The video is really cool. (And I’m a big Star Trek fan also.)
So I’m assuming that wherever you say “echo, tell computer…” That you’re using the AskAlexa smartapp?
Also, what did you use to motorize your shades?
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Lots of lights controlled with motion (I have lots of lights turn on and off as I walk through my house.)
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Opening Garage Doors when cars arrive and closing when left open leaving (although the closing hasn’t been working well since upgrading to V2 hub)
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Lights turning on and off when doors are open and closed. (Pantry light in my kitchen)
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Morning Wake-up routine to turn on the TV when I wake up on weekdays based on motion events (although this routine has been broken for the last few days)
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Overhead bedroom fan controlled by temperature at night (mode based) and motion/occupancy/temperature during the day.
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Lights turned off when everyone leaves the house (I have the vast majority of lights in my house using smart switches.
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SmartThings integrated with Harmony, Echo, Nest, etc to control lights and such via voice (I have considered setting up AskAlexa but haven’t done it yet.
I’m sure I’ve missed things and am always trying to incorporate more and more things and automation…
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Yes, using the Ask Alexa… why or why did I delay installing that app…
(Oh, your idea of the box with the motion detector is what gave me the idea for my back deck fan).
The shades,
- Create the Somfy zRTSII Device Controller Device Type - Courtesy of @chriswood1001 (Chris’s Device Type297)
- Create the Somfy zWave Blinds Device Type - Courtesy of @Ashwin (@ashwin’s code180) .
G
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Started with Osram bulbs and ST door sensors to complement Piper (meh). Huge fan of the Amazon echo and Ask Alexa. (would love an Echo & Google Now integration). Just removed Rule Machine and will install Core in a couple of weeks.
Similar uses as others so here are the ones with a twist:
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Osram LED strip behind our head board comes on 5 minutes after our Amazon Dot wakes us up (ITTT) in case we snooze. I also have the strip set to turn on when the Good Morning routine runs.
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We have a bedtime report through the Ask Alexa app (Jarvis) that tells us if any lights are on or door/window/contact switches are open:
It is 10:28 PM on Thursday. It is time for bed. The Porch Light is on. The Living Room Light is on. The Overhead is on. The Iris Button is 76 degrees. The current temperature is 81 degrees with Mostly Cloudy skies. The relative humidity is 76% and the winds are calm. Tomorrow your forecast is mostly sunny skies. High around 100 degrees. Winds west-south west at 10 to 15 miles per hour. Sleep tight.
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Bedside Iris button that turns on all Lights when held. (still trying to get the Aeon Multifunction Doorbell to play)
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PIPER camera alerts in armed modes turn on certain ST lights via IFTTT so camera can record.
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Thanks - great list. I have a question around the home theater actions. This is probably pretty basic, but how do you get SmartThings to turn “on” items like a receiver and projector that are already plugged in and powered, but just need to toggle to a state of “on”? I’d LOVE it if I could press a button and have my projector kick on, receiver kick on, and Apple TV power up…
Thanks!
You have to have an intermediate device. The official method, which works very well, is to use the $99 harmony home hub. I have this and really like it. So the harmony is actually issuing the commands to the entertainment devices.
https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Harmony-Smartphone-Entertainment-Automation/dp/B00N3RFC4Q
I don’t know if the harmony can control the Apple TV, though. It does fine with Roku, which is what I use for streaming. But you can look it up on the Logitech Harmony site.
Another device alternative which has more granular controls is the global cache. That’s a more complicated set up but then you have more control options. And it’s not officially supported by SmartThings. But is a good choice for some applications. For most people the harmony is enough. 
I think in order of most used:
- Wash is done notification…
- Kids arrived home and left home notification
- Thermostats comfy when motion detected and we are home, medium when we are home with no motion, and wide open when we are away or on vacation.
- Motion lighting when dark to avoid trips/falls/etc.
4.1 (had to add) Turn lights off when they are left on! This one gets lots of use. - Close the garage door from upstairs/checking if we left it open/notification if open for more than ten minutes
- Checking solar power generation and house consumption from same app.
- Checking who is home from same app.
- Turning the bug zappers on/off based on lux.
- Graphing house trends/temps
- Garage heater
- Hot water recirculation pump.
more… and more coming…
ST has caused me to spend so much on HA, it has always worked very well for me compared to other HA I have tried. 
Edit: In the beginning I used energy savings to justify purchases. Now I get asked to install automated things.
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Something I had set up at one time (and it worked pretty good) was using motion sensors. I used tape to mask off the bottom half of the motion sensors and placed them at different heights in the bedroom so they would detect someone coming in the room.
If the lower one detected motion the lights came on to my wife’s preferences. If the higher and lower sensors detected motion then they came on to my preferences.
In the kitchen if you place one of these high enough that your kids won’t set it off, then if the cabinet opens you’ll know it was not an adult.
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I have lots of favorite things with my system… and it’s always changing… always!
