Wanted to start a thread to see how people are using STs this Christmas season. A thread with all the cool stuff people are doing!
I’ll start:
Simple one - Turning on/off my outside light display
Using it to sense when Santa comes around for the little kids in the family. When we are at a family party I am going to put one where my cat stays and at some point tell the kids at a family party that Santa is in our house delivering our presents.
When someone walks into my front courtyard a motion sensor turns on a snowfall machine that displays “digital” snowfall on the side of my house to make their entrance “magical”
Smart Sense Multi used to tell me when the cookies i baked are done. I set it under my pan rack after i pull cookies out of the oven it will tell me when they are safe to eat. Alerts at that perfect gooey temperature…
Used the same multi the other day to alert me when my pudding was done too. Put it in a small bag and sat it on top of the pudding. When it got below 38 degress it alerted me.
I am going to use a variation of the tree water sensor that @sjones0812 created to let me know when to eggnog and wassel are running low
I’m sure I can, and will, think of many many more.
How are you using smartthing to make your christmas season better?
Christmas is right around the corner! So excited! Savior is born!
This is what I did indoors. Will post the pictures for outdoors tomorrow (raining heavily outside).
Philips hue, living colors, lightstrips, aeon outlet, ST power outlet…hello home actions. Outdoors are three GE outdoor zwave outlets. Hue effects by OnSwitch app.
I have all of my lights (Tree, Inside Railing, Outside floods, outside lights) on four switches. The switches are grouped into one “Room”. Then my wife can hit them all at once.
I also have 2 commands set up in UBI that will turn them all on or all off and make an announcement. I trigger this with 2 HTTP requests (not voice). I have an On an Off button on my ActION dashboard with the HTTP links. It’s pretty handy.
I just have my Christmas tree turning on when I wake up or arrive home from work and turn off when I leave or go to bed. I want to do some exterior lighting next year.
I’m still pretty new to the platform, so I’ve just automated the Christmas tree. Comes on 20 mins before sunset, turns off when the mode changes to night.
@tslagle13 what light/machine are you using to project the digital snow?
2 Christmas trees in different rooms, stairway and loft Christmas lighting come on “When things start happening” in the morning. They turn of “When things quiet down” after everyone leaves for school/work. They turn back on “When people arrive” and back off “When things quiet down” which I use for Auto-Away during the day time. They turn back off at night “When things quiet down” for the night. My outside lights are on a GE Outdoor outlet, but pretty much stay on 24/7, I have only bought 1 GE Outdoor z-wave outlet, so I also have a non-zwave light sensor outdoor outlet connected to the z-wave to turn off the house lights, but leave my blow up Santa on and allow me to turn it all off with ST if I want/need.
I didn’t get too creative, but I did install another Jasco Zwave outlet in the back of my built in book case.
My wife LOVES her Christmas decorations, and this year is no exception. We bought a new tree which she wants to see lit 24 hours a day.
A quick look at the the current draw revealed it to be drawing 240 watts.
That works out to about $22.00 a month worth of electricity, if it was left on 24/7.
I installed the new outlet I’d bought a while back, intending to use it to power some led lighting for the book cases, and set it up to turn the tree on only when my wife is home.
It won’t amount to much difference, but this way I figure it subsidizes my addiction to smart things somewhat.
I replaced some HUE bulbs with Link ones where I did not really need/use color and moved the HUE’s out front (I hope they work in rain, so far so good). Now when my front lights come on as passersby walk down the sidewalk in front of the house they see red and green lights. If we were not getting pounded with rain here in SF I would post a picture. . .
I have now added using my virtual switch (On/Off Button Tile + Big Switch App) and my new “Big Talker” app to speak “Merry Christmas” through “VLC Thing” pointed at instances of VLC running on a Windows computer and a Raspberry Pi.
haha
