Automation turn on/off wrong time after a power outage

[dtapro (Anh)]

after a power outage, automation turn on/off light wrong time. please help me, thanks.

[123 (Taras)]

@dtapro

after a power outage, automation turn on/off light wrong time

If Home Assistant is off during a power outage at either 23:00 or 17:30, it wont be able to trigger at the specified times. When starts later, it will have missed the trigger time and so will not set the switch to the correct state.

The automation needs to be redesigned to handle a third trigger that occurs when Home Assistant starts. Add the following trigger to your automation:

  - platform: homeassistant
    event: start

Change the template to this:

  service: "switch.turn_{{ 'on' if 17 <= now().hour < 23 else 'off' }}"

That ensures the switch is set to the correct state whenever Home Assistant starts.

NOTE:

The template I have suggested will work accurately for 99% of all cases. However, if Home Assistant starts between 17:00 and 17:30, the template will turn on the switch. That’s because the template only concerns itself with checking the current hour, not minutes. That’s not a problem when the automation normally triggers at 17:30. It will only occur if Home Assistant restarts during that half-hour “window” between 17:00 and 17:30.

If that’s unacceptable to you, I can show you how to enhance the template so that it also considers minutes. However, in my opinion, the extra complexity isn’t worth it and the suggested template is neat, simple, and will handle 99% of restarts accurately.

If you want to learn more about this technique, you may wish to read the following post:

Evolution of an automation. Turn a light on/off at sunset/sunrise

A brief tutorial demonstrating how to create a single automation to control a light that is able to handle missed events (i.e. Home Assistant is off when the primary trigger(s) occur). Implemented as two automations:

Turn on a light just before sunset

- alias: 'Scheduled Exterior On' trigger: - platform: numeric_state entity_id: sun.sun attribute: elevation below: 1.8 action: - service: light.turn_on target: entity_id: light.exterior

Turn off a light just b…

[dtapro (Anh)]

thanks, my HA has a power outage at 21h and has power at 22h, but the automation turns off the lights at 0:17, and sunset turns on the lights at 0:46.

[123 (Taras)]

@dtapro

but the automation turns off the lights at 0:17, and sunset turns on the lights at 0:46.

I assume you mean you have another automation doing that? It will also have to be modified to support a trigger on startup.

[dtapro (Anh)]

I have no another automation. I have 2 lights, the garden light uses time to on/off, and the gate light uses sunset to turn on, but they often work wrong after a power outage. example, HA starts at 22h, but at 0:17, the garden lights will turn off and turn on at 18h…, and the gate lights will turn on at 0:46.

[123 (Taras)]

@dtapro

I have 2 lights, the garden light uses time to on/off, and the gate light uses sunset to turn on, but they often work wrong after a power outage.

If they are not controlled by Home Assistant then I can’t help you with that.

Is what I posted above useful for you to correct the behavior of the garden lights automation?

[dtapro (Anh)]

thanks. it’s like my timezone is wrong, but my tz is set correctly

[123 (Taras)]

I don’t understand why you believe timezone is related to the problem you described in the first post. Does the garden lights automation normally turn the switch on at 17:30 and off at 23:00 local time? If it does then there’s nothing wrong with how Home Assistant’s time is configured.

[dtapro (Anh)]

it works normally with local time if there is no power outage (on at 17:30 and off at 23:00) . and after a power outage, it takes about 1 to 2 days for the system to work correctly. I don’t understand why it’s like that

[123 (Taras)]

@dtapro

takes about 1 to 2 days for the system to work correctly. I don’t understand why it’s like that

You said:

@dtapro

my HA has a power outage at 21h and has power at 22h

When this happened, did Home Assistant turn off the garden light at 23:00?

[dtapro (Anh)]

when this happened, the garden light was turned off and i turned it on manually, but after about 0H:xx the garden light went off by automation, not at 23:00. about 1 2 days later, the garden light turn off at 23:00

[dtapro (Anh)]

i checked again, error: automation not updating time. example, power outage at 9:00 and come back at 10:00. At that time, the internet was not available, so HA could not update the time, but still used the time of 9:00 for automation. when the internet is connected, HA updates time is 10:03, and automation is still 9:03. error, automation doesn’t sync time with HA

[123 (Taras)]

@dtapro

the internet was not available, so HA could not update the time, but still used the time of 9:00

My guess is that the computer you are using to host Home Assistant doesn’t have a Real Time Clock (RTC) so on startup it must use an Internet-based time source as a reference. If access to the Internet is unavailable on startup, it can’t synchronize itself with the time source and so its clock is off.

Given that you live where there are frequent interruptions to power and Internet access, it’s advisable to use a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) as well as a computer with an RTC. If that’s not possible then I can’t see how you can run Home Assistant reliably.

[dtapro (Anh)]

but when the internet is connected, HA updates the time, and automation doesn’t update the time, do you know why?

[tom_l]

@dtapro

HA updates the time, automation doesn’t update the time

That’s not how automations work. The ‘automation time’ is hard coded by you in the trigger, there is nothing to update.

[ceinmart (Cesar)]

Hi,

HA 2023.10.0 .
Container version, running over a box tv with armbian/debian linux.

I got into a similar situation yesterday here.
My automation to run at sunset, ran twice and completely at the wrong time and the event log was messy.
Already check everything commented in this post and all was OK.
My only suspicious is over the weather service , which is who provide the sunset time , right?

The current sunset, is always close of 18h25m.
My power outage was between 16h20 and 20h39.
The automation ran at 22:39 .

My automation trigger is :

  alias: Acender luzes ao por do sol
  description: Acende apenas se Cesar ou Thamiris estao em casa.
  trigger:
  - platform: sun
    event: sunset
    offset: '- 00:05:00'

This automation ran few scenes which turn on some internal and external lights.
I wakeup twice with all lights on.
However , the automation event log, shows only one execution.
But…
The event log from one of the lights, show the twice times which was turned on

Checked the syslog of my linux and they up with correctly time, so , isn’t a problem of wrong time sync.
Also, my internet begin online in less of 2 minutes after the end of the power outage…

My guess is something wrong about the weather services, some kind of internal timer/countdown to the sunset which pause during the power outage and back the countdown when it return.
I saw that because the differ between the moment of the outage and the sunset, is very close of the gap where the system back online and when the automation triggered :
power outage = 16h20 , sunset ~ 18h25 = 2h05 of gap.
power return = 20h39 , aumation triggered at 22h39 = 2h00 of gap.

Only the second trigger of the automation at 23h09 was very weird and without any plausible explanation.

Does anyone know something about this?
There is anyplace where I can ask for something like this for the developers?