Here are the Home Assistant Blueprints you can import. I'd appreciate any feedback, so let me know what you think! my.home-assistant.io/redirect/blueprint_import/?blueprint_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsmarthomesolver%2Fecb69b3a382a79d959583f3dd23ca060 my.home-assistant.io/redirect/blueprint_import/?blueprint_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsmarthomesolver%2F4c594ddbc8623d2554785d52e4673bd0
@@alonsobrito3926 make sure the automation i(in my case) entity is set to "on". i briefely had the same issue and created two scenes to use. one was for off and the other was for on - or whatever your desired level of light is.
For the "paused" Blueprint, You may want to update the "The scene for your lights" secton to reflect the "paused" action. I do beileve this section was just a carry over from the "off" blueprint.
It's fantastic, but I think you should have more options, for example being able to turn off some lights while others turn on when you play and press, for example when you start the movie the ambilight turns on and the ambient light turns off, and when you pause it turns off. I turned off the ambilight and turned on the ambient light, and a question about how I could add Disney to that blueprint, thank you very much.
I've done something similar - one thing I ended up doing was looking at the length of the media that's playing (available in the Apple TV integration in Home Assistant). Then I use this to work out if its a movie (e.g. >1 hour) or something shorter. I then only turn off all the lights if its a movie. When watching something shorter often you dont want all the lights to turn off as its more casual.
Saw this on your main channel this morning and skimmed your blog post about it. Came back here to find this here. So thankful for the blueprint. Virtual switch override is a nice touch and really shows a well rounded solution and implementation. Thanks for making it easy with the blueprints.
Great work! Thanks for sharing. It works great. A couple of suggestions for next version: - if you could choose “from sundown to sunset” instead of time it would adapt all year around. - add a feature where you could turn off other automations while this is playing. My light automation is based on presence and overrides this if I move.
One of my favorite automations. I have been using an automation very similar to this for a while with my Apple TV. A suggestion - in addition to app ID, it may be helpful to configure a condition for media duration, this way you can limit lights changing for things like auto playing trailers on Netflix.
great suggestion. When browsing Netflix shows, when they do the auto play preview, the Apple TV state changes to "playing". I got around this by setting a condition "media_content_type = video" as when browsing the menus, this is set to "music". This prevents the lights from dimming each time a preview auto plays. I also like your suggestion, I might add that too.
@@PatrickFelstead Tried to use your method for Prime Video on a Nvidia Shield, unfortunately the media_content_type does not change 😞 Seeking an alternative solution...
Nice one! I’ve got an automation suggestion for you, if you have contact sensors on your bathroom doors, have an RGB bulb in each room then red when the door is closed and revert back to what it was doing when the door opens. If you have two floors, only light up bulbs on that floor with the occupied bathroom though. I also have my bathroom lights come on when the door is closed and go off when opened. Really basic but SUPER useful imo
This is really cool. My problem is several-fold: 1. My apartment building is about a hundred years old and I'm pushing it to run anything more than a couple of WS2812B strips. The one ceiling light in the living room is one single LED fixture with a pull string. No switches anywhere. Next, we don't only watch apps, we have a Blu-ray player with a ton of movies and the Blu-ray isn't smart, so none of that works there. The next problem is that my TV is an older dumb flat screen with a Roku hooked up. I have a string of lights around the back so, when I turn on the TV and the lights come on, the rest of the LEDs go dim. Kind of handy, if I do say so myself.
Great topic! I did something similar in my media room, and it's still a family fave. A bit more complex in my situation, requiring Home Assistant integrations with my Nvidia Shield, kodi and PLEX, and a simple Node-RED automation, but other than that it's very similar. I created a companion automation that actually turns key lights up to bright, and switches inputs on my AVR when having family Zoom calls. All triggered through my remote talking to Home Assistant. And I'm sure that there are other cool variations of this too.
Thanks for the blueprint! I have something very similar but I didn't even think about separating automations per application, so I'll give your blueprint a try :D Only thing I missed in the video was if this only runs when it is dark outside, but I believe this might be easy to add :)
Nice, Reed! Love the idea. I could see this also being possibly extensible for Fire TV. Would like to see a single blueprint with both automations (for play / pause TV) if possible. Thanks again 🙏🏻
Hey, great automations and awesome that you gave us a blueprint! Just to add on top of it, you do not need to create a new input boolean to disable the automation, as you can toggle the automation itself, same as you'd do with a boolean.
True you could easily disable the automation completely. I just prefer to have an Input Boolean do it because I can add that quickly to my dashboard for my living room and see if it's on or off. Also I have an automation run in the middle of the night that resets all my input booleans that temporarily turn things off like this. That way the lights are only temporarily locked for that day. But yes I could re-enable the automation and all of that but I just prefer the Input Boolean switch.
@@reedssmarthome you can also have a button on your dashboard to enable/disable the automation, same as you'd have the boolean tied to that same button. And you can also reset the automation statuses with your reset automation, even though the fine tuning of choosing what to reset could be messier than using the helpers :)
Love your videos and they have been super informative. I’ve been wanting to transition from Google to an Apple home. Videos like this give me ideas and helps with the spouse approval.
