Why do home automation with PowerShell?<\/p>\n
There are certainly other solutions out there which are great, even excellent. For me personally, it’s mainly because it’s fun to be able to build parts of it by yourself, you learn a lot by doing it, but you can also base your tasks on almost any piece of information out there.<\/p>\n
I’ll give you an example!<\/p>\n
I’ve started to go to work after the traffic calms down in the morning, I have a pretty good idea of when this usually happens, but sometimes there is no traffic jams at all, and sometimes it’s completely hopeless.<\/p>\n
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to utilize live traffic information on the internet, and based on that trigger your wake up call? At least I thought so \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
First of all, try to find a provider for traffic information near you, and make sure you don’t break their ToS by fetching that information in a automatic way (ie. web scraping).<\/p>\n
I won’t go into detail on how to build a webscrape-cmdlet right now, but I’ll show you how to use it when it’s done. (A guide to web scraping available here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n This is the script I run every morning, I think the code comments will be enough to explain how it works:<\/p>\n [PowerShell] # Import the Module containing your traffic parser # Set your home and work address # Set a max traveltime limit (in this case, in minutes) # I want it to be under this value for $NumberOfTimes consecutive times # Make sure it does’nt get $True on first run # Reset variable to zero # Run until the traveltime limit has been passed enough times # Reset variable # Load new data, the “Get-Traffic”-cmdlet is my traffic parser # Check if it is below your traveltime limit, and that it is not $null (cmdlet failed) # Write current status # Pause for a while before checking again, 10 minutes or so… # The while loop will exit when traveltime has been verified enough times.<\/p>\n # Write status # Time to initiate the “sunrise effect”<\/p>\n # Set the device id for the lamp you want to light up # Set start dimlevel # Set how much it should increase everytime we “raise” it # Set your Telldus credentials # Kick off the “sunrise-loop” # Set the new dimlevel # Sleep for a while (30 seconds makes the “sunrise” ~30 minutes long depending on your $SunriseSteps value) # Set the next dimlevel # Set the lamp to full power (loop has exited) and exit [\/PowerShell]<\/p>\n This script is scheduled to run in the morning (on week days) around the earliest time I want to go up, the first loop will run until traffic calms down, and then start the “sunrise”-loop which will run until the light reaches its maximum level (255).<\/p>\n You could of course turn on other stuff as well, like a coffee brewer (make sure you don’t do this while you are away…), a radio, play some music or something else.<\/p>\n That is one of the (many!) pro’s of doing things with PowerShell! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why do home automation with PowerShell? There are certainly other solutions out there which are great, even excellent. For me personally, it’s mainly because it’s fun to be able to build parts of it by yourself, you learn a lot by doing it, but you can also base your tasks on almost any piece of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[231,21,241,841],"tags":[521,501,511],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Zj0A-fl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/p0wershell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/p0wershell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/p0wershell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p0wershell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p0wershell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/p0wershell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/p0wershell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p0wershell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/p0wershell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n# Import the Telldus module
\nImport-Module ‘.\\Telldus.psm1’<\/p>\n
\nImport-Module ‘.\\WebDataModule.psm1’<\/p>\n
\n$HomeAddress=”Homeroad 1, MyTown”
\n$WorkAddress=”Workaround 1, WorkTown”<\/p>\n
\n[int] $TravelTimeLimit = 30<\/p>\n
\n[int] $NumberOfTimes = 3<\/p>\n
\n[int] $CurrentTravelTime = $TravelTimeLimit+1<\/p>\n
\n[int] $NumberOfTimesVerifiedOK = 0<\/p>\n
\nwhile ($NumberOfTimesVerifiedOK -lt $NumberOfTimes) {<\/p>\n
\n $CurrentTravelTime = $null<\/p>\n
\n [int] $CurrentTravelTime = Get-Traffic -FromAddress $HomeAddress -ToAddress $WorkAddress | select -ExpandProperty TravelTime<\/p>\n
\n # Increase $NumberOfTimesVerifiedOK if it was ok, or reset to zero if it wasn’t
\n if ($CurrentTravelTime -ne $null -AND $CurrentTravelTime -lt $TravelTimeLimit) {
\n $NumberOfTimesVerifiedOK++
\n }
\n else {
\n $NumberOfTimesVerifiedOK = 0
\n }<\/p>\n
\n Write-Output “Traffic has been verified as OK $NumberOfTimesVerifiedOK consecutive times”<\/p>\n
\n Start-Sleep -Seconds 600
\n}<\/p>\n
\nWrite-Output “Initiating sunrise, current travel time to $WorkAddress is $CurrentTravelTime minutes, and has been below $TravelTimeLimit for $NumberOfTimes consecutive times.”<\/p>\n
\n$BedroomLampDeviceID=”123456″<\/p>\n
\n$SunriseDimlevel = 1<\/p>\n
\n$SunriseSteps = 5<\/p>\n
\n$Username=”my_email@telldus.com”
\n$Password=”MySecretPassword”<\/p>\n
\nwhile ($SunriseDimlevel -lt 255) {
\n # Write some status
\n Write-Output “Setting dimlevel to $SunriseDimlevel”<\/p>\n
\n Set-TDDimmer -Username $Username -Password $Password -DeviceID $BedroomLampDeviceID -Level $SunriseDimlevel<\/p>\n
\n Start-Sleep -Seconds 30<\/p>\n
\n $SunriseDimlevel=$SunriseDimlevel+$SunriseSteps
\n}<\/p>\n
\nSet-TDDimmer -Username $Username -Password $Password -DeviceID $BedroomLampDeviceID -Level 255
\nWrite-Output “Maximum level is set.”<\/p>\n