homeassistant

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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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Looking for a cheap dopamine hit ;) (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I love playing with my HA and associated devices. I suspect that most of you reading this get a bit of a jolt every time you add and incorporate a new sensor, camera, integration and get to play with it.

I have all the door/window sensors and locks/covers, every angle of my exterior covered with cameras, alarm, network devices, appliances, sprinklers, household devices covered.

Any ideas for a new thing I can play with?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

NFC tags are cheap and fun

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Ooh, Ive heard of these. Can you name some of the ways you use them? Do these effectively work as a cheap alternative to a physical switch or can they be used more creatively?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I use mine for a jukebox with various playlists. Allows anyone in the house to scan a tag. You can also have them do anything a button can do (run a script, turn on/off devices, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah it's essentially a trigger. I have a few purposes. One is for my dumb washing machine plugged into an energy monitoring smart plug. After it registers the washing is done, I'll get alerts through the house in intervals until I get up and scan the NFC tag on the washing machine (I forget to hang out washing.

As I'm in a rental and I can't have smart switches so I have smart globes and put tags on the switches to toggle the lights.

One by my bedside table to turn off all the lights and smart plugs.

One on my front door to set my away from home scene.

I also have a signed band poster hung on the wall with one, which opens the album in Spotify.

Good fun.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Thanks for sharing! The band poster is particularly very cool :)

I wonder if someone would go so far as to put tags on each of their record albums to do the same thing (kind of odd not actually playing the vinyl, but it'd be easier to play an album!)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Actually NFC tags were one of my first things back when I was using HomeKit. They are much better in HA because you can fire an event without any interaction with the device that scans it and that is pretty cool.

Thanks, I have a 10-pack of tags that I could deploy to do random stuff for my own enjoyment. I appreciate the reminder!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The only downside is that the smartphone needs to be unlocked 🙁

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You don't need to unlock your phone to fire an event in HomeAssistant. My iPhone needs to be awake but will still scan and run shortcut while locked.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

In Android NFC doesn't work when the device is locked 🙁 That's strange that it does on iPhones, usually is the other way around! 😄

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not if you build an NFC tag reader! Then anyone can scan tags! Great for music jukeboxes!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Do you mean that smartphones can act as a NFC tag? Even when they're locked?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh sorry, I meant that with an nfc tag reader you don’t need the smart phone. Apologies that I wasn’t clear.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Oh, nooouuuu! I was so happy when I read your post! 😆 Thanks for clarifying.