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on Home Shower Automation

Danny Anderson

• 4 min read
on Home Shower Automation
The future is here and it's steamy.

Imagine, just as your shower is ready for you, without flipping any switches, a seemingly real, comfortable, and calm, baritone voice chimes in on the bathroom speaker

Hi there shower superstar. Here's your daily briefing.

In my first house, after using showers all across the Pan-American Highway, I knew I wanted to keep that shower fresh. So, I wondered how to keep the mold out without ever having to worry over a switch. Around then, my friend and good cousin, Juan, introduced me to the magic power of home automation with Home Assistant. So, with my new Home Assistant Green that I loaded up with Zigbee and Z-Wave dongles, I picked up a humidity sensor and a beefy smart switch strong enough to handle my bathroom fan (didn't get that right the first time 😂). After fiddling with home assistant for a while, my fan magically turned on seconds after the shower water started running.

After getting that automation running so perfectly, and drunk with power, I pondered about my ideal magical shower. That's when I remembered how all across the pan-american highway, when we were showering in houses or campgrounds, truck stops or gas stations, I would always listen to music on my phone to feel comfortable when showering. So I grabbed an automatable speaker. Then, I added playing music to the seemingly all-powerful shower automation.

Next on the list? We came up with the idea, given the tech of today... of a generated daily briefing about our lives and interests read to us in a voice sounding --so smooth– that we have our own Jeeves in the Sonos, joking and informing us, in a smooth baritone voice. He always ends the briefing with something like:

Your son ... is ... days old today, be sure to enjoy these fleeting moments in his young life. Something great you could do together today is ...
Tools of the Trade
Smart Shower Blueprint

Home Assistant can be accessed from your computer, browsing to a website running on your local network on the Home Assistant hub, or from mobile apps. You have to go through the Home Assistant Green's setup process, where you will enter your location and other data. Then you can start adding each device bit by bit, going into the Home Assistant's Settings -> Devices menu to add them under the devices tab -> Add Device.

Of course you will have to wire up the home assistant green in your garage or some central location, attaching the dongles to it. The other physical work is to put the humidity sensor (battery powered) on top of your shower or somewhere hidden (as well as wiring up a smart switch to replace your fan's switch - of course, shut off the circuit at your breaker before doing any wiring). The switch I used does require a neutral wire at the box, but some don't. Then place the automate-able speaker somewhere in the bathroom where it can have a wired connection.

The automation does not use the number for humidity provided by the sensor, but the rate of change of that number, or slope. So the blueprint can tell if the humidity is actively and rapidly increasing - like when your shower pumps water into the air. To set up that "rate-of-change" in Home Assistant, you will create a "helper" variable that Home Assistant keeps track of dynamically for triggering things.

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