- I have no garage door opener so I added a tag in my car to open the smart garage without having to open the app and fiddle with things.
- I added a tag to our light switch that turns on our bedroom lamp (softer, more pleasant light at night).
- I added a door tag to unlock the door (no information contained on the tag so nobody can break in).
- I added a tag that pauses an automation at night so my stair lights don’t come on with motion sensing.
This is literally just the tip of the iceberg. I think of a new one every couple hours. Anyone have any other cool ones to share?
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I think the best use case I’ve seen for nfc tags are periodic reminder reset. Place a nfc tag near your filter register then when you change your hvac filter, scanning the tag records the date which can then be used to send notifications when it’s time to change the filters again.
I do this and even have a card on my tablet/dashboard with how many days left on the filter! Tag is down on the furnace.
You just reminded me that I had tags on my furnace and under sink water filter. I never set them up again after I moved a few years ago.
I hear a weekend project brewing :)
That’s an amazing idea, thanks! I have a stack of NFC stickers doing nothing at the moment
I started with NFC tags but whipping out my phone everytime I needed to scan a tag got annoying so I switched to bluetooth beacons. I have automations fired by button taps and proximity. MUCH easier and less hassle.
Definitely curious, how do you set these up and what do you recommend getting?
I don’t want to make any specific recommendations but any ibeacon signal emitting BLE beacon works perfectly with HA’s default bluetooth integration, Bluetooth Low Energy integration and ESPresense.
Can you use BLE for presense detection such that your phone is beaconing and when you enter an area an ESP32 (or something like it) picks it up? Or is this really only useful the other way where there’s a beacon and some s/w on the phone picks it up?
@bpnine you can definitely use it like that. Look at espresence.com for some examples or esphome.io Bluetooth low energy device. The first site has some good info. Not all phones / watches are compatible
Using the phone as a beacon drains battery like stupid in my case. My ble ibeacons are tied to HA, I don’t use the phone for any kind of beacon tx or rx.
I set up two tags that trigger the Bedtime routine and taped one to the side of my wife and I’s bedside tables. I much prefer scanning the tag over bothering with my phone or yelling at Google (until I give up and do it on my phone anyways).
I also set up a few medication reminder tags for my wife. Reminder triggers once an hour until she taps the tag on the pill bottle. Very handy with medications on different schedules.
The spouse acceptance factor is huge. Nothing for her to remember.
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Do you really always have your phone on you when you’re at home? When I’m outside then yes I have it in my pocket, but at home it’s either charging or just on the table in a different room.
I usually have my phone with me most of the time when I’m at home.
For sure. I would honestly love to not but I work from home so it’s easy to watch a movie and wait for a teams notification if I’m needed :)
lol ok, that is a good use of the phone in your pocket, I agree.
What tags are you using? Android or iOS?
I am using iOS. The ones I bought are very generic, I will try to find an Amazon link and report back. There’s very little difference between versions so I think just about any would work with both type!
I have one inconspicuously hidden under a sticker that will unlock one of my smart locks. Needing to unlock my phone is what prevents me from using it that often, though.
It is fun to use it when friends/family are around, and see them go “Whaaaat?!”
I liked nfc for that as well but then realized anyone that finds it can just overwrite your tags. No one can overwrite my bluetooth beacons.
With iPhone shortcuts, you don’t actually read anything off the tag, it just recognizes it and runs a shortcut that calls a home assistant entity (least that’s how I do it).
Your NFC reader on your phone reads the data on the tag whether you believe it or not. If you have writeable tags, someone can just overwrite your tag rendering it useless to you until you fix it.
I have an NFC tag which has a homeassistant action written to it, and it’s also set up in Shortcuts as an automation. It works on Android, and iOS! So no, you can’t override the shortcuts trigger.
Are you really that worried about someone overwriting your tags?
There’s no one in my family or friends that would even realize they’re writable, let alone actually figure out how to do it.
So how do you physically use these?
Have the tag on a surface, and touch your phone to it whilst connected to HA?
Never used RFID tags before, do you need to have the app open, or will it work with the phone locked?
I haven’t tried HA with NFC tags yet, but if I tap an NFC tag with my phone, it’ll show a list of app that can be launched to handle the tag. The phone need to be unlocked though.
HA handles them really well actually. You can flash them directly from the HA app, and as long as NFC is turned on on the phone, you can just scan them and execute whatever automation they’re tied to without opening the app. You can buy a 50 pack for like $15 on amazon/aliexpress.
Also if you have a 3D printer, you can slip them into your prints while printing and have them fully sealed inside the object (I have a giant 3D printed house key that has our wifi login embedded in it)
NFC tag on a vacuum that enables “Clening scene”: shared spaces lights on maximum, favourite cleaning playlist on
I really like that “tag as a garage door opener” idea!
