Home Assistant reigns supreme over rival smart home platforms when it comes to automations. A powerful automation editor offers endless possibilities, and I’ll be the first to admit that this depth can at times feel overwhelming.
Fortunately, Home Assistant offers a simple way to outsource the process.
Crowd-source your automations with blueprints
Blueprints are an incredibly valuable Home Assistant feature that allows you to tap into the boundless expertise of the broader community. While there’s a certain satisfaction in working something out for yourself, blueprints let you skip the grind and save time by adopting a solution that someone else has already perfected.
A blueprint is essentially a plan for an automation, script, or template entity. Once shared by the community, they can be imported into your Home Assistant instance, which is where they will stay until you delete them. From here, you can use them to create automations and scripts that are tailored to your needs (without changing the blueprint).
Think of these as a framework with which you can specify a few parameters in the pursuit of achieving a specific task. Blueprints are read-only, so you can keep rolling them out as you need them. The resulting automations are tailored to you, the devices you flagged in the setup process, and any additional conditions you might have set.
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These are purpose-driven workflows that exist to speed up processes that can take a long time to design from scratch. As an example, consider the two blueprints that are included with every Home Assistant install: a motion-activated light automation and a confirmable notification script. These are just the tip of the iceberg compared to what the community provides.
To use blueprints, you must first import them. This is usually done by clicking the “Add” button that the author has shared, which will ask you to log in to your Home Assistant instance and confirm that you want to add the blueprint. From here, you can make use of it by creating a new automation or script and then selecting the blueprint you imported from the pop-up window that appears.
Many blueprints take on a life of their own, becoming constantly evolving projects that the author will tweak and improve based on feedback provided by the community. Just be aware that if an author updates a blueprint that you want to use, you’ll have to import it again.
Someone’s probably done it better than you have
Not everyone needs to outsource the process of creating an automation or script to someone else. It’s a good idea to get familiar with the process of creating automations, attaching conditions to them, and adding extra blocks using the editor. If you’re really keen, you might want to skip using the editor altogether and write your automations in YAML instead.
But even if you do enjoy the process of creating automations and also happen to be good at it, you can still save time by using blueprints instead. It’s hard to match the effort someone has put into designing a blueprint over months or years, which includes optional add-ons you might not have even considered.
One of the best examples of this is Blacky’s Appliance Notifications & Actions blueprint that I used to create an automation that notifies me when my washing machine cycle is done. The process of creating an automation for this task is pretty straightforward, once you’ve given it some thought.
Credit: Tim Brookes / How-To Geek
Essentially, you need to trigger a binary sensor that turns on based on a minimum power load from an energy-monitoring smart plug (that’s you starting a washing cycle). When the power load drops below a certain threshold for a set time, the binary sensor turns off, and this event can be used as a trigger to notify you that the cycle is done. If that sounds like another language, don’t worry, and grab the blueprint instead.
But then there’s everything else that the author of this blueprint has included, like a reminder system that uses a door sensor to understand if you’ve ignored the first notification and your clothes are still sitting in the washer. There’s also a method of restricting notifications based on the time of day or whether you’re at home, plus energy and time-tracking helpers, if you want them.
The Blueprints Exchange board over at the Home Assistant Community forums is the best place to find new blueprints. You can search the forum without signing up for an account, and the whole thing is ad-free thanks to the support of Nabu Casa.
One tip is to order the forum by replies, so that the threads with the most replies appear at the top of the page. This is a solid way to find popular, fleshed-out blueprints that have been through several iterations. The other way to go is to search for whatever task it is you want to achieve, sensor you want to use, and so on.
If you’re trying to unlock the full potential of a specific device like a remote or a wall switch, try searching for a blueprint to see if someone else has already figured it out.
Using blueprints to save time? Check out some more Home Assistant tricks that can save you hours in the long run.
