After a while of not flipping switches, whenever we left the house we got used to saying “Hey Google, turn off all my lights”. But then again, having to say that everytime sounded like repetition to me and we also had to remember to say that.

It got me thinking – “If only there was a way to know who is in the house or not”, so I looked into it. I found out that I can use our phones as presence sensors so if no one was at home it would enable the “Away” mode, which would turn off all the lights in the house. 

To do this, I first created a generic turn off all lights routine. I created a new variable called AllLights which had all the lights I wanted to control.

Then, I created a routine that would turn all of those lights off.

Now that the easy stuff was done, I then created another routine that would monitor if anyone was at home, and if not, then set the house to away mode

This seemed to work for quite a while, but we needed our phone locations to be on at all times which wasn’t a issue for us. Alternatively, I could have purchased presence sensors that would have worked with the smart ecosystem.

After making a few more tweaks, in the next version where if we arrived home, the house would detect us and set the status to regular Home mode.

Ahh I don’t even have to talk to the house anymore when we leave or enter the house.

“Talking is so overrated”
– Some wise man I’m sure