I specifically would not go down that path because the motion sensor can turn off the lights automatically and most presence sensors require constant power to work and are expensive. I am getting around this limitation at my house, where we keep the bathroom door open when it is not in use, by not allowing the light to turn off in the bathroom when the door is closed but allowing it to turn off when the door is opened, using conditional logic in our automations. And to trigger the automation, we use the motion sensor not detecting motion.

Both of the rooms where this would be useful that I know of are bathrooms. In the office area of my school, they keep the bathroom doors closed. And at my grandfather’s house, one of the bathrooms was stupidly designed so that the doors (one in the hallway and one in the Guest Bedroom) open to the outside instead of the inside. This means that the doors are in the way and cannot be kept open when the bathroom is not in use. Nonetheless, this will work in any room where the door is primarily kept closed. Some ideas could be a large walk-in closet turned into an office if the door swung out of the closet or if you had stuff behind the door, a room that you need to keep the door closed in for whatever reason, or for a different situation. I don’t think that this is an extremely large issue for Automators, as there is a pretty small subset of people who have this issue, but I would guess that it is sort of common.

I’m not quite sure about this, but I think that all of that is handled in the cloud. There’s no direct communication happening over the local network.

Is this an electric fireplace?

What ecosystem are those being run through?

Simplest solution.

The only thing you need to have a good experience with an Apple TV is an iPhone or iPad.

Are the mini splits smart? Do you already have smart tech in your house?

Door pressed, lights turn red, wait one minute, turn lights to Halloween setting.

I think that direct paring is something required of companies that use the Zigbee specification and don’t modify it at all, so pretty much every smart plug from a company that doesn’t push there own hub.

First: Get that piece of shit gateway out of your house and get an actual legit Wi-Fi system. Second: Get a mesh Wi-Fi system! Third: Get a separate modem. This is optional, but getting a mesh Wi-Fi system is not unless you want to have to constantly worry about having to reboot your router. If you really want to stay with Xfinity products, look at their XFy pods.

If the room has a door and that door usually is closed when you don’t want the lights turning off, you could create a condition that does not allow the lights to turn off when the door is closed. I did this in our bathroom, and it works flawlessly on the technical side when all of the devices all work correctly together and on the people side when people actually close the door. I am currently looking at other ways to add inputs to this automation, but this might work for you. You could also explore using a pressure sensor under a chair in the room as a condition to not turn the lights off, or you could get a millimeter wave motion sensor. You could also have a button on the wall that turns the lights on. A dummy switch would also be turned on when this button was pressed to turn the lights on. You could add a condition that would not allow the lights to turn off when this dummy switch was on. When the lights did turn off, you could have another automation to turn off the dummy switch. I also have this set up in our bathroom.

And it’s more robust, even though most of my automations use Homebridge.

Intercom is complete and utter trash compared to Alexa announcements.

Your comment posted twice.

Unfortunately, that is normal. We’ve had Kasa smart plugs for five years. They get a bit warm when in use. Amazon smart plugs doo as well. I don’t know why, but these smart devices get a bit warmer than normal devices when in use. Nothing to be concerned about, Our first smart plug was purchased in October 2018 and its still being used to this day. I just yesterday pulled out another smart plug that hadn’t been used in almost a year, and hadn’t had a load on it since like 2020. I set it up, and it is now controlling a box fan in our living room. I can’t comment on any of the smart switches.

Papa smart button over the switches. However, in our house, most of our built-in light fixtures are not smart yet.

You have a couple options here. As another user suggested, you could put relays in the bases of the lamps and have the pool chains/switches of the lamps control them. You could also use low-voltage relays and set them up so that they quickly turn on and off, Mimicking a button press, then wire them up to the buttons on the cords. However, this method would only work if the buttons on the cords use a low-voltage signal and not a full 120 V. They do make 120 V relays however.

Lastly, he tends to jump on our bed/chair in our bedroom when we are gone. We have a camera that tracks motion but unless we are keeping a close eye on the camera it’s hard to tell when we are getting a notification that he’s moving, or if he’s jumping on the chair. We have one of those spike mats AND a mat that makes a noise. NEITHER deter him! Would a motion sensor work that I only activate when I’m gone? Anyone try anything like that? In my opinion, deterring him from jumping on furniture is not something you want to do, especially if you are trying to form a bond with the dog. Nonetheless, you might be able to create an automation where motion sensor sends you a notification but only when everyone is not home.

Ring camera live views seem to load pretty fast.