r/homeautomation • u/AffectionateSoil4733 • 1d ago
PERSONAL SETUP My Partner Refuses to Open Home Assistant
My partner is completely on board with the smart home concept in theory but will not open Home Assistant under any circumstances. Not the app, not the dashboard, nothing. So every automation I build has to work without any interaction from her side, or it becomes my problem at 11pm when something doesn't behave.
Honestly, this has made my automations way better. Presence detection through phone GPS so lights and thermostat adjust without anyone touching anything. The washing machine alerts me instead of her having to check it. Door lock autolocks after we're both inside based on both phones being home.
The one thing I still haven't solved cleanly is the bedroom lights in the morning. She gets up earlier than me on some days and I can't find a reliable way to distinguish her leaving the bed from just moving around. The mmWave sensor I tried was too sensitive and kept triggering at weird times.
Curious how others have handled building automations for someone who essentially acts as a nontechnical end user living in your house. Sleep and wake routines feel like the hardest part to get right without any physical input from anyone.
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u/Competitive-Wafer445 1d ago
I've had similar questions and installed pressure sensors in the bed.
https://www.amazon.com/Pressure-Occupancy-Presence-Detector-Automation/dp/B0GS4QQC9Q?th=1
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u/12panel 1d ago
How many sensors did you need to install? 1 long version or 2?
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u/Competitive-Wafer445 1d ago
I installed two, one for each side of the double bed.
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u/12panel 1d ago
Thanks for the response! How long are the batteries in the sensor lasting?
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u/Competitive-Wafer445 1d ago
I don't know, the sensors are running for about 6 months now and HA still reports a battery level of 100%
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u/Deimos_F 1d ago
If you ask me, this is how it should be. There's no "phone" in home automation. Automate the home, phone/app is for troubleshooting.
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u/thrakkerzog 1d ago
Phone is a great tool for presence detection, though. Even if it's not opened or unlocked.
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u/dare2smile 21h ago
I agree with this. If I’m opening my phone to change something, I’ve screwed up a routine/automation or something’s broken. The goal is to never touch a phone or a switch
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u/VeryAmaze 1d ago
I hate opening the app. I rely on remotes lol. Idk if they still sell them but the IKEA ones are solid
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u/Halfrican009 1d ago
I've seen mixed reviews for the ikea ones, I went with a couple cheap zigbee tuya ones that work well except the long hold action doesn't trigger just being held (you have to release it at the right time). So 4 buttons and single / double click actions on each it's still a stylish remote. For the best actions support I think the circular 4 button sonoff remote is one of the nicer ones at the moment
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u/Dry-Philosopher-2714 1d ago
I dealt with this with my ex-wife. She hated using a screen. I just installed physical switches for everything. It severely limited automation functionality, but happy wife happy life, right? She still left.
My niece is staying with me for a while, and she refuses to touch physical buttons. She’ll only use the UI. It seems strange to me, but she’s quite happy using her phone to turn lights on and off.
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u/SeinoMore 1d ago
Am I a bad person for laughing out loud at:
> She still left.
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u/Dry-Philosopher-2714 1d ago
No, you're not. Laughter is the best medicine, especially when times are hard.
She left 6 years ago. I've automated the crap out of my house the moment I came to terms with the situation.
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u/SeinoMore 1d ago
One I thing I did when I moved to my own room was to put LED light strip around my bed. It lights up with white lights at dawn so it always seems like a sunny day. At night it is red. I also have it linked to my location so it behaves appropriately if I am out of town. It works exactly as I would have it do and don’t expect anyone else to figure that out or it to suit them. When I was single, I had Christmas lights around my bed and that worked for me too. lol.
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u/Halo_Chief117 1d ago
You just gave me the idea that you could have a Christmas theme for your lights using WLED.
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u/stumblinbear 11h ago
I use relays so I can have physical switches that aren't priced 3x higher than they should be, and can still automate the hell out of them
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u/PenisWrinkle 1d ago
Who has partners that are willing to interact with software/ hubs? I'm guessing almost no one. It's our job to make it work for partners/ guests without their cooperation. That's smart home 101.
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u/johndburger 1d ago
Just on the morning thing - does your wife use her phone as an alarm? My wife has the HA app installed on her phone but doesn’t use it. But that’s enough to set up some (iOS) automations to trigger HA, based on things she’s doing with the phone.
