October 23, 2020
by Ezlo Admin

We’re often fond of saying that having a smart home is less about what you can do with it, and more about what it can do for you. If you’re new to smart homes, you’ve probably figured it out that you can unlock your smart door lock with your phone or ask your virtual assistant to turn on the hallway lights for you, but the true magic lies beyond the ability to tap your phone to turn on a light—the “smarts” in a home is actually the ability to tailor your smart home experience around each family member’s habits, personal preferences, and daily routines through automation, without ever having to use your app. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a small set of the best smart home scenes to try first, and truly see what your home can do for you throughout the day. But first, let’s review some key terms.

What are Scenes?

Scenes allow you to control multiple devices based on a schedule, an action registered by one of your devices, or sometimes, with a tap. In a Vera system, scenes have triggers and actions. Triggers can be any other device in your smart home, a schedule, a manual push of a button, or a geofence boundary. Actions are what happens with a device in response to a trigger. Actions can be immediate or delayed. Here’s an example If the hallway motion sensor detects motion (trigger) —> turn ON the hallway light (action), then wait 2 minutes and turn the hallway light OFF (delayed action). For more information on how to create a scene, check out this article on our support page. Now, onto the ideas.

Start the day right

Ease your way into the day by having your home wake up before you do. It can slowly raise the bedroom and living room shades, turn on the lights just enough to light your hallway and brew the coffee to help lure you to the kitchen. To achieve this, you’ll have to create a scene that uses a sunrise schedule as a trigger, your Z-Wave plug-in module for the coffee machine to ON, sunshades to 50%, and hallway bulb to ON as actions.

Off to work

Save yourself five minutes in the morning. Rather than running around the house to make sure the lights are out, the coffee machine is off, the windows are closed, and the thermostat is set, all you have to do is lock the door. By using your smart door lock as a trigger, your home can run an action to check and arm all your window sensors, turn off the lights, turn off the coffee, and set the thermostat to away.

Pro tip: You can configure Alexa or Siri to run the same scene for you. “Alexa, I’m heading out!”

Light up your way

There’s nothing more comforting than coming home to a warm, well-lit house. Imagine coming back from work on a dark night. Using the Geofencing feature of our app as a trigger, your home can run the following actions: turn on your lights, open your garage, turn up your thermostat, and prompt you to disarm the security system before you walk in the door. Welcome home!

Enjoy your evenings

You can also create a scene called “Evening” which uses “sunset” as a trigger then the action automatically fades up the exterior lights as day turns to night and lowers your blinds to ensure your privacy. Whether you’re out and about or already in for the night, Vera takes care of things so you don’t have to.

Bedtime ritual

Vera systems offer pre-set modes that can also serve as a scene trigger. Heading up to bed? Ask Alexa or Google Assistant to switch your home to night mode; the action will set the motion sensors to arm, lock the front door, set your thermostat, and dim the lights slowly so you can see until you hit the pillow.

Our list just scratches the surface of what you can achieve with scenes in your smart home. If you like to see more examples make sure you check our blog regularly and visit our knowledge base for the latest smart home tutorials.