If you have a firetv and an echo you can also do this very easily. However it must be by voice commands by Alexa. Ex Alexa pause tv or Alexa play tv ..ect
That's a very cool automation. Seeing things like this I think how cool this is but sometimes I wonder at what point it's kind of excessive. I mean ok things like this give people ideas. I sometimes see stuff like this and think maybe I should switch version smartthings to home assistant but I don't exactly feel like putting in the work for the initial setup to have my system working just as it currently does. It's also things like this that make my setup look very rudimentary by comparison. But keep it up!
How cool is this!? I'd love to start using HA, only issue is I have no idea how to use it. All the beginners guides I've watched seem to me to actually think the person watching knows how to use HA. I've yet to find a guide that says 'right, here is how to turn on a light with a motion sensor. Now turn on the same light when light levels change. Now only set it up at these days and times' etc.
Cool. I have the Hoobs box (Homebridge), how do you do this with Homebridge? Otherwise this can be done with shortcuts. I have 2 Siri shortcuts where I say,” Siri, pause movie or continue movie“. This has one action: Apple TV: pause (or play) ; but here you can add home control actions for the lights. Disadvantage: no actions by pressing the remote only by pressing the shortcuts or via voice.
This is awesome, thank you! I’ll try it out. I was thinking about creating scenes in HA where specific apps are opened in Apple TV. Do you have a link that helps setting that up or even better, don’t you wanna create a video about it?:D Like watch Netflix, TH-cam or NBA…
This is a really fun automation to play with. When I had an automation like this running, I even tied in ambient light and weather conditions so that the lights would not change if it was already bright in the room and the weather was clear or sunny, but if the weather was cloudy or rainy, the automation would go ahead and raise the brightness of the lights. But here's a similar automation I was even happier with: You're not going to see the connection at first, but stay with me. We used to have a few large dogs, and all of the automatic feeders at the time seemed to be for cats and micro-dogs. So, I attached a zigbee contact sensor to the dogs' food container. I then setup a boolean helper and an automation that would check several times per day to see if the dog had been fed according to schedule. If the dogs had been fed [dog food container was opened with the last x amount of time] then the dogs_fed boolean would turn on. If the dogs were not fed, then two things would happen: 1. a push notification would go out to everyone in the house reminding them to feed the dogs, and 2. As long as the dogs_fed boolean was off, then if someone tried to watch something on any of the Apple TV's in the house, Home Assistant would pause the Apple TV and play an audio message on the HomePod in that room reminding the person to feed the dogs. This would repeat until the dogs were fed, and then the person could proceed to watch TV. It worked like charm. Dogs always got fed when they were supposed to. I highly recommend this kind of automation.
This is litterly why I started Home Assistant. This is just so pro, thank you so much. Only took a while to find the Bundle ID's of Dutch apps. but I managed to get it. No idea if I can post a helpful link in the comments, lease let me know!
Absolutely love this! Works great on AppleTV. Thank you so much for the Blueprint. Any chance you can add Pause option to the Blueprint? I.e. When paused, choose a light scene
Thanks! Sorry the link to the second blueprint for the pause was broken. I updated the link to fix it and here it is my.home-assistant.io/redirect/blueprint_import/?blueprint_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsmarthomesolver%2F4c594ddbc8623d2554785d52e4673bd0
I found all my app names in the settings of each app in the OS Settings (on Google Chromecast). However, even finding these and manually putting them in, I can't figure out why it's not able to use the information, my automation fails each time.
I tried with the Fire TV in the past too and found it also unreliable. That's why I finally switched to the Apple TV and it's been great. But there are less expensive options like the Chromecast that work well too.
I am very impressed with all your settings. My question is: How do you keep track of all the integrations and settings. That means if something goes wrong, where do you start looking?
Thanks and that's a good question. I try and name all of my automations something that I can quickly search and know what's happening from reading the automation title. So if an issue was happening with the TV and the lights. I would go to the automation section and search "tv" and then see what automation just ran and is not working. Or if the automation didn't run when it was supposed to, I click on "Traces" and see what condition stopped it from running. If the automation seems fine, it could be the integration. So I reload the integration for whatever seems like it isn't working and if that doesn't fix it. Reboot Home Assistant and if that doesn't fix it, then update Home Assistant. It's rare for me to get to that point.
Thanks so much for this. What is the state to return the lights back to normal if you exit out of media without pausing. I tried stopped, stop, and idle on line 100 of your automation.
Is there a way to do that guest mode idea (Boolean switch) for all your automations? I have guests all the time and forget that my automations are running a round the house 😅
I have this setup and it works really well, but if my wife is in the kitchen with the lights on - and I start playing something - it turns her lights off. I have an aqara FP2 presence sensor in the kitchen, but I don't know how to integrate this to 'delay' turning the lights off until no presence is detected in the kitchen. Any ideas? Super cool of you to share the blueprint - many thanks!
