What automation processes have you implemented that make your life easier?

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I'm a big fan of automating as much as I can.

• Lights automatically turn on when someone enters the room, but only if it's dark enough to need lights in that room at that moment. Turn them off automatically when presence is no longer detected (not just IR based motion detection).
• My old washer and dryer alert me when they're done thanks to vibration sensors.
• Media downloads when added to a watchlist.
• Regular backups locally and to the cloud.
• My phone enables/disables rotation lock based on the app I'm currently using.
• Phone also opens various playlists when connecting to my car stereo based on date/time.
• Various "scenes" to turn devices on and off, control brightness, volume levels, etc. This includes controlling devices that are IR, RF, Bluetooth, and Zigbee based.
• Game servers that update when new versions are released, but only when no players are connected. If anyone is connected, sends a message to a discord server (that is also connected to Matrix) alerting everyone to the available update and asking players to log off at their earliest convenience. Players can also check on game server status with bot commands in the game's channel on that server.

Everything runs locally and has a manual backup so I can still control everything the old fashioned way if my phone is dead or if my non tech savvy parents are over and need to operate any of it.

I used to work at a place outside the city that only had one bus after work and it was kinda spotty and unreliable. However, there was an online API provided by the bus company that told me where the bus is.

So I wrote a Python script and a Linux alert that would give me a notification when the bus was within range, with enough time to get to the stop on time.

Communication. Everything. With my partner.

Us both come from familys that never communicate and live without a day plan. Our life has improved so much

some discord bots on a private server, notify me whenever a paper in my scientific field is published.

have another one about whenever senator or a representative trades stock.

useful.

I'm processing orders for an online shop so a lot of what I do is printing different things on different printers (different labels with different sizes etc) so I wrote a few little JS scripts to inject into the Webshop to automate downloading the different labels, and an accompanying AHK script to automatically print the labels to the correct printers. Instead of 10-20 inputs I just press one button now.

I've been playing Factorio with a friend. Our factory was getting large enough that him downloading the map and catching up was getting really slow (even though the factory itself wasn't that big). We ended up setting up a VPN which somehow made that process SIGNIFICANTLY faster. However, I really only wanted the VPN on while we were playing the game. So I ended up writing some automation to detect if I was no longer playing and the VPN was still active and then shut it off automatically. It's a small thing but I'm both proud of it and happy with the results.

Wxterior lights turn on and off with sunrise and set. It's been running on a raspberry pi b for ages with Misterhouse. I'd like to change it over to something newer, but I automated it because I have other things to do.

I used to download school menus and expose it to my phone as an ical feed, but no longer need that. It still runs. I should shut it off some day...

Scheduling bill payments through my banks online bill pay. I will pay bills with a credit card when I absolutely have to. I don't use ACH autodraft at all if I can avoid it. Online bill pay is usually free, it helps centralize all my bill payments, and if there's a problem I just call the bank instead of having to mess with the vendor.

It also helps make sure I don't forget to pay a bill, which my ADHD brain would do all the time otherwise.

Seriously, I haven’t automated anything. And life is just fine.

Monthly backups of containers and volumes, notifications of disruptions, rules for salary to send it to the right places. Arr stack saves a ton of time too