90 practical automation recipes, grouped by what they actually do for you rather than by brand. Each one names the trigger, the logic that makes it reliable, and the hardware it needs. Filter by category, or read straight through. Moving your devices to a new hub first? That lives under help with migrations.
Showing all 90 automation recipes
Charge only during the cheapest hours instead of the moment you plug in. The automation reads your tariff schedule, works out how many hours the car needs for the state of charge you want by morning, and starts the charger late enough to finish just in time. Add a manual override for the days you need a fast top-up.
You'll need: Smart EV charger or a contactor with metering, tariff schedule
When your inverter reports more export than the house is using, dump the surplus into the immersion heater rather than selling it back at a low rate. The trick is a hysteresis band and a minimum run time so the element does not chatter on and off every time a cloud passes. Cut out on cylinder thermostat temperature, not on a timer.
You'll need: Inverter with a local API, smart relay on the immersion circuit, cylinder temperature sensor
Day-ahead prices publish in the afternoon for the following day. Fetch them, rank the hours, and schedule the battery to charge across the cheapest block and discharge across the most expensive one. Leave a reserve percentage untouched so the battery still covers an outage.
You'll need: Home battery with a local or cloud API, day-ahead price source
A media stack, desk setup or games console can draw real power doing nothing. Watch the plug's power reading, and when it stays below a threshold for a set period, cut the socket. Never do this on anything that needs to update overnight, and never on a fridge, router or hub.
You'll need: Metering smart plugs
A simple notification an hour before your most expensive block starts, listing what is currently drawing the most power. Cheap to build and surprisingly effective, because most peak-hour consumption is habit rather than necessity.
You'll need: Dynamic tariff feed, whole-home energy meter
Rather than switching heating off, drop the target flow temperature or setpoint by one or two degrees during the expensive block and recover afterwards. A well insulated house barely notices, and the heat pump avoids running its compressor hardest at the worst possible price.
You'll need: Heat pump with a controllable setpoint, tariff feed
Clamp meters on the main circuits, then build one screen showing live draw, today's total, and the split by circuit. This is the automation that makes every other energy automation obvious, because you stop guessing which loads matter.
You'll need: CT clamp energy monitor, hub with an energy dashboard
Load the machine and press start on the appliance, but hold the power at the plug until the cheapest window opens. Only works with machines that resume after power is restored, so test yours before relying on it.
You'll need: Metering smart plug, tariff feed, a machine that resumes after power loss
Rotate a single metering plug through the house a day at a time and log the idle draw of each appliance. After a fortnight you will have a ranked list, and usually two or three offenders account for most of the standby total.
You'll need: One metering smart plug, a hub that logs history
On sunny, low-demand days wholesale prices can go negative, meaning you pay to export. Watch the price feed and, when it drops below zero, charge the battery, run the water heater, or curtail the inverter instead of exporting.
You'll need: Inverter with export control or a battery, price feed
When the alarm sounds, bring every light to full cool white, open the blinds, unlock the internal path to the exit, and stop the ventilation so it does not feed the fire. This should supplement, never replace, interlinked mains-powered alarms.
You'll need: Smart smoke/CO detector, smart lights, smart lock
Fixed timers are obvious from the street. Instead, pick two or three rooms at random each evening, vary the on and off times by up to forty minutes, and follow real sunset rather than a clock. Include an upstairs light late in the evening, which is what a real household does.
You'll need: Smart bulbs or switches in three or more rooms
Require a second sensor to agree within a short window before the alarm escalates. A single PIR trips on pets, sunlight and warm air from a vent; a PIR plus a door contact or a second PIR in the next room almost never does.
You'll need: Two or more motion sensors, door/window contacts
Presence-aware notifications, so you are not pinged every time you walk past your own hallway camera. Occupancy comes from phone presence plus a door sensor, which is far more reliable than phone location alone.
You'll need: Camera with an event trigger, presence detection
At a set hour, check every door and window contact. If anything is open or unlocked, announce which one on the nearest speaker rather than sending a notification nobody reads, then lock what can be locked automatically.
You'll need: Smart lock, door/window contacts, a speaker
A probe sensor inside the freezer, an alert above minus fifteen degrees for more than thirty minutes, and an escalation to a phone call if it keeps climbing. The delay matters, because opening the door briefly should not wake you at 3am.
