Thought of another one…
I bought some TP-Link wifi bulbs that were flaky from the start. After some investigation I discovered that these particular bulbs felt it important to phone home to China every few seconds and became very, very unhappy if the lines were down. After a short tantrum they would reset their wifi connection before regaining consciousness. What that meant in my 3 bulb fixture was that when my “lights off” scene was triggered and my firewall was blocking their corporate masters, one or more of the bulbs was often in a stupor and would remain on indefinitely.
Did I just go spend $25 on some new, decent bulbs that actually worked? Nope - no way some stinking TP-Link bulbs were going to win! Instead I spent hours creating multiple redundant automations that checked for each possible failure state, kept polling the bulbs until their tantrum ended and they regained consciousness, and then turned off whatever bulbs were left on.
Every time I turned off the lights I was able to declare victory. After I felt they had learned their lesson I bought some Zigbee bulbs that actually work.
This is some shit I would do. Fuck you and your not working, I’ll show you who’s boss!
I click a button when taking my pill so I don’t take it twice by mistake, it also alerts me if I’ve forgotten my dose. Not really ridiculous, but I wanted to feel included lol
frog I can’t even remember to get my meds renewed let alone take them half the time. 30 days of pills last me upwards of 3 months before I get a new bottle. no wonder I’m so messed up
MedTimer (FOSS) and a 7-day pill organizer changed my life.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to upgrade to one with AM/PM distinctions to balance the uppers and downers.
Also, you have ADHD. Talk to somebody about it.
I replaced my fridge light with an RGB zwave light and door sensor. This concept has been solved for decades and my solution is worse. But it also turns green…
Not sure this belongs, but my most proud automation is an automatic water bowl for my dogs. It automatically drains, rinses, and fills 16 times per day so they always have fresh water. They deserve a better life than my lazy ass can give them.
Not too crazy but I have automations based on whether external doors are open: if it’s hot and it’s cooler outside and someone opens the door then the fan near it gets turned out. Similarly if the heater is on but someone leaves a door open longer than one minute (conservative) the heaters will shut off. And all the air fresheners shut off if the doors are ever open.
My house’s fridge has a horribly designed freezer that is just a huge drawer with a smaller drawer inside. It wastes a huge amount of freezer space.
It also doesn’t close all the way periodically. If you’re not paying attention, it freezes up the coil, and melts all your freezer food.
I mounted a door sensor switch to the side and it sends my phone an email if the door been open for more than five minutes.
What brand?
Would the phrase “Never by a household appliance made by a cell phone company” apply in this case?
Modern fridges just…do that.
My fridge sends a push notification if the door is opened too long.
The issue with that is that all of them require internet access for that, and there’s no way I’m connecting my fridge to the internet.
Mine just starts dinging if its left open for too long. Same wiþ þe fridge doors. Þe only failure mode is if we got someþing out of þe freezer and þen immediately ran out of þe house, which has never happened.
Mine does that too, but LG’s app required fine location permissions to be always on. No way in hell I’m going to let LG track my every move so I can be alerted when the fridge door is open or the washer’s done. They’d have to buy me dinner first.
Mine is turning on a fan when an exercise video is played. Pressing a button is way too difficult.
Laziest eh? Probably the one that deletes completed items from my shopping list when I leave the supermarket, because I got sick of doing it manually.
Most ridiculous would be the NFC tag I have on the lid of my cold brew coffee jug. I make a batch so rarely that I can never remember how much coffee to add, so scanning the tag makes my Google Home say; “You want 80g of coffee per litre, or 6 scoops.”
44 automations + 27 scripts and counting, not sure any of them are totally over the top but theres at least 2 dedicated buttons in my house for when the dog needs to take a shit in the middle of the night to turn on specific lights for a short time for him.
Unfortunately I haven’t taught him to use them on his own.
44 automations? HA!
I have a small home and currently have over 200 automations. Maybe I need to find other hobbies.
600+ automations, 500+ scripts :( My house runs itself, and has its own moods. If it’s in a goth persona and feeling miserable (which it usually is when in a goth persona), it’ll change some of the light colors to apocalypse of blood.
You win, but you definitely need to find other hobbies.
