In this video I'm going to show you how I use guest mode in Home Assistant. Make
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Hi I'm Will from Will Surridge Tech, and today we're going to look at guest mode
in Home Assistant - how you can make it, and what you can use it for. Some of you
will have seen my guest mode in my lovelace in previous videos, so I thought I'd
show you how you could do the same. So let's get going! Now guest mode isn't
actually an integration, or a built-in function at all - it is just an input
boolean. But I use this input boolean to make things happen, or make things not
happen depending on its state. So why might you want it? Well if you have a lot
of automations setup in your house, then certain things will happen at
certain times, or given certain criteria. But this is most likely going to be
reliant on the people in your household normally being there. For example, if you
have presence detection and you have everything turning off when you and
everyone else in your household leaves, then if you have a guest there then
everything will turn off on them, and you'll plunge them into darkness - we
don't want that to happen! So guest modes can be used to prevent certain
automations happening, if you don't want them to. It can also make things happen
instead. For example, your heating schedule might never include the spare
room, but if you have guest mode on you might want the spare room to be heated
up for your guests to have a nice warm room when they go up to bed. Let's start
off by making guest mode. As I said it's just an input boolean so we head over to
our config file and add an input boolean. Mine are referenced in a separate file, so
we'll head over there now. This input boolean, we need to give a name, and an
icon. We can then save and restart Home Assistant, and it should appear in our
entities. Now at the moment this is just a little switch - it doesn't do anything.
What we need to do is include it in some automations. I'm going to show you some
of the automations as I've got running which include guest mode, but of course
it completely depends on your automations and what you want guest mode
to do. Personally I only switch guest mode on if I've got guests staying over
or here for a long period of time, whereas you might want guest mode on
anytime that someone else is in the house who's not in your
household; or you may even want to separate input boolean
to control those two different states. So let's head over to node-red. The main
automation I use guest mode for is to turn the heater on in the spare room.
To do this we use a light scheduler node. This is active between 9:00 and 10:00
p.m. every day. It then goes into a switch node so if the light scheduler is
on it'll continue, if it's off it won't. It then goes to a current state node -
this gets the state of the guest mode - so if guest mode is on it'll continue down
the flow, if guest mode is off then it won't do anything. If it continues, it'll
check the temperature of the room using another current state note - if the room
is less than 17 degrees, then it will continue on; if it's more than 17 degrees
then it won't - because if it's that hot you don't need to turn the heating on! If
it continues it then goes to a call service node, and turns the heating on to
21 degrees. When the light scheduler goes off, ie at 10:00 p.m, it will set the
temperature to 12 degrees - that means it's in an ambient state for the rest of
the night. At midnight it then reset and reverts back to the heating schedule.
I've also included guest mode in my sleep scene.My sleep scene basically
turns the whole house off, and sets the bedroom ready for sleep. It'll turn off
the music, the lights, and the heating. But I don't want to plunge the whole house
into darkness if I've got a guest. So if I've got a guest, then I'll check a
current state node of guest mode, and if the guest mode is off then I'll turn the
spare room lights off, if it isn't then I'll just leave things how they are. I
also have it having an effect on our heating. So there's a 20 minute delay on
turning the heating off in the bedroom. If guest mode is on then there's
also a 20 minute delay turning the heating off in the spare room.
If guest mode is off, then I'll turn the heating off straightaway. The third
automation which uses guest mode is for my outdoor heater.
I only just thought of this idea while making this video, so I'll edit it now
for you. Currently when the heater turns on, it waits an hour, and then turns off.
What we're going to do is add a switch in there, switching based on the state of
guest mode. If guest mode is off then it will delay one
hour and then turn the heater off. Whereas if guests mode is on, it'll delay
three hours instead before turning the heater off. If I've got a guest I'm much
more like you'd spend a bit longer outside in the garden with them talking,
so I don't want it to shut off on me as quickly. I also have guest mode affecting
my lovelace. Here is my simple tablet view which you will have probably all
seen before. What you might not know is there's a conditional card in there.
So if guest mode is on, another card pops up with Wi-Fi login details, if guest
mode is off then that card disappears because I don't want it clogging up space.
To do this you're going to need a QR code of your Wi-Fi login details. I use
QiFi to create mine. I'm guessing it's a play on Wi-Fi but it's hard to
pronounce. All you need to do is enter your SSID and password and then it will
spit out a QR code. To suit the theme of my lovelace I'm going to round the edges
of this a bit. If you're going to do that, make sure you don't round it too much,
that you cut off too much of the QR code, otherwise it won't scan. So give it a
quick test before you go ahead and import it into Home Assistant. To
actually make it appear, we're going to use a conditional card. When guest mode
is on it'll display a picture card with the QR code for our login details. I'm
using a horizontal stack here with some blank cards to give it a bit of space, to
make sure the QR code is centre. These blank cards are excluded from the
conditional card (i.e. outside of it) so they're always there. This means that my
weather widget is always at the bottom of the screen.
I prefer this look. I'll leave the code for this and my spare room heating flow
in the description below so you can check it out for yourself. Obviously
there's so much you could use guest mode to edit. Even if you can't think of
anything right now, I would suggest you get guest mode setup and up and running
straight away - then any time you create a new automation or a new routine then you
can check whether it would be different if you had guests in the house, and then
you can add various conditions to your routine or your automation to make
things happen differently. I'm thinking about getting a 3D printer over the next
few months to help out with projects. I've been looking at the Ender
3 Pro - it would be great to know what your opinions are of this printer as an
entry-level model. Let me know in the comments below. I've also been asked to
let any followers know about the Portuguese home assistant community you
can find them at cpha.pt. Thank you to Rodolfo for sharing this with me so I
can share it with you. The link will be in the description below. And there we go -
guest mode is set up and running! Make sure you hit subscribe and the bell icon
below to find out more about my smart tech, and how you can build yourself the
ultimate smart home!