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Comment by JshWright | Hacker News Reader

I use Home Assistant to automate a lot of stuff around my house. The one I use at least daily is a trigger based on the light switch in my bedroom. A double click down triggers an automation that turns off all the lights in the rest of the house, makes sure the garage doors are closed, and that the rest of the doors are locked.

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One future Home Assistant project that I would love to implement is a whole house lighting system that gradually transitions all the lights from white/blue in the morning, to yellow/orange in the evening to aid natural melatonin production. Such a project would have to be fully automated, otherwise I'd forget to set it each day. Blue LEDs are terrible for sleep and throw off your body's natural sleep pattern. I got the idea from the excellent book "Why We Sleep"[1]. It's possible that a similar HA project already exists.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep

I use Circadian Lighting [0] component for this one. Works pretty well all around the house.

[0] - https://community.home-assistant.io/t/circadian-lighting-cus...

Wow, very nice. This looks like exactly what I had in mind.

Look into philips hue. You can set the lights so they turn on at a different color temperature depending on time of day. Some of the remotes/switches even come pre-programmed to do that right out of the box.

Good to know thanks.

You can do this with a bunch of any “smart” bulb that supports schedules. It is not very hard.

I used to have a little script running on my computer that changed one bulb’s color based on local weather forecasts and the time, so that I never had a screamingly bright light telling me it was about to rain in the middle of the night. That’s when it starts to get vaguely complicated.

I did this with good results, using warm white and daylight white LED strips, a couple of PWM dimmers, and an arduino, at a former apartment a few years ago. I have a similar setup now but it's a single LED strip featuring both color temps, with its own remote controllable dimmer for brightness/color temp; I haven't bothered to automate it.

My brother prototyped this LED panel ages ago does that. Made for a good project, and it's still hanging in his office.

https://lbnc.ca/luz-lightbulb-meet-sunlight

I use a lot of automation around my house too. I noticed that my wife and kids tend to leave certain lights on frequently, so I replaced them with motion sensor switches that automatically turn on/off the lights. Having them turn on the lights became a very nice feature.

I also have all the outside lights on wifi light switches that turn on automatically at dusk. There are a few lamps inside that turn on automatically too, so it looks like someone is home and so it automatically creates a nice ambiance when we are home.

The lamps also happen to use RGB Hue bulbs, so they're normally a white shade, but if one of the outside motion sensors (also Hue) is triggered, then they turn red, and if it's late enough that the outdoor lights are off, then it automatically triggers the wifi light switches to turn on all the outside lights.

Amazon echo show is great for checking cameras. Logitech harmony remote is great for starting up the tv/media box/amplifier and configuring them to their correct settings each time someone wants to watch tv. The automatic refill kit for the keurig keeps the water tank full. myQ lets me know if one of my garage doors was left open. A wemo plug turns on my hot water circulator during the hours when we're usually home and off when we're not. Nest camera lets me know when it spots a person on my driveway.

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