You'll need: Temperature probe sensor rated for sub-zero use
Arm on a confirmed empty house: all phones away, no motion for ten minutes, and the front door closed. Disarm on the first arrival, and always give an audible warning countdown so a returning family member is not startled into a false alarm.
You'll need: Alarm-capable hub, presence detection, door contacts
Contacts only tell you a window was opened. Vibration or glass-break sensors catch the window being forced or broken while still closed, which is the more common ground-floor entry. Tune sensitivity to ignore passing lorries.
You'll need: Vibration or glass-break sensors
One long press on a wall button or wearable turns every light to full, sounds a siren, and messages a chosen contact with the room name. Useful for security, and just as useful for an elderly relative who has fallen.
You'll need: Smart button or wearable, siren, smart lights
A contact sensor inside a medicine or cleaning cupboard, alerting only when children are home and adults are not in the room. A quiet piece of child safety that takes ten minutes and one sensor.
You'll need: Door contact sensor, presence detection
Above roughly 1,000 ppm concentration and sleep quality measurably suffer. Run the mechanical ventilation up a step, or open a window vent, when CO2 crosses the threshold, and drop back once it recovers. In a bedroom this is the single most noticeable air automation.
You'll need: CO2 sensor, controllable ventilation or a window actuator
Fifteen minutes before your usual bedtime, read temperature, humidity and CO2 in the bedroom and announce anything out of range with the fix, such as cracking the window or turning the radiator down. Ambient conditions cause more bad nights than people realise.
You'll need: Multi-sensor with temperature, humidity and CO2
Frying, candles, a nearby bonfire or a wood burner can raise indoor particulates tenfold within minutes. Trigger the purifier on the reading rather than a schedule, run it until the level has been clear for twenty minutes, and log the events so you learn your own sources.
You'll need: PM2.5 air quality sensor, smart air purifier or a plug
On high-pollen mornings, close roof windows, stop the ventilation intake if it has no filter, and pre-run the purifier before the daily peak in the late morning. Hay fever sufferers notice this one immediately.
You'll need: Pollen forecast source, window actuators or ventilation control
Below 40% and airways dry out; above 60% and mould gets a foothold. Run a humidifier or dehumidifier against a band rather than a single setpoint, with a dead zone in the middle so the two never fight each other.
You'll need: Humidity sensors, humidifier and/or dehumidifier on smart plugs
Total VOC sensors are crude but useful for exactly this: a sharp rise after a solvent-heavy activity. Alert, then ventilate for a fixed period rather than waiting for the reading to fall, since many sensors drift slowly.
You'll need: VOC or air quality sensor, ventilation control
Radon is a long-term average risk, not a spike risk, so daily numbers mislead. Log readings, compute a rolling seven-day mean, and alert only when the average crosses the action level for your country. Boost sub-floor ventilation if you have it.
You'll need: Radon monitor with an API or local integration
A sound-level sensor that flags sustained noise above a comfortable level, which is usually a reminder to close a door or move a call. Store only the decibel level, never audio, and keep the sensor out of guest rooms.
You'll need: Sound level sensor
If a desk plug has been drawing power for ninety minutes with no motion elsewhere in the house, put a short prompt on the nearest display. Low effort, easy to ignore when you are genuinely busy, which is the point.
You'll need: Metering plug, motion sensor, smart display or speaker
Cool bright white in the morning, neutral through the afternoon, warm and dim after sunset, with blue removed entirely in the last hour before bed. Apply it to fixed ceiling lights only, so a manually chosen lamp scene is not overridden.
You'll need: Tunable-white or colour smart bulbs
Skip the cycle if more than a few millimetres fell in the last day or is forecast in the next, and extend it during a heatwave. This is the difference between a timer and a controller, and it usually pays for the sensor in one summer.
You'll need: Irrigation controller or valve, rain sensor or weather forecast source
Water on what the soil reports, zone by zone, rather than one schedule for the whole garden. Beds, pots and lawn dry at completely different rates. Set a per-zone minimum interval so a badly placed probe cannot flood a bed.
You'll need: Soil moisture sensors per zone, multi-zone valve controller
Trigger on calculated sunset with a small offset rather than a fixed time, so the schedule stays right through the year, and switch off at a set hour instead of dawn to save power and spare the neighbours.