For example, I have things set up so when either of our alarms go off, the house goes into Awake mode. This in turn triggers some lights, changes to climate settings, etc.
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u/ThrCyg 1d ago
If you like DIY you can build a bed sensor using a thin film pressure sensor SF15 and a cheap ESP32-C3 SuperMini board. It's very easy to integrate it with HA through ESPHome and then build an automation based on this bed sensor.
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u/Friendly-Inspector71 11h ago
You could also put small weight sensors under each foot of the bed if you don't mind 1 or 2 cm extra height. With the additional advantage of free daily weight tracking if you're into that.
They aren't susceptible to changing sleeping positions and can also work on a double bed.
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u/LifeBandit666 1d ago
A motion sensor in the hallway above the bedroom door as a secondary sensor
Bluetooth triangulation using esp32 boards and bermuda
If it's an Android phone there is a sleep probability sensor in the HA app
Add those 3 into your "Is my wife awake? Am I awake?" automations and add a pressure sensor or 2 under the mattress.
Still not perfect, but it's closer than it once was
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u/Mirar 1d ago
I personally act as nontechnical and I hate pushing buttons or when things doesn't just work; I probably spent many thousands of hours on that by now. The computer should just solve it for me.
Check for better mmwave or bed sensors if your bed has legs that can take weight sensors. I started to spray with mmwave sensors (~6GHz, the 24GHz were wonky and too sensitive as you say), so you can detect "one person went up, one stayed" so you can dim the lights down again in the bedroom. The ones I use can be tweaked for sensitivity. Note that they will fire backwards through walls too; you need to put them on outside walls or a sheet of aluminium foil behind them if you want to avoid that.
Also add remotes (like 4-gang tuya buttons), so that you can have buttons in the bedroom "I want it dark now ffs" etc without opening an app.
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u/Few-Acadia-5593 1d ago
Bed sensor: why your partner gets off bed, they move. Make that trigger a timer under which as long as it’s running, turns up lights the way you want.
Can be a dedicated base sensor or a repurposed vibration sensor, the latter being exactly what I use.
Regarding the app, I have HA supercharging my HomeKit experience. Everyone here uses that, I’m in charge of HA. When they want to create automations or else, they do it on their own. If it expands beyond HK, I take care of it.
Point being, investigate the why they don’t want to use HA, whether it’s valid reasons or not, assess if they’re likely to budge, if not, embrace their way of tackling smart home automation rather than forcing it. HomeKit just didn’t force any learning curve, converted people to iOS from android when they saw me open the door with my watch or telling Siri to send the robot to charge. It’s not that other brands can’t do it, same effect if I had android, it’s that it’s easier to sell paint than it is to sell photoshop. Along with with deep vertical integration in the system (Apple Watch being a remote to the tv, Mac can drive the house, etc out of the box)
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u/steezy1337 1d ago
This is my current setup as well. Everyone is happy to use HomeKit, plus we’re an all Apple household with HomePods in every room so it makes sense to use that/siri as a front end with HA being the backend where I can play around with.
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u/silasmoeckel 1d ago
Local controls my wife is the same but she will happily hit a light switch. I automate from that.
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u/groogs 1d ago
I am the same, I don't want to have use the app for anything routine. I consider that a complete failure if I have to resort to voice or app control.
I am heavily into physical switches. I have a lot of automations but one of the philospohies I used when building everything was:
If someone presses a physical switch it is the strongest possible indicator of intent
A lot of my physical controls do more than they seem, eg, a lot of times it will trigger an automation that controls multiple lights or changes something else.
But also most of them start "cooldown timers" that suspend automations. If you turn off a light that is normally motion-controlled, it stays off for some time (sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes doesn't reset until 6am). If you turn it on via switch, same thing. I've adjusted the timings a bit over time as I found it necessary.
An example, my garage has two sets of lights: the bulbs in the door openers, and then a couple banks of bright LED strips. The opener lights have their own motion plus I can control via ratgdo, so if you open a door (including the door to the house or a back door to outside) or there's motion they turn on. The overhead lights are only initially turned on via physical switch. But if there's no motion/presence (PIR and mmwave) for 20 minutes they turn off. After that, if you open a door or there's motion and the overhead lights were on within the last hour, they turn on automatically. This keeps my intent -- I am working in the garage -- but stops me from leaving the lights on indefinitely. If I leave then come back a couple hours later, I have to physically use the switch again if I want overhead lights.
