Awesome Tips 20 Creative Home Automation Ideas for 2025!
These home automation ideas are useful AND fun!
These home automation ideas are useful AND fun!
*Links in chronological order*
TrampleTek Blue:
3D Printed cube info:
Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition:
Desk tablet:
Desk tablet mount:
Ring MQTT integration info:
Kitchen dashboard:
Kid’s smart buttons:
Aqara FP1E Zigbee mmWave:
Aqara T1 light strips:
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How I set up these automations:
My smart home favorites:
My smart home shirts!
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0:00 Intro
0:10 Laundry pressure sensor
0:55 Phone charging light
1:40 Comment your ideas!
2:06 Night cool down
2:58 Forced chores
3:58 Find Aly’s phone
4:59 Skip automations
5:45 Dashboard calendar
6:19 Xbox auto reply
7:09 Bluetooth going home
7:50 Backyard lights
8:17 Air running alert
8:50 Vitamin reminder
9:45 Automatic alarm
10:38 Auto camera alerts
11:18 No doom scrolling
11:58 Spouse reinforcements
12:35 Snapshot scene
13:21 Kid bedtime lights
14:11 Server rack mmWave
14:52 Internet down alert
15:25 Automation misuse
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MUSIC
Digifunk by DivKid
All of the music throughout is by Nihilore.
Spotify playlist:
Ending song is The End by EVA.
Deals for Days. Big home savings are happening now.
šĀ Comment your home automation idea and I might show it in a future video!
How I set up these automations: https://smarthomesolver.com/reviews/20-creative-home-automation-ideas-for-2025/
Can you share the link on where to buy the speakers stand on your work desk? I like it that it's secured at the corners. Many thanks
You know what will be a nice video? How, we Smart Home enthusiasts, will left a home that can be used and maintain by our love ones in case we are no longer around to keep it running? Specially when our love ones are not interested that much in the technology behind the sweet automations they all enjoy.
$100 mat to know you should do laundry? Woof
Great stuff. Please keep doing more automation compilations like this.
I love ya man, but you know damn well when it's time to do laundry just by looking at it.
Tim Appleš ššš
You should see if it's possible to have a Bluetooth proxy or something similar in your car that can detect if Ally is in there with you and then auto select which thing to do for the automation.
My three best automatons.
PROBLEM 1:
Power outages cause Microwave clock to be wrong.
SOLUTION:
At 12:00pm every day, if my Microwave is not being used, I turn it off for five seconds. The Microwave clock defaults to 12:00pm.
PROBLEM 2:
Can't tell the time when I wake up in the middle of the night, as I'm not wearing glasses.
SOLUTION:
When I put my phone on the bed charger it always starts home assistant. Home assistant knows the phone is being charged and changes dashboard on my phone to show a very large digital clock.
PROBLEM 3:
I fall asleep with the light on, when I read at night. I wake up an hour later because the lights are still on.
SOLUTION:
When I say "Read" to a smart speaker, it turns on my bedside lamps so I can read in bed. It sets a timer for 20 minutes.
When the timer ends, it dims the lights to off. If I want to continue reading, I say "Read" to my smart speakers.
I love the find phone and snapshot scene automations. One automation I have restores the volume level of the soundbar whenever the TV switches inputs. For example, if I switch from the Apple TV to the Xbox, the current volume level will be stored in the Apple TV volume input number, and the soundbar will be set to the volume stored in the Xbox input number. When I switch back to the Apple TV, the Xbox input number will update, and the soundbar will be restored to the volume in the Apple TV input number. This is great because a lot of Xbox games are really loud compared to movies and shows on the Apple TV. I also needed to use an input boolean to store the TV's input. This is needed as a condition so the automation doesn't trigger when the TV is turned on to the same input it was set to before.
Put nfc tags on the caps of your pill bottles and tap them with your phone whenever you take your meds so you can log it easily for reminder notifications.
Does the find Aly's phone work with Android phones?
Ideas for great automations? Yeah, I've got a few! Would love to collab up…
I think I've long passed the 100 automations marker in my Home Assistant setup, so I won't bore you with all of them. But one of our most useful ones is a "digital turnstile" kind of automation that tracks how many time our pets go into the litter box room, and if it's too many within a single day – we get an alert, it means one of the kitties might not be feeling so well. Spousal Approval Factor is through the roof on that one!