You'll need: Outdoor-rated smart lights or a weatherproof switch
When the outdoor sensor or forecast predicts sub-zero temperatures, alert in the evening so you can drain the outside tap and cover plants, and close any automated vents. Add a trickle heater on the pipe run if you have one.
You'll need: Outdoor temperature sensor or forecast source
Awnings and pergola screens are the most commonly wind-damaged smart device. Retract above a threshold and refuse to extend again for a cool-down period, and always treat retract as the safe default when the sensor stops reporting.
You'll need: Anemometer or wind data source, motorised awning
Heat to temperature in time for when you actually use it, using the cheapest hours available, and hold a lower standby temperature the rest of the week. Pool heating is often the largest single load in a house, so the savings are real.
You'll need: Pool or spa heater control, temperature sensor, tariff feed
Motion alone means the light triggers uselessly at noon. Add a sun-below-horizon condition and a short cooldown, and use a warm colour temperature so it looks like a house rather than a car park.
You'll need: Outdoor motion sensor, outdoor smart light
A rain sensor and a fifteen-second delay before acting, so a single splash does not close a window you deliberately opened. Announce the closure rather than doing it silently, because a jammed roof window needs a human.
You'll need: Rain sensor, motorised roof windows
Open the vent above the upper limit, close it and run the frost heater below the lower one, and leave a wide dead band between the two so a spring afternoon does not cycle the actuator all day.
You'll need: Greenhouse temperature sensor, vent actuator, heater on a smart relay
Run the display only between chosen dates, from dusk to a sensible hour, with a countdown scene on the day itself. Building it around a date list means you set it once and never dig the timer out again next December.
You'll need: Outdoor smart plug or lights
Use a wide geofence, several kilometres out, so the house has time to react instead of starting once you are already inside. Combine it with travel-time data if you can, because distance alone is a poor proxy in traffic.
You'll need: Smart thermostat or air-con control, phone presence
Per-room targets driven by motion and door state, with a minimum temperature everywhere so pipes and unused rooms stay safe. The hard part is not the logic but the valve balancing, so change one room at a time.
You'll need: Smart radiator valves or zone actuators, room temperature sensors, motion sensors
A contact sensor per window and a short delay, so heating stops instead of fighting the outdoors. Include a five-minute grace period on close, because rooms overshoot after a purge airing.
You'll need: Window contact sensors, smart radiator valve or air-con control
Lock the doors, turn off downstairs lights, lower the thermostat, arm the sensors and leave a dim landing light on. Fire it from a bedside button rather than voice, so it works when the internet does not.
You'll need: Smart button, smart lock, smart lights, thermostat
Solar position rather than clock time, so the schedule remains correct in December and June without you touching it. Add an offset per room, because an east-facing bedroom and a west-facing living room want different mornings.
You'll need: Motorised blinds or curtain track
Close the sun-facing blinds when outdoor temperature and solar irradiance are both high and the room is unoccupied. Shading before the room heats is far cheaper than cooling it afterwards, which is why this beats any air-con automation.
You'll need: Motorised blinds, outdoor temperature or irradiance data
Instead of a fixed pre-heat time, record how long the house took to reach target on previous mornings at similar outdoor temperatures, and start early enough based on that. Most commercial thermostats do a crude version of this; a hub can do better with your own data.
You'll need: Smart thermostat with a settable setpoint, outdoor temperature source, history logging
One switch that drops all setpoints to a setback value, disables presence automations, keeps randomised lighting running, and holds a minimum temperature so nothing freezes. Reverses itself on the return date.
You'll need: Thermostat or radiator valves, a virtual switch
Downdraft in summer for the wind-chill effect, gentle updraft in winter to push warm air off the ceiling without a draught. Switch on a rolling outdoor average rather than a calendar date.
You'll need: Fan controller supporting direction, outdoor temperature source
Visitors do not know your house's habits. Guest mode disables motion-off timers in the spare room and bathroom, keeps a night light on, suspends away-mode arming and stops announcements after 10pm. Expires automatically after a set number of days.
You'll need: A virtual switch, motion sensors, smart lights
The two classic failures are the light cutting out while you are sitting still, and the automation overriding a deliberate manual switch. Fix both with a long timeout retriggered by any motion, and a manual-override flag set whenever the physical switch or app is used.