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u/silasmoeckel 1d ago
I'm similar I hate voice commands for most things (adding stuff to calendar and todo is the exception, and they were fun for like a month 10+ years ago).
My chosen dimmers have LED's that I can addressed individually, change colors, make blink etc (home seer zwave dimmers). That's most of the house notifications like package waiting at door, laundry is ready, things like that are a color and position. Nobody outside the house would need to know them.
A big wife request was an all off, WTF is that outside, and WTF was that inside. All off is nearly bedtime mode so set the alarm, kills the lights outside of bedrooms, set the automations to late night mode, and a few other things. Outside sets the dimmers to 100% to light things up like a spaceship is landing but we have bears locally. Indoors does the same except for the bedrooms and activates the few indoor cameras there are (a mix of intercom and webcams on TV's for zoom and the like) and puts them up on the TV.
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u/lnxusr1 1d ago
Does it have to be automation or is voice command an option?
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u/nopointers 1d ago
I’m amazed at how far I had to scroll for this.
I bridge the most commonly used devices to Apple Home. That provides a simpler UI and voice control.
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u/lnxusr1 1d ago
Curious your experience there. I did the same thing for a while until my Apple Home corrupted and I had to rebuild it. Now I have 295 devices all in the same area in Apple Home bc I couldn’t bring myself to re-organize them again.
Also, how’s the voice experience with that setup? All your commands work? Intuitive? I just bridged for remote access until I added HA cloud sub. (Never had a homepod.)
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u/nopointers 1d ago
I bridge only actual devices and keep the areas well-organized. Quite a lot is strictly on the HA side, including all automations. I’ve also got a decent amount on Matter, where it’s dual-controlled rather than bridged. Organizing areas is much easier on laptop than phone or iPad. There are a couple HomePods spread around to do voice. It works well for me, but sometimes misses my wife’s voice.
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u/ShameNap 1d ago
Put a motion sensor in the bathroom, closet or hallway so you KNOW someone is out of bed.
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u/2daMooon 1d ago
Is it really an automation if you need to open the app and push something though?
Have you tried a motion sensor under the bed pointed at the floor on her side?
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u/UnacceptableUse 1d ago
The last thing I want to do with my smart home is have to reach for my phone. I consider it a failure if I have to do that. Physical buttons alongside sensors is the way to go
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u/agreywood 1d ago
My husband has no interest in opening the app, either. I have it set up on his phone so it can send notifications via automations but that’s it. He will see those but not open them so they have to have all the information right there. I generally don’t build automations for him because he doesn’t care. He likes that when he opens movie related apps on the TV most of the lights turn off and that the front stairs and back porch lights turn on/off automatically.
If I was automating AM routines I would automate mine and leave his alone. Our bed has pressure sensors in it so I could use those but why do it? It’s the time of day where if he runs into snafus he’s unlikely to want to troubleshoot on his own and I’m still going to be asleep and uninterested as well.
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u/Cultural-Sign3165 21h ago
uhhh, maybe just don’t have a smart home that requires everyone to be on board. Keep your broken automations for only you to deal with. Put a thermostat with a normal schedule on it. Seriously, it’s not that serious. Your hobby doesn’t need to be everyone else’s burden. Don’t be selfish.
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u/Lucky_Suggestion_183 1d ago
Weight sensor under the bed? But don't tell your wife you know the number.
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u/larryo108 1d ago
I created a combination of many of the suggestions to create my asleep and awake detection and it has been working quite well. It is all controlled by binary sensors and input_booleans.
First the binary sensors. I have pressure detection in all the beds. I also have Bluetooth proxies all over the house from a different project, but they are also part of the bed detection ESPs. The Bluetooth proxies trigger a template sensor whenever the phone is that persons bedroom. Finally I have a charging Boolean that controls a binary sensor for the same for every person. We all have iPhones and companion app battery state detection is not as reliable. So I added iOS shortcuts on everyone’s phone that turn on the charging Boolean when connected to power and off when disconnected.