Another one – and this one is really fancy, and I plan to do a YouTube video on it on my channel soon – is that I have a Home Assistant node over at my elderly mother's home. Whenever she turns on the light on her nightstand, a plug sensor picks up the increase in amps and then her HA fires a Webhook request over at my system, and then my system turns on a little lava lamp on my nightstand! It's a nice "human touch" and lets me know she's doing ok and going about her business. It's a sort of "digital twin" set of lamps, one in her house and one in mine. In fact, I created an entire video – one of my favorites to date – on using Home Assistant to help monitor the well-being of loved ones, mostly through multiple countdown timers that keep getting reset through normal activity.
Thanks for the video, I've already gotten some great ideas out of this! Thanks for doing such great work over so many years! You and Paul H inspired me to start up my own channel!
15:21 you should definitely make a intruder alert automation if you haven't already! If you are feeling brave while someone breaks into your home turn off all of your lights but make all of your ambient lights turn red this will scare the intruder! While this is happening the house automatically calls 911 or alerts you. Additionally you could add some music in the background and the cleaning robot to hunt them down.
I do not approve your use of ring products
about she forgetting her phone: take a picture of her phone while on the kitchen bench or table, and send the photo to her on her phone once she goes out WITH her phone…
thanks me later š
Since I am old and live alone, I would like to send out a notification like: "Dave has reached room temperature, send the wagon." to the neighbors..
0:06 Starting off hot (literally)
I think I want to build on your internet alert automation. Iām currently at war with my ISP. They are āimprovingā our network coverage.Translation: what used to be ok service now blows harder than a hurricane. I want to use your idea with a counter and timer to track the outages.
Reed, Really enjoy your automation videos. Sometimes it takes someone talking about a solution for one thing to generate a spark of how it can be adjusted to suit another. Iāve also used suggestions from other content creators to do things I didnāt even know I needed until Iād thought about them.
Nevermind babysitter mode and relying on a calendar. Just disable the automations if someone is connected to your guest ssid. Easy to do this with the unifi integration. I made a video about it a couple years ago.
With regards to your kitchen dash boardā¦.what hardware do you use and have you done a video showing how?
I have a similar "internet down" routine, but it includes power cycling my modem, which might resolve the issue š
Reed, I use ESPressence with our iPhones. On one device it is working reliable but on the other realy bad and making my automations run crazy. I think you haw also iPhone. How do you manage the bluetooth presence detection?
I have a standing desk with UPSY Desky to control it. Then if the desk is above a certain height a linear actuator pushes a treadmill out. And then folds the treadmill up when the desk is lowered.
I do the reverse of your A/C automation. When the window with the sensor is opened, the HVAC is turned off, and when itās closed the HVAC returns to its previous state.
Can someone automate how to know if a smart door (tapo dl110) is closed from the outside without grabbing your phone. My mom gets confused. Thanks
Bed pressure sensor is cool. But what happens if you need to use the bathroom during the night? Will it still disarm the Ring Alarm?
The point of automation is to make life easier and or faster. But the example of hamper is not that. Spend money on a scale and write an automation to tell you when the hamper has X amount of weight in it or I don't know, see that it's full when you add clothes to it? How is this simpler?
The Orb add-on for home assistant is great for checking internet connectivity. It looks at more than just ping, so picks up more subtle degredations.
The add-on publishes MQTT, so I have an automation to power cycle my router if the "orb score" drops too low for a couple of minutes, which tends to fix things. It needs a timeout though to prevent a loop, and make sure not to use a WiFi outlet to reset the router!
Reed, this is a phenomenal video with great takeaways. I'm going to get busy implementing a few of these right away. Side note: I also use the Ring Security although not cameras because I have a Home Assistant/ Homekit/ Homey combination in both of our homes (MA & FL). I'd love it if you could expand on the integration/ method you use to tie it all in.
i dont have a problem with doing the laundry, but taking it out after it's done is. i've been thinking about using a smart plug to measure the power consumption. what's your idea?
3d printer is finished automation: Added a door window/sensor to the door of the 3d printer. Made a template sensor: printer = finished & door = closed and before printer finished state then the sensor is "Unemptied". Unemptied trigger creates a scene for the current state of the hallway light then it changes to a color. Plus, notification to phone. When door is opened, scene is activated to put the light back the way it was and deletes the scene. Template sensor goes to "Idle". (Next, it will handle printer errors and pauses.)
Had to integrate it into my arriving home light automation to ensure the hallway light is set to the color if the light was turned off while I was away (via an automation.)