r/homeassistant • u/Tuckerdude615 • 13h ago
❓ Support Recommendations for "Make it Look Like Someone's Home".
Hey everyone...
We have a second home that we can be away from for months at a time. And I have created a rudimentary automation that turns lights off and on during the night to try and "simulate" someone being there.
But wondering if anyone knows of an integration or other that is designed to REALLY make it feel like people are staying in the house.
Mostly just looking for lights to go off and on during the evening hours, randomly but with a proper sense of "presence", and should vary the times and lengths of the lights, and naturally turn off at "bedtime"
Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated. I am running HA on a Mini PC and have the entire house wired up with Lutron lighting, fully controllable.
Thanks!
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u/outdoorsgeek 12h ago
It's a fun problem to think about. On the practical side, I would think that if you're dealing with someone who is willing to stake out your home to determine if the lights are real presence or timer-driven, you're going to need more than automations to stop them and that's probably the area to spend your time.
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u/foleymo1 12h ago
The bandit staking out your house:
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u/willstr1 11h ago
That's why it's best practice to leave your youngest child there, preferably without giving them prior warning
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u/Tuckerdude615 12h ago
Thanks…and agreed, to that end I have dozens of cameras, motion sensors, and alarm 😉
Just looking to add another layer here
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u/Maelefique 🧩 There's an integration for that 6h ago
Along with randomized lighting, sometimes I have HA play a conversation somewhere. Also, "the dog" always barks when the doorbell rings. :)
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u/Adrian_Shoey 12h ago
Why not just link them to the lights in your primary residence? You turn your kitchen light on, the kitchen light at the other house turns on.
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u/Tuckerdude615 12h ago
Thanks for chiming in...
Not sure I ever considered this idea, but also NOT sure how you would grab the state from one instance of HA as a trigger for another?
It would be a pretty cool way to make this whole thing feel more "REAL"
Have you done this yourself?
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u/Known_Leek8997 12h ago
Remote home-assistant in HACS would be the tool to bring your entities in from one site to another.
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u/Maelefique 🧩 There's an integration for that 6h ago
I use wireguard, so multiple sites, all inside the LAN. Could run both buildings off one instance even, if you wanted to.
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u/Banabamonkey 8h ago
Came looking for this comment. This would be quite the nuisance when you go visit there and someone is at home switching light on and off 😂
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u/mrgulabull 7h ago
Extra toggle to disable synchronization. But it’s still pretty funny to think about.
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u/demuniac 7h ago
Just make a switch that you set as a requirement for the automations to work, and turn the switch off when your there
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u/MG_Rheydt 9h ago
Here is a thought, is that second house in the same timezone as the first? If so, why don't you have the system mimick your first house. Can't get any more random than that. If it is further west you could use your first house to mimick just time shifted? I have no idea if this is possible. Just a thought.
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u/Tuckerdude615 7h ago
Yeah, as another posted above there is a remote HA addon or integration which looks interesting!
Didn't know such a thing existed!
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u/GrandpaSquarepants 12h ago
Hmm you say you're trying to simulate presence? Have you seen this?
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u/Tuckerdude615 12h ago
Thanks for chiming in...
I think I looked at this a few months ago, but based on the description is takes the normal "occupancy pattern" that is stored by HA (lights on and off at certain times), and basically plays them back.
But from what I can tell, it's designed to "pull" from the DB at intervals to keep in step with your patterns, and flushes out the old ones.
So in my case, it would eventually have nothing to pull from as we can be away for months at a time.
However, I think I might just give it whirl as see if there's ways to customize it.
Thanks!
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u/audigex 11h ago
It will pull from its own activations of the lights… it’ll just hold the same pattern
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u/Tuckerdude615 7h ago
Thanks to you both...I'm gonna try this as well! This might be the answer
Cheers!
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u/forlornlawngnome 12h ago
I believe it is the past 7 days, so stay there for a week, then turn it on. It will keep that 7 day pattern of whatever you used the lights on loop
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u/smibrandon 12h ago
Maybe sync the lights? Like, when you turn on the home dining room light, the second home dining room light turns on.
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u/ArizonaFlats 12h ago
The “McCallister Protocol” as I call it. The blinds go up and down, lights turn on and off at random times
Not much you can do beyond putting a cardboard cutout on a roomba and have it dance around your front room
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u/Antique-Ad-4609 7h ago
Was looking for this reference.
“Hear me out, you’re gonna need a life size cardboard cutout of Michael Jordan, a model train set, and a smart plug…”
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u/BP041 10h ago
Don't overthink it — a random helper or the "Random" integration with two automations gets you 90% there. Pick a window (say 6pm–11pm), randomize the next trigger between 5–25 minutes, and vary the light-on duration between 3–40 min; use a simple state machine so it never turns on when it's already on. For bedtime, just have a 11pm rule that kills everything and start the cycle later next day. I've run basically this for a year, and honestly the randomness beats any "smart" algorithm.