You'll need: Motion sensor, smart bulbs or a smart wall switch
Ramp from 1% deep amber to full brightness over twenty to thirty minutes before your alarm. Start dimmer and slower than feels right on paper, and always leave the real alarm as a backstop.
You'll need: Dimmable smart bulb, ideally tunable white
One rule applied to every ceiling light: colour temperature and brightness interpolated across the day from sunrise to bedtime. Exclude lamps you set by scene, or you will spend your evenings fighting it.
You'll need: Tunable-white smart bulbs
Motion between midnight and 6am lights the route at the lowest usable level in a warm tone, with no announcement and no bright ceiling light. Keeps night vision, and keeps the rest of the household asleep.
You'll need: Motion sensors, dimmable smart lights
Fade to 20% for thirty seconds before going dark, so anyone still there can wave and cancel the shutoff. Removes almost all of the annoyance of a short motion timeout.
You'll need: Motion sensor, dimmable lights
Press once for bright, twice for relaxed, three times for film, hold to turn everything off. A single four-action button often replaces a wall of switches, and it is the automation guests understand fastest.
You'll need: Multi-press smart button, smart lights
An HDMI sync box or a screen-sampling integration drives an LED strip behind the panel. Cap the brightness and add a smoothing delay, because raw frame-by-frame colour changes are more distracting than immersive.
You'll need: Addressable LED strip, HDMI sync box or a media player integration
Triggered from the extractor fan's power draw rather than a button, so it starts itself when you actually begin cooking and releases twenty minutes after the fan stops.
You'll need: Metering plug or smart switch on the extractor, smart lights
Two sensors, one at each end, with direction inference from which fired first, so the light leads you rather than following. Keep a longer timeout than a hallway, because stairs are where a dark gap actually matters.
You'll need: Two motion sensors, stair or landing lights
Flash a chosen lamp a specific colour for a specific event: blue for the doorbell, green for laundry finished, red for a leak or alarm. Restore the previous state afterwards, which is the step most people forget.
You'll need: Colour smart bulb, hub that can store and restore light state
A leak sensor that only alerts is a leak sensor that floods your house while you are away. Pair the sensors with a motorised mains valve so detection closes the supply, then alerts. Exercise the valve monthly, because a valve that has not moved in two years often will not.
You'll need: Water leak sensors, motorised shutoff valve on the mains
Put a leak sensor in the machine's drip tray and a valve on its feed. Braided hoses fail without warning and usually while the machine is unattended, which is exactly when a local valve earns its cost.
You'll need: Leak sensor, valve on the appliance feed
Learn your normal pattern, then alert on flow that continues without pause for longer than any real fixture would run. This catches slow leaks and running toilets that no spot sensor would ever see.
You'll need: Whole-home smart water meter with flow reporting
Monitor the pump's power draw and a high-level float independently. No power draw during heavy rain means a failed pump; a float trip with the pump running means the pump cannot keep up. The two faults need different responses.
You'll need: Metering plug on the pump, float or water level sensor
If you run the cylinder at a low temperature to save energy, raise it above 60°C once a week to keep bacterial growth in check, and log that it completed. Never remove the physical thermostat or a tempering valve as part of this.
You'll need: Controllable water heater or immersion relay, cylinder temperature sensor
Run the recirculation pump when someone actually moves in the bathroom or presses a button, rather than continuously. Cuts both the wait for hot water and the standing heat loss a timer-driven loop produces.
You'll need: Recirculation pump on a smart relay, motion sensor or button
Read the tank level, stop the irrigation pump before it runs dry, and switch to mains only if you have a proper backflow-protected changeover. Dry-running is what kills garden pumps.
You'll need: Tank level sensor, pump control relay
A small continuous flow, under a litre a minute, that never stops is almost always a toilet flapper. Detect it as flow present for longer than any plausible use, and name the likely culprit in the alert so the fix is obvious.
You'll need: Smart water meter with fine-grained flow data
Below a threshold outdoor temperature, close the internal isolation valve and alert so the outside tap can be drained. The cheapest automation on this page relative to what a burst pipe costs.
You'll need: Outdoor temperature sensor, valve on the outdoor feed
Start on humidity rise or a flow reading, then change the bathroom light colour gently at eight minutes rather than sounding anything. A visual cue works and does not make the bathroom stressful.
