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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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I Create Better Automations Using These Hidden Principles - YouTube (youtube.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/homeassistant

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Summary:

This video is about creating better smart home automations. The video introduces 6 heuristics that the creator uses to evaluate automations. These heuristics are:

Insider Knowledge: Automations should not require users to have any special knowledge to use them.

Anti-ambiguous: Automations should be clear and easy to understand what they do.

Failsafe: Automations should not cause any harm or negative consequences.

All or Nothing: Automations should allow users to easily opt in or out of the experience.

Accessibility: Automations should be usable by everyone in the household.

Learnable: Automations should be easy for users to learn and understand how to use them.

The creator argues that automations should be designed to be used by everyone in the household, not just the person who created them. The video uses the example of an automation that dims the lights and closes the blinds when a TV is turned on. This automation would be inconvenient if someone wanted to watch TV during the day, and it would violate the All or Nothing heuristic.

The creator proposes a solution to this problem by adding a toggle switch that allows users to enable or disable the automation. The automation also includes a voice message that announces what actions can be taken. This solution satisfies all of the heuristics and makes the automation more user-friendly.

The video concludes by asking viewers for their feedback on the heuristics and whether they can think of any other important heuristics that should be considered.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago

Thank you for the text summary!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I find Home assistant has all these points with the exception of accessibility; I only have one account so I never encountered this scenario.

The trace feature is amazing to visualize the logic.

I do wish it had a test run feature so you can simulate different examples and data to see is the automation behaves as expected. I had one finicky automation that would fudge up after midnight.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Home Assistant has all these points, but it's about the automations we build. In the video, he explores an automation that dims the lights when he plays stuff on the TV and brightens the lights when he pauses. He explores why it's not kid or wife friendly and how to fix it.