For me, my favourites are definetely some light automations, namingly

• motion detectors and window sensors (where there aren’t insect nets) turning on and off the lights
• adaptive lighting automations setting brightness and shade based on the time

more than that

• turning down the (usually somewhat loud) music in the bathroom when I open the window to the street
• running the vaccuum when I’m not at home
• heating automations adapting to the weather report, presence, time and user preset

my future idea is to copy a nuki opener with an esp-32.

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.

Current favorite is an automatic bathroom vent fan for when i’m in the shower.

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

I don’t have many, I find home assistant is a tool in search of a need.

• Run the robot vacuum when I leave the house.
• When I arrive home or open the garage door after sunset, turns on the rear porch lights and then turns it off after 15 minutes. (I have a detached garage.)
• Turn on select outdoor lights at sunset.
• Turns off all outdoor lights at sunrise, so if I forget to turn off the lights around my deck they eventually do get turned off.
• I have a button near where I sit in the living room that controls all four lights in the living room.
• I have a button on my dashboard that just turns off all the lights in my house.
• I have a button near my bar that turns on multiple lights and a neon sign. I was intending to add effects and scenes around the bar too so I could press another button and have a show go off.

Here they are with links to the code

A bunch of little things:

• when I hit the small button on my inovelli bedroom switch, it turns on my bedside tables, turns off all other lights, and closes my blinds
• when it sees my living room and bedroom tv’s on at the same time, it turns off my bedroom. My damn remote triggers both tv’s power when I’m in the living room
• flashing my kitchen lights if my deep freezer door is ajar
• opening my blinds in the morning automatically, and closing them at dusk.
• adaptive lighting with hue bulbs

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’ve got Emby tied into HA and it auto dims the lights on playback/pause if it’s dark with a toggle in HA to override.

A “night mode” button that starts my white noise MPD playlist in the bedroom and sets the speaker zone/volume, turns off all the lights/decorations, turns on one bulb in the living room overhead lights to 1% (just enough to navigate around furniture), and turns the bedroom lamps on to medium brightness with a 10 minute auto-off.

Overhead lights and lamps tied into a common dimmer and can select different modes (lamps only, overhead only, both, etc) and color temps. Overhead lights are set to be proportional to the lamps to keep the light levels even (unless overridden to “Chernobyl mode” which disables the overhead light limiter).

My “TV” is just a PC connected to a large dumb monitor upstairs and a projector downstairs. Wrote a MQTT agent in Python to control turning the screen on/off, volume, and other settings. This is to allow HA to turn the screen/projector on/off .

Have more, but those are the ones I’m using this moment.

In Progress, needs tweaking:
Making sure our AC only turns on when it can efficiently cool the house. Useful when we dip into the 50’s for lows while it’s 70’s+ during the day. Basically switch the thermostat to heat only to avoid the AC coming on.

In the planning stage:
Presence sensing in our bathroom to turn the light on for my dad in the middle of the night. Can’t use PIR motion detection as my dad moves very slow these days and actually defeats the PIR sensor in our hallway night light. I’m thinking mmWave is the way to go. Might try presence sensing when someone is on the toilet, turn the fan on, again, because sometimes he forgets.

Just getting started really with automations right now.