I have 7 red series switches and 5 on the way. I thought it would be cool to have a discussion of what people are using the notification lights for to get some ideas I haven’t thought of.
I have one switch that just tells me the status of the garage door, green door is closed, red door is open.
I have one that tells me that the garage is closed and both the front and back door are locked. Green is all locked and red is one or more are unlocked.
Then the last one I am using right now in my bathroom gives the same status as the previous one, but adds the laundry room door so we know we closed the door and the dog isn’t roaming the house at night. (he pees on things if he roams, but it is a half door so he doesn’t feel isolated as much).
That is all I have really come up with so far, just thought others might have some creative and useful ideas. I love the notifications, one of my favorite smart home features, but mine are terribly under used at this point.
Garage Door open
Fridge Door open too long (>2 minutes - settable)
Alarm on/off
Attic light on
Backyard floodlights on.
Shed (detached structure) Light on.
-other things I’ve contemplated but haven’t enabled yet-
Shed AC running
Shed Compressor running
Shed temp over ‘xx’
Garage temp over ‘xx’
Garage Door sensor batteries low
Fridge Door sensor batteries low
That’s a good idea. Do you put the sensor on the inside or outside of the door? I already plan on adding a sensor to our chest freezer but that’s out of sight so I’ll mount the sensor on the outside.
I have 2 fridges with sensors on them, One small one on our front porch that my wife put drinks in for delivery drivers, that one I was able to put a door sensor on the bottom of the door and it is almost not noticeable at all. The other fridge in the garage I put at the top of the doors, it is a side by side so I put the sensor on one door and the magnet on the other so it notifies me if either door has been left open. Vary handy. My kitchen fridge is the samsung smarthub fridge and has a built in sensor. A couple of times that oone has not closed good, I left the house and got a notification on my phone before I got out of my neighborhood that the door was open.
Thanks for posting this have been considering asking the same! I’m still getting everything configured on my new HA but here is what I have planned/implemented
All Clear - Solid green
Alarm Armed - Chase Red
Something is open - orange pulse
Person detected on property outside (using blue iris) - purple slow blink
Washing machine is done and laundry is in it- blue fast blink
And I’m sure I’ll will be adding some of the great ideas posted here!
I have mostly standard notifications (Same on all switches) and some that are specific to certain switches. No notifications show if one of those isn’t “active”:
Open garage door
Alarm is on
Alarm delay
Alarm on but key doors or windows are open
AC is running (and actually cooling)
Air Exchanger is on Turbo Mode (Only in bathrooms and kitchen)
Auto-lock is disabled at night (Only on the switches next to doors with locks)
RGBW Closet light is on (Only on the closet switches)
I liked @Eric_Inovelli weather application. Could be as easy 0-32 degrees is solid blue, chance of snow or ice chase blue, 32-75 solid yellow, 75+ solid red. Thunder storm can be another color etc…
Have not got around to it yet but my kids share bathroom. If bathroom is in use it will change LED color in their rooms. This way they can see that bathroom is in use.
Most of my usage is already mentioned, but i’m also combining the notification with the config button as an action to close/toggle the thing it’s monitoring.
Example:
Upstairs lights open
** With config button press → close upstairs light
Similar in purpose to folks’ Alarm status, but slightly different implementation:
My primary/all-day usage is not a notification, but actually changing the default LED bar color parameter on ALL my switches to represent the state of the house:
Light Blue: Home
Dark Blue: Quiet Mode (Home, with audio alerts silenced because someone’s sleeping)
Purple: Night Mode (Home, but security sensors armed)
Red: Away Mode (Almost never see this unless I’m testing or there’s a bug )
Then I’ll add notifications on top with a blink or pulse effect to differentiate from solid color and try to draw more attention depending on severity/urgency:
Timers in bathroom:
Slow blink while timer is running
Switch to fast blink for final minute
Use a scene notification to turn “single tap up” into “add more time to the timer”, and send a 3-second solid notification to acknowledge before going back to slow blink.
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