The easiest way in is the door you never look at

Most people spend their security budget on the front door: a better lock, a peephole, a chain. Yet a large share of break-ins come through a balcony instead. A drainpipe on the outside wall, a stairwell window, the neighbour's balcony door left on the latch. A balcony has no peephole and no bell, and you have no reason to wander out there and check.

Worse, the balcony changes its job several times a day. In the afternoon it is where the laundry hangs, and you do not want a fuss every time the neighbour's cat walks the railing. At night it is dark, you go out to bring the washing in, and you would like enough light not to kick over a plant pot. But if that light comes on at full brightness it shines straight into the bedroom next door. And once you leave for the weekend, that same door opening becomes a serious event.

Three situations with opposite requirements. Most setups only ever get one rule, which is why they end up either firing all afternoon until somebody switches the whole thing off, or doing nothing at all at night.

The fix: one set of sensors, three arming levels

You do not need more hardware. A reed switch on the balcony door and a motion sensor in the corner is enough. What changes is that the system knows which state it is in, so the same trigger takes a different path.

One day, minute by minute

The same grid reads more easily as a day in the life.

1. 06:00

   Sunrise, the level drops on its own

   At sunrise the balcony returns to the daytime level. You do nothing, and you get no notification, because stepping down is not something you need to be told about.

2. 09:15

   You leave for work

   One tap on the way out. From this moment the same reed switch means something else entirely: not "a door opened" but "somebody came in".

3. 11:30

   Someone appears outside

   The motion sensor reacts. The system pushes a notification with a still from the camera. You glance at it at your desk, recognise the meter reader, and tap clear. Cleared inside thirty seconds, so the siren never made a sound.

4. 18:30

   You get home

   Clearing away mode happens as you walk in. Once the light fades outside, the system picks up the night level by itself. Again, no notification for that.

5. 21:05

   You go out for the washing

   The door opens and the light comes up to thirty percent, enough to see the floor and the drying rail, not enough to reach next door. You come back in and two minutes later it fades out. A message says the door was opened; you swipe it away.

6. 23:50

   The wind pushes the door open

   The light comes on, the phone buzzes, and the message carries a photo of the balcony. You see there is nothing there and go and close the door properly. The night level does not sound the siren, because at midnight the person on that balcony is almost always you.

At night the brightness matters more than the switch

Almost everyone sets balcony lighting to full the first time. The result is that you get dazzled, the neighbours get lit up, and within a few days the whole rule gets disabled.

In practice you only need to do two things out there at night: see whether anything is on the floor, and find the drying rail. Thirty percent covers both. A dimmer light also means your eyes adjust faster on the way out from a lit room, so it is genuinely easier to walk.

The same goes for duration. Two minutes is enough for one trip with the laundry, and if you are not done, moving brings it back up. Ten minutes is not more convenient, it is just ten more minutes of light on the neighbour's window.

There is exactly one case for full brightness: the away level being triggered. At that point the light is not there to help you see. It is there to tell whoever is outside that this home is paying attention, and very few people stay somewhere lit up with a siren going.

Before and after

What you need on hand

Home Assistant calls every device in the house an entity. The brand and the model do not matter. What matters is which kind it counts as. These are the kinds you need.

This works without a siren. Swap the away response for three notifications in a row plus every light in the house coming on. It is less direct than a noise, but you still know within seconds. Without a camera the push is text only and everything else runs unchanged.

How the whole thing works

There are only three stages: sensors report, one decision works out which level applies, and three ready-made blueprints do the work.

Use the ready-made blueprints for the middle part

The hub ships with a set of tested automation blueprints. Think of a blueprint as a fill-in-the-blanks form: the boxes are already drawn, you supply the content. Night lighting uses binary_sensor_trigger_light, which exists precisely to turn a light on when a sensor reacts and off again when things go quiet.

The alarm side uses binary_sensor_trigger_things. The boxes look almost identical, except the thing being done is starting the siren and the camera instead of a light. The push uses entity_state_trigger_notify, watching the siren and messaging everyone in the household the instant it goes off.

Different homes, different numbers

Here are the balconies we see most often. Pick the one closest to yours and adjust from there.

Worth adding once the basics work

Three rules cover the core. These are extras. Add whichever one you actually want.

Four things it takes care of

You do not have to set this up yourself

None of the above needs clicking through box by box. The WOOWTECH hub ships with HA-MCP, so an assistant can connect straight into your system, do the work, and then go back and check that it really runs.

Prompts you can copy straight out

Each block below can be copied whole, using the button on the right. Pick the one closest to what you want rather than working through all five.

Set up security on my balcony. After dark, when the balcony door
opens, bring the balcony light to thirty percent and let it fade out
after two quiet minutes, and send a message to my phone.
During the day just send the message, no light and no alarm.

Build three arming levels for my balcony, sharing one door sensor
and one motion sensor. In daytime, push only, no light and no siren.
After dark, opening the door brings the balcony light to 30% and it
fades out after two quiet minutes, with a push carrying a still from
the balcony camera, and the siren stays silent. While away, opening
the door sounds the siren, takes the light to full, pushes and starts
recording; motion at the away level pushes first and only sounds the
siren if I have not cleared it within 30 seconds. Count 6am to 6pm as
daytime, the rest as night, and away regardless of the clock. Give me
a one-tap way to arm away and to clear it.
Test it yourself once it is built, confirm it really works, and then
tell me which devices you used.

Only a wall separates my balcony from next door, and a bright light
at night shines into their window. Drop the night brightness to 20%
and let it fade after 90 seconds, and after 10pm do not use the siren
at all, just push a message with a photo.
The away level is exempt from this, it should still sound.

That balcony night lighting rule is too dim. Take the brightness to
45% and stretch the on time from two minutes to three.
Leave everything else alone.

The balcony alarm went off by itself in the middle of last night and
I was indoors the whole time. Go and read the execution log for that
rule, work out which sensor fired and which arming level was active
at that moment, then tell me the cause and what you would change so
it does not happen again.

Common questions