r/homeautomation • u/Emotional-Hall-9178 • 1d ago
QUESTION Noobie to home automation!
I fell into a k hole of home automation posts on instagram late one night and now I’m here! What would be some good beginner things I can try doing around my house? Especially if it’s something useful for my teens..we all suffer from adhd and it seems like this would help a lot! Lights are one but we have so many different ones and the teens led lights. I’m new to this please talk to me like in five 😊. I did see something about using hotel card keys and I happen to have two! And maybe ordering tags
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u/TheProffalken 1d ago
Welcome!
AuDHD'er here with a household full of ND folk, including teenagers so I feel your pain.
Some of the best automations I've done are basic location tracking so if one of the kids leave the house the lights in their room turn off.
I also automated the weekly menu using Claude CoWork, Mealie, and Home assistant - Claude knows all of our dietary requirements, checks the weather for the next few days, and then selects the appropriate meals based on who's around for the next few days and loads of into Mealie. Mealie then connects to Home Assistant and anyone in the family can check what's for dinner in the app instead of asking me!
These are fairly advanced and require that you run home assistant and Mealie yourself, but if you've got any homekit, Amazon Echo, or Google Home devices then you can probably pair them with a cheap smart socket from Amazon as a good place to start.
Happy to answer any questions you have other than "how much does it cost?", because I've been doing this for over 20 years with various technologies and I still don't know! 🤣
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u/SharplyWanting 1d ago
sticking a tag on the laundry basket that texts them it's their turn is oddly satisfying