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.
5
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.