how is it – My home office tends to be a bit too hot, possibly due to heat generated by routers, computers, and various gadgets I run. The best way I found to solve this problem is to turn on the fan located in the corridor outside the office to blow in cooler air. I want this to happen automatically, so I don’t have to keep turning the fan on and off when entering and leaving the room (a recognized first world problem). This “how to” records the gadgets I use to do this and how I configure them.
Required gadgets
Design decision
At this point, you can already tell that I am a fan of Apple; in particular, I really like Apple’s Internet of Things software HomeKit, Because it attaches great importance to data privacy and security. I am not interested in any solution that uses my data for sales advertising or shipping to China.I already have four HomePod Minis in my house. They can be used as hubs for various smart devices, including several Nano Leaf Bulb, One Ecobee thermostatt and WeMo outdoor plug. These will be the brains of my solution.
I reviewed before This Guar beansd. Intelligent water leakage detector.I am not only impressed with this gadget-it has detected a leak in our washing machine and saved the day-I am also impressed Eve’s position on data privacy. They do not store data in the cloud, do not need an account, and never use any data for analysis or advertising. This is great, and I hope that every gadget manufacturer values my customer as much as Eve! Anytime I can find the gadgets I need from Eve, it is a breeze for me, which is why I bought their smart plugs and motion sensors. Of course, their prices are on the high side, but it’s worth it for me.
I can use HomeKit-enabled smart apps (Eve’s app or Apple’s Home app) to set up everything. Both can work, but since these are Eve products, I chose to use Eve’s applications.
My basic plan is to put the motion sensor on my desk. When it senses movement, the smart plug turns on the fan. After a period of inactivity, the smart plug will turn off.
Set up
There are three steps in this process. The first step is to add smart plugs and motion sensors as HomeKit accessories. In the Eve app, I go to “Settings”> “Accessories” and click the “Add Attachment” button (the small + in the upper right corner), and then follow the steps in the “Add Attachment” wizard. I was a bit dissatisfied with this process because neither of these gadgets could be installed on the first attempt; in fact, before the final installation, I had to run each installation wizard six times, including multiple hard resets. In addition, I found that they will only be installed when using my iPad and not on my iPhone. I don’t know why it is so difficult; their water guards are not like this. Whatever the reason, I ended up adding them, and now they appear in the form of “Actions in James’ Office” and “Fans” in my accessories list. For the motion detector, I made two additional changes. I set the sensitivity to “High”, which means it can detect even a small amount of motion, and set the duration to “2 minutes”, which means it will signal a change when no motion is detected after 2 minutes .
The second step is to create two scenes, one with the fan turned on and the other with the fan turned off. I go to Automation> Scenes and click the “Add Scene” button at the bottom. For the scene that turns it on, I add an action by selecting the fan in the office and making sure it is powered on. Then I named the scene “Turn on the fan” and selected the fan icon. I repeated this process for the scene that turned it off, making sure that this action turned off the fan, and gave the scene a name “Turn off the fan”.
The third step is to create two automations to integrate everything together. When motion is detected, the first automation will call the “on” scene, and when no more motion is detected, the second automation will call the “off” scene. I go to Automation> Rules and click the “Add Rule” button at the bottom. Every automation consists of three components: triggers, conditions, and scenarios. For motion detection automation, I set the trigger to “motion in James Office” and make sure to set it to motion. I did not use any conditions. I set the scene to “turn on the fan”. For the automation of no motion detection, I repeated the process, but for the trigger, I made sure to set it to clear and set the scene to “turn off the fan”. That’s all!
result
it works! It is exactly what I want. When I approached my desk a few feet, the fan started to spin. When I leave the room (or when I really sit still) for a few minutes, the fan will turn off. I can still use Siri to control the fan by voice, thus covering the motion sensor.Even though I had trouble adding these accessories, I still have trouble with HomeKit and eve.
source: I bought these gadgets with my own money.
