Splash into a Smarter Summer - Automate your Home with Sub-G Sensors, Matter and Apple Home

Tapo plugs allow me to keep my home lit at night when not home.

Time to enhance and/or upgrade my Deco X55 system?

Hey @NJKen,

Great to hear! Do you use schedules or Smart Actions to accomplish this?

If you have not yet given it a try, you can try the new Tapo Geofencing feature to automatically toggle your lights based on your phone location.

Hey @ggahan,

It could be, depending on your network needs and the devices on your network.

The X55 is still one of our most popular Decos and its performance is more than enough for normal networks and traffic. But if your network has a lot of new devices, HQ video streams, or has a lot of traffic passing through it, it may be worth keeping an eye out for deals and upgrades to Wi-Fi 6E and 7 Decos.

If you are looking for something in particular or are experiencing slowdowns with your network, our teams would be more than willing to help you out in our Deco forums or on our recent story for comparing Decos.

Several automations and smart actions via the Smart Action 2.0 feature of the Tapo app.  I make extensive use of Tapo sensors and hubs, and a number of Tapo bulbs, smart plugs, and Kasa plugs.  All devices are scattered across five different physical locations as far as 90 miles apart.  The only feature I have not made use of is the geofencing ability.  

Garage doorr:

I have a generic garage door opener, whose power is managed by a smart plug.  I have the garage door power on a schedule so that it can't be opened at night at all.  

I have also wired up another smart plug to briefly power on and then power off again after one second whenever I hit the "smart action" button.  This brief, 1 second poweron->poweroff triggers a relay that closes for that one second to act as a press of the garage door, thereby letting me open my garage door without the use of a separate remote door opener, or also in case I forget it.

There is a door sensor on that door that notifies me of the door's state.  I also have a camera pointed at the door which I can look at if I happen to get such an alert.  This gives me complete ability to control the garage door as necessary from wherever I want.

Porch light:

My front porch light uses a smart bulb which is triggered to turn on by the use of a motion sensor, but only set to come on between sunset and sunrise.  This same bulb is configured to turn on full bright red if any door in the house is opened during "after hours".  This is also accompanied by every automated light turning on and every hub in the house making enough noise at least to let any intruder know that their presence has been detected.  If I wanted a loud alarm, I could probably wire up a loud physical device via a smart plug toggled relay, much like the garage door opener button.

Front porch

The same motion sensor on the front porch will alert to any activity there and create an audible noise on the hubs.  Whether it's solicitors, guests, or packages left at the door, an overhead camera lets me see who or what is there when I get the alert.

Mail slot:

Any mail placed inside the mail chute triggers a unique alert that happens on a 10 second delay, since the front porch motion sensor alarm sounds first.  If I hear the front porch first and then the mail chute, then I know the mailman has walked by and left me to some mail.

Misc lights

Several lights in the house are triggered by a single light switch being turned on.  The lights can still be toggled independently, but being able to turn on multiple lights with a single press can be convenient.

Thanks for chiming in @Silly_Goose 

I highly recommend trying the geofencing feature, as I have added a surprising number of automations geared around my presence while away.

For your Garage: How were you able to control a relay with a smart plug? Did you use another device to interface the smart plug and opener, or is this a direct connection available to your door?

I think that using a motion sensor for your porch lights is one of the most popular automation options. In my home, I decided against needing to manage an outdoor sensor and simply automated my lights to turn on for 'x' hours after sunset - but I may need to consider rethinking this for late nights. For a Siren, you could consider the siren on the H100, but I honestly like the idea of using a smart plug with a noisemaker. I am imagining something like a fire station bell going off when needed XD

Mail Sensor:

This has been my own pet project in my home. Our mailbox is down the street, making it more difficult than usual to get a wireless signal back to my home. I also found that using a motion sensor in my mailbox is more flexible than a contact sensor, but it isn't too viable for mail slots that drop into the home.

Since you are already using your switches for another purpose in automations - something I have found useful is using a switch's status as a condition to prevent an automation from taking effect. For example, I have a set of lights in my kitchen that are not often turned on, but I have them set so that when turned on, they disable the motion-sensing automations in the kitchen. This is often used when we have company or know that the lights will constantly turn on and off from the automation.

Lastly, Have you thought about connecting your devices and sensors to a voice assistant to get notifications on your devices and hubs? I had to start adding voice notifications since it was getting too difficult to keep track of what different chimes meant.

