What home automations and routines have you setup?

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So what things are people doing with their home setups? Any cool, fun or useful IFTTT recipes or Alexa routines? Any tips?

A couple I setup recently...

1) My detached garage has a lot of expensive stuff in it. So I put an Echo Flex+Motion sensor in it, which if detects motion at night using an Alexa routine will alert me via the Echos in the house by announcing “Motion detected in garage!”. But also it will turn on my outside lights, and all the downstairs lights on (all on LightwaveRF). I have put a delay between each light coming on, to simulate someone turning them on, rather than an automatic thing. They all go off after 30 mins of no motion being detected. (The Garage lights are on a permanent PIR, so can’t be turned off by a burglar, which I go an Electrican to do, but not really smart as such. Good lighting is better than CCTV in many ways).

2) I have a wireless thermometer (also has humidity, light sensor etc - It’s a brilliant little for remote monitoring thing that I bought Amazon, but I wonder if anyone can guess where I first came across one?) anyway... I use it to monitor the temperature of my hot water tank with a probe. If the temp get too low I use IFTTT plus an Alexa skill called Notify Me to email me and sent a notification to Alexa. I do this because it cheaper to leave the water heating to my solar panels rather than my ASHP, but sometimes the solar isn’t enough.

It’s a real shame Nest doesn’t support IFTTT anymore, could have down some really interesting stuff with the facial recognition.

What are others doing? Or a people just happy to turn a light on with their voice, and the odd timer. Always looking for a bit of inspiration :).
 
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I like the heat probe one you mentioned. Any more details over what your are using? I've been looking for something similar myself.

I'm currently in the process of building a rain water tank level sensor using an Arduino and an ultrasonic sensor. Once this is working I'll set alerts to tell me when these needs pumping through the filters into my clean water tanks.
 
Ubibot WS1 WiFi Temperature Sensor, Wireless Thermometer Hygrometer, Humidity Monitor, Remote Data Logger with Free App Alerts, IFTTT Thermometer,(2.4GHz WiFi only,no hub required) Amazon product ASIN B071HVDDFB
For a water tank you will also need the external probe sold separately (to sit against the side of the tank). Will run using AA’s for a few weeks, but I use an external power source (old USB phone charger).
 
Ah, my tank is pretty well insulated so I doubt I will get much of a reading from it. Ideally I need one inside.
 
Ah, my tank is pretty well insulated so I doubt I will get much of a reading from it. Ideally I need one inside.

So is mine. It should have a probe entry point, a small hole/tube at the bottom. That should be standard because tanks need to be able to temperature monitored (not just the built in thermostat). Mine one has 3 at different heights. My system already had it own probe from the ASHP control panel, so I just added another (this is also helpful to make sure it’s calibration is correct). But if it’s very old tank and doesn’t, you can push the probe through the insulation. There will be a way to do it. You don’t want to be putting anything inside.
 
I have an unvented cylinder and there doesn't appear to be a spare port I could use. I had looked into finding a Wi-Fi enabled thermostat for it as that has the information I want, it's just only displayed on the little LCD display on the thermostat. I wasn't planning on actually putting the probe inside the tank, but the immersion element and the thermostat both have ports that allow them to read the temp ;)

This is what I have been working on. Still kinda prototyping it but pleased so far. It measures my rain water tank level.

IMG_2223.jpg


IMG_2224.jpg


It replaces an analogue gauge I was using which was fine, but it was down at the bottom of the garden and was kinda hard to see.

IMG_2225.jpg


The analogue gauge was showing around 1/4 full before I moved it and the new one is currently showing a similar value.

1592054826029.png


Eventually the plan is to them pump this water through my filters into a clean water tank and automate this process when the rain water tank gets near full and there is space in the clean water tank to accept it. So far so good though!
 
I have an unvented cylinder and there doesn't appear to be a spare port I could use. I had looked into finding a Wi-Fi enabled thermostat for it as that has the information I want, it's just only displayed on the little LCD display on the thermostat. I wasn't planning on actually putting the probe inside the tank, but the immersion element and the thermostat both have ports that allow them to read the temp ;)

This is what I have been working on. Still kinda prototyping it but pleased so far. It measures my rain water tank level.

View attachment 1317111

View attachment 1317112

It replaces an analogue gauge I was using which was fine, but it was down at the bottom of the garden and was kinda hard to see.

View attachment 1317113

The analogue gauge was showing around 1/4 full before I moved it and the new one is currently showing a similar value.

View attachment 1317114

Eventually the plan is to them pump this water through my filters into a clean water tank and automate this process when the rain water tank gets near full and there is space in the clean water tank to accept it. So far so good though!

Cool little project, like it.

A for the tank, mine is unvented too. Currently have three probes sat in the middle port.
 

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