Your eyes are not deceiving you, you read the headline correctly: Home Assistant now integrates with Bluetooth enabled toothbrushes from the American brand Oral-B. The connectivity between the two relies on the newly relaunched Bluetooth integration, and Home Assistant will pick up any supported toothbrush in its range automatically.
Once integrated, Home Assistant will have access to six sensors, provided by the Oral-B toothbrush: Home Assistant will be notified to which mode your toothbrush is currently set. Depending on the model, this could, for example, be Daily Clean, Intense Clean, Super Sensitive, or Tongue Cleaner.
Next on the list are sectors: Home Assistant will report how many sectors you have set up in the Oral-B mobile app, which sector you are currently brushing, and the time you have spent brushing that sector.
Finally, you will be able to use and view the time and state sensors. The former will tell you the total brushing time in seconds, while the later will report whether the toothbrush is running or idle. Currently, a broad range of Oral-B toothbrushes with prices ranging from affordable to luxurious are supported:
- iO 4 Series
- iO Series 7
- iO Series 8
- iO Series 9
- Smart Series 7000
- Genius Series 9000
Why integrate an Oral-B toothbrush with Home Assistant?
At first glance, the Oral-B integration with Home Assistant might not appear to be anything more than a useless gimmick. However, there are genuine applications within automations and triggers. The first one I could imagine myself using might not be relevant to all, but those suffering from ADHD like myself will know why I'm mentioning this: tracking whether my teeth have been brushed. Obviously, this doesn't just apply to yourself, you can also track whether your children have been brushing their teeth regularly.
Or you could take things in another direction and have the toothbrush being used kick off a series of automations: in the morning, when you first wake up, you might want dim lighting until you arrive in reality, but once the toothbrush is out, you can crank the lux up to make sure you are properly awake. Likewise, at the other end of the day, you could have the toothbrush kick off your evening or bedtime automation.
With every integration, there are at least a handful of people somewhere making use of them—or there would be no reason for it to exist—but I predict that this one will gain broader adoption. This is especially true if you are running the Home Assistant Operating System on a Raspberry Pi, as it will use the Bluetooth radio to automatically pick up and integrate your toothbrush.
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