This smart home sensor is helping break my most dangerous habit
Sitting for long periods of time can increase the risk of serious health problems such as type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, obesity and certain cancers. Even a minute of walking every 30 minutes could provide modest benefits, such as reducing blood pressure. That’s why I use one of my smart home sensors to nag me when I sit for too long.
I turned my presence sensor into a desktop presence monitor
My sensor can “see” when I’m at my desk
I have a mmWave sensor in my home office that I initially set up to control my lights and computer. When I arrive at the office, my presence is detected and an automation in Home Assistant turns on the lights and wakes my computer, ready to work. As long as I’m in the room, the lights and computer stay on, and when I leave, the lights turn off and my computer goes to sleep.
Some mmWave occupancy sensors allow you to configure multiple zones. In addition to monitoring the entire room to trigger the lights, I can also create a zone that only covers my desk chair. The sensor is accurate enough to be able to detect when I’m in that area and when I’m not.
After some testing, I was able to confirm that the sensor would accurately report the area as occupied when I was sitting in my desk chair and unoccupied when I was not. This means I have an effective way to determine when I’m sitting at my desk.
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Create an automatism to harass me and get up
Shaming yourself really works
Once the zone was set up correctly, the next step was to create my automation in Home Assistant. I wanted a way to remind myself to get up from my desk chair if I was sitting there for 30 minutes or more. Since I have smart speakers and a stereo in my home office, the obvious solution was to use a voice announcement.
My automation starts whenever my office chair zone status changes to busy. At that point, a 30-minute delay begins. If at any time during these 30 minutes the zone becomes unoccupied, the time delay is canceled and the automation stops.
If I’m still in my office chair at the end of those 30 minutes, a voice warning plays through one of my smart speakers, telling me to get up from my chair. If I do this, the automation stops and only restarts when I come back to sit down.
If I don’t get up when I’m pestered, the automation pesters me again after five more minutes of sitting down. If I sit still, it nags me again after three more minutes, then two minutes, then one minute and then every 30 seconds until I finally give in and get up.
Each time, the volume increases, making it harder and harder to ignore. The broadcast message also becomes increasingly aggressive, eventually listing some of the worst health problems I could suffer from if I don’t get up.
I also can’t fool the automation by quickly getting up and sitting down again. The zone only becomes unoccupied when no presence is detected in the zone for a full minute.
Add real-world logic
Sometimes I need to sit still
As with most automation, while I feel like being nagged to get up most of the time, there are times when I don’t want that to happen. If I’m working late at night or early in the morning, for example, I don’t want loud voice notifications to disturb other people in my home.
There are also times when I have to sit for more than 30 minutes. For example, if I’m on a work video call, I don’t want my smart speaker to suddenly start telling me to get up from my chair.
So I needed to add real-world logic to my automation to make sure it only pestered me when I wanted it to. Adding a few time exceptions was fairly simple to do; You can add time conditions in Home Assistant automations, so that the automation only works between set times or days.
I also added a condition that prevents the automation from working if I’m on a video call. The Home Assistant desktop app on macOS exposes an entity called Camera In Use, which turns on when my MacBook’s webcam is activated. Automation will not work if the camera in use is enabled.
Automation works better than expected
My booth hours are exploding
I’ve always had trouble sitting for too long when working. Despite my best intentions, several hours may pass before I realize I haven’t left my seat all this time. I am fully aware of how unhealthy a sedentary lifestyle can be.
I thought creating this automation might help, but I wasn’t convinced it would make a huge difference. A smart speaker telling me to get up is not something I would necessarily obey. However, as I keep recalling for shorter and shorter intervals, the announcements can quickly become irritating enough that I can no longer ignore them.
The masterstroke wasn’t giving me an easy way to turn off automation. If I want to turn it off, I have to go through some menus in the Home Assistant UI and manually turn off the automation. It’s less effort to just get out of my seat and walk around for a minute or two.
Thanks to my mmWave presence sensor, I now get up several times during my working day. The proof is that I now close my Ring Stand on my Apple Watch almost every day, whereas before I would hit it once a week or less.
They say technology can make us lazy, but sometimes it can make us more active. It’s satisfying to know that my smart home not only makes my life easier, but also helps me live a healthier lifestyle.