You'll need: Humidity sensor or flow meter, colour bathroom light
Generate a code valid for a named person and a date range, then delete it automatically when the range ends. Per-person codes are what make the lock's history useful, so never share one code with everyone.
You'll need: Smart lock with code support
Lock on the door contact reporting closed plus a delay, not on the lock's own timer, which cannot tell a shut door from a door resting against the frame. Skip the auto-lock entirely while the door is open.
You'll need: Smart lock, door contact sensor
A single-use code that only works inside a delivery window, unlocks nothing but the porch or garage, starts a camera recording, and notifies you on use. Worth being conservative here: limit the space, not just the time.
You'll need: Smart lock on a porch or garage, camera, code generation
Restrict a per-person code to specific weekdays and hours, and disarm the alarm only for the areas they need. Notify on entry and exit so you have a clean record without watching video.
You'll need: Smart lock with per-user codes, alarm partitioning
Alert after ten minutes open, close automatically after thirty if nobody is home, and never close without an audible warning first. Only do this on a door with working safety sensors, and check them as part of the build.
You'll need: Garage door controller with position sensing
The gate call rings your phone with a live view and a release button, wherever you are, so deliveries stop depending on someone being in the house. Keep a physical release as the fallback.
You'll need: Video intercom with an integration, gate relay
Pause playback and drop the volume on a doorbell press, then restore both after a short delay. One of the smallest automations here and one of the most used.
You'll need: Smart doorbell, media player with an integration
Report who unlocked the door and how, rather than just that it was unlocked. This turns a lock's log into something you can actually reason about, and it is how you notice a code that should have been deleted.
You'll need: Smart lock with per-user codes or fingerprints
A valid code or fingerprint disarms the alarm as it unlocks, so nobody has to sprint to a keypad. Restrict it to recognised users only, and keep a duress code that unlocks while silently alerting.
You'll need: Smart lock with per-user identification, alarm-capable hub
Alert at 30% rather than the default 15%, and again with escalation at 15%, because lock batteries fall off a cliff in cold weather. Keep the mechanical key override accessible regardless.
You'll need: Smart lock reporting battery level
Watch the plug's wattage and treat a sustained drop below a threshold as the cycle ending. Works on any dumb washing machine, dryer or dishwasher, and needs a longer confirmation window than you would expect because most cycles have quiet phases mid-run.
You'll need: Metering smart plug
Hold the machine until export exceeds its typical draw for a sustained period, with a fallback start time so the dishes are not still dirty at bedtime on a cloudy day.
You'll need: Metering plug, inverter data, a machine that resumes after power loss
Power the machine twenty minutes before the alarm on weekdays only, and cut power an hour later so it is not idling all morning. Check yours actually powers on rather than waking to standby.
You'll need: Smart plug, alarm or schedule trigger
Start when everyone has been away for fifteen minutes, skip if it already ran today, and pause if someone comes home early. Far better than a fixed schedule that always seems to start during a call.
You'll need: Robot vacuum with an integration, presence detection
Detect a heating load still drawing power with the house empty and escalate hard: announcement, phone notification, then a call. Do not automatically cut power to a cooking appliance, because that has its own risks.
You'll need: Metering on the appliance circuit, presence detection
Count completed cycles from power patterns and prompt a filter clean every fifteen runs. Lint restriction is both an efficiency problem and a fire risk, and a count-based reminder is far more accurate than a monthly one.
You'll need: Metering smart plug, a counter variable in your hub
Alert if a job runs beyond its expected duration, and cut power if the draw suggests a thermal runaway or a stalled motor. Pair it with a heat alarm in the room rather than relying on power data alone.
You'll need: Metering smart plug, heat alarm or temperature sensor
Cut the socket after a fixed period, or immediately when the last person leaves. A five-minute build that removes one of the most common leaving-the-house worries.
You'll need: Smart plug, presence detection
A contact sensor and a two-minute delay, announced on the nearest speaker rather than pushed to a phone, because whoever left it open is almost certainly still in the kitchen.
You'll need: Door contact sensor, speaker
Dispense on schedule, then check the camera clip to confirm the food actually came out and the animal ate. Alert on a missed meal, which is often the first sign of an unwell pet.
You'll need: Smart pet feeder, camera