Automation Help - including custom sensor with templated state

Configuration
1

I created an automation that was working just fine and since I added a condition to it that includes a sensor with a templated state, it has stopped working.

My automation triggers when my garage door opens at night and the house is dark. It simply turns on all my lights so I don’t stumble into a pitch black house. It worked fine when the only conditions I had was a light sensor was below a specific value and the sun was below the horizon. Everything worked as expected. However, I ran into some situations where I would leave early, before sunrise, which would leave the lights on all day, or I would come in really late from a trip and when I got home, all the lights would come on waking my kids up. The solution I came up with was to use the device tracking and if someone was home, do not trigger the automation.

So, I browsed around and found an example that monitors multiple device trackers and updates a sensor.

- platform: template
  sensors:
    someone_home:
      friendly_name: Someone Home
      icon_template: >-
        {% if is_state('binary_sensor.someone_home','on') %}
          mdi:home-account
        {% else %}
          mdi:home-outline
        {% endif %}
      value_template: "{{ is_state('person.chad','home') or  is_state('person.tiffany','home') }}"

The sensor works just fine. It returns a ‘True’ or ‘False’ if someone is home.

Here’s my automation with the new sensor included as a condition:

- id: '1559016728404'
  alias: Nighttime Dark House
  trigger:
  - entity_id: binary_sensor.ecolink_door_window_sensor_sensor
    from: 'off'
    platform: state
    to: 'on'
  condition:
  - below: '5'
    condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.vision_security_zp3111_multisensor_4in1_luminance
  - condition: state
    entity_id: sun.sun
    state: below_horizon
  - condition: state
    entity_id: sensor.someone_home
    state: 'False'
  action:
  - data:
      entity_id: group.home_all_lights
    service: homeassistant.turn_on

I don’t see anything glaringly obvious so the only thing I can think is that I’m using the wrong value for my new sensor. Instead of True and False, should it be ‘off’ or ‘on’ on maybe even 1 or 0? If I remove the sensor condition, it goes back to working correctly.

Can anyone see where my mistake is?

2

I’m not sure why it happens but I’ve seen other examples of this happening. The way that i resolved it there was to force the template to return ‘true’/‘false’ like this:

value_template: >
  {% if is_state('person.chad','home') or  is_state('person.tiffany','home') %}
    true
  {% else %}
    false
  {% endif %}

then make sure you use ‘true’ or ‘false’ in your condition state.

you could try it and see if it works.

3

That seems to have done the trick! No more stubbing my toes on kids toys in the dark.

Thanks!

1 Like
4

(My poor reading skills! I’ve removed my original, redundant suggestion.)

NOTE:
Something is amiss here. Have you defined a Template Sensor or a Template Binary Sensor?

In the configuration of the icon_template, you refer to binary_sensor.someone_home. If that’s self-referential then you have created a Template Binary Sensor. If it’s not self-referential then is this a typo or a reference to another sensor with an identical name?

If you are creating a Template Binary Sensor then this is incorrect:

  - condition: state
    entity_id: sensor.someone_home
    state: 'False'

For a Template Binary Sensor, the entity_id should refer to a binary_sensor and the state should test for off.

  - condition: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.someone_home
    state: 'off'
1 Like