@Riley_S 

Garage door:

Let me see if I can restate how I'm doing my setup.  I programmed a smart action that turns on a smart plug momentarily for just one second.  I plugged a 120 volt relay into the smart plug (I had to fabricate the relay assembly by cutting up a spare 120 volt power cable and wiring it to a 120 volt relay that I bought on Amazon, $13 for two).  The relay can now be turned on and off for just a second by way of that smart action.  I just have a standard old school garage door with a wired button on the wall, so I wired in the relay in parallel with the existing wall button.  For that brief second, the relay closes the wall button wire loop, triggering the door.  This 1 second on/off is enough to open, close, and stop the motion of the door as I normally can by standing next to the button on the wall.

The H100 hubs I have scattered around aren't quite as loud as I'd ideally want in case of a true emergency, but they're more than enough.  But I do like that I could potentially wire in a VERY loud speaker to blare out a siren if I wanted to.

So a couple of things I've been tinkering with but haven't fully fleshed out yet.  The first is figuring out how exactly the H100 hub is being powered.  I have sacrificed a spare H100 to do this.  Obviously it plugs into a 120volt source, but electronics don't run directly on 120volt, they are usually stepped down to between 5 to 12 volts DC for normal operation.  Inside the Hub I found a transformer and it *looks* like the main power rail is 5 volts, but I haven't actually tried wiring that up and testing it yet.  I want to run a hub at a remote location (shed in the middle of nowhere) that only has 12 volt for power.  I do not want to run an inverter for something as trivial as an H100 hub.  I want this hub to host a motion sensor so it automatically turns on a Tapo L930 light strip, as it's dark in the shed.  Normally I would just go some other direction, like Arduino, but the goal here is to try and integrate everything with my existing Tapo account.  I have internet out there, so having a motion sensor would also alert me if there is any intrusion into this remote shed.

Having a direct DC powered hub is very useful for this, which is why I'm tinkering.  This could potentially benefit you as well.  Maybe a motion sensor in your mailbox would be too far away, but what about a DC/battery powered H100 hub that can sit in the middle, close enough to the motion sensor and close enough to wi-fi.

Anyway I'm no electrical engineer, barely an electronics hobbyist although I've taken apart my share of gizmos, enough to make me dangerous and bold enough to risk shorting a couple of components.  Truthfully I really wish that the Tapo hub had some kind of barrel jack to allow that kind of power to be plugged in("dual fuel" power option), so that's what I'm trying to work towards.  Getting a bit of guidance about where I could potentially wire in a barrel jack would be HIGHLY useful (Like knowing where would be a safe spot to push in 5 or 12 volts, I can clearly see where the circuit board is grounded.).

Another idea I have been kicking around is using a leak sensor as a switch.  The leak sensor has two poles that have screw terminals and closing this loop triggers the sensor.  Aside from determining the gauge/size screws that fit these two terminals and how long of a pair of wires can be connected to the sensor and still have it work when the wire loop is closed, if you put some kind of standard switch at the end that opens and closes with the mailbox door opening and closing, then potentially the leak sensor may be able to be close enough to the hub to still trigger.  And if the hub can be made battery powered somehow, then potentially there could be more than enough distance that the components can be run.  Using screws screwed into the leak sensor wouldn't even damage it in any way, very easily reversible, and allow for even greater versatility.  Were the two screw terminal posts put there with this kind of thing in mind, so that the leak sensor could work in tight areas where the sensor itself otherwise would be too big?  If so, you wouldn't happen to know what size the screws are supposed to be, would you?  Otherwise I'll have to break out my box of random screws and experiment...

These are the kinds of silly project ideas that make me wish that the Tapo line had a few more options like physical on/off sensors and DC powered hubs.

To address the other topics:

Geofencing 

I'm generally not a big fan of relying on a cell phone GPS location to trigger smart actions, but I'll have to play with a couple of things as a test.  But I have been experimenting with using a spare smart plug that does nothing more than act as my Home/Away when on/off.  

Voice Assistant:

I have a couple of Echos in the house, but I use them very sparingly.  One is used to control lights inside my garage (Most of the light switches are on the opposite end of the garage, partly blocked by boxes) and the other is tucked away in a quiet corner of the house where I just ask it occasionally to set an alarm or ask it the weather, but it's in a place designed to not pick up normal conversations.  So far I haven't had any real need for voice assistant notifications but I might play with that setting.

Just waiting for the day my Decos are matter compatible with all third party devices, i have 2 BE95 and one BE85

I do want to say after buying multiple brand devices when i first started, Tapo is by far the best out there.