Trying to set up this automation in the Google home app. Media plays/ pauses isn't available as a trigger option - only Chromecast on/ off. Chromecast is a 3rd generation I believe and I'm in the UK. Any ideas?
Awesome. Have been thinking about this myself. Do you happen to know if it is possible to recognize whether Plex is playing a movie or something else, like a tv show, or music? I only want the extra dimmed lights when watching a movie, but not when listening to music for example.
Has this recently stopped working for anyone else? Playing videos on my Nvidia Shield no longer triggers the scene, but other features work (Pause & Stop). I'm totally at a lost as to why :-(
Go to the Developer Tools section in the bottom left. It's the little hammer icon. Go to the tab "States" enter in the entity of your Apple TV and then when you start playing something from Disney, just hit the little refresh button and you will see it. There's a lot of great info in those States. I recently added to the article on how to have the lights not change if something like Netflix autoplays a video from looking at the States. Basically if it didn't have "media_content_type: video" then it was just autoplaying.
@@reedssmarthome Brilliant, thank you. I was looking for the same thing. Anyone from the UK looking for AppleTV Sky Go ID - on the AppleTV, it only shows the state as IDLE when playing Sky Go content. Appears Sky haven't built their app properly to show a media state
Sadly my Chromecast shows as playing in HA whether it's playing or paused 😢 And in the Google Home app I can only make a routine based on it turning on or off 😮 Is my Chromecast just old or something? 😕
Hey Reed! Great idea and im glad you put this how to out there! So i recall playing with this several months ago and from what i recall the issue i ran into was when i had say netflix or max open in apple tv and im browsing for a show to watch, those previews that play when you are selected on a show for a few seconds seemed to trigger the play pause which would then raise and lower my lights as i was scrolling through searching for something to watch. Have you also ran into this or did you disable the previews? The idea being i would only want the lights to raise when I press pause, not when a show was done playing or im in the middle of searching for something to watch as different previews play and stop.
Hey sorry about the second link. I must have not copied and pasted it correctly. It should work now. I updated the article to have instructions on how to make it skip autoplay on Netflix for the "play" automation. You just add to the condition - condition: state entity_id: CHANGE_ME_YOURMEDIAPLAYER attribute: media_content_type state: video
I have a chaep LED strip on the back of my TV which changes intensity (1% vs 30%) depending on the state. It also turns RED-BLUE-RED when my kid wakes up in the middle of the night. I use JellyFin which provides a helpful callback so I always know if it's playing or paused. Same with Kodi. In addition, I created a fake ("emulated") Rolu device in HA, so my Harmony sends play/stop/pause commands there, which I intercept, and send the appropriate command to the unit currently playing (be it Kodi, CCwGTV, or FireTV-4k).
See I’ve had this a while, but I had to make my lights only brighten once the Apple TV had been paused for 5/10 seconds, since everytime I was fast forwarding/rewinding a video, home assistant would see it as ‘paused’ so when jumping 10 seconds at a time, the lights would go into seizure mode! Did you run into this issue and/or find a way round it? Would love to have it as instant as yours are
Hi Reed, how did you accomplish the lights turning back on when an episode of a tv show finishes? You mentioned it at the very end of your main video. I have an automation that will turn up the lights very slowly like in a movie theater. But I'm struggling to find an easy way to trigger that (other than using a button) during the credits of a tv show episode or movie. Do you have any ideas on how to accomplish this? Is that something an Apple TV can do when integrated into Home Assistant? Thanks!
For me it was just happening automatically and the state would just be "Paused" when the TV show finished. But you could use media_duration" and "media_position" and calculate how much is left and turn on the lights when the credits are rolling that way for a movie.
I did this a while ago on my HA with my Apple TV. one of my favourite automations. I put media duration as a condition in mine so if I'm playing a short trailer while trying to figure out what to watch it won't dim the lights. I also am fighting with the prime video app, which likes to change state to play while browsing the app. Prime video also uses their own player, so can't get duration from it :(
@@CookieCreative-ir2ii I never found a good solution. I'll have to look back into it. Furthest I got was using media duration for everything thatwasn't Prime, and for prime I just set a longer delay to where it would have to be in a play state for longer than 10s or something before it would would go.
For home assistant, can you do this if you are running everything through an Xbox? Can it tell the difference if you are playing a game or netflix, or youtube?
Sorry about that. I must have copied and pasted the link wrong but now it should work my.home-assistant.io/redirect/blueprint_import/?blueprint_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsmarthomesolver%2F4c594ddbc8623d2554785d52e4673bd0
Can you do a video on how you set up when your phone connects to wifi using home assistant? Are you using a unifi router for this, or will any router work?
I've tried this before with Apple TV and Home Assistant, but it doesn't show the proper state. Shows standby majority of the time. Ive seen others report this issue. What am I doing wrong?
Sadly this automation does not work for my apple tv... "Here is the automation for the TH-cam video to pull up on the Apple TV." I get: top_menu is not supported
@reedssmarthome could you check your automation please? I cant understand why top_menu is not supported for my homeassistant when i copy your script. thank you!
