r/homeassistant • u/attticrattt • 2d ago
Let's hear your favorite vacation automations!
I am heading out of town in a few weeks, would love to hear folks favorite vacation automations.
As a note, our dogs will be staying at home, isolated to 1 room. Our neighbors will be spending a decent amount of time at our house either stopping by to feed them, or spend some time with them. Planning on buying a Ring Keypad to make our Alarmo more accessible for them.
Anything anyone has setup that they love? Thinking of a script to turn lights on semi randomly throughout the day/evening...
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u/MinimalLemonade 2d ago
I’m on the last week of my 3-week summer holiday, how fitting :D All of my holiday automations are simply there because I can tho. There is nothing really “useful” tbh
My home automatically switches into vacation mode when it sees “Urlaub” (German for holiday/vacation) in my personal GCal When this is active and I’m at home, it changes my wake-up routine a bit. The simulated sunrise is slower, my PC and some music come on a few minutes before the alarm rings. The Spotify playlist depends on the weather forecast, because I like to match my music to the weather or rather the feeling that comes with sunshine, rain, etc. My vacuum also automatically cleans my desk as soon as I spend more than 5 minutes in the bathroom after waking up (in other words: I’m showering), because I spend loads of time there when I don’t have to work and I’m not travelling. Picks up the crumbs of pretzels, weed and other stuff from the gaming sessions the night before :D
Separate from that, I have extended presence detection with more states than just “Home” and “Not Home”. I use “Just Arrived”, “Home”, “Just Left”, “Away” and “Extended Away”. Extended Away means I’ve been gone longer than 48 hours. So in other words, I’m travelling. This triggers the “Presence Simulation” integration, which does exactly what the name says: simulate my presence (lights etc.). I don’t really need this tbh, since I live in a nice area in Germany and could probably leave my door open for a week without anything happening. But it’s fun to automate, so why not. I also have a security camera pointed at my huge glass front. Never heard of a break-in in my area, but if one ever happened, that would be the obvious spot. Again, not needed but fun. Oh, and my smart irrigation for the plants on my roof terrace also activates when I’m travelling. I don’t use it when I’m at home because I enjoy watering them manually :p
Most other stuff just continues as if I’m not on holiday. My roller shutters keep opening and closing in the morning and evening as if I were home, my alarm activates anyway every time I leave and yeah.