Because the identify suggests, House Assistant was designed for good residence automation. It is a highly effective software for automating all of the good gadgets in your house. To my shock, a few of the finest ways in which I exploit House Assistant don’t have anything to do with my good residence in any respect.
Getting my spouse’s consideration
That is probably my favourite House Assistant automation, and it is fully unrelated to controlling my good residence. As an alternative, it solves a real-life downside that bugged me for years till I constructed my very own resolution utilizing House Assistant.
Every time I attempted to get in contact with my spouse for one thing essential, she would at all times miss my calls or messages as a result of her telephone was on silent, and he or she did not really feel it vibrating. The reverse was additionally true; I might recurrently miss essential messages and calls from her.
You should utilize the Emergency Bypass feature on an iPhone to permit particular contacts to override silent mode. Nonetheless, this can be a everlasting override, so each name or message will include audible alerts, which is not what both of us wished.
House Assistant allows you to ship notifications to a telephone as critical alerts. These notifications can override silent mode and Do Not Disturb settings to play a loud notification sound. This turned out to be the right resolution.
I created a shortcut on my telephone that asks for message enter after which sends that message to my spouse as a vital alert through House Assistant. The message arrives on her telephone and performs a loud, prolonged notification sound, even when her telephone is on silent. She has an analogous shortcut on her telephone that sends a vital alert to my gadget.
It really works extremely nicely. We virtually by no means miss essential messages from one another anymore, and what was as soon as a supply of standard irritation is now a factor of the previous.
Treatment reminders
That is one other case the place I could not discover an app or service that did precisely what I wished, however utilizing House Assistant, I used to be in a position to construct the precise options that I wanted. I’ve to take remedy day-after-day for a few well being circumstances, and I attempted utilizing devoted remedy reminder apps in addition to Apple’s personal Medicines app. Even when utilizing them, there can be days after I forgot to take my capsules.
The primary downside was that I take my remedy within the evenings, and after I was out, I might have to show off the notifications from the reminder apps in order that I would not hold disturbing everybody round me each half-hour with a full-volume notification sound. Once I bought residence, I might have fully forgotten about taking them.
I created my very own remedy reminder software utilizing actionable notifications in Home Assistant. Each night, I get a vital alert reminding me to take my capsules. It is an actionable notification, with choices to remind me in an hour, remind me in two hours, remind me silently, or remind me after I get again residence. If I do not choose any of the choices, I mechanically get one other vital alert each half-hour till I faucet “I’ve taken it” within the actionable notification.
Essentially the most helpful half is the choice to remind me after I get residence. It stops reminders whereas I am out, and as quickly as I get again residence, geolocation triggers another critical alert reminding me to take my capsules. Since setting it up, I have not as soon as missed taking my remedy.
Monitoring my children’ chores
Getting my children to assist out with chores round the home had at all times been one thing of a chore itself. I wished to attempt to discover a technique to gamify issues in order that they’d have an incentive to get their chores executed as a substitute of us simply nagging them on a regular basis. Setting up a chore tracker was precisely what I wanted.
There are a number of ready-made chore trackers that different House Assistant customers have created. I used the KidsChores custom integration as a result of it appeared just like the one that might enchantment to my children probably the most.
Now my children have chores to finish every day that may earn them cash. They will commerce cash for sweet on a Friday or save up cash to commerce for a toy or different present from the shop. They will additionally lose cash for actually dangerous conduct.
The chore tracker is an enormous hit. The youngsters love with the ability to mark their very own chores off on the dashboard, and for us, it is easy to approve chores solely as soon as they’re executed correctly. It has been an actual win for each mother and father and youngsters.
Protecting me centered whereas working
That is most likely the best factor that I’ve ever executed by way of improving my productivity. One in every of my greatest issues is that after I’m researching an article, I am going to find yourself happening a rabbit gap about some obscure House Assistant set off or area of interest good residence sensor, and waste a ton of time studying about issues that are not mandatory for my article.
I wished to attempt to discover a technique to snap myself out of those conditions, and House Assistant supplied it. Should you use the House Assistant companion app on macOS, it exposes a sensor called Frontmost App, which tells you the app that’s at present in focus in your laptop.
Utilizing this sensor, I created an automation that generates a snarky comment if I am utilizing something however a really small set of purely work-related apps. If I spend greater than a few minutes in a browser, for instance, it’s going to berate me for losing time and inform me to get again to work.
The macOS app exposes one other sensor referred to as Lively, which seems to be for mouse strikes or keyboard enter to find out whether or not you are utilizing the pc. After a minute of being inactive after I ought to be working, I get an announcement telling me to get off my telephone.
I exploit an mmWave presence sensor to find out if I am in my workplace chair, so the automation would not run if I am not there. I additionally use the presence sensor to inform me to rise up if I have been sitting down for too lengthy.
House Assistant is at the start good residence software program, but it surely’s so versatile that you need to use it for issues past merely turning on lights or smart plugs. Lately, when there’s any form of downside I wish to repair, I am going to take into account whether or not I would be capable to clear up it utilizing House Assistant.
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