I don’t have that ability in my google home. When I try to make the routine the only options I have for my chrome cast is turns on or off. Not media playing. What am I doing wrong?
@billfotceone9808 & @reedssmarthome I just checked and yes, Public Preview mode is necessary in order to use the state of the Chromecast as a starter (trigger). Options available are: Media changes, Plays, Pauses, Stops. Hope that helps. 👍
@@wscottfunkI’m on public preview as well and don’t have those options. I just opted out of public preview and will opt back in to see if that clears it up. Thanks.
@@wscottfunk @reedssmarthome I have now fully backed out of public preview and rejoined and have no change in starters for my chromecast. I wonder what other awesome options i'm missing compared to you guys. I sent a ticket to google for some help so hopefully that works. It's pretty frustrating to see other people with the ability and I can't access it. Not either of your faults of course. Keep making awesome videos!!!!
Hi... I follow you for quite a while. This looks really cool. I have a similar Home Automation setup: HomeKit + Home Assistant. I was looking for a while already for a Virtual Switch. Can you please tell me how do you change the value of the virtual switch here: th-cam.com/video/p-ZO7Qede5s/w-d-xo.html Its not very clear. Thank you so much for your time.
Has anyone tested if the blueprints (or this whole thing done manually without the blueprint) will work with Nvidia shield? Or is this only for Apple TV and Google Chromecast?
The google chromecast option does not work. Only the original chromecast with google tv supports media state. The 4K and android TVs with google TV do not support media states as triggers.
@reedssmarthome Big request! When you are breaking your how information; could I ask you to please also think about us Homey Pro users. It would be great if you also played with this ecosystem and gave us pointers on a "flow" we could set up to translate this automation on that ecosystem. Too much to ask? Thanks in advance!
Seems like a neat automation to use, but sadly I'm unable to get it to trigger. I've tested just doing an automation when the Apple TV is playing anything and I can do that. Yet when I try to set it up with either of these Blueprints, it will not work.
I've done that my self, the only problem is with netflix it just go to a playing state when you run the app and even if you pause it still have a playing state
On the Chromecast it does that for some odd reason. This isn't the case though if you use your Chromecast with Home Assistant. For some reason the Chromecast state works just fine with Netflix in Home Assistant 🤷♂️
Here are the Home Assistant Blueprints you can import. I'd appreciate any feedback, so let me know what you think!
my.home-assistant.io/redirect/blueprint_import/?blueprint_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsmarthomesolver%2Fecb69b3a382a79d959583f3dd23ca060
my.home-assistant.io/redirect/blueprint_import/?blueprint_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsmarthomesolver%2F4c594ddbc8623d2554785d52e4673bd0
Hey, the second blueprint doesn't work.
@@alonsobrito3926 make sure the automation i(in my case) entity is set to "on". i briefely had the same issue and created two scenes to use. one was for off and the other was for on - or whatever your desired level of light is.
For the "paused" Blueprint, You may want to update the "The scene for your lights" secton to reflect the "paused" action. I do beileve this section was just a carry over from the "off" blueprint.
This is awesome, will this work with fire tv?
It's fantastic, but I think you should have more options, for example being able to turn off some lights while others turn on when you play and press, for example when you start the movie the ambilight turns on and the ambient light turns off, and when you pause it turns off. I turned off the ambilight and turned on the ambient light, and a question about how I could add Disney to that blueprint, thank you very much.
I've done something similar - one thing I ended up doing was looking at the length of the media that's playing (available in the Apple TV integration in Home Assistant). Then I use this to work out if its a movie (e.g. >1 hour) or something shorter. I then only turn off all the lights if its a movie. When watching something shorter often you dont want all the lights to turn off as its more casual.
U don’t watch marathons of TV Shows like they’re a movie 😂
@@rashdub2057 huh
Anyone know how to get this tweak working on Prime video on my Nvidia Shield ?
Saw this on your main channel this morning and skimmed your blog post about it. Came back here to find this here. So thankful for the blueprint. Virtual switch override is a nice touch and really shows a well rounded solution and implementation. Thanks for making it easy with the blueprints.
Reed! Thanks for the blueprints! As much as I'd like to set stuff like this up on my own each time, time is often NOT on my side.
Brilliant! My new favourite HA automation :)
You’ve gotten way too smart for me! This is impressive
Great automations! Here's to hoping this is what finally sells my wife on this whole smart home hobby. 🤞
You saved me so much time with the HASS blueprint! Thank you so much!
Great work! Thanks for sharing. It works great. A couple of suggestions for next version:
- if you could choose “from sundown to sunset” instead of time it would adapt all year around.
- add a feature where you could turn off other automations while this is playing. My light automation is based on presence and overrides this if I move.
One of my favorite automations. I have been using an automation very similar to this for a while with my Apple TV. A suggestion - in addition to app ID, it may be helpful to configure a condition for media duration, this way you can limit lights changing for things like auto playing trailers on Netflix.
great suggestion. When browsing Netflix shows, when they do the auto play preview, the Apple TV state changes to "playing". I got around this by setting a condition "media_content_type = video" as when browsing the menus, this is set to "music". This prevents the lights from dimming each time a preview auto plays. I also like your suggestion, I might add that too.
