2. Shut the laptop, hit the gym
On Mondays at 6 p.m., Kathryn Mckinley, a product manager, gets a reminder that it’s workout time courtesy of the Nest speaker in her home office. This automation also turns off the lights in her home office and turns on the lights and the fan in the home gym. “The physical scene change of the lights keeps me on track,” she says.
3. Keep the garden watered
“Thirsty plants” is the title of software engineer manager Christina Kong’s favorite home automation. “I set the time so that my sprinklers run at sunset using a smart plug,” she explains. “It helps me keep my plants in tip-top shape” she says.
4. Make sure your home is safe
“Once a month or so, we’d discover our kids left the backdoor unlocked,” says software engineer Jim Li. To remedy this, he created an automation he named “Nighttime door and window check.” If any doors or windows are unlocked or open at 11 p.m., he’s notified with a message to his Pixel so there’s no way he’ll miss the message to lock up.
5. Keep an eye on the kids
Engineering manager Gayathri Subramanian’s kids get home before she does some days, and she wants to know if her home’s cameras see an unfamiliar face when they’re home alone, but not during any other time of the day. So she set up an automation called “Afternoon unfamiliar faces.” That way, when the Nest Cam for her driveway or doorbell detects an unfamiliar face in a specific time frame, she gets a notification, and the notifications are silenced during the rest of the day.
