exist Smart Home Smart Home EP 1 There are three major milestones in smart homes mentioned, the last of which is "Automation". So what is the difference between "automation" and "situational" control? Why is "automation" the ultimate goal of smart homes?
Table of contents
Let’s first understand what “situation control (Scene)” is
Scene control (Scene) is a method of linking multiple devices, which is called "scene" in some places.
Different situations can be set according to different family needs. You can imagine it as a "continuous skill" (just like playing a fast tornado 😂). Pressing a button can complete all the operations you want to complete in this situation. Here are a few common context setting examples:
- Sleeping Situation: Turn off all lights and appliances, and set the air conditioner, dehumidifier or humidifier (some people may also want to turn on white noise).
- Movie situation: adjust the light brightness, sound volume, and turn on the TV overflow light bar.
- Situation away from home: Turn off all electrical appliances and lights, turn off the air conditioner, and turn on the monitor.
Sounds great already, right? Then let’s take a look at how “Automation” becomes more and more lazy!
"Automation" for smart homes
"Automation" is like an evolved version of situational control and is the ultimate form of smart home.
"Situation control" still needs to rely on "human" judgment. For example, when leaving home, you need to manually activate the "leaving home situation", usually through a smart home APP (Homekit, Home Assistant...) or voice control on your mobile phone. (Google assistant, Siri...), but this is still too much trouble, right? Is it possible to truly free your hands? Able to do everything completely hands-free? no problem! At this time, "automation control (Automation)" is needed!
How to set up "Automation"?
The most important role in achieving automated control is the "sensor". We will need to monitor or listen through the sensor (this does not refer to the real monitoring and monitoring like a private detective, but For example, you can see the indoor temperature on the air conditioner remote control🤣) various events that occur in family life.
Whether you use Home Assistant or Homekit like me, you can use similar settings to achieve automated control, but unfortunately, Google Home does not currently support sensor automation settings.
Next, let’s take a look at the automated controls currently in use in the two Eggshell Houses!
Taking "leaving home automation" as an example, what should be used to let the smart home system know that a member of the family has left home? Our home uses the Home Assistant APP's GPS to determine that when there are no family members within a 500-meter radius of the home, home automation will be activated. At this time, all lights, air conditioners, and other unnecessary appliances will be turned off.
Taking "turn on the lights to welcome you home" as an example, I used a "door and window sensor" installed on the door, and a "human body sensor" installed in the living room facing the balcony to monitor the intensity of outdoor light. The setting of the automatic control is: when the "door and window sensor" senses that the door is open, check the "human body sensor" in the living room to monitor whether the outdoor light is too dark. If it is too dark, turn on the entrance light. In this way, when you return home at night When you get home, you will feel like someone has turned on the light to greet you, and you no longer have to turn on the light in the dark!
The above briefly introduces two automation control (Automation) setting cases actually used in Danke House. I hope it will be helpful to you in building a smart home!
Take away
Automation is the use of various sensors to replace human judgment and operation, and make different matching applications in response to different environments. The difference between automation control (Automation) and situation control (Scene) is that it is no longer necessary to manually trigger various situation modes. Instead, various sensors are used to monitor environmental changes for automatic triggering.
If you are also building or preparing to build a smart home system, you need to start observing the living habits of your family members to think about how to design your own automated control, replacing the normal steps of human judgment and operation by family members with appropriate ones. The sensor finally achieves the goal of "Set it, and forgot it!"! 😎
Hi Neil,
I would like to ask about the GPS judgment when leaving home. Is your measurement stable now? And how do you check that the lights and air conditioners are turned off after leaving home? (Do you need to apply for a fixed IP to expose the HA to the Internet?)
I'm thinking about getting a wireless switch, pressing One Touch before going out, and turning off those smart devices (air conditioner + light bulb + lights). GPS automation still makes me worry about whether Automation will be successful XD
Thank you for your continued sharing^_^
Hi Aaron,
It's quite stable. In the previous version of Android, positioning drift would occasionally occur, causing people to turn off the lights at home. However, after a certain version was updated, it has been performing perfectly for nearly half a year. I have subscribed to the HA Cloud service, and people can still see it outside. It operates through the HA APP, so you can also see the status of each device in your home. Some people don’t want to spend money on subscriptions and will get their own DNS and SSL, so they can check the status of their home devices from outside.
If you don't want to do either HA Cloud or DNS yourself, you can also look at the device's history and compare the time you left and returned home to see if the automation is controlling the device correctly.
Hello neil, I would like to ask you how to avoid pets accidentally triggering automation?
For example, I want to automate lighting fixtures in the living room and turn on the lights when people are present and the outdoor brightness is lower than the set value. However, the human presence sensor seems to detect pets.
thank you
Hi Paul, it is currently impossible to exclude pets simply by relying on human body sensors or human presence sensors. It may be possible to use a monitor to make visual judgments, but the cost is too high and I have not tried it myself.
However, you can try adjusting the angle of the sensor a little higher so that the sensor cannot see the lower areas, which may improve things a bit.
hello neil, I would like to ask you how to set up scenes? It’s a bit laggy at the moment.
Hi Erik, what is the problem you are facing? It might be quicker to discuss your situation directly.
hello Neil, can you share your Scenes settings? My own settings are a bit weird.
https://neiltw.com/home-assistant-installation-and-onboarding-guide/
Home Assistant installation tutorial is here!
I quickly read it. It was written so clearly. Thank you.
Thanks for sharing~ The implementation part of Knocking Bowl HA~~ At present, the new home has finally entered the decoration stage, and it is also planned to set up HA. I look forward to seeing more teaching articles~~
Thanks for the support! I work hard
Really practical automated control. Can you share how you structured your HA step by step in the future? Thank you.
Okay, let me think about how to present it