homeassistant

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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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How to get lights to turn on when we enter a room? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago by sleepyvoid@lemmy.ml to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

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Hey guys, I'm thinking about setting up HA. A big positive would be if our bedroom lights (Feit brand) turned on when we enter the room.

Or similarly in my office, I have an LED light that plugs in to a power strip, so I could use a motion sensor + a Wemo power switch I already have to trigger my office light to turn on.

What motion sensor works and isn't expensive?

Sidebar: also, is it possible to link a wifi connected light switch to operate our Feit bulbs? The lamp is plugged in to a socket that doesn't connect to the only light switch in the room and it gets old having to tell Google home every time we enter or leave the room.

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[–] TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

I have all my houses completely smart outfitted. Except the bedrooms. Yes you can have a wireless switch control a wireless light. I do that everywhere because then nobody gets confused and flips a switch.

I haven't touched a light switch in years. Every room has mmWave sensors either in the ceiling or on a shelf or both. You walk in, lights go on. Leave the room for a minute, lights go off.

The problem is a bedroom where that doesn't work. When are lights on? When you're in the room and not in bed? Ok. That's a lot more complicated. Get up in the middle of the night to pee, now the whole room is blasting light and waking up your partner. Reach for your phone, detected as motion outside the bed, inter of a tip lights come on. It never seems to work because too many variations.

Because of that I keep a remote by the bed. The light switch works, the phone apps work, the voice assistants work, all as usual just no automatic sensor. Then in addition the remote by the bed can turn the lights on full, one bulb dim, or off. One for each side.