When I started using Home Assistant, I ran way too many automations for the silliest of things. Over time, I pulled back and kept only those automations that felt genuinely useful without making any visually noticeable impact. That helped me avoid flashy but unwanted dashboards and notifications.

Among those, there’s one automation that continues to run every day without my family noticing it. After a brief surprise early on, the automation faded into the background and now works quietly. I get no notifications, prompts, or choices to pick from. That helps with a small yet consistent reduction in the electricity bill over months.

It solved something I struggled to get right: reliable presence detection without a dedicated app or cloud services. I’m proud of it because it runs locally, reliably, and completely out of sight.

The Home Assistant automation goes unnoticed in my house

How I turn off idle devices in my bedroom

My bedroom has several devices, though I don't use them all at once. So I’ve been on the receiving end of the “Who left the TV or the lights on?” inquiry more times than I’d like to admit. Past mistakes aside, I didn’t want devices silently drawing power when they’re not in use or after someone has finished using them.

My primary logic was straightforward: turn off things that had been idle for a specific time. But getting that done cleanly required connecting those devices to Home Assistant first, using integrations or a smart plug. The idea was to stop relying on manufacturers’ apps and cloud services to build an automation that runs locally within Home Assistant.

Besides, the built-in power-off timers in devices like TVs or ACs have never helped with my family’s unpredictable usage patterns. That’s why automation is the right choice.

I built the automation to test small appliances, such as coffee machines and chargers, using power consumption data generated by the smart plugs. So when a device’s power draw drops to idle levels for more than ten minutes, the automation shuts it off. That worked reliably from the start.

The harder part was to figure out presence detection to effectively carry out the automation before it becomes a nuisance. So I needed to confirm if no one was present in the room. That’s where Bluetooth proxies helped out big time. When I combined a device’s power draw with the Bluetooth proxy's presence detection data, I confidently configured two conditional triggers. The first one checks the power consumption, and the other reports no one nearby. The devices go off only after both conditions are met.

Nobody in my family has questioned how it happened. That assumed someone had manually switched things off and moved on.

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Fine-tuning the automation logic to turn off things

When a single automation wasn’t enough

One of my biggest concerns was preventing the devices from going off randomly mid-use. I wanted to avoid those complaints when crafting the automation. So it was important to detect anyone’s physical presence in the area or room. The Bluetooth proxy confirms that no one is nearby, and the smart plug confirms that the device is idle.

The single automation worked fine when I dealt with a couple of devices. The smart plug data pointed out that my TV draws around 5W when idle and no one is in the room. The coffee machine draws less than 2W when turned on, but no one is using it. So it was manageable to automate them.

The problem grew when I wanted to automate turning off more devices. That’s because each had a different idle wattage draw. I couldn’t apply the same threshold for all of them.

The automation began to turn into a complex chain of conditions that must be met before an action actually occurs. Slowly, I dreaded adding more devices because I didn’t want to risk editing automation and hoped nothing breaks in the process.

That’s when Blueprints came in. I defined the logic just once to check for the power sensor, detect presence, and turn off the device only if both conditions are met. That logic needs to be applied to each device separately to define the wattage threshold and idle duration. Adding a new device means filling in a few values and not editing the automation from scratch.

The automation that keeps growing with my smart home

My next step is extending the logic to Bluetooth-supported devices using ESP32-C3-based proxies. Bluetooth Low Energy devices like bulbs, LED strips, SwitchBot buttons, and select Govee lights that support active Bluetooth connections are on that list.

The part I keep coming back to is the automation nobody ever asks about. It’s been running for the past few months, and no one has noticed it. That’s exactly what I aimed for when I started automating my smart home.