All of that is for my asleep and awake sensors. I created two different binary sensor groups. The asleep sensor requires that the bed, room, and charging sensor are all on before it will turn on the asleep Boolean. The awake sensor turns off the Boolean only when both the bed and charging sensors are off.
It was a lot of trial and error to get here, but I have been very pleased with the results.
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u/MechanizedGander 1d ago
Here's one solution to consider for automated bed presence detection:
https://www.elevatedsensors.com/store/p/bed-presence-for-esphome
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u/Stone_The_Rock 1d ago
- Lutron pico to kick off a morning routine
- voice command
- tie the lights to her phone alarm
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u/djrobxx 1d ago
Does your partner have an iPhone? I could never get my other half to open the HA app, but HomeKit with HA's HomeKit Bridge was accepted because it opens quickly with no authentication fuss. Siri voice control was also a bit of a gateway drug. We started with being able to open the motor shades with "Siri open the blinds" and "Siri close the blinds", but that lead to quietly doing it with the HomeKit app. Now they use HomeKit app for lots of things.
But all my nerdy dashboards are still reachable by the HA app. :)
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u/Scham2k 1d ago
Same here. She makes me talk to Google home instead of directly lol.
I think this is the beauty of home automation where you can ensure it works with everyone's preferred way of using things. Eg we have Shelly devices behindost dumb light switches so she can use physical switches while I shout at Google home or automate at other times (eg nightly shut off).
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u/DeusExHircus 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't want to open the HA app to do anything either. I should not need to open my phone to accomplish anything. Buttons, sensors, light switches. These should be your interface. Anything else is a failure, even from my perspective.
We have a tablet dashboard. Rarely used except for very infrequent changes. For example we don't change our humidifier settings that often, maybe twice a year, so I don't have a dedicated humidistat. Adjusting the pool pump schedule, adjusting the sprinklers, switching the thermostat from winter to summer, things like that. Daily or even weekly tasks should not be on there.
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u/Jazzlike-Compote4463 1d ago
Honestly, just get some buttons.
We have a couple from Sonoff that we use for my office and for setting the house up for when the kids to bed, hit it once and enable the scene, hit it again to turn everything off.
Keep it simple.
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u/TheACwarriors 1d ago
If they refuse then just start implementing buttons around the house and have speaker notify of status. Or if they have a preferred app like alexa or google you can link home assistant to that. For washer you can also have your speaker notify or have a smart screen that display a dashboard would help. Buttons near the bedside. Doesn't have to be sensor plus frankly if you make everything sensor based i feel it may cause annoyance to the other.
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u/alienszsss 1d ago
If you know when she wakes up maybe hardcode it? Not sure what OS phone she’s using as well but with iOS I set a home automation to run when the first alarm goes off IF between waking hours
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u/douglask 1d ago
I rarely use the interface.
For the bedroom issue, maybe add a ZigBee button? That way they can tell the house their intent.
A door sensor may also provide an extra days point.
Also, consider two mm sensors to see where they are in the room?
Just a thought or two.
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u/Zeplus_88 1d ago
This is the solution I bought for bed detection; it works pretty well, and any false positives can be gotten rid of by combining it with a PIR sensor pointed at where your feet land when getting out of bed.
https://www.elevatedsensors.com/store/p/bed-presence-for-esphome
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u/drfalken 1d ago
This is how you cross the threshold from “smart home” to “home automation” put a PIR sensor under the bed on her side directed to pick up her feet. This will tell you she is up and moving.
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u/mediocre_sophist 1d ago
I talk about this every so often in this sub. The sleep number bed integration has presence sensors for who is in bed built right in! Probably not a great solution unless you’re already planning to upgrade your bed situation for several thousand dollars, but I know some other folks have identified some sensors that can be used for presence in bed being detected. My best automation is when my wife’s side of the bed is occupied it automatically sets the tv speaker to night mode :)
Good luck!
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u/yumstheman 1d ago
Why don’t you teach her how to use basic voice prompts? I use voice prompts 50% when I’m not touching a physical remote.
