I think my favorite “automation” is actually one of the most simple. There’s a button next to my garage door I press when leaving the house. It just shuts down all the things I want off. No lights lights left on I know the doors are locked etc

I have A LOT of automations. Some of my favorites are:

• Automatically set “house state” (morning, day, evening, night, not home, etc.") based on alarm state, time of day, last movement, etc - this state controls a lot of other automations
• Push message to my phone if outside camera detect a person when house state is “night” or “not home” (using Frigate for object detection)
• Automatically turn off lights at night or when not home. Automatically set lights to right level when home
• Push message when window has been open for more than 20 minutes.
• Push message if windows or doors are open when leaving the house or at night
• Push message with “morning update” and “evening update”. Including today’s weather, if I should sell some stocks as price has reached threshold, etc.

Basically, I no longer has to remember to turn on of off lights and if I forget something important in the house (such as an open window or turning on the alarm), it reminds me to do so (if it can’t do it itself)

I did a few small automation for my car and the charger.

When I plug in the charger at home, it will check the current electricity prices and if below a certain threshold it will setup a plan to charge in those hours.

I also have a button I can press to make a plan depending on how many kwh I need as well as when I need it.

It will then automatically start and stop the charger based on these plans

My automations include:

• Setting the lighting mode to “night mode” based on a threshold of the outside lux level, which is changed dynamically based on the reported weather condition.

• Setting a master brightness input_number based on a threshold of the outside lux level, which is dynamically changed based on the reported weather condition. Every room then has it’s own input_number which is automatically set every time the master brightness changes, and either has additional brightness added relative to the master, or brightness subtracted.

• At 7:30am some Jinja code starts setting a daylight temperature input_number which starts adjusting the Kelvin temperature of supported lights in the house. I’m aware that there are various integrations to do this, but they all appear to be based on the actual sun, and as a SAD sufferer I don’t understand why people would want that, especially in the winter. My solution guarantees me at least 8 hours of “daylight” regardless of what the time of year is. - The code is ridiculously simple too:

    {% set k_end = 5500 %} {% set k_start = 2000 %} {% set t_start =
    today_at('07:30') %} {% set t_end = today_at('10:30') %} {% set cv =
    ((now()|as_timestamp) - t_start|as_timestamp)|int %} {{ k_start +
    (cv/3.0857)|int }}

Then the reverse happens starting at 6pm:

    {% set k_start = 5500 %} {% set k_end = 2000 %} {% set t_start =
    today_at('18:00') %} {% set t_end = today_at('21:00') %} {% set cv =
    ((now()|as_timestamp) - t_start|as_timestamp)|int %} {{ k_start -
    (cv/3.0857)|int }}

My other favourite automation, is something I call Music Walk, essentially when I play music on a group of speakers, as I move about the house when the occupancy of a room changes (camera through frigate, and Zigbee motion) a script is triggered which increases the volume in that room, and starts a timer for 01:30:00 and then after occupancy has been cleared, the timer is reset to 00:05:00 and when the timer finishes - it will run the script that changed the volume originally and set it to 0.1 So it feels like as I walk into rooms the music follows me there, but really it was already playing there - just quieter.

My sibling jailbroke my old Kindle and is working on combining it with a Raspberry Pi to show a calendar that syncs up with their online calendar. It’s also supposed to show the weather, but that’s a WIP.