Automation rate limiting

Feature Requests
1

I suggest native support for rate limiting automations.

There is a forum thread suggesting different solutions how to rate limit automations:

However, these are either quite verbose, like adding a separate script that disables, delays and enables the automation, or rely on script sematics that prevent running a script twice in parallel.
It would be easiest to be able to specify the rate limit directly in the automation definition, for example

automation:
  - alias: 'Some notification'
    trigger:
      ...
    condition:
      ...
    # No more than once per 5 minutes
    rate_limit: 
      minutes: 5
    action:
      service: notify.notify
      data:
        message: 'Some notification'

I’m not sure where it would be best to put the rate_limit expression – in the trigger, condition or at the top level?

2

Why not just put a

delay:
  minutes: 5

in the automation (after executing the action). That should effectively give you the same experience.

CARLO

3 Likes
3

Thanks! I haven’t noticed before that there can be multiple actions in the automation.

4

Turns out that adding a delay at the end of an automation action only works if the automation runs a script and the delay is at the end of the script. Putting a delay directly inside the automation action doesn’t rate limit the automation. Apparently, HA runs the automation action even when the previous delay hasn’t ended.

To put it in code,
this works:

automation:
  ...
  action:
    service: script.do_stuff

script:
  do_stuff:
    sequence:
      - do_something
      - delay:
          minutes: 10

This doesn’t:

automation:
  ...
  action:
    - do_something
    - delay:
        minutes: 10

Personally, I would prefer an explicit rate_limit attribute of the automation.

1 Like
5

I agree a ‘rate_limit’ would be better. I’m starting to see the need for that with my speech automations. I only want to hear about the thermostat every so often. :confused:

1 Like
6

I wrote a tip about this topic here: Limit automation triggering

Basically, you can turn off the automation as the first action, do all the normal stuff then add a delay and enable it again as the last actions.

5 Likes
7

+1
This would definitely be usefull a so we don’t need the workarounds

8