Introduction

I wanted to automate some basic things in my apartment.

Here are the things I have automated so far:

• Turning on the air filter at night and off in the morning.
• Turn on a bedroom fan based on the temperature and time of day.
• Turning on sensors and camera for some basic security.
• Notifications when a package has been delivered.

I will update this page as I make more progress and have something worth sharing.

Home Assistant

I am using https://home-assistant.io/ to accomplish my automation.

Home Assistant provides a nice framework for creating your automations and the flexibility to expand as you like. It has a massive library of already built components.

Ongoing work

The main work I have done to improve Home Assistant capabilities are the following:

Blink Camera Automation

I have one camera which I use as a basic “security” feature. At the time, there was no component already existing to use this in home assistant. So, I did some research and found someone had already reverse-engineered part of the API. I used this a base for my script to add some basic functions(arm/disarm/status).

Later, the blink platform was integrated into home-assistant by a contributer. https://home-assistant.io/components/blink/

Wireless Tags Automation

I have two of these tags. They can used for temperature, humidity, motion and more. I am currently using them to monitor the doors to my apartment and temperature. I made a python script to interact with the wireless tags api. This includes arming, disarming and reading temperature/humidity data.

Motion automations are:

• Turning on the sensor when we leave and off when we are home.
• Alert sent to phone when motion is detected.

Temperature automations are:

• Turning on bedroom fan.