10 VERY Practical Home Automation Ideas for 2023!

hey what's up today I want to show you 10 home automation ideas that are all very practical and I've used each one of them every single day since I've set them up and man how did I ever live without these it's a nice mix of automations that were easy to set up and others that were more challenging but it's all worth it because I think these automations are amazing starting off first here in the bathroom I have some ceiling lights that are automated with a motion sensor and that's great for night but during the day I want some more natural light I installed these blinds when we moved in and I've opened them like once or twice in the almost two years since we've lived here now if I wanted to automate these I could replace the entire thing with something like Lutron but I didn't want the hassle and the cost of replacing the entire window cover so I ended up going with a retrofit option now the blinds open in the morning before I wake up and close in the evening and I love the natural light it's so refreshing and energizing I'm using the switchbot blind tilt for this and I like it because it was really easy to install it uses the existing blind wand and it comes with a solar panel even though I'm not really sure if the solar panel is doing much since I'm losing about a percentage of battery every two days now what about when I need a shower because this window is right next to the shower should I just flash everything for my neighbors at all to see and I prefer not to so that's where this next automation comes in once I turn on the ceiling vent above the shower the blinds close and all the ceiling lights turn on and then a Spotify playlist starts up on shuffle because I love listening to music in the shower but it doesn't stop there now I don't know about you but I don't have a clock here in the bathroom and it's just easy to lose track of time now a sane person would probably put up a clock but I have light strips already in here so I don't need no clock I can use the RGB lights on the light strips as a visual timer for my shower the way it works is this after I turn on my shower it takes about a minute for the warm water to reach this side of the house and once that happens the lights turn green so I know it's time to get in the shower without freezing after about four minutes the lights turn orange so let me know to start wrapping things up then a couple of minutes later the lights turn red telling me it's time to get out this has been great because I use less water and I get ready faster once I'm done with the shower I turn off the fan and the blinds automatically open back up and everything goes back to normal I love it okay if your home is anything like ours When someone knocks on the door somehow everything is just pure chaos right then Mom Dad I need help guys someone's at the door uh oh Mom someone made a big mess oh the baby just spit up everywhere basically I need all the help I can get and normally we don't have the lights on here in this front area because no one really goes over here unless there's a visitor at the front door and there's not really a good spot for a motion sensor over here so I'm using the contact sensor on the front door that way when I open the door for a visitor at Night the Lights turn on in the front room so our house doesn't look like a dark dungeon and it gives that illusion that things are not as chaotic as they are as much as I love my automations I know there are times when they should not run so I wanted to make an easy way to skip certain automations right before they run you know if it's like at a bad time that way my smart home and my wife Ali can co-exist in peace and here's how I'm using it in a useful way my home goes into away mode when all the phones have left this isn't ideal if someone is still at the house though because it gets a little crazy the robot vacuum starts the thermostats run less the alarm is set the Echoes start listening for glass breaking the lights change randomly and my Echoes will even start barking like a dog if someone is detected on the front porch uh yeah so it's kind of an unsettling environment if you're still in the house during all of that so instead of my house automatically going into away mode I get a notification with the option to skip it that way if someone is visiting our house I can stop the automation from running but if I don't click on the skip button in one minute then the automation will run like normal so it's kind of like a little warning so I've been wanting music to be playing more in the background and I set up an automation to play Christmas music in the evening and it's been great now that Christmas is over I wanted to play classical music to calm the kids and put them in a more lethargic state so dinner time is not the crazy zoo that it normally is and yeah it's Up For Debate if it's actually working the way it works is if someone is in our family room area in the evening the motion sensor will trigger an automation to turn down the echo volume and start playing music softly in the background now this next automation here in my garage is one of my favorite automations ever because it fixes a major problem I've had for years well it's a little complicated so stay with me I want the LED lights I put on my ceiling to turn on instantly when I enter the garage either by walking or driving in but I need the lights to stay on no matter where I'm at or how long I'm in the garage for and I finally did it here's how it works the lights can turn on by one of six different ways the ring Security contact sensor on the door going to the garage the door going outside either garage door opening or the two motion sensors inside if you're wondering why I don't use just a motion sensor for this well the door contact sensors will turn on the lights way faster this means I'm not walking into a dark garage waiting for the motion sensor to see me but I also want the lights to turn off if I'm not in the garage anymore so that's why I have the lights on automation also start up a timer then that timer gets reset every time one of those doors are open or the motion sensors see someone so as I'm working in the garage that timer will keep getting reset for me moving around then when the timer runs out because no one's in there anymore the lights turn off this automation is amazing and it's very easy to visualize what's going on during setup and testing because you can view the timer changing in real time now you can do a very similar thing using just conditions for the automation to turn off the lights and I'll explain all of that and all of these automations on my second channel for my fellow nerds out there and I'll link that down below alright while we're here in the garage another one of my automations has to do with charging my EV do you know you can connect the Tesla wall charger to your smart home you might be like that seems a bit unnecessary but it actually comes in handy to run automations sometimes I get back from a long drive with the family and I forget to plug it in trying to get all the kids inside so I can have the echo remind me to plug it in when I enter the garage at night don't forget to plug in the Tesla or on my phone as a last resort of reminders I'm trying to give myself less distractions by making my notifications a little more smart so what I used to do is have a reoccurring reminder on my phone to go pick up my daughter from school and this was getting annoying because the reminder would show up every single weekday no matter what even if my wife or I are literally walking out the door to go get her right then now the notification gets announced at the latest possible time to get her time to pick up kid from school only if the garage doors have not opened in the last 10 minutes basically if Ali or I are failing as parents and I'm not left to go get our daughter yet we'll get notified but getting numb to Notifications is a real thing and it happens to me all the time so instead of bombarding my phone with notifications that the garage door is still open I set up an automation that turns on the little light in our kitchen to Red whenever a garage door is open as a bonus this is actually a motion and sensor with an RGB light built in it's pretty sweet and of course the light turns off when all the garage doors are closed I just love this because it's easy to see and it's not annoying now this next automation is kind of annoying but on purpose if I'm getting into bed at night the sensor under my mattress detects me and triggers an automation which checks to see if any exterior doors including the garage doors are still open if so the echo will tell me which doors are currently open the back door right is open this is pretty sweet that it tells me the doors that need to be closed and it feels like my smart home is actually helping me it was a little tricky to figure out but now that I did I can use the same concept for other automation ideas and I'm excited to tell you more details about it again if you want to see how I set that up or any of these automations check out the video on my second Channel read smart home and thanks to everyone who has subscribed to that channel already and for all the nice comment comments you guys are amazing and I appreciate all the support thanks for watching [Music] I [Applause] [Music] that's it read the garage lights will not turn off they keep opening the door to check and they're still on ah my favorite automation is ruined [Music]

Channel: Smart Home Solver

Views: 406,308

Keywords: home automation ideas, smart home ideas, home assistant ideas, smart home solver, smart home, home automation, home automation 2023, practical home automation, Reed’s smart home, Reid’s smart home

Id: gF5646C4IOE

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 31 2022