How does that help though, knowing the washer uses that much power is cool but unless you want dirty clothes there isn’t much you can do about it, no?
Push notification when watts go less than four (laundry notification). Can also tell when its washing versus drying (its a combo unit). Can also tell what’s contributing to high load in house.
Thats my power dashboard. I have others. I mainly glance at the solar and house power. Girlfriend just uses the notification.
How difficult is it to install the HEM? Looks like it would be simple, but maybe I’m missing something?
I think it’s easy. But you have to open your panel. It’s dangerous if you are not careful. There are some threads showing various installs with a search.
Our use case isn’t so much about automation as practicality. We needed to add lights in an area where we would have a tough time running electrical wires. I talked my wife into track lighting, but she stipulated that she needed to be able to turn each light on and off individually. By using ST with smart bulbs, we can easily (and inexpensively) get that done. By using a seven button wall switch, she can treat the smart lights as though they are traditional lights.
We’re going to use the same technique to add some sconces to our music room. Running wires would be a headache, but ST should be able to handle it fine.
We’ve had a couple small hiccups, but in every case except one she has pushed the button for the lights and they have come on.
My own personal favorite use case is with geofencing on my phone. When I come home after dark, the entry lights turn on.
I use the auto-turn on fan in the bathroom and love it. Put that switch in over the weekend and it’s been great.
One of the items I like most is the ability to have all my lights turn off when I leave. No more wondering if I forgot to turn a light off.
Roombas are loud when they’re in the same room with you, so I have mine fire up only when I’m gone.
Things like Laundry Monitor can definitely be practical, especially if your laundry room is in the basement or a completely different part of the house (hard to hear when the equipment stops).
One that I just stole from @diehllane in another thread:
Motion sensor in hallway linen closet turns on the hallway light when it sees motion. If the light is already on, it is set to full brightness.
The main bits of my automation that take it to something extremely useful are
I have a double garage that i use for a lot of storage of kit as well as a utility corner for the washing machine/tumble dryer and there is a sink, now obviously the garage is not heated, and we are not known for the best weather in the UK, it rains lots and lots, and we are in and out of the garage multiple times per day.
So I have a Zwave lock on the side garage door so when i open my back door of the house the garage door automatically unlocks, and then you can just walk in and the light switches on etc… when i close the door, the light goes out and after 60 seconds after the door is closed it locks again. this is a godsend to my wife when she is carrying laundry baskets out to the garage, no more looking for the key,especially when my kids would use it and not put it back.
Also every winter i had problems in the depths of winter of the pipes freezing when the temperature drops below freezing, and i have had plumbing damage as well as damage to my washing machine as its not recommended you install them in unheated areas because of this issue, now an oil filled radiator will come on to keep the temps just above freezing in that corner of the garage. we had the first really cold snap of the year last night and dropped to -5 and it worked as it should without issues. i don’t have a water sensor yet, but when i do that will make the solution complete.
I monitor the power usage of the Dryer and Washing Machine and notify when the cycles have finished, as they arent in the house, this saves my wife keeping going out to check if she has more than 1 load she has to put on…she loves that automation.
I haven’t tied in the main house locks to the system yet due to some reliability concerns, but as others have said the code automation will be good when i do.
Security is a real plus, i have 4 CCTV cameras in the house which record to an NVR local device, and my concern has always been that if someone uplifts the NVR my evidence of a breakin goes with it, at least this way snapshots are made to the cloud on motion, i am currently working on the camera motion detection also triggering the same action in ST.
now you don’t think light automation is a must, then i bet you don’t have kids living with you. i have two teenagers and the days of nagging them to turn off lights are gone. and they have their own office upstairs where they are on Xbox’s/Computers with headphones on, and we were sick to death of shouting up the stairs to tell them to do stuff or come down for dinner. we even fitted a wireless intercom but they just didn’t hear it with their headphones on. now we have a code for flashing the lights green flashes they come down for tea, red means they have chores to do and we want it done now. and blue is that one of their friends is at the door or on the phone. it works well, and we have thre buttons for these on the wall mounted tablets in the various rooms.
I am still creating, what i am working on now, i work from home and i am trying to automate based on what activities i am doing on the PC. i.e automatically pausing Sonos when i get a lync call and resume after the call has finished. i am looking at VoxCommando for to achieve this.
What do you use to flash the lights? Just some on/off commands or is there something better?
I just create a simulated momentary button for each action, and then i use rule machine to set the color and back to white with delays. but to be honest i am starting to write my own smartapps to do this as i can send lighting control better.
but that that goes hand in hand for my halloween planning which i am starting now as it will take that long to tally up the sound and lighting
Hey I hope you release some of that Halloween stuff
yup i will release it prior, but it will be very specific to my house.
It’s really the best night of the year for me, it always takes months of planning i measure my success on kids running away crying and screaming from my house because they are scared. I even managed to make a 30 year old bloke jump backwards from the door scared on the Halloween just gone.
I’ve got a name for it now and the parents of the younger kids can be seen dragging the their kids past even though they want to come because i was told some of the kids had nightmares after the year before 
That is so awesome! I have 8 kids and I love torturing them! ! ! ! Hahaha
I love threads like this. Hoping to reboot it for more ideas.
I currently use smart lighting to auto turn on/off lights at sunrise and sunset, but considering using more scenes/routines in combo with motion sensors.
Since this thread began three years ago, we have since added the quick browse lists in the community – created wiki. If you look down towards the bottom of that page to the “project reports” section, you can find lots of lists on different topics that should give you many ideas. 
I love threads like this as well, they help to stimulate conversation and spread ideas. Something the ST community has been lacking a lot over the past year.
One of my Practical Uses is with my whole house fan. I wrote an app to control.
When I open a preselected number of windows the whole house fan will turn on.
At the same time the thermostats will turn off.
When all of the windows are later closed, the thermostats automatically turn on.
This is great because I was always catching myself forgetting to turn off one of
the thermostats, usually the one upstairs. So, while I had all of that nice fresh air
going through the house I was heating or cooling it at the same time.
I built some safety options into the app.
- fan will NOT turn on if the minimum number of windows is not open. This prevents the
back draft of the gas appliances exhaust. If the windows are open and someone closes
a bunch of them so less than the min are open, the fan turns off. - it does a bunch of checks for other conditions and restrictions as well.
Scheduled smart blinds (based on sunrise/sunset) is one of those things I can’t live without now that I have them. I no longer have to be the person who goes around the house twice a day doing it, and I don’t have to worry about those three window blinds that are difficult to reach and were often left closed before they became smart. I also love being able to open/close ALL the blinds at once via Alexa.
I’m also interested in which devices are successfully being used to accomplish these projects.
Great share BTW. Plenty of good ideas.
Yeah, this community is pretty amazing. Not just in their creativity, but in their willingness to write it all up and share it with others.