Home Automation Projects Archives

A Smarter Smart Vacuum

This writeup covers the extra features I’ve added to make our smart vacuum feel just a little bit smarter. My custom dashboard makes for really easy targeted cleaning and you can quickly see how long it’s been since each room was cleaned. I also don’t worry about the bin getting full, the vacuum will just go and wait by the bin when it has been cleaning for an hour since it was last emptied.

*Custom dashboard alongside the vacuum (with obligatory googly eyes!)*

Fun with APIs – TTS Trivia and ‘Today in History’ Generators

I recently discovered how to use freely available APIs in NodeRED. This short guide covers how to set up a text to speech (TTS) trivia generator and a second TTS generator that reads a ‘Today in History’ event. I’ve been using both of these automations daily since configuring them.

Spotifynd – Spotify music that automatically follows you as you move around your home!

This project started off as an implementation of a new use case that my Comprehensive Room Presence Detection project now allows. As usual, it ended up down many rabbit holes and with screens full of debug nodes in Node-RED. But the end result is pretty fun! Spotifynd can be let loose to transfer any music you start playing on Spotify (on your phone or desktop clients etc.) to speakers in the room you are in. Then, if you move to a different room, your music will follow you and switch to playing on speakers in the new room. This is all thanks to the great Spotcast integration. All this can happen automatically with no user intervention. Or, Spotifynd can be set to notify you before starting if you’re not quite ready to let it run wild. Actionable notifications give you more detailed control whenever Spotifynd is running or encounters a problem.

Comprehensive Room Presence Detection: Linking it all up!

I’ve been testing various methods of room presence detection and while many do have limitations, they can give an accurate description of room presence in a home when they are all linked up and considered together. I wrote this guide on how I’ve been implementing my version of comprehensive room presence detection. I’ve made sure that all the processes are modular and scalable so it’s simple to add new users/sensors or tweak criteria for changes.