Thought of another one…
I bought some TP-Link wifi bulbs that were flaky from the start. After some investigation I discovered that these particular bulbs felt it important to phone home to China every few seconds and became very, very unhappy if the lines were down. After a short tantrum they would reset their wifi connection before regaining consciousness. What that meant in my 3 bulb fixture was that when my “lights off” scene was triggered and my firewall was blocking their corporate masters, one or more of the bulbs was often in a stupor and would remain on indefinitely.
Did I just go spend $25 on some new, decent bulbs that actually worked? Nope - no way some stinking TP-Link bulbs were going to win! Instead I spent hours creating multiple redundant automations that checked for each possible failure state, kept polling the bulbs until their tantrum ended and they regained consciousness, and then turned off whatever bulbs were left on.
Every time I turned off the lights I was able to declare victory. After I felt they had learned their lesson I bought some Zigbee bulbs that actually work.
This is some shit I would do. Fuck you and your not working, I’ll show you who’s boss!
You’re my spirit animal.
I click a button when taking my pill so I don’t take it twice by mistake, it also alerts me if I’ve forgotten my dose. Not really ridiculous, but I wanted to feel included lol
I have had complex med schedules for an epileptic cat monitored by HA
frog I can’t even remember to get my meds renewed let alone take them half the time. 30 days of pills last me upwards of 3 months before I get a new bottle. no wonder I’m so messed up
MedTimer (FOSS) and a 7-day pill organizer changed my life.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to upgrade to one with AM/PM distinctions to balance the uppers and downers.
Also, you have ADHD. Talk to somebody about it.
Do you have it set to tell you after x amount of pills to pickup new ones and/or see your doc for refills?
Laziest eh? Probably the one that deletes completed items from my shopping list when I leave the supermarket, because I got sick of doing it manually.
Most ridiculous would be the NFC tag I have on the lid of my cold brew coffee jug. I make a batch so rarely that I can never remember how much coffee to add, so scanning the tag makes my Google Home say; “You want 80g of coffee per litre, or 6 scoops.”
That’s a good idea I’m gonna steal it. You should make a blueprint.
Not sure this belongs, but my most proud automation is an automatic water bowl for my dogs. It automatically drains, rinses, and fills 16 times per day so they always have fresh water. They deserve a better life than my lazy ass can give them.
:O it’s hooked to the tap and a drain I assume? How big is that?
Correct! It connects to a sink drain the same way a dishwasher does. It is actually a bathroom sink, the kind that sits on top of the counter. We have had three Great Danes at one time so trying to keep up with a clean water dish was really impossible. We no longer have large dogs but the desire to keep them in clean water persists.
What a clever idea! Is the dirty water drained from the bottom of the bowl or is it pumped out?
Pumped from the bottom. The basin sits on a raised box that holds the internals, including a pump for draining and a water valve for filling. Basically it uses a timer that commands the pump and a sump circuit for the fill valve detecting high, low, and overflow conditions.
The pump runs for three minutes every hour for sixteen hours between 0600 and 2200. The three minutes is enough to drain the entire thing with enough time for the clean fill water to rinse the basin and be drained away before stopping the pump and letting the fill top it off with clean water.
Not too crazy but I have automations based on whether external doors are open: if it’s hot and it’s cooler outside and someone opens the door then the fan near it gets turned out. Similarly if the heater is on but someone leaves a door open longer than one minute (conservative) the heaters will shut off. And all the air fresheners shut off if the doors are ever open.
What a wonderfully ridiculous waste of time and effort. I hope your daughter realizes how lucky she is.
I replaced my fridge light with an RGB zwave light and door sensor. This concept has been solved for decades and my solution is worse. But it also turns green…
Salesman at the door button and routine exported to HomeKit. My doorbell camera shows a PiP of a person detection on my AppleTV. If I say “Siri salesman at the door” then HA will briefly turn on the flowerbed sprinkler zone to chase it away. Never gets old.
I made an automated sandwich maker. The automation turns it on, sets a timer, shows the timer on tv, turns it off when the timer goes off, pauses the tv and turns lights in kitchen on, if after sunset. Ridiculous? Jup. But also super cool.
My dishwasher automatically selects it’s Eco program when powered on. The Eco program uses more water and more energy than the Auto program while also taking almost twice as long. So I have an automation that triggers when my dishwasher is powered on and then selects the Auto program for me - because pressing a button to change the program after loading the dishwasher would be too much to ask.
If it uses more water and more energy, what exactly is “eco” about it?
@pfr @homeassistant just remember that this machine needs to clean it’s pipes too, just using chemicals for that won’t do very well i guess. I’m not saying that this is logical (making this eco mode) but using more electricity for hot water and using more water (for not reusing too much water all over again) is probably the sweet spot for lasting much longer. Which in turn is not in the interest of the company selling these machines. I guess.
We have a ZzZ script which slowly turns off the TV and lights.
It works from one end of the house through the kitchen, then lounge, then up the stairs, the idea is it follows me to bed turning off things as I’m walking…
A separate script tells me that it’s time for bed (as I find finishing the day difficult).
Not as fancy but an hour before my bed time my small stained glass lamp turns on as a reminder I have an hour left. 5 minutes before bed my phone goes into night mode. At bed time all the lights in my room shut off. It’s been way more effective than my ADHD ass having no idea what time it is and staying up super late.
My house’s fridge has a horribly designed freezer that is just a huge drawer with a smaller drawer inside. It wastes a huge amount of freezer space.
It also doesn’t close all the way periodically. If you’re not paying attention, it freezes up the coil, and melts all your freezer food.
I mounted a door sensor switch to the side and it sends my phone an email if the door been open for more than five minutes.
What brand?
Would the phrase “Never by a household appliance made by a cell phone company” apply in this case?
Whirlpool it’s about 15 years old now.
Modern fridges just…do that.
My fridge sends a push notification if the door is opened too long.
Mine does that too, but LG’s app required fine location permissions to be always on. No way in hell I’m going to let LG track my every move so I can be alerted when the fridge door is open or the washer’s done. They’d have to buy me dinner first.
So instead of adding a door sensor I should have bought a new fridge?
I don’t understand your point …
The issue with that is that all of them require internet access for that, and there’s no way I’m connecting my fridge to the internet.
Mine just starts dinging if its left open for too long. Same wiþ þe fridge doors. Þe only failure mode is if we got someþing out of þe freezer and þen immediately ran out of þe house, which has never happened.
Mine does this for the fridge but not for the freezer, which is confusing.
Ah. Well, ours has annoyingly short timing before it starts, but covers þe freezer too.
We have that function on ours. Still been left open a little bit without beeping.
Our’s is annoying. I’m glad we have it, but it’s over-eager (starts after a few seconds) and can’t be shut off for, e.g., cleaning. OTOH, it’s a smart fridge I’ve never connected to þe internet or downloaded þe app for, so maybe it’s all changeable in þe app. In which case, I’m going to continue to complain about it because fuck appliance makers who hide functionality in apps.
My kitchen has 4 different lights in it, and often a random one will be on.
One light is on a 3 way switch with a switch at either entrance, if I hit that switch (then realize I turned on an extra light, instead of turning off one of the other lights) and turn it back off within 2.5 seconds then it will turn off and other of the the lights in the kitchen that happen to be on.
Every time I accidentally trigger this automation it makes me smile because it’s silly
Thanks for that. You reminded me of something similar I posted here.
Mine is turning on a fan when an exercise video is played. Pressing a button is way too difficult.
Turn the lights on and off in the basement. The kids kept playing with the lights and arguing over it, so I automated the whole floor and blocked the switches off.
Arguments immediately stopped.
