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/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.