This is my top 5 home automations off all times.

Turn on lights a few minutes before sunset

This is the first home automation that i ever setup. You see, i used to get home after sunset. But one day i got home earlier and i had parked my car onto another street cause there where no parking in front of my house. I was living in front of a school and the teachers where taking all the parking spots during the day. So i got home and I sat in front of the TV and started watching a show. After an hour the sun started to set and i saw something moving outside the window…. only to realise it was one of my neiboors that was peaking trought my living room window. The reason being, the light in my living room was off, so she taught nobody was home. After that day i got myself a smart plug off of amazon and i was using it to trigger my light remotely from my phone to make sure the lights where on before i got home. But it was anoying and i quickly realised that using IFTTT (an online service called @If This Then That@ that allowed to do all kinds of automations with your smart devices) it was possible to set that to happen automatically. It was even possible to change the time the lights turned off based on my phone’s location. That was really great, and i remember one night when i got home and the lights where off. Turn out Tuya, the company that makes most of theses smart plug had removed the option to use that service. So i had to find another solution but i will be showing you that other solution as well as how to set it up in another video.

 

Get notified when the washer is done

Now is time to jump to my second best home automation of all times. Have you ever ran the washer with some clothes in it only to come back the next day to realise you forgot to remove you clothes and you are left with some clothes that you have to wash again because of the smell they have?

This was happening to me all the time. I couldn’t ear the machine and i would often get invited over to some friends gathering and would forget about the laundry in the washer. Some of the the new washers have wifi capability and they can send you a notification to your phone when they are done, but mine was built in 2009 and its dumb.

That was fix by  putting smart plug that has power metering capability between the washer and the electrical outlet behind it. Everytime to washer is done this smart plug senses the washer is no longer consumming as much power and i get a notification on my phone. This automation was pretty difficult to setup as i had to modify my smart plug. But i discovered it could have been much easier. I’ll be sharing how i did this in a future video.

That old dumb doorbell now has phone notifications capabilities

Now for my third favorite automation. I dont know if it was because of the configuration of my appartment or if its a common thing. but i couldn’t hear the doorbell when i was working in my basement office. Nor could i hear it when i was in the backyard. And since my appartment was a rental, there was no way i could install a video doorbell. So i had to find another solution. The solution i ended up with was to use a small wifi developpement board that i hookup up to the doorbell. Everytime someone would ring the doorbell i would get a notification to my phone. It was pretty effective and the good thing about it is that as opossed to a video doorbell no one could tell it was there.

Keurig brewer Counts coffees.

How many coffees do you drink in one day? I certainly drink way too much. Using the same principles as the washing machine i have setup a smart plug behind my Keurig Brewer to sense when the machine is brewing coffee. That allows me to count how many coffees where serve during the day, the week, the month and even during the whole year. It also keeps track of how many coffee pods a have left in stock. That way i know exactly how many pods i have left when i get to the grocery store.

 

Mail delivery notification

This is the last automation for today and its a very usefull one. Ever wanted to know when one of your package get delivered? I’ve setup a zigbee door sensor on our mailbox so whenever someone delivers a small package or if the mailman delivers an enveloppe, we get a message from our Alexa Echo devices that tell use to pickup the mail.