@@PatrickFelstead Tried to use your method for Prime Video on a Nvidia Shield, unfortunately the media_content_type does not change 😞 Seeking an alternative solution...
Nice one! I’ve got an automation suggestion for you, if you have contact sensors on your bathroom doors, have an RGB bulb in each room then red when the door is closed and revert back to what it was doing when the door opens. If you have two floors, only light up bulbs on that floor with the occupied bathroom though. I also have my bathroom lights come on when the door is closed and go off when opened. Really basic but SUPER useful imo
This is really cool. My problem is several-fold:
1. My apartment building is about a hundred years old and I'm pushing it to run anything more than a couple of WS2812B strips. The one ceiling light in the living room is one single LED fixture with a pull string. No switches anywhere.
Next, we don't only watch apps, we have a Blu-ray player with a ton of movies and the Blu-ray isn't smart, so none of that works there.
The next problem is that my TV is an older dumb flat screen with a Roku hooked up. I have a string of lights around the back so, when I turn on the TV and the lights come on, the rest of the LEDs go dim. Kind of handy, if I do say so myself.
Great topic! I did something similar in my media room, and it's still a family fave.
A bit more complex in my situation, requiring Home Assistant integrations with my Nvidia Shield, kodi and PLEX, and a simple Node-RED automation, but other than that it's very similar. I created a companion automation that actually turns key lights up to bright, and switches inputs on my AVR when having family Zoom calls. All triggered through my remote talking to Home Assistant. And I'm sure that there are other cool variations of this too.
Love the blueprint concept! I finally got a Home Assistant Green last week, can't wait to actually get to use some of your automation ideas now 😊
Love this little addition.
Thanks for the blueprint! I have something very similar but I didn't even think about separating automations per application, so I'll give your blueprint a try :D Only thing I missed in the video was if this only runs when it is dark outside, but I believe this might be easy to add :)
Nice, Reed! Love the idea. I could see this also being possibly extensible for Fire TV. Would like to see a single blueprint with both automations (for play / pause TV) if possible.
Thanks again 🙏🏻
Hey, great automations and awesome that you gave us a blueprint! Just to add on top of it, you do not need to create a new input boolean to disable the automation, as you can toggle the automation itself, same as you'd do with a boolean.
True you could easily disable the automation completely. I just prefer to have an Input Boolean do it because I can add that quickly to my dashboard for my living room and see if it's on or off. Also I have an automation run in the middle of the night that resets all my input booleans that temporarily turn things off like this. That way the lights are only temporarily locked for that day. But yes I could re-enable the automation and all of that but I just prefer the Input Boolean switch.
@@reedssmarthome you can also have a button on your dashboard to enable/disable the automation, same as you'd have the boolean tied to that same button. And you can also reset the automation statuses with your reset automation, even though the fine tuning of choosing what to reset could be messier than using the helpers :)
Props for all of it!! I may try since I have the Lutron lights and Apple TV, thanks!
Hi Reed, great video and thanks for the blueprint 😊
Love your videos and they have been super informative. I’ve been wanting to transition from Google to an Apple home. Videos like this give me ideas and helps with the spouse approval.
Great Blueprint! I wish it worked for Roku devices.
Thanks! Looking at the Roku integration I think it should work. www.home-assistant.io/integrations/roku/
If you have a firetv and an echo you can also do this very easily. However it must be by voice commands by Alexa. Ex Alexa pause tv or Alexa play tv ..ect
That's a very cool automation. Seeing things like this I think how cool this is but sometimes I wonder at what point it's kind of excessive. I mean ok things like this give people ideas. I sometimes see stuff like this and think maybe I should switch version smartthings to home assistant but I don't exactly feel like putting in the work for the initial setup to have my system working just as it currently does. It's also things like this that make my setup look very rudimentary by comparison. But keep it up!
Thanks. Wish this was for Homebridge.. guess I have to invest in HA now too
Great video. Love your content. I downloaded the blueprint but some reason nothing happens when I pause or play my Apple TV
I simply use my Apple TV remote and say “turn on movie mode” and it just turns my scene on. The lights change to the levels we like.
How cool is this!? I'd love to start using HA, only issue is I have no idea how to use it. All the beginners guides I've watched seem to me to actually think the person watching knows how to use HA. I've yet to find a guide that says 'right, here is how to turn on a light with a motion sensor. Now turn on the same light when light levels change. Now only set it up at these days and times' etc.
Thanks Reed.
Cool. I have the Hoobs box (Homebridge), how do you do this with Homebridge?
Otherwise this can be done with shortcuts.
I have 2 Siri shortcuts where I say,” Siri, pause movie or continue movie“. This has one action: Apple TV: pause (or play) ; but here you can add home control actions for the lights.
Disadvantage: no actions by pressing the remote only by pressing the shortcuts or via voice.
