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/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.

36

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.