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  • Showing only topics with the tag "automation". Back to normal view
    1. Want to automate my home with a privacy focus (but I'm a bit slow and need help)

      Hey folks - I've been wanting to go whole hog on automating my home, I read through this smart home automation - tips and tricks thread started by @Merry and had a lot of useful information. Some...

      Hey folks - I've been wanting to go whole hog on automating my home, I read through this smart home automation - tips and tricks thread started by @Merry and had a lot of useful information.

      Some of the things I took away from it:

      • Home assistant is pretty great (if you don't mind tinkering)
      • Getting something that will boot back up after a power failure is great
      • Use smart plugs / switches vs bulbs
      • Maintain it's usefulness if there is an internet outage

      Like I mentioned I'd really like for this to be privacy focused and mostly self contained. Sure I'd love to be able to control stuff from my phone while I'm home and also recognize that I'm home or away.

      I just am a bit smooth brained when it comes to even seeing "would something like this work with the wiring / circuity that I have in my home already?"

      If there are any good guides to follow or really specific advice / steps I could follow to begin this process I'd really appreciate it.

      25 votes
    2. Smart home automation - tip, tricks, advice?

      Next week, I will be closing on my first ever home (hello Michigan tilderinos!). One of the projects I want to tackle and work on after I move in is setting up a smart home ecosystem that is...

      Next week, I will be closing on my first ever home (hello Michigan tilderinos!). One of the projects I want to tackle and work on after I move in is setting up a smart home ecosystem that is sustainable long-term. I saw the open-source Home Assistant but I think I need to do more research on it and find compatible products. For now, my wishlist of projects are:

      • Controllable lighting from my phone or computer
      • Carbon Monoxide/Natural Gas detection
      • Water leak and usage monitoring
      • Thermostat

      Are there any other use cases that you use home automation for? If you use Home Assistant (or used it in the past), what are some things I should consider? Any products that you bought in the past and regret now?

      28 votes
    3. Home weather stations - what's the weather like where you are?

      I've been idly browsing for a home weather station for a while, hoping to contribute to the local sensor network for a region that's got lots of microclimate variation. I saw this one from Seeed...

      I've been idly browsing for a home weather station for a while, hoping to contribute to the local sensor network for a region that's got lots of microclimate variation. I saw this one from Seeed Studio today, and was hoping for some reviews and advice. Seeed Studio devices are known for open source software, and I wouldn't mind playing with writing a tie-in for sprinkler system automation so we're not irrigating when it's about to rain. It wouldn't be situated so far from the house that we'd need to use the LoRaWAN feature, though.

      Concurrently, we just had an inch of rain dropped on our house in the space of 15 minutes, with winds that were taking down tree branches. The weather report says "light rain", weather stations a mile away continue to indicate that everything is bone dry with quiet air. This rainstorm breaks a nearly month-long drought. I'm finding it nerve-wracking that climate change makes it impossible to use past local weather as a predictor of what to expect for gardening, home maintenance, and outdoor activities, and local weather reports are so inaccurate. So that's (hopefully) where the weather station might come into play.

      That being said, any chat about your local conditions and reporting from your station is welcome.

      21 votes
    4. Any Tasker users around?

      I just recently joined Tildes (absolutely loving it so far, by the way) and also recently left Reddit. r/Tasker will probably be the hardest for me to let go of since I'm an avid Tasker fan/user,...

      I just recently joined Tildes (absolutely loving it so far, by the way) and also recently left Reddit.

      r/Tasker will probably be the hardest for me to let go of since I'm an avid Tasker fan/user, so I'm just trying to gauge the audience for that type of discussion and topics here on Tildes.

      I'm not as big of a power user in phone automation as I would like to become but I'm fairly savvy and am learning more all the time.

      15 votes
    5. What's your smart home setup?

      Does anyone else here have a smart home setup? I've been building mine over the 7 or 8 years now in fits and starts. At first, it was smart lights in an apartment and then grew to include smart...

      Does anyone else here have a smart home setup?

      I've been building mine over the 7 or 8 years now in fits and starts. At first, it was smart lights in an apartment and then grew to include smart door locks. I bought a house and it now remotes, motion/door sensors, light switches, and more.

      After trying all of the platforms you can think of (Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Homekit, Homekit + Homebridge, Home Assistant, and more), I settled on Home Assistant earlier this year. As I've bought stuff over the years, I've tried to get things that support more than just one platform to avoid being too locked in to one ecosystem. Apple's Home platform is nice, but I can't use it if I want to switch to an Android phone.

      Like many of us, I've had some free time during the pandemic, so I put some work into getting Home Assistant up and running. It's definitely not for the average consumer. It requires quite a bit of manual editing of code to get it working perfectly but I've spent the past few months learning how to customize it and get things working just how I want them.

      I've also been working toward replacing the few components that rely on cloud services with equivalents that can work locally, so I'm not beholden to a cloud service that could disappear eventually.

      I also started automating more and more things:

      • I added a Zigbee controller and a bunch of motion sensors to automatically turn lights on and off as people enter/leave rooms.
      • Turn on the lights for my dogs if no one is home at dusk.
      • A very nice bedtime routine that turns off all the lights in the house, turns on the bedroom TV, arms the security system and then turns on the bedroom lights and slowly fades them out over the next half hour. That last one has been great for helping me get to sleep.
      • My favorite is an NFC tag hidden under the living room coffee table that I can scan. It turns on the TV and receiver, switches to the correct inputs and turns on the light strips I have around the living room. If my wife isn't home, it also turns off all the other lights in the house.

      I'd love to hear what other people have been doing.

