Adding a while loop

Configuration
1

I am very new to home assistant and trying to learn. I am struggling to integrate a while loop into my code.

Here is what I have so far:

alias: Auto off AC unit
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: device
    type: turned_on
    device_id: 7523e44d7de02cf5ecd8b23e7ef93adc
    entity_id: dbd3a36474d21851804c4c7f0400bd0e
    domain: switch
condition: []
action:
  - if:
      - condition: time
        after: "06:00:00"
        before: "21:00:00"
        weekday:
          - sat
          - fri
          - thu
          - wed
          - tue
          - mon
          - sun
    then:
      - delay:
          hours: 2
          minutes: 0
          seconds: 0
          milliseconds: 0
      - type: turn_off
        device_id: 7523e44d7de02cf5ecd8b23e7ef93adc
        entity_id: dbd3a36474d21851804c4c7f0400bd0e
        domain: switch
    else:
      - type: turn_off
        device_id: 7523e44d7de02cf5ecd8b23e7ef93adc
        entity_id: dbd3a36474d21851804c4c7f0400bd0e
        domain: switch
mode: single

I want to be able to add a while loop in to check the time every 15mins in the event that this is triggered at 8:58, it’ll turn off at 9pm.

Is there any way to do this? I tried adding “- while:” in before the “if” condition, but I got an error.

Any help would be appreciated.

2

Hi Andrew,

Trust me on this…If you want to learn and do Automations in YAML, don’t use device stuff. It’s meant for UI and does not lend itself well to manual editing. Templates are not available, the device and entity names are impossible to relate to.

Why and how to avoid device_ids in automations and scripts.

3

What is your end goal here? You want an automation that:

  • if the light is turned on between 6am and 9pm: turn it off 2 hours later
  • if the light is turned on at any other time: turn it off when the next quarter hour occurs

Is that correct? A couple examples for clarity of the resulting logic:

  • light turns on at 5:58am: turn it off 2 minutes later at 6am
  • light turns on at 8:55pm: turn it off two hours later at 11:55pm
  • light turns on at 9:02: turn it off 13 minutes later at 9:15 pm

Besides avoiding device triggers and actions, it’s also good practice to avoid long-running automations. Long delays or repeats with delays will make your automations fragile to restarts or reloads. Generally you want your automations to execute quickly and if there’s something you want to do a while later, add another trigger for it.

4

I want the automation to be (device is a Kasa Smart Plug):

  • If the plug is turned on between 6am and 9pm, then it’ll stay on and turn off after 2 hours.
  • If the plug is turned on outside of those times, then it won’t turn on.
  • If the plug is turned on less than 2 hours before 9pm, then it will turn off at 9pm (won’t fulfill the full 2 hour timer)

Hope this helps :smiley:

5

I normally use the ‘choose’ action for automations like this that have multiple triggers. I’ll set a trigger id for each trigger and I’ll leave the main conditions section empty. In the ‘choose’ action I’ll use the ‘triggered by’ condition for each option of the choose action, so you can choose which logic to execute based on what trigger fired the automation.

But this one turned out to be a bit more simple and I was able to put the conditions into the main condition block and just turn off the plug if the conditions passed. Or in this case, since I used ‘not’, the automation is only executed when both conditions are not met

alias: Switch automation
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: switch.kasa_plug
    to: "on"
    id: turned_on
  - platform: state
    entity_id: switch.kasa_plug
    to: "on"
    for:
      hours: 2
  - platform: time
    at: "21:00:00"
condition:
  - condition: not
    conditions:
      - condition: trigger
        id:
          - turned_on
      - condition: time
        after: "06:00:00"
        before: "21:00:00"
action:
  - service: switch.turn_off
    target:
      entity_id: switch.kasa_plug
mode: restart

I set the mode to restart just in case someone rapidly turns on/off the plug after 9pm or before 6am, this should allow the automation to keep restarting and perform the appropriate action based on the ‘final’ state.