Summary
Building a smart home is easy, but creating an ecosystem where all your gadgets work together without manual control is trickier. Although being able to turn off your home’s lights or adjust the thermostat remotely from another country is neat, smart home gadgets truly become smart when they complete actions on their own. I’ve got a strong collection of accessories in my smart home, from speakers, displays, and cameras to thermostats and lights. They all talk to each other and complete actions without me ever picking up my phone, and it’s thanks to the Google Home app’s automations. I use Google Home to run these five automations in my smart home, but you can build them in any ecosystem, including Apple Home or Home Assistant. If you want to get more out of your smart home accessories and aren’t sure where to start with automation, consider this your launchpad. Camera-based message broadcasting Use your smart speakers and security cameras together Your smart home cameras are capable of recording events and 24/7 video, if you’ve got the right gear. However, for those that also own a smart speaker or display, they can do much more than that. I built an automation that broadcasts a message that my cameras are recording when they detect motion during a specific time range. As a reminder, Google Home automations are composed of Starters, Conditions (optional), and Actions. In this case, the starter is the living room camera detecting motion, the condition is the time range, and the action is the broadcast. I set up my automation to only cover my office between 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., when it is supposed to be empty. If the camera detects motion during that time, it’ll broadcast a message through the Nest Hub in my office that states the camera is recording. The broadcast serves two purposes. It reminds people in my household that the camera is recording if they’re unexpectedly in the office overnight. Ideally, if there was an intruder, the broadcast could serve as a warning. In addition to an in-home broadcast, I added a notification action to the automation that pings my phone when the camera detects motion. This all happens automatically, without me lifting a finger. Automate when your cameras turn on and off Use Google Home’s presence sensing to only record when you’re away I have security cameras to keep an eye on my home when no one is around. Since I live in an apartment complex, it’s not uncommon for maintenance workers to need to enter at times when everyone is out of the house. I use an automation to turn the cameras on when everyone has left the house, and turn the cameras off when someone returns home. The automation hinges on a Google Home feature called presence sensing. Google Home uses your phone’s location, and the location of everyone’s phone that has access to your home, to determine if you’re home or away. When it recognizes that everyone in the household is away from home, the cameras switch on. There are two separate automations working together to make this possible. They both use presence sensing as the starter and turn the cameras on or off as the action, but individual automations are needed for when someone is home or everyone is away. There’s a lot more you can do with presence sensing beyond just camera control. You could set the lights and TV to turn off when everyone leaves the house, or raise the thermostat’s temperature setting to conserve energy. Morning wake-up and night wind-down automations Set the lights and speakers in your home to match the mood When you first dabble in smart home automation, you test out good morning and good night routines. While these are basic automations, they shouldn’t be overlooked. One way to spice up your good morning or good night automations is to use an event as the starter rather than a specific time. For example, you could set your good morning automation to start every day at sunrise and your good night automation to start every day at sunset. Or, you might set the automation to respond to a device status, like when the TV is turned off after 10:00 p.m. This kind of dynamic automation adapts to your daily life. It isn’t confined to a specific time, but rather, is designed to align with your natural routine. Once you’ve picked the right starter, there are powerful actions you can tie to a good morning or good night routine. If you have smart blinds, you could configure an automation that slowly opens them in the morning, creating a natural alarm clock. Without smart blinds, you can recreate the experience with smart lights and a gentle wake-up sound. At night, you can create automations that dim the lights, turn off TVs or gaming consoles, lower volumes, and change the temperature. That last one is crucial for my bedtime routine — I like to sleep in a chilly home, and this automation automatically lowers my Nest Thermostat’s temperature setting every night. Broadcast messages to the entire household Tell the family when it’s time for dinner with your smart speakers We dabbled in broadcasts and notifications related to security cameras. However, it’s important to remember that you can send out broadcasts and notifications for any reason. Some households use these messages to call everyone to dinner, tell kids when it’s their last chance to make the school bus, or remind people to remember their keys. Any message can be turned into a broadcast, whether it’s serious, silly, or a little bit of both. Notifications can be a versatile way to stay informed about your smart home. Some devices, like cameras and doorbells, typically send out notifications by default when they detect motion or a person. However, you can configure status updates from any smart home device to be sent to your smartphone using automations. It’s helpful if you need to know when a door is left open or a light is left on, for instance. Greet visitors with a well-lit porch Your doorbell camera can kick off an automation when it detects motion Your doorbell camera’s motion sensing could be the key to making your home’s entryway into an inviting, and safe, space. Some people like to leave the front and back porch lights on all night, but I have a better solution. I created a Google Home automation that turns on the front and back lights when the doorbell camera detects a person between 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. The light stays on for five minutes, and if the person leaves, it’ll automatically turn back off. This creates a safer space for everyone, and gives the impression that someone’s watching. You can take it even further if you have more smart lighting gadgets in your front yard. Those with smart pathway lights can set automations that turn those on when people are detected at certain times, too. And since the doorbell is only looking for people, not motion, you’ll avoid false positives. The light won’t turn on when an animal runs across your front yard. With Help me create, it’s easier than ever to build custom automations Automations used to be difficult to build. It took quite a bit of time to dig through every menu and see all the possible starters, conditions, and actions. The more smart home accessory types you add to your home, the more options you see in the Google Home app. The recent Gemini for Home update made automation building finally accessible to everyone. Using the Help me create feature, you can describe the automations you want to build in natural language, and Gemini will take care of the rest.