This is awesome, thank you! I’ll try it out. I was thinking about creating scenes in HA where specific apps are opened in Apple TV. Do you have a link that helps setting that up or even better, don’t you wanna create a video about it?:D Like watch Netflix, TH-cam or NBA…
This is a really fun automation to play with. When I had an automation like this running, I even tied in ambient light and weather conditions so that the lights would not change if it was already bright in the room and the weather was clear or sunny, but if the weather was cloudy or rainy, the automation would go ahead and raise the brightness of the lights.
But here's a similar automation I was even happier with:
You're not going to see the connection at first, but stay with me. We used to have a few large dogs, and all of the automatic feeders at the time seemed to be for cats and micro-dogs. So, I attached a zigbee contact sensor to the dogs' food container. I then setup a boolean helper and an automation that would check several times per day to see if the dog had been fed according to schedule. If the dogs had been fed [dog food container was opened with the last x amount of time] then the dogs_fed boolean would turn on. If the dogs were not fed, then two things would happen: 1. a push notification would go out to everyone in the house reminding them to feed the dogs, and 2. As long as the dogs_fed boolean was off, then if someone tried to watch something on any of the Apple TV's in the house, Home Assistant would pause the Apple TV and play an audio message on the HomePod in that room reminding the person to feed the dogs. This would repeat until the dogs were fed, and then the person could proceed to watch TV. It worked like charm. Dogs always got fed when they were supposed to. I highly recommend this kind of automation.
Excellent blueprint Reed, worked straight away for me, so easy to set up - one quick question i don't see and Apple TV option for playback detection?
Great stuff. Thanks
This is litterly why I started Home Assistant. This is just so pro, thank you so much. Only took a while to find the Bundle ID's of Dutch apps. but I managed to get it. No idea if I can post a helpful link in the comments, lease let me know!
Mind. Blown.
An Nvidia Shield reports Prime, Max, TH-cam show pause/playing as it should, but not Netflix as it reports "Playing" as soon as the app is running.
Absolutely love this! Works great on AppleTV. Thank you so much for the Blueprint. Any chance you can add Pause option to the Blueprint? I.e. When paused, choose a light scene
Thanks! Sorry the link to the second blueprint for the pause was broken. I updated the link to fix it and here it is my.home-assistant.io/redirect/blueprint_import/?blueprint_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsmarthomesolver%2F4c594ddbc8623d2554785d52e4673bd0
@@reedssmarthome Thank you, much appreciated
Hi Reed. How do you find the app names for stuff that’s not already in the blueprint? Thanks for all the great content!
I found all my app names in the settings of each app in the OS Settings (on Google Chromecast). However, even finding these and manually putting them in, I can't figure out why it's not able to use the information, my automation fails each time.
Reed said Boolean!
Love all these viseos
What about Fire TV? Tried a few different ways but it's been massively unreliable
I'd love it if he would make a video entirely about integrating FireTV into automations!
I tried with the Fire TV in the past too and found it also unreliable. That's why I finally switched to the Apple TV and it's been great. But there are less expensive options like the Chromecast that work well too.
@@reedssmarthome well it's good to know it wasn't just me being rubbish 🤣
Good afternoon great, going to try this out. I'm just curious how I can find the app ID of other apps on the Apple TV. can anyone tell me.
OMG THANK YOU!!!
I am very impressed with all your settings. My question is: How do you keep track of all the integrations and settings. That means if something goes wrong, where do you start looking?
Thanks and that's a good question. I try and name all of my automations something that I can quickly search and know what's happening from reading the automation title.
So if an issue was happening with the TV and the lights. I would go to the automation section and search "tv" and then see what automation just ran and is not working. Or if the automation didn't run when it was supposed to, I click on "Traces" and see what condition stopped it from running.
If the automation seems fine, it could be the integration. So I reload the integration for whatever seems like it isn't working and if that doesn't fix it. Reboot Home Assistant and if that doesn't fix it, then update Home Assistant. It's rare for me to get to that point.
Thanks so much for this. What is the state to return the lights back to normal if you exit out of media without pausing. I tried stopped, stop, and idle on line 100 of your automation.
Cool!
Is there a way to do that guest mode idea (Boolean switch) for all your automations? I have guests all the time and forget that my automations are running a round the house 😅
I have this setup and it works really well, but if my wife is in the kitchen with the lights on - and I start playing something - it turns her lights off. I have an aqara FP2 presence sensor in the kitchen, but I don't know how to integrate this to 'delay' turning the lights off until no presence is detected in the kitchen. Any ideas? Super cool of you to share the blueprint - many thanks!
How do you use the Apple Remote to stop the automation?
For some reason it dim but dose not come back to full brightness stays dimmed n mater what.
Any idea how to run app with apple TV integration? can't make it working at all :(
Trying to set up this automation in the Google home app. Media plays/ pauses isn't available as a trigger option - only Chromecast on/ off. Chromecast is a 3rd generation I believe and I'm in the UK. Any ideas?
Awesome. Have been thinking about this myself.
