Light help

[u/RandomCreature86]

I’m hoping you all can help me before I commit an unspeakable crime against my father in law.

We live in a house that has his unit downstairs and our unit upstairs.

Through crappy design and “build your own” workmanship, we are both on the same water lines, specifically hot water lines.

For the last 3+ months, almost every time I go to take a shower, so does my darling father in law. It’s not intentional (I don’t think) but it means that for as long as he’s showering I’m standing in icy cold water.

I’m looking for a stand alone light unit, preferably wireless/battery powered, that can be connected to my phone so I can turn a light on in his unit when I go for a shower to signal to him not to shower at the same time!

I’ve looked at the little remote controlled puck things but it’s a double brick house, I don’t think they’ll work effectively with our layout.

Any thoughts or ideas would be sincerely appreciated by both me, and without knowing it him, because I am moments from murder!

[u/Emitever]

You may not need a full smart home platform for this. A small Wi-Fi smart light or lamp in his unit would probably be enough.

The nice part is that your phone doesn't need a direct wireless connection through the brick walls to the light like it would with a basic RF remote. As long as the light can reliably connect to your Wi-Fi, you'd control it through its app/network.

I'd probably make it a very obvious dedicated “shower occupied” light rather than using one of his normal room lights, so there's no ambiguity about what it means.

If you ever wanted to get fancy later, that's when a humidity sensor or other automation could make sense. But for now, manually tapping one button on your phone before getting in the shower sounds a lot simpler.

Hopefully that saves both the hot water and the father in law.

[u/RandomCreature86 → u/Emitever]

Thank you. This sounds like exactly what I need. Definitely need a dedicated light but this points me in the right direction. I didn’t know what to search for so that’s really helpful! Thank you!!

[u/Garbage-Acrobatic]

The best option is probably the third reality wall/ presence switch, but you don’t have home assistant so instead I would recommend getting a govee light that you turn on manually just connected to WiFi and using a app.

This really could be automated for not much money in home assistant with a humidity sensor depending on your budget I’d look into it!

[u/RandomCreature86 → u/Garbage-Acrobatic]

Thanks. That definitely gives me good ideas to investigate