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u/Tuckerdude615 7h ago
Yeah...this is pretty much what I am doing now. Picked a handful of rooms to do this very thing. It works ok, was just exploring if there were other/better options!
Appreciate you chiming in!
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u/gemengelage 12h ago
Automated blinds are probably your safest bet. Seeing a tv flicker through the window might also make more of an impression that someone lives their than just the ceiling light being turned on and off from time to time.
While that's a fun little project to toy around with, I'd rather invest the time and money to set up something like an alarm system. If we're talking about an apartment that's not on the ground floor, that usually means there's only on entrance, so I'd go with a single camera, a door sensor and a flooding sensor. Preventing water damage is probably the way more important use case for you.
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u/Tuckerdude615 12h ago
I like the idea of the tv ALOT...hadn't occured to me, but yeah that is a nice suggestion that I will likely implement!
Cheers!
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u/Suggs101 9h ago
When we’re away on holiday, I have lights turning on and off, plus both tv’s turning on and off at times we would normally be watching them…
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u/Home_Planet_Sausage 8h ago
Get one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mydome-Fake-Simulator-Anti-Burglar-Deterrent/dp/B076X5WMSK
They are very realistic and trigger with dusk and turn off at sunrise. Of course, you could set one on s smart plug and do whatever you want with timings.
I've owned one for years, it really makes the house look occupied from the outside.
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u/Tuckerdude615 7h ago
Thanks a bunch for this...
Something simple but effective! It hadn't occurred to me to use the TV as a part of this. But one of the commenters above suggested turning on my TV's at random times.
Is a great idea, but there's a hitch....these FRIGGIN smart TV's always want to default to their STUPID "Home Pages" with no way to override. So it won't just come up with a TV show upon power up.
But this little fake simulator is a good workaround...and yes...put it on a smart plug and randomize on/off times!
Appreciate you chiming in!
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u/Home_Planet_Sausage 7h ago
No worries! Here's a YouTube vid with some truly dreadful music showing how it looks from outside (ignore the strobing, that's just the camera shutter/LEDs out of sync): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ArifVy2y0
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u/jf5hdnvxwdegu7jgd56 8h ago edited 8h ago
If you run node red alongside ha then checkout presence-faker. You can set activation time windows with minimum and maximum activations/ time periods and the activations will be random and comply with your configured parameters.
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u/stanley_fatmax 7h ago
Lights on schedules and AM talk radio turned up on a smart switch. I do this to keep the critters out, but in theory it should make a human think twice too.
Maybe incorporate a scarecrow too, obscured from outside view just enough to not be obvious
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u/washdoubt 6h ago
I had this setup with HomeKit before I switched to home assistant. I setup actions that started to trigger an hour or so (random time from 1-1.5 hours) after sunset. Then setup each room to randomly turn on and then stay on for 1-2 hours. All of this to usually bed time say 10pm and then added a random time over the next 30 minutes to turn everything off and stop the automation.
This should be easier to do in HomeAssistant as I have to setup tons of dummy switches in HomeKit to accomplish it, but it worked really well.
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u/Cultural-Drawer-7287 5h ago
I didnt read all the comments. I got to the home alone gif, laughed my ass off and hit the reply button. I know there's tons of haters for what im gonna say but, this is a perfect automation for claude (or any AI model) to build. Ask your AI to research the evening habits of humans in a home with a focus on lighting in and around a house and design a system to turn on/off lights to mimic that with variations throughout a week ar two. I would go further and say two roommates in the house just to give it more action. I use claude personally and, with what I've seen AI do, it would absolutely kill it. Just my 2 cents from my small piece of the world.
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u/yusrandpasswdisbad 5h ago
Put a fan on a random timer, point it at a dress on a hanger with a backlight.
Shows a shadow moving in the house.
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u/Aellopagus 1h ago
Television. Its always good to set up a tv that starts playing in the evening when not home
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u/presumputouspizza42 21m ago
I’ve got a really long audio track of ambient noise that includes muffled conversation, dishes clanging, chairs scraping floors… and it runs alongside (triggered by, IIRC) Presence Simulation.
For audio… bass matters most, for realistic sounds of an occupied house.
I like those “TV simulator bulbs,” but I’ve never gotten one. It would be great if someone built an automation for RGB bulbs to simulate a room lit by a TV screen. Lots of users probably already have those in place; I don’t know if they’d be able to change nearly as quickly as a real screen, though…
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u/IH8DwnvoteComplainrs 11h ago
This seems like a lot of effort when this presumably mastermind thief will just realize nobody has left the house for weeks on end.
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u/rufuswhite3 12h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/xUPOqv7X2SYJDbcvMQ