One scene that makes the empty house look lived-in, sends you the alerts that matter, and lets the right person in to check.
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Smart home away mode is one scene that switches the house from “someone lives here” to “tell me if anything changes”: lights and curtains that keep moving on a varied pattern, door, leak and power alerts sent to your phone and a second person's, cameras set to alert on people, and a temporary lock code for whoever checks the house. It suits a balik kampung week as well as a long trip overseas. It does not replace shutting the water and asking someone to visit; the empty-house checklist covers that side. For what else a connected home can do, see the smart home guide.
Most apps call it something different: away mode, vacation mode, holiday scene or simply a routine you build yourself. Underneath, it does the same three jobs. It makes the house look lived-in to someone watching from the road or the corridor. It turns quiet sensors into alerts, so a leak or an open door reaches your phone instead of being found when you get back. And it controls who can come in while you are away.
Build it as one scene you can switch on with a single tap, rather than a set of separate rules you have to remember. Then the night before you leave becomes “check the list, press away”, and the morning you come home becomes “press home”.
| Job | Devices involved | What it looks like in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Look lived-in | Smart bulbs or plug-in lamps, curtain motors, a smart plug for a radio | Lights and curtains change through the evening in a pattern that varies |
| Tell you what changes | Door contacts, leak sensors, a hub that reports power loss, cameras | Alerts to two phones, cameras alert on people only |
| Control who comes in | Smart lock, gate controller, doorbell camera | A temporary code for the person who checks, with the lock history to confirm visits |
A single lamp that switches on at the same minute every night is easy to spot from across the road after a few evenings. What makes a house look occupied is variation: the living room on in the early evening, then a bedroom, a bathroom light for a short while, everything off at a slightly different time each night. Many apps offer a randomise or vacation option for scheduled lights; if yours does not, stagger several schedules by room.
Smart bulbs and plug-in lamps do all of this without touching the wiring. If you would rather have the wall switches do it, that is switch work. For smart switches and anything wired into the mains, we supply the devices and set up the app, and the switch or wiring work is done by an electrical contractor registered with Suruhanjaya Tenaga that we coordinate.
Many hubs can switch away mode on by themselves when every phone in the household has left. Home Assistant's person integration, for example, describes presence automations such as turning on lights when you arrive home or sending a notification when someone leaves a place. It works well for a couple; it gets less reliable with a helper who stays behind, a parent without a smartphone, or a teenager whose phone is often flat.
For a trip, a manual away button is the safer default: you press it when you lock up, and the scene stays on until you press home. Keep the automatic version for daily use if it suits you, and make sure the alerts still reach you when the presence rule is wrong.
Water does the most damage in a house nobody is in, so a leak sensor under each sink, behind the washing machine and beside the water heater is the first alert to add. On its own, a leak alert means you can phone someone. Paired with a motorised shut-off valve on the incoming supply, the system can close the water itself. The guide to water leak sensors and shut-off valves explains placement and valve options.
If you already turn off the main valve for a long trip, leak sensors still matter for the hours between turning it off and leaving, and for the tank and pipes upstream of the valve on a landed home.
Two quiet failures catch travellers out. The first is a power cut: the freezer thaws, the aircon you left on for a pet stops, and the lights in the away scene never come on. A hub or router on a small backup supply can send a “power lost” alert, and devices that drop offline together tell the same story. The guide to smart homes in a power cut explains what to keep on backup.
The second is the internet going down. Cloud-only devices stop sending alerts and stop following schedules until the connection returns, while devices on a local hub keep running their routines. If you travel often, check which of your devices keep working offline; the guide to smart homes without internet shows how to tell. Either way, treat a long silence from the house as a reason to ask someone to look.
Monsoon trips add a trade-off. Some owners unplug the router and the camera recorder before a long trip to protect them from lightning surges. That also silences every alert in this guide, so decide which matters more for your house, or ask the person who checks to plug them back in after a storm.
Away mode is also a chance to stop paying for things nobody uses. A smart plug can cut standby power to the TV, the sound system and chargers, and a schedule can keep the one lamp you need on. If your water heater is on a smart timer, set it to off for the trip; the smart water heater timer guide explains how those timers work. Leave on what the alerts depend on: the router, the hub, the cameras and the fridge if it is staying on.
For anything longer than a short trip, someone should look inside: a relative, a neighbour or a friend. A smart lock lets you give them their own code instead of a spare key, limit it to the days of the trip if the lock supports scheduled codes, and see in the lock history when they came. Delete the code when you are back.
Cameras are most useful away from home when they alert you to people and stay quiet about cats, rain and passing cars. Before you leave, set person detection where the camera supports it, mark out the road and the neighbour's porch as areas to ignore, and send the alerts to the same two phones as the rest of the away scene.
A doorbell camera lets you answer the door from anywhere, which means a caller cannot tell whether anyone is home. Do not tell a stranger at the door that you are away. The video doorbell versus intercom guide covers the options for landed homes. When you come back, switch indoor cameras back to private mode.
An alert is only useful if you know what you will do with it from a few hundred kilometres away. Decide this before you leave, and give the person with the code a short copy.
| Alert | Check first | Who goes |
|---|---|---|
| Water leak | Close the valve from the app if you have one | The visitor with the code, as soon as possible |
| Door or window opened | Look at the cameras and the lock history | Guardhouse or neighbour; police if needed |
| Power lost | Check if the whole area is affected | Visitor checks the fridge and resets the trip |
| House silent, devices offline | Check whether the internet or the power is down | Visitor on the next visit |
| Person at the door | Answer through the doorbell without saying you are away | Nobody, unless it repeats |
Keep the guardhouse number, a neighbour's number and your area's police station in the phone notes next to this plan, so you are not searching for them during an alert.
Run the scene for one evening before the trip while you are still home. Watch the lights and curtains change, trigger each sensor once and confirm both phones receive the alert, and open the lock with the visitor's code. Replace any low batteries; the smart home maintenance checklist lists what to look at. A failed test at home costs nothing; a failed sensor during the trip costs the reason you set it up.
We install leak sensors, door and window contacts, smart locks and battery curtain motors, and we set up the away scene, lighting schedules, camera alerts and visitor codes in the app with you. We do the smart device, app and low-voltage side of the job. We can also run the pre-departure test with you so you leave knowing every alert arrives.
Keep the admin accounts in your own name, and make sure a second adult receives every away-mode alert.
This page is general information about smart-home settings for an empty house. It does not replace the physical shutdown or someone checking the property in person.
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