Home Assistant IOS Actionable Notifications Example

Here is a fun little project I put together when I realized that Home Assistant could trigger the lost remote function on my Roku. This little discovery allowed me to write up an automation that allowed me to use my Amazon devices to say “Amazon, Turn on Living Room Remote Finder” and trigger the remote to begin playing a sound. In addition to that, I also used IOS notifications to send a message to all phones in the family that asked if the remote was found.

The basic components of the project were a Home Assistant package (called Roku.yaml), an actual Roku, and an Echo device (although, this could easily be used with a Google device as well).

We first start with an input_boolean that is exposed with Nabu Casa to the Amazon devices.

With this in place, we then define our IOS push notifications.

This IOS notification block has two entries. LR_REMOTE_FOUND and LR_REMOTE_NOT_FOUND. When the routine kicks off, the family is sent a notification that they can press to get two additional options. Remote found or not found. Press found, ends the automation, and pressing not found cycles through it again triggering the remote to play the noise.

It is a straightforward automation to implement and if you have packages set up, you can almost just drop it into your setup to get this up and running super fast. I’ve found it super handy to have.

Happy Automating!
– Carlo