checking the temperature and turning the heating on when it falls below a set value. Using conditions you can make this more advanced, as you can check to see if the house is occupied before turning the heating on. If a window or door is left open for a prolonged period whilst the heating is on, it can automatically turn itself off as to not waste heat. When the window or door is closed again the heating will then automatically turn back on to continue heating the home.
What makes this heating schedule so clever is the use of conditions, and the systems ability to interact with other factors in your home, such as your phones alarm, to dynamically turn the heating on and off based on your activity. All of this prevents you from wasting energy by unnecessarily heating your home, and could ultimately save you some money on your energy bill.
3.) Reminders & Notifications
Create smart reminders for yourself and your family by building your smart devices into simple automations.
A great example of this is setting up your washing machine to be compatible with you smart home so you can be notified when it has finished its cycle. You can easily accomplish this if your washing machine has smart functionality built-in, as most manufacturers will allow you to integrate them with home automation systems such as Home Assistant. If you don't have a smart washing machine, then you can use an energy monitoring smart plug to determine when the washer is in use by measuring the wattage.
Once you have your washing machine connected to your smart home, you can build an automation that will alert you once the washing machine has finished its cycle. This works by detecting a change in the washing machines wattage. As washing machines use a lot of energy, we know when the consumption goes above 10 watts that the washing machine has started a cycle, so when it eventually drops back down below 10 watts we can send a notification to alert us that the cycle has finished. This is a very simple automation, but helps forgetful people like myself, and stops you from leaving your wet clothes in the washing machine for too long!
This automation can be used for other appliances around the home too, such as tumble dryers and dishwashers. A great way for your smart home to assist you with the boring tasks around the home.
4.) Welcome Home
Who doesn't want to be greeted by their voice assistant upon arriving home, pretending as if you are Tony Stark?! Alright, maybe that feature is more of a novelty than actually being essential. But there are plenty of other actions you can run upon arriving home!
Linking back to our adaptive heating schedule. Your smart home could check the current temperature in the home as you are travelling back and turn the heating on for you if it is a bit chilly. Using conditions we could check to see if the house is occupied, or if the heating is already active, and then make a decision based on these factors.
If you have driveway gates, or store your car in a garage, the gates and/or garage door could automatically open for you moments before you arrive home, allowing you to easily drive into your garage without needing to interact with a clicker and wait for it to open. This can be achieved by monitoring the location of your vehicle, which can easily be integrated into your smart home if your car comes with an app. If your car does not have an app, then you can purchase a smart tracking device for your vehicle and use this instead.
After parking up in your garage the ambient lighting in your home could turn on for you, and your voice assistant could alert you to any important events you may have missed during the day, such as missed deliveries.
This particular automation really demonstrates the level of convenience and luxury that a smart home can offer you. Although saving time, energy, and money are benefits of owning a smart home, the benefit of convenience is what really makes smart homes so desirable.
5.) Responsive Leak Detection
Leak detectors are a brilliant addition to any smart home, and when set-up correctly, could potentially save you thousands in repair costs.
The first step is to configure the leak detector to send you a mobile notification whenever it detects a leak. This notification alone could be enough to save you from having to break the bank in order to repair the damage caused by an undetected leak. No matter if you are home or away, you will know that your home is at risk of water damage, and you can jump into action by isolating the water supply, or alerting a neighbour if you are away.
The notification is a good start, but you know we can do better than that...
Lets integrate another smart device into the automation by adding a smart water valve. Now your smart home will alert you to the leak, whilst simultaneously isolating the water supply for you. This minor addition has created an automation that is advanced enough to identify and temporarily resolve the issue without any interaction from yourself. This is what a true automation looks like!
There are a variety of smart water valves available, so make sure you purchase the correct one for your existing valve.
6.) Advanced Doorbell Alerts
Most video doorbells will send you a real-time notification to your mobile alerting you of a visitor. From here you can even interact with the person at your door by talking to them through the mobile app.
This is great if you have your mobile on you, but if you're anything like me you probably leave it lying around the house most of the time, and miss these notifications. Even with a chime fitted, you can still miss this if you are in another room, or if you are playing music throughout the home.
To create a truly unmissable doorbell alert, you can integrate your smart lighting into an automation with your doorbell. So when your doorbell is pressed, the lights in your home will briefly flash to alert you that someone is at the front door. This is extremely useful for those moments where you might be cleaning and listening to music, as not only will you miss the notification on your phone, but if you are playing loud music you will also miss the doorbell chime go off.
