Setting up the perfect smart home can be a delicate balancing act.You may have some automations that work perfectly, but only if you know how to use them.When guests visit, you often need to disable a lot of your home's smart features so that your guests can actually control the lights and heating.
Rather than having to set up a guest mode manually, I set up a calendar in Home Assistant to do it for me.A guest mode makes everyone's life easier Your guests can use your home and won't break anything When it's time to go to sleep, I say, "Hey Jarvis, turn out the lights." The old Android phone by my bed hears the wake word and runs the command, turning off whichever lights are on in the bedroom.If guests come to stay, however, they will have no idea they need to speak to their lights to turn them off.
You can provide them with a 500-page manual that lays out every automation in your smart home, but that's unlikely to make their lives easier.A far simpler option is a guest mode.This can enable a set of simple automations that make your smart home act more dumb, so that guests can control the lights with the light switch or adjust the heating with a physical controller.
It can also disable automations that may not work correctly when you have guests.For example, if you have automations that turn off all your lights and devices when everyone's phones are detected as having left your Home zone, this could leave your guests sitting in the dark if they're home alone.You need to disable this automation to stop it from running when your guests are in the house alone.
Home Assistant Green Dimensions (exterior) 4.41"L x 4.41"W x 1.26"H Weight 12 Ounces Home Assistant Green is a pre-built hub directly from the Home Assistant team.It's a plug-and-play solution that comes with everything you need to set up Home Assistant in your home without needing to install the software yourself. $219 at Amazon Expand Collapse My calendar now tells Home Assistant when guests are coming A dedicated calendar event makes guest mode happen automatically Close You can make a simple toggle that can turn your guest mode on and off, and even set up a smart button or voice command that you can use to activate your guest mode.These are perfectly legitimate options, and work well.
I opted for a different approach.Instead of having to manually turn guest mode on before guests arrive, and turn it off again once they leave, I decided to have Home Assistant do it for me.Home Assistant can monitor calendars through the native Local Calendar integration or through integrations such as Google Calendar.
I have a Google Calendar set up that I can add events to that Home Assistant can read.In Google Calendar, I can add an event called Guests whenever guests are due to visit.A Home Assistant automation watches the calendar and checks for events with that specific name.
When the event starts, the automation runs, and guest mode turns on.When the event ends, the automation turns guest mode back off again.All I need to do is add the appropriate calendar events with the dates that guests are due to stay, and guest mode will automatically turn on and off at the appropriate times.
Related Building a smart home? Here’s one design principle you shouldn’t ignore ”Guest mode” is a sign that you’ve missed the brief.Posts 4 By Tim Brookes The guest room gets comfortable before anyone arrives Heating and other devices turn on when they're needed One of the benefits of using this method is that I can use it to start preparing for guests long before they actually arrive.There's an offset option for the calendar event start trigger that will run the automation a set amount of time before the event begins.
Using this option, I have the heating for the guest room turn on well in advance of the guests' arrival.By default, the heating in the guest room is kept just warm enough to help reduce the risk of condensation and mold, but since the room is only rarely in use, there's no point in heating it to the same temperature as the rest of the home.When guest mode is activated by the calendar automation, the room starts to warm up so that it's at a nice cozy temperature by the time guests arrive.
Home Assistant prepares the rest of the house, too Lights, guest Wi-Fi, TV controls, and more Other guest mode features remain deactivated until the exact start time of the event.This ensures that the automation doesn't disable useful automations before it needs to.When the event actually starts, the full guest mode activates.
A smart display in the kitchen displays a QR code that the guest can scan to connect to the guest Wi-Fi network.Presence-based lighting automations are disabled so that the lights work purely using the dumb switches.My complicated TV remote automation is disabled and replaced with a simple version that uses a tablet to control the TV and select the different streaming apps.
Smart speakers are also disabled so that the guests don't accidentally trigger them and start turning on random devices.Once the guests leave, everything returns to normal.The guest automations turn off, and the original automations turn back on.
The guest room heating returns to its normal state.Anyone can activate guest mode The beauty of this system is that other members of my family can add events to the calendar and automatically turn on guest mode without having to touch Home Assistant.Rather than having to teach them which button to press or which toggle in Home Assistant to flip, adding events to the shared calendar is simple to do.
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