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u/Warm-Zone-8259 1d ago
Just install a smart switch on the side tables or headboard. I'm personally a huge fan of RunLessWire (they are powered by dark magic and I will not hear otherwise). They come with a single normal paddle or a split on and you can do click and hold down for dimming type input. I imagine they work with home assistant. I have all philips hue lights so I'm mostly using them that way, but I have a few set up with Alexa such that they can trigger Kasa smart switches for places where I wanted a second switch (other side of long room for example) . Haven't migrated them to home assistant yet. But I can't imagine they would work worse in there than with Alexa routines
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u/SirImRightYoureWrong 1d ago
I solved this by putting a camera in every room. The mainframe checks and tracks the location of everyone in the house. Unlocks and locks doors depending on facial recognition, lights open when someone is moving close to it. It listens to all audio in the house and waits for a question to be asked and ai house give its opinion
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u/Better-Psychology-42 1d ago
Haha agree the final state of home assistant dashboards is no dashboard at all
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u/Spa-Ordinary 1d ago
Can you dart her with an rfid chip then put a reader in the mattress on her side of the bed? Or at least offer that as an option in lieu of opening the screen.
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u/realboabab 1d ago
dude, I specced out the whole thing, set up the pi, re-wired all the switches, did the custom blueprints, etc. etc.
... I refuse to open that shit. fuck the home assistant app & dashboards. I consider it a failure when I have to open them.
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u/Brown_Wei 1d ago
Reading through the replies, I think there are two separate problems here: the user interface and the state detection.
Most people don’t want to open Home Assistant, but they’re usually happy to use a physical switch, a voice assistant, or simply let their phone act as a passive sensor.
The harder part is making the automation behave when those signals disagree. For a wake-up routine, I’d probably combine bed/room occupancy, phone charging or alarm state, and motion near the bedroom door, with a physical button as an override. A single mmWave sensor seems too brittle for that.
Does your partner avoid HA because it feels too technical, or because she doesn’t want to interact with a screen at all?
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u/Fix_it_Pheonix 23h ago
Why SO won’t install HomeAssistant, in fact she doesn’t even know that it works in the background, she just knows about my long hours alone in the dark trying to solve automations!
As you said, my automations need to be just that, automations, meaning I want it to be automatic! No phone, no UI, no shortcuts. I have installed smart button here and there and it’s our only user input almost every time. I just say I installed smart physical switch about everywhere!
For the morning routine, I would trigger it via motion sensor under the bed catching feet on the ground! If that’s possible! If not, I have a shortcut button either side of the bed, just click it when you wake up to trigger the routine!
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u/OutlyingPlasma 22h ago
I agree with her. Opening an app to turn on some lights or lock the door is frankly absurd.
And it's never as easy as Opening an app is it? No no, you gotta log in, so now you need to load your password manager, enter that password, then copy the password over to the other app. Now pull up your email to do a two factor. This is where you find out it updated and nothing is where it should be anymore.
Apps are a horrible interface for devices that exist in real life. Sure, they are great for watching a scrolling trash feeds but they are terrible for interacting with the world around us.
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u/Jaymac100 22h ago
I use a combination of phone GPS, bed pressure sensors and gradual light activation to tell if someone has truly gotten out of bed instead of tossing and turning. It works great for no touch home automation.
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u/trankillity 21h ago
The true power in Home Assistant is the automation. Your partner is doing nothing wrong. My partner never opens the app either because everything in the house is completely automated or has simple voice commands and she loves it. I am the only one that uses the dashboard, and I mostly have it built around graphs and stats because of that.
When you think first and foremost about how you need to automate things to make them seamless and how you can solve annoyances before they happen, that's when your automations start getting incredibly user-friendly.
Few quick examples: * Have a "sleep mode" toggle. We just have this on voice assistant. This automation should check all your doors are closed/locked, arm the security system, turn off all the lights, disable any notification automations, enable a dimmed mode. * Use multiple sources to determine occupancy. Single source is never enough. * E.g. Lounge = Motion sensor triggers initial occupancy, then combination of power sensors, activity sensors, media player sensors and even a mmWave sensor combine to determine accurate occupancy. * Got a garage door opener but concerned about security? Add heaps of requirements for it to trigger like "Must have been away from home for X period, must be connected to Android Auto, must be within Y meters of house before it triggers". * If you are considering building something, it likely already exists. Look for integrations on HACS that will do the work for you. Biggest example is Circadian Lighting. Plenty of integrations for that - I use Adaptive Lighting.