Having an obvious visual alert like this may seem like a gimmick to some people, but it can be extremely beneficial to people who are hearing impaired, as even when it is quiet in the home, they may still miss the chime going off.
7.) Empty Home
How many times have you left the house and wondered if you locked the door? Did you leave the TV on? How many lights did you forget to turn off? Is the bathroom window still open? Did you arm the alarm? These are the kind of questions that have you turning back around halfway to work, only to realise you did do all of those things, and now you are late for work!
Your smart home can detect when the house is empty and carry out all of these tasks for you, so you never have to worry about leaving appliances on, or making sure every single light in the house is off before you leave. You can do this by connecting mobile devices to your smart home so it knows when you are at home. As soon as you leave the house it will check to see if anyone else is still at home, if there is no-one else in the house it will proceed to shut everything down, lock the doors, and arm the alarm.
If you are worried about your smart home tracking your location, you can utilise other methods to determine whether you or at home. Another popular trigger for this automation is checking if your mobile is connected to your home network. When your mobile then disconnects from your home network it is likely you have left the house, and this automation can run. The downside to this method is the increased chance of false triggers, as your phone may disconnect from your home network even when you are in the house. For example if your phone dies, if you switch over to 4G, or if you put your phone in airplane mode.
8.) Holiday Mode
This is a great automation to give yourself peace of mind when you are away from home for extended periods.
This automation would be enabled using a toggle switch in your smart home app, and when active it would keep your home protected whilst you are on holiday. To start with your smart home would perform all of the tasks it carries out during the Empty House automation. It would ensure all of your external doors are locked, arm your alarm system, turn off any appliances you may have left on, and switch off all of your lights.
Whilst you are away your smart home would simulate your daily activity. It can do this using the logged data from all of your devices. Each device has a log that shows exactly what it was doing for the past 7 days. Using this information the smart home can accurately perform your daily tasks to make it appear as if the house is occupied. This means lights would turn on and off and blinds would open and close throughout the day, so if any potential burglars were watching your home, they would not suspect it as being empty.
Your smart home would also monitor your heating, making sure the temperature doesn't drop too low and that the overall humidity of your home is still within the average room humidity. It would then turn the heating on to avoid mould and damp conditions from forming, and to stop your pipes from freezing if you are away for a prolonged period.
Combine this with the other automations in this list like the Responsive Leak Detection, and you can enjoy your holiday without the need to worry about your home.
9.) Motion Activated Music
One of the greatest and most seamless automations on this list. The ability to have your music follow you around the home without needing to manually swap sources, or interact with any of your devices.
This automation uses motion sensors to track your movement around the home and automatically play your music in the room you are currently in.
When you walk into a room the motion sensor will detect you and switch the source of your music to the speaker that is in the same room. There are a couple of conditions within this automation to ensure it runs smoothly.
Firstly, you will need to check that your music is actually playing, as we don't want your music to play whenever we enter a room. Another condition will then check to see that you are actually in the house. If your music is playing, but you are not in the house, we don't want the source to switch to a speaker in your home if somebody else is walking around the house while you are away. Finally, you must be the only person in the house for this automation to work. So you use a condition to check if anyone else is in the house before switching the source. If your music is not playing, you are not in the house, or you are not home alone, then the automation will not run.
Now you are free to play your music and walk around the house without needing to worry about switching sources. Wherever you go, your music will simply follow you.
This automation is yet again showcasing the insane level of convenience you get when living in a smart home.
10.) Intelligent Sprinkler System
Watering your garden can be a big task, especially if you have tons of plants, or a large property. Making sure your garden gets watered correctly is important, and can be very time consuming.
Using some clever automation with your smart home can help you forget about this task, knowing that everything is being taken care of for you, even when you are away on holiday.
This automation is similar to the Adaptive Heating Schedule we discussed earlier, as it will water your garden depending on the environmental conditions, but it is way more advanced. To create this automation you need to integrate the weather into your smart home, so you can determine what the moisture level of outside is. You would then calculate the evapotranspiration of moisture and compare it with any rain and snowfall. Then, if the moisture evaporated is higher than the precipitation you would calculate the number of seconds the irrigation needs to run to ensure no moisture is lost. If more moisture was added through precipitation than has evaporated the irrigation is not required and the net value is carried over to the next day.
If that all sounds too complicated, and you are a Home Assistant user, then I suggest you just use the Smart Irrigation integration from HACS. As this integration does exactly what is described above, and is truly amazing.
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