Automation Condition Always Failing when using last triggered

Configuration
1

Trying to prevent an automation from running repeatedly by incorporating a delay (5 minutes) between subsequent runs. I’m using the following condition statement which I learned after looking through similar questions.

condition:
    - condition: template # only notify once every 5 minutes at most
      value_template: "{{ ( as_timestamp(now()) - as_timestamp(state_attr('automation.driveway_notify_on_interest', 'last_triggered')) |int(0) ) > 300}}"

Unfortunately with this condition, my automation never runs stating that the condition failed.

Is it b/c when the automation is first triggered, it updates the last_triggered variable and as such it will always fail? I would think the last_triggered time would be from the previous automation run not the one currently running.

Thanks in advance.

2

If your automation is running in the default ‘single’ mode which only allows one instance of the automation to run at a time, just put a delay at the end of your actions and delete that condition.

The delay will prevent the automation running again until it has expired.

- delay: 
    minutes: 5

This will generate an ‘already running’ warning in your log, unless you set max_exceeded to silent.

Personally I like to see the warnings so I know if an automation is trying to run repeatedly but being blocked.

3

This works great. I was definitely over complicating things.