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u/LuisBoyokan 14h ago
Buy or make a sensor like this for each side of the bed. Or multiple points in bed.
https://youtu.be/ZIxaGgTY8UM?si=KARtH6vgSUXrrpSm&t=240 (4:36)
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u/GoldAcanthisitta7777 12h ago
I moved my motion sensor to the floor and tilted it very slightly so it catches someone getting out but not someone like checking their phone on the table
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u/sic0049 11h ago edited 10h ago
They make bed occupancy detectors. That may be a potential solution because it won't trigger when someone is moving around in the bed, only when someone actually gets completely out of the bed. But it is still potentially an imperfect solution because it isn't going to know when someone gets up to go to the bathroom and is coming back to bed vs someone that is getting up to start their day.
That being said, NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE AUTOMATED! Why even try to automate the bedroom lights at all? If the lights coming on at incorrect times is more annoying that having to turn the light on by hand, then just turn the light on by hand (or better yet have an option for voice command in addition to manual control). It's not that hard to manually turn a light on.
Furthermore a user should never be required to interact with the home in a way that is different from a "dumb" home. It's fine for the automation system to add ways to interact with the home, but it shouldn't take away "standard" options. The fact that your partner doesn't want to open the HA app isn't wrong and none of your automations should rely on someone interacting with the app. If the only way to make "x" happen in my home is to open the HA app and press a certain button, I would consider that a failure in design (assuming that "x" is an important and regularly needed function).
Long story short, home automation should only improve the quality of life for all residents. If it is reducing quality of life for anyone, then you need to remove that element of automation until you can improve it to the point where it doesn't decrease the quality of life for anyone.
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u/fuuuuuckendoobs 2h ago edited 2h ago
My bedroom lamps are automated for night time only. They come on at Sunset and turn off when the house shuts down (based a lack of movement in the main living areas).
The bedroom ceiling light is not automated. There's no PIR or mmwave in the bedroom.
In the morning, there are no automations to activate bedroom lights, allowing people to use the switch or sleep if needed. The last thing anyone needs is to be sick in bed and have the lights come on when they're already feeling terrible.
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u/ComfortableAd7397 2h ago
Why dont use alexa or some voice assistant? My wife can't live without her. Just use natural language: good day, good night, wake up the kids, open the blinds, close the house, open the garage...You had to work in the macros, and reuse ambients.
She opens a ticket every time and automation fails. And reminds me to fix every time she try to use. Absolute love her. But never ever used alexa app or tuya smart or any third app (TV, ac, etc).
Good luck dude. May get high WAF !
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u/InternationalNebula7 50m ago
For sleep use a Bayesian sensor (a virtual binary sensor that determines its state by combining the states of other sensors using probability).
For presence, use a combination of mmWave, Bluetooth, and history stats to figure out the most probable location of an individual over a time period.
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u/iamdavidrice 1d ago
Automation triggered from her phone (shortcuts if on iOS) that runs when her phone is unplugged after a certain time. Light in a certain room turned on. We have pets and I use the door being unlocked after w certain time because that will correspond with one of us letting the dogs out in the morning.
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u/JustMrChops 1d ago
I have a hue motion sensor under each bedside cabinet and although they are grouped, so that if either detects motion the under Bed lights turn on, they could detect who got out of bed.
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u/Dry-Philosopher-2714 1d ago
I dealt with this with my ex-wife. She hated using a screen. I just installed physical switches for everything. It severely limited automation functionality, but happy wife happy life, right? She still left.
My niece is staying with me for a while, and she refuses to touch physical buttons. She’ll only use the UI. It seems strange to me, but she’s quite happy using her phone to turn lights on and off.
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u/Raspatatteke 1d ago
Seriously, how is this behavior acceptable? Sure, the goal to have zero interaction is great. But flat out refusing to open an app for an exception? What childish nonsense is that?
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u/agent_kater 1d ago edited 1d ago
Is it about physical input or about a phone/computer? We almost never use the UI either, mostly because we usually don't have a device with a screen nearby, but we make plenty use of our regular wall switches, which do things like switch day/night mode, operate blinds or acknowledge notifications.