This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/homeassistant by /u/Rude-News-8416 on 2026-05-21 15:08:51+00:00.
I will start with two of mine at opposite ends of the spectrum.
The first is extremely simple. When I put my smartwatch on its charger in the evening, the house knows I am winding down. The lighting shifts to evening tones. The shades close. The whole house mode flips to sleep-ready. It is one of my least technically impressive automations and one of my most loved. The trigger is dumb. The effect is everything.
The second is more involved. The shades in my main living space are managed by an automation I call "Do Not Cook the Fish". It has four template sensors and two state triggers. It tracks LUX levels going up and down, the TV being turned on or off, and whether any windows are opened or closed. The west-facing dining room windows take full afternoon sun, which both bakes the room and causes a lot of glare.
The automation closes the shades when LUX crosses a sustained threshold, or faster when the LUX spikes high enough to be painful (cloud-and-sun afternoons in Loja are dramatic). It does not fully close the shades when a window is open, so if someone closes the window it re-evaluates and adjusts. Same for the TV. Turning it on triggers a lower LUX threshold because glare on a screen is more annoying than direct sun on a face. And the shades open all the way at the start of sunset, because the sunset over the Andes is the actual reason we live in this house and no automation gets to hide it.
The bedtime one is extremely simple but satisfying. The shades automation is more complex and impressive. Both earn their place because they make the house feel like it is paying attention.
What is yours?