Automation & AI
The household automation estate
Eleven n8n workflows that run my life admin.
Problem
Shift work, dynamic energy pricing, a home server fleet, and a roster that changes without warning. Nothing was on fire, but a dozen small things needed watching: shift changes inside the week, payslip errors, cheap power windows, server health, backups. Checking them manually is exactly the kind of low-value, high-frequency work that should not be a human's job.
Diagnosis
Most of the friction was data movement. A roster lives in a calendar feed, payslips arrive by email, energy prices come from an API, server health comes from SSH. Nothing needed building from scratch; it needed connecting. An automation runner plus a set of small, single-purpose workflows would cover it.
Action
- Shift-change watchdog — diffs the rostering calendar hourly and alerts on changes inside the next seven days
- Roster pipeline — rebuilds the roster every 15 minutes and publishes the next shift to Home Assistant as a sensor
- Payslip check — Gmail-triggered; parses the payslip PDF and compares it against actual shift history
- Morning digest — 07:00, one message with energy prices, the cheap window, weather and infrastructure status
- Cheap-power alert — checks live energy pricing every 15 minutes
- Infrastructure watchdog — SSH health checks across the fleet every 15 minutes, alerts on failures
- Mesh visualiser — a live map of the mesh (webhook)
- AI assistant — a chat agent over Gmail, Home Assistant and memory (webhook)
- Nightly export — 02:30, exports all workflows and encrypted credentials, keeps 14 versions
- Price-aware heating and water heater — event-driven from live energy pricing
- Budget rules — categorisation and payee tooling over exported transactions
Outcome
- Shift changes no longer surprise me; the watchdog tells me within the hour
- Payslips are verified against shifts automatically instead of by eye
- Household energy use follows the cheap windows without me thinking about it
- Fleet problems page me before I notice them
- Eleven workflows, one runner, all versioned and exported
What I'd do differently
Pending
Reflection to be written by Jupiter.
0
Open a window and its geometry shows up here.
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The desk blanks itself after a quiet spell, then runs one of thirteen effects named after the IRIX screen savers. Move the pointer or press a key to wake it; lock it and only Unlock brings it back.
Settings load with the desktop.
The environment
About this desktop
jupiter.au is set up as a working desktop: the Toolchest, the objects, the status strip and the windows stay with you on every page. Drag a title bar to move a window, pull any edge or corner to resize it, drag it to the side of the desk to snap it into place, and right-click a title bar for that window's menu. Right-click the desk itself for the root menu.
Toolchest
The panel in the corner carries the classic seven menus — Desktop, Find, People, Applications, Shared Resources, System and Help — above the command field. Collapse it to the chip with the arrow in its title strip, or press Ctrl+K to bring it back.
Desks
Four desks, as 4Dwm kept them. Each surface belongs to the desk it was opened on — switch with the status strip, the Toolchest, or Ctrl+Alt+1…4. The Desks Overview window maps all four at once.
The catalogue
The Icon Catalogue lists every application the desk knows — click to select, double-click to open, right-click for the icon's own menu. The objects on the right edge can be dragged into a new order, and the one that will take the drop turns royal blue.
Customise
Desktop → Customise… holds the background (signal wash, flat or dim), the bevels (flat 2026 or the classic two-line), and the way to the Screen Saver. Choices stick to this machine.
Screen saver
Thirteen effects named after the IRIX screen savers, with a timeout, a Random mode and an optional lock. Open the Screen Saver window to change them.
Desks
Four desks, as 4Dwm kept them. Each surface belongs to the desk it was opened on — switch with the status strip, the Toolchest, or Ctrl+Alt+1…4.
Winterm
Type help for the commands — ls, open,theme, date.
Loading the desks…
12 icons shown; sorted by Name
No audio hardware on this host.
Background
Bevels
Screen saver
The timeout, the effect and the lock live in the Screen Saver window.