      10 votes
    6. What to do with NFC tags

      I picked up 20 NFC tags (link) and they seem to be alright with iOS after I (re?)format them to NDEF. Anyway, I have a few things setup: tap to play music in the dining room over a Google Home...

      I picked up 20 NFC tags (link) and they seem to be alright with iOS after I (re?)format them to NDEF.

      Anyway, I have a few things setup:

      • tap to play music in the dining room over a Google Home speaker
      • tap to turn off some lights and prep for bed etc
      • tap to change some Hue scenes

      ... and that's about it. I don't have trouble waking up to an alarm, so I don't need to go down that route. Anyone have any fun things you're doing with tags?

      9 votes
    7. Tech people of Tildes, what have you automated in your life?

      Talk about anything you have "automated" in your life. No restrictions on the tools or things to automate. You have a simple "silence your phone at work" thing? Great job! Do you have a complex...

      Talk about anything you have "automated" in your life. No restrictions on the tools or things to automate. You have a simple "silence your phone at work" thing? Great job! Do you have a complex thing with hundreds of lines of custom code? Wonderful! All are welcome!


      I myself have automated a bit of stuff, and am constantly looking for more (that's why this thread exists):

      Home:

      • My room will turn on the lights when it detects the brightness inside is going down, but will slowly do it relative to the current brightness so it doesn't suddenly turn on at once. (Tries to keep a certain brightness at certain times)
      • I can send "loff", "lon" or, "lauto" through XMPP to turn my lights off, on, or toggle the automatic mode mentioned above from anywhere. I am blocking internet connections from my smart light hub so I had to re-implement that manually

      Computer:

      • Copying any YouTube links (or Invidious links, which get translated into YouTube) will automatically prompt me about opening them under MPV

      Phone:

      This is where I do the bulk of my automation, as Tasker is a very convenient way to automate stuff.

      • Toggle full brightness and/or auto rotation on specific apps (Gallery, NewPipe, etc.)
      • A couple of Android "Share" targets for
        • Uploading dumb images to my webserver
        • Adding links to Miniflux (abusing it's bookmarklet functionality)
        • youtube-dl through Termux
      • And some (mostly gimmicky) text-to-speech notifications for calls and XMPP messages

      Planned:

      • Miniflux notifier over XMPP. My last attempt failed because Node-RED apparently doesn't reconnect over to XMPP when its connection drops :(
      26 votes
    8. Phone automation - Share your workflows!

      I recently switched operating systems on my phone and lost some of the automated workflows I had during the transition. While I've rebuilt some of it, but it sometimes feels like I'm missing...

      I recently switched operating systems on my phone and lost some of the automated workflows I had during the transition. While I've rebuilt some of it, but it sometimes feels like I'm missing something or that I could do more, I just don't know what exactly. I'd like to hear from others here and see if they can inspire me to implement what works for them. I'm using an android phone with automate and here's the workflows that I got:

      • When plugging in the phone, set it to do not disturb and enable Bluetooth. This is for when I go to sleep so that I don't get woken up by notifications and I can listen to podcasts on my headband.
      • If at work (Based on cell towers, not GPS) set phone to vibrate, when leaving it set it to ring. I actually lost this one but haven't rebuilt it since I've not been to the office in a while.
      • Learn location. For a set time, grabs the cell towers around and stores them in a JSON file.

      What kind of automation have you implemented on your phone?

      18 votes
    9. What tasks on your computer have you automated?

      After using Shreddit to delete my Reddit history periodically for some time now, I finally decided to make a cron job to automate it on a weekly basis. I use it to delete every post and comment...

      After using Shreddit to delete my Reddit history periodically for some time now, I finally decided to make a cron job to automate it on a weekly basis. I use it to delete every post and comment that isn't whitelisted, which right now is just a tiny subreddit for a musician I like that I solely moderate and a pinned post explaining why I have a bunch of karma but barely any posts.

      After setting this up, it got me curious as to what tasks other people automate in their lives in order to streamline their workflows and eliminate minor (or major) routine tasks.

      So, what do you automate, and how did you go about doing it?

      18 votes
    10. What do you do when asked to automate away other peoples' jobs?

      At work there's a project that was originally pitched as an automated system we would build for a new client, and now the conversation has shifted towards automating away some data entry tasks for...

      At work there's a project that was originally pitched as an automated system we would build for a new client, and now the conversation has shifted towards automating away some data entry tasks for an existing client. If the project is successful I would guess that some or all of the people doing the data entry tasks would be out of a job. And if it's a resounding success I would guess that the powers that be would be eager to apply it in other areas and potentially put more people out of jobs.

      This project is in the very early stages of gathering requirements and whatnot so it's not really clear what exactly we're building or what my role in building it would be. But it involves a technology that's new to us (natural language processing) and often times I end up playing some role in a project that involves learning something new, even if it's just in some small way.

      So yeah, I know automation replacing low-skill work is nothing new and if these jobs can be automated away, they will be sooner or later, but this is the first time I've been confronted with the idea of using my skills to put people I don't know out of a job and it sticks in my craw. Normally I love automation and interacting with new (to me) tech even if it's nothing groundbreaking and I'm just doing the plumbing to connect system A to interface B, but in the past it's always been in the name of freeing up people from tedious tasks so that they can do more interesting and more important work, rather than "freeing" them of their paycheck. So I'm finding myself adding this to the small but compelling pile of frustrations I have with this job and weighing it against the also-small but also-compelling pile of things I love about it.

      Anyway, if you've ever been in a position where you were asked to automate away someone else's job, how did that go? What did you do?

      If you haven't, what do you think you would do?

      16 votes