I wanted to setup some smart lights to turn on and off at various times when I’m away so that it looks like people are still around in the house. These are going to be going between a few rooms to look more legitimate for anyone watching.
Goals
- Turn on at sunset for living room
- Turn off at X time in living room
- Turn on at X time + buffer in bedroom
- Turn off at Y time in bedroom
With this setup, all I have to do is remember to turn on the lamps when I go and then enable the automations that run it. These automations are now enabled/disabled by my EspDeck pads.
Plan
To set things up, I’d install some smart switches or plugs on the lights I wanted to use. I would make use of my automations that I made for the stairway fairy lights as a baseline to turn on and off everything, and customize from there.
Light Automations
I’ve added one floor lamp and a few smart switches to my automations. With a few different lights in the automations, it’ll make it look like someone is moving around. When I’m around though, I’ll need all the lights to work as normal.
Enable/Disable Automations
I have both a Home automation and an Away automation. Both of these are triggered by ESP Deck buttons (binary sensors). These are below. They are pretty simple, just to enable all the automations when away, and disable all of them when home. They also turn on and off some smart plugs based off that status so the lamps that are plugged in can be used manually.
Conclusion
This ended up working out well. With a few iterations to make it easier to startup, it’s now made use of when we go out of town for a few days. Smart switches instead of plugs for lights makes it harder to miss a step before going (no need to turn on the lamps it uses). I went so far as to set up the start and stop actions for it on my EspDeck to make it that much easier to turn on. At some point I’d like to get presence detection working so I don’t even need the EspDeck buttons to make it run.