How have you used smart devices outside of their intended purposes.
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Ok. I’ll start it off.
Last nite my wife accidentally let our old cat out. We looked around and called him for a while. We realized that we would have to look around the neighbourhood for him. What if he comes home while we are away from the house. I took a motion sensor from the house and set it up to alert anytime and placed it at the door. We walked around calling him for hours. Finally we when to bed. It started raining. At about 1:30am the iphone chimed an alert " Motion at the front door ". I immediately jumped out of bed and there he was wet and cold.
Happy to have him back and glad to have Smartthings.
Peter
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I’m using IFTTT integration with Google Calendar as a morning alarm clock. Specific calendar items trigger the good morning phrase which turns off the white noise machine I sleep with, plays the weather & news on Sonos. More info here: http://chrisnelson.ca/2014/11/07/smart-sleeping-morning-wakeup-routines-with-smartthings/
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I monitor my septic tank with a SmartSense multi to detect any alteration from normal trends which is what folks used to do with counters to detect leaks or other issues early. The app uploads each pump trigger to Thingspeak. All I did was modify various code that others created for different purposes and shared with the community. I’ll figure out some sort of predictive algorithm to detect trend changes after I gather a year’s worth of data.
So far triggering reliably over four months except when I broke it in July for awhile by renaming the device. Detects family vacations and perhaps SmartThings October extended outages. Just a SmartSense multisensor mounted on the pump switch which bumps enough to trigger the sensor each time the pump turns on. Original battery reports 63% at a current temp of 23.1F degrees. I also have alerts, like septic pump has not triggered in 24 hours when mode is Home. Some others I can’t recall now since none have fired yet.
@Greg monitors his sump pump using and app that him and I developed together. He was a great Guinea pig haha thanks again @greg! Similar to @Dlee. Does it run more than twice in x amount of time? Yes? Then notify me. If anyone is interested the code is on my GitHub
I use an app I call “Wasp Away” that is really nothing but a hourly scheduled on/off of all my outdoor lighting. I only need to run it during the summer to keep paper wasps from building nests in the fixtures. They hate when the CFL’s come on and leave immediately. Before I would have to buy expense and toxic sprays and spray up into the lights. Not good for the lights, or me, and it would only keep them away a month or two.
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hahah thanks @tslagle13
I have a proposed unusual use that is just waiting on the proper device to be integrated. I’m waiting on the lowes orbit water valve to be integrated so I can run my sprinkler when outdoor motion is detected at night from August - October to shoo away the skunks that like to dig up my grass looking for grubs. And maybe soak a burglar?
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I love this one! Fantastic idea! Can’t wait for a viable sprinkler integration to make it work.
This works well:
but it would be nice to have more smarts so you don’t get soaked when you get in range.
I use a multisensor on one of these sprinkler-scarecrows so I can get a laugh thinking about the cat that wants to crap near my house in that spot.
But the sensor also tells me that outside air temp is getting to 32F now so the scarecrow will have to be packed up for the winter.
I use a Z-Wave AC outlet to turn my CatGenie automatic litter box off when I’m sleeping and on in the morning. When we go on Vacation, the CatGenie gets to run 24/7.
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Turn off the 3D printer after prints are done. Motion sensor to watch printbed or toolhead. When motion stops, turn off the appliance plug after a set delay. No more setting an alarm to wake up in the middle of the night to shut the machine off…
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Energy consumption reporting smart outlets (like the Aeon Aeotec Appliance Module, etc.), are a common tool for this use case.
By tracking the actual power draw periodically, a sufficiently long period of low draw probably indicates that the 3D printer (or other vampire device) is no longer performing a power intensive function and the outlet can be turned off.
Hmm… That’s probably a more efficient / appropriate way of accomplishing the task. I just stuck a motion sensor in the enclosure along with a smoke detector. 
The plus side is I get temp readings from the motion sensor.
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I want to do this with my primary desktop. It takes a while to shutdown, and it would be nice if SmartThings would observe plug load less than 16 watts and kill the outlet. Is there an existing or close-enough smartapp for this?
I am using the Aeon KW dongle plug (pre-Gen5, maybe Gen2?)
I did a very shallow quick search of the Forums and found this Posting below (you may try additional searches). I was able to find this entry because I remembered that Laundry machine monitoring was the requirement / use case.