Desk based presence automation ideas

[fathom sentinel]

Just looking for some inspiration, would be nice to know which automations you have setup based on presence when working at your desk.

I've currently got it setup to control heating only, so set a target temperature when room is occupied. In the vicinity of my desk, I have motorised blinds, laptop running hass agent, monitor which could be connected to a smart plug, various lighting etc.

The main part I struggle with is that my home office is multi-use, my working hours are reasonably regular, however the remainder of the time it may be used as a guest room or another lounge area, so I may not necessarily always want the monitor turning on when presence is detected, for example.

Would love to hear what others have done.

[random pagoda]

Lighting is the main one, closely followed by music (during work hours). Music starts when the office becomes occupied, pauses when I leave the room, and also pauses when meetings start

[fathom sentinel]

Are you using a calendar integration for it to be aware of when meetings start/stop?

[random pagoda]

Yes

That also handles things like when it's not in use as an office (so don't start music)

[fathom sentinel]

Great, not got a calendar connected to home assistant so will look into that.

[fiery mesa]

To handle the Multi-function part, you could set up an input selector, which gets set to the current function, using a calendar or manually and use that to condition some automations. On my system the calendar triggers the heating on working days and powers on my desktop PC, as I am semi retired so my work days vary. I also use a local calendar to schedule the heating through out the house.

[fathom sentinel]

Great, I think the local calendar approach would work well to determine what 'mode' the room is in, and that mode could be overridden with input selectors, in case of unplanned variations where I haven't edited the calendar.

Could create modes for work, chill, movie, guest etc and base automations from those.

Thanks for the ideas!

[candid heron]

Another +1 for using a calendar so that when working=on then xyz
Could also use it for scheduling guest modes so that adds more refined logic.

Sometimes I have unscheduled work from home so I'll use an NFC tag to trigger a WFH event in our calendar. Quicker than trying to do it manually.

The NCF calls this script to create the event from current time > 18:00:

alias: Calendar Insert WFH
sequence:
  - service: google.create_event
    data:
      summary: WFH
      description: "#wfh"
      start_date_time: "{{ now().strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M') }}"
      end_date_time: "{{ as_timestamp(now())| timestamp_custom('%Y-%m-%d', True) }} 18:00"
    target:
      entity_id: calendar.scheduler
mode: single
icon: mdi:factory

[willow hound]

I use Alexa for voice control and notifications. The echo in my office goes into DND mode when the mic on my work computer is in use. (calendar wasn't enough as some of my calls aren't scheduled)

[candid heron]

That's something HASS.Agent can monitor and pass to HomeAssistant

Can also monitor what program is using the mic, so you can refine the automation

[supple heart]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B072N473HD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

i used one of these on top of my monitor, you can fine tune it better than a motion sensor, its pretty accurate, can you over 90cm, ignore, below 70 cm, there must be something right in front of the screen now

also have one in our cinema for the bar, as we only want them on when we walk right up to the bar

[fathom sentinel]

Thanks for all the ideas. I looked into the calendar functionality but decided I'd most likely forget to add entries/overwrite existing entries when things change. Instead I'm using my existing 'guest mode' Boolean so when set certain parts of the automations don't trigger.

I'm now using presence detection for turning on/off heating, turning off the pc monitor and turning off the lights. Turning on the monitor and lights is done with a scene controller on the desk, that manual input saves complicated rules where I may/may not want all/some lights to turn on based on motion at certain times of day/luminance based on what the room is currently being used for.

I'm also using hass agent on the windows pc to determine if my web camera is in use, which changes a WLED lamp outside of a room to a certain preset if so, to warn others not to enter the room.

I'll run this for a bit and see how I get on.

Here's the scene controller