Do you happen to know if it is possible to recognize whether Plex is playing a movie or something else, like a tv show, or music? I only want the extra dimmed lights when watching a movie, but not when listening to music for example.
Has this recently stopped working for anyone else? Playing videos on my Nvidia Shield no longer triggers the scene, but other features work (Pause & Stop). I'm totally at a lost as to why :-(
I wish i could get this to work, but nothing populates in the "entity", "area" or "device" fields :(. I have these options on all my other blueprints
Why do you only eat during youtube and sports, but not eat during a movie?
Love this and using the blue prints. How do you find the app ids of other Apple TV apps? I need Disney, and Crave in Canada.
Go to the Developer Tools section in the bottom left. It's the little hammer icon. Go to the tab "States" enter in the entity of your Apple TV and then when you start playing something from Disney, just hit the little refresh button and you will see it.
There's a lot of great info in those States. I recently added to the article on how to have the lights not change if something like Netflix autoplays a video from looking at the States. Basically if it didn't have "media_content_type: video" then it was just autoplaying.
@@reedssmarthome amazing, thank you!
@@reedssmarthome Brilliant, thank you. I was looking for the same thing. Anyone from the UK looking for AppleTV Sky Go ID - on the AppleTV, it only shows the state as IDLE when playing Sky Go content. Appears Sky haven't built their app properly to show a media state
How do you find out what the App ID is? I'm trying to find the one for F1 TV.
What about home bridge?
Sadly my Chromecast shows as playing in HA whether it's playing or paused 😢 And in the Google Home app I can only make a routine based on it turning on or off 😮 Is my Chromecast just old or something? 😕
I am getting in to home assistant you have help me to know what it can do
Do you happen to have 4 way dimmer switches and if yes how did you made them smart? I tried kasa and it didn't work 😢
Hey Reed! Great idea and im glad you put this how to out there! So i recall playing with this several months ago and from what i recall the issue i ran into was when i had say netflix or max open in apple tv and im browsing for a show to watch, those previews that play when you are selected on a show for a few seconds seemed to trigger the play pause which would then raise and lower my lights as i was scrolling through searching for something to watch. Have you also ran into this or did you disable the previews? The idea being i would only want the lights to raise when I press pause, not when a show was done playing or im in the middle of searching for something to watch as different previews play and stop.
first link to import the blueprint works the second i am getting invalid parameters given
Hey sorry about the second link. I must have not copied and pasted it correctly. It should work now.
I updated the article to have instructions on how to make it skip autoplay on Netflix for the "play" automation. You just add to the condition
- condition: state
entity_id: CHANGE_ME_YOURMEDIAPLAYER
attribute: media_content_type
state: video
you can use wiz with homekit?
I have a chaep LED strip on the back of my TV which changes intensity (1% vs 30%) depending on the state. It also turns RED-BLUE-RED when my kid wakes up in the middle of the night. I use JellyFin which provides a helpful callback so I always know if it's playing or paused. Same with Kodi. In addition, I created a fake ("emulated") Rolu device in HA, so my Harmony sends play/stop/pause commands there, which I intercept, and send the appropriate command to the unit currently playing (be it Kodi, CCwGTV, or FireTV-4k).
See I’ve had this a while, but I had to make my lights only brighten once the Apple TV had been paused for 5/10 seconds, since everytime I was fast forwarding/rewinding a video, home assistant would see it as ‘paused’ so when jumping 10 seconds at a time, the lights would go into seizure mode! Did you run into this issue and/or find a way round it? Would love to have it as instant as yours are
Can this be done using hubitat instead of home assistant?
Anyone successfully made this work with Nvidia Shield Pro + Plex?
Tried setting it up but for some reason cant get it to work. Anything i am missing
Hi Reed, how did you accomplish the lights turning back on when an episode of a tv show finishes? You mentioned it at the very end of your main video. I have an automation that will turn up the lights very slowly like in a movie theater. But I'm struggling to find an easy way to trigger that (other than using a button) during the credits of a tv show episode or movie. Do you have any ideas on how to accomplish this? Is that something an Apple TV can do when integrated into Home Assistant? Thanks!
For me it was just happening automatically and the state would just be "Paused" when the TV show finished. But you could use
media_duration" and "media_position" and calculate how much is left and turn on the lights when the credits are rolling that way for a movie.
I did this a while ago on my HA with my Apple TV. one of my favourite automations. I put media duration as a condition in mine so if I'm playing a short trailer while trying to figure out what to watch it won't dim the lights. I also am fighting with the prime video app, which likes to change state to play while browsing the app. Prime video also uses their own player, so can't get duration from it :(
Did you find a solution for the Prime video issue? I am trying to find a condition to ignore the trailers played on Prime video on my Nvidia Shield .
@@CookieCreative-ir2ii I never found a good solution. I'll have to look back into it. Furthest I got was using media duration for everything thatwasn't Prime, and for prime I just set a longer delay to where it would have to be in a play state for longer than 10s or something before it would would go.
@@bschmu Thanks for the reply, sounds like a reasonable solution. Can I ask how to applied the longer delay to Prime please?