In no particular order…
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Foyer and Porch lights - When the front door opens (24 hours per day) the foyer lights turn on. If the door closes then the lights will go off in 3 minutes. If the door does not close (we leave it open for natural lighting) then the lights go off in 5 minutes. At 20 minutes before sunset the porch lights come on, they turn off at 9 pm. Between the hours of 9 pm and sunrise, if the front door opens then the foyer lights come on and the porch lights come on. Also, between those hours if a presence sensor arrives home, then the porch lights (not the foyer lights) come on.
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Coming home from the store - Our phones use Life360 as our location app. This integrated with IFTTT and ST allows me to have predetermined places. The phone knows when we arrive at these places… (Winn-dixie, Wal-Mart, Publix, Sam’s Club… All places that we would normally bring home lots of stuff). When we leave those places Life360 alerts IFTTT which then tells ST to turn on the “Grocery Shopping” virtual switch. When we arrive home and that switch is on, then the garage door opens, the kitchen lights turn on, the kids alert lights, and their speakers tell them we are home with groceries and to come to the garage to help carry it in. FYI - I do not have to use IFTTT for this automation. I use it as a second level of security. The phone has to tell IFTTT and IFTTT has to tell ST and then the phones have to come home. ST presence is flaky at best. If I didn’t use the virtual switch and IFTTT, then my garage door would be opening up all of the time.
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Announcements - Using AskAlexa and CoRE I can do things like this…
Alexa, tell home to announce dinner time.
Alexa, tell home to tell the boys to go to bed.
Alexa, tell home to ask the boys to bring down their dirty clothes and hangers.
Alexa, ask home to tell me the last time Dug was fed
Alexa, ask home to tell me the last time the litter box was cleaned
… and the list goes on.
With each command Alexa triggers a CoRE Piston which in turn launches actions and sends Text To Speech to speaker through out the house. I have custom things for each of the kids and each of the kids rooms. So I can tell Alex one thing and Justin something else. -
My master bathroom - My wife likes bright lights… I hate bright lights. So, you can imagine the dilemma we have in our master bath. So, I created lighting schemes that are mode dependent and action dependent. The entire automation for the room is on three levels.
Level 1 - Master Bath - Modes - motion sensors trigger the lights in the room and different ones come on at different levels for each mode. Morning 20%, Day 100%, Eve - 75%, Night/Late Night - 40%, Sleep - one bulb at 5%.
Level 2 - Master Bath - Jason’s lights - Using the motion sensor in the shower my level overrides and turns off level one, but only in certain modes. So, I walk in the room and the lights are triggered by level one. When I get in the shower, the lights slowly dim down to very very low… one bulb at 2%. A couple of minute later the fans turn on. When I get out, once the motion sensor reports no action then the system resets and goes back to level one automations.
Level 3 - Master Bath - Wendi’s lights - She always has her cabinet door open and she insist on all of the lights being on at a billion percent. So, I put a contact sensor on her cabinet door that overrides and turns off levels 1 & 2. It turns on all of the lights and leaves it that way until her cabinet door closes. It also turns on her hair accessories located beneath the cabinet. I told her the curling Iron is NOT on the system so she has to turn it off manually… though she sometimes forgets… so I put it on a plug in module just in case she forgets. She closes the cabinet and they all go off.
What really neat about this one is that in the beginning I found that as level 2 or 3 ended I either had to stand still for 30 seconds or stand there in the dark. The lights did not automatically just restart in the mode that they were in before the higher levels were turned on. So, using CoRE, in the Level 2 & 3 pistons at the end of the shut down section I have the system execute the piston that controls the mode lighting for the room. So, the levels shut down and the mode piston is re-initiated. Since I do NOT use motion sensing as a trigger, only a condition, when the piston is executed it is found to be true and resets the lights. Then when I leave the room every thing shuts down as programmed.
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And finally… The TV… My baby is now 10 months old and it took me that long to finally buy the harmony hub. I bought it once before but returned it… don’t ask why… cause I’m a moron. Anyway… I don’t do a lot with it yet, but I just got it a few days ago. Right now I can just say, Alexa, tell home to watch TV/Netflix/Movies and she turns things off and on. I got it simply because it never fails I’ll want to turn on the TV just as Moira falls asleep in my arms and the remote is on the other side of the room… next to the TV.
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and finally… my still a work in progress… My Smart Home User Manual!!! I haven’t had time to update it lately… but it’s being worked on… follow this link…
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Welcome to the world of homeautomation =)
I can confirm Harmony controls AppleTV well (and all generations of ATV are supported). It took me months to justify the Harmony in my own mind…one of the best purchases we made.
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Awesome set up? How do you get Alexa to say all of that extra stuff?
Search this site for “Ask Alexa”. With that you can setup the verbal commands.
A couple of my practical favorites are a open close sensor on our upright freezer door in garage with 10 minute open alert, and a moisture sensor in the laundry room behind washer. With teenagers in the house, before SmartThings we lost full freezer of meat/food twice and had water damage in laundry. Since setting up these sensors have saved freezer from defrosting multiple times and water damage again in laundry room! Well worth the investment! Most frivolous is mailbox sensor and voice announcement of ‘mail has arrived’ over Sonos speakers, fun!
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