I agree with Rich and Bob: identify the most annoying ‘real’ world problems and find your own smart solutions.
Might sound a little bit boring, but my favorite automation is my HVAC system to optimize room temperatures.
That is a challenging, complex task if you take care of furnace and hot water control, windows, AC, ventilation, current and future weather, presence information, energy savings etc. And a rewarding one.
Some more ideas of what I implemented and found to be useful:
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a doorbell that makes lamps blink in different rooms (I’m working in the basement where you don’t hear the bell) plus some garden lights .
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a switchable foil on my bathroom window to become opaque when someone enters the room.
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a rain sensor that, if triggered, speaks an announcement (to make me hurry retrieve the clothing off the garden).
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multiple ‘nighttime’ and one ‘leave house’ physical switch at the front door that activate light scenes and security related functions. For example, ‘nighttime’ turns off most of the lights, dims some of the others, checks if all windows are closed and sends me a status message to my mobile, and enables the alarm system after a couple of minutes. ‘Leaving’ currently only turns off lights. But it could also enable the alarm system, turn down the heating and start simulation of presence (more or less random lighting or sounds).
Actually, it’s no extra switches, but specific action taken when I triple click on actuator-connected traditional light switches.
In general, that’s much more feasible than to use the smartphone every time. WAF is much higher, too. -
I use a geo-tracking app on our mobiles to make my smarthome know when one of the mobiles enters or leaves either home or some other defined area. I use this to ramp up the heating in my wife’s room when she’s leaving her workplace.
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my basement’s beer-loaded fridge starts cooling only if the weather forecast for next day is ‘warm’.
(now that’s a useful one, isn’t it !) -
optimized ventilation based on presence
My ventilation unit is noisy and located atop my bed room, so I automatically turn it down at bed time, based on presence detection.
Ventilation also happens to drop cold air right on my wife’s head when she’s at her favorite place.
So I added a valve to auto-close when she’s sitting there. -
all sorts of automated lighting:
** dimmed lights during nighttime
** welcome lighting scenery when the car is arriving (known via geo tracking).
** light scenes depending on time of day (agressive-cold white in the morning, warm red-ish in the evening, dim light blue during the night) or based on TV or alarm status (dimmed lights if TV is on, flashing or all-on if an alarm is set off) and so on. -
an automated TV cabinet door to open when I use my receiver’s remote.
It’s opening the TV cabinet, turns on AVR and TV und adjusts the living room’s lighting.
There’s also a ‘cinema mode’ to closes all of the room’s roller shutters / blinds, and turns the sound system into ‘blockbuster’ surround mode. -
my personal favorite is a mechanism that uses movement detectors in everybody’s room and power metering to identify who is first to raise in the morning, then I play an announcement through my Pi saying “dear wife[son, daughter], Good Morning, and please get me a coffee”. But only if I turned on my bed’s light before (identified through power metering plug-socket).
Yes, this solves a real world problem:
before, neither of us was daring to bring in the coffee because he/she didn’t know if the other one was already awake (and to wake up one of us can be life threatening
)