For home assistant, can you do this if you are running everything through an Xbox? Can it tell the difference if you are playing a game or netflix, or youtube?
Second blueprint says invalid parameters?
Sorry about that. I must have copied and pasted the link wrong but now it should work my.home-assistant.io/redirect/blueprint_import/?blueprint_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsmarthomesolver%2F4c594ddbc8623d2554785d52e4673bd0
Can you do a video on how you set up when your phone connects to wifi using home assistant? Are you using a unifi router for this, or will any router work?
How do you control the input boolean with your voice ?
i like your automation but what about using homey pro ?
Can this same idea be done with nvidia shield 2019 and Hubitat?
I've tried this before with Apple TV and Home Assistant, but it doesn't show the proper state. Shows standby majority of the time. Ive seen others report this issue. What am I doing wrong?
I think I've heard some others say that but I haven't run into this issue yet.
Sadly this automation does not work for my apple tv... "Here is the automation for the TH-cam video to pull up on the Apple TV." I get: top_menu is not supported
@reedssmarthome could you check your automation please? I cant understand why top_menu is not supported for my homeassistant when i copy your script. thank you!
Is it possible if I have a HomeKit enabled tv? Or does it have to be an Apple TV ?
I haven't tested that but if you can pull it into Home Assistant and view it as a media_player then it should work.
I don’t have that ability in my google home. When I try to make the routine the only options I have for my chrome cast is turns on or off. Not media playing. What am I doing wrong?
Hmmm I wonder if it's because I'm on the Public Preview version of the app?
@billfotceone9808 & @reedssmarthome I just checked and yes, Public Preview mode is necessary in order to use the state of the Chromecast as a starter (trigger). Options available are: Media changes, Plays, Pauses, Stops. Hope that helps. 👍
@@reedssmarthomeI’m also on public preview. Still don’t see it.
@@wscottfunkI’m on public preview as well and don’t have those options. I just opted out of public preview and will opt back in to see if that clears it up. Thanks.
@@wscottfunk @reedssmarthome I have now fully backed out of public preview and rejoined and have no change in starters for my chromecast. I wonder what other awesome options i'm missing compared to you guys. I sent a ticket to google for some help so hopefully that works. It's pretty frustrating to see other people with the ability and I can't access it. Not either of your faults of course. Keep making awesome videos!!!!
Hey reed when ever i click save for some reason it says "Rename" I dont want to rename i want to save 😂
Haha I know it’s weird that it does that. Two click to save it.
Hi... I follow you for quite a while.
This looks really cool. I have a similar Home Automation setup: HomeKit + Home Assistant. I was looking for a while already for a Virtual Switch.
Can you please tell me how do you change the value of the virtual switch here: th-cam.com/video/p-ZO7Qede5s/w-d-xo.html
Its not very clear.
Thank you so much for your time.
Pfffft... When I say movie time and... all the blinds close, all the lights switch off, the TV switches on, Nvidia Shield turns on with Plex open....
Has anyone tested if the blueprints (or this whole thing done manually without the blueprint) will work with Nvidia shield? Or is this only for Apple TV and Google Chromecast?
I’m a huge fan of Apple home content creators sharing their programming. Thanks!
LOVE this deep dive video on a single thing! Would love to see more like this!
The google chromecast option does not work. Only the original chromecast with google tv supports media state. The 4K and android TVs with google TV do not support media states as triggers.
Hey Reed, could you please share how did you find app IDs..? Having a trouble finding one for Hulu app on Apple TV :(
@reedssmarthome Big request! When you are breaking your how information; could I ask you to please also think about us Homey Pro users. It would be great if you also played with this ecosystem and gave us pointers on a "flow" we could set up to translate this automation on that ecosystem. Too much to ask? Thanks in advance!
Good tutorial Sir. Can you please explain how to controll the Roborock vacum to clean a spesific room using a switch?
Thanks! I followed these instructions www.home-assistant.io/integrations/roborock/#how-can-i-clean-a-specific-room and it works great.
Seems like a neat automation to use, but sadly I'm unable to get it to trigger. I've tested just doing an automation when the Apple TV is playing anything and I can do that. Yet when I try to set it up with either of these Blueprints, it will not work.
Homebridge OR home assistant. So how do you do this with Homebridge? I don’t use home assistant.
This is great, but how do you get it to work with something in your Apple library or if you’re watching Apple TV+ or Disney+?
Instead of purchasing One Philips hue light we can purchase 10 different and useful tech items.
just a question. Why do you need an automation on your TV to turn it on when you have children. you can also say to one of the kids turn on the TV.
I'm triggered NOT to do this.
How could I add other services like Disney. thank you
I've done that my self, the only problem is with netflix it just go to a playing state when you run the app and even if you pause it still have a playing state
On the Chromecast it does that for some odd reason. This isn't the case though if you use your Chromecast with Home Assistant. For some reason the Chromecast state works just fine with Netflix in Home Assistant 🤷♂️
can we do this with a firestick and alexa some how?