Automation Wait for trigger shows 'triggered', but doesn't act like expected. Any ideas?

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1

Inspired by a topic that I cannot seem to find back, I created the Proof of Concept below.
The PoC is a simplified test automation to understand the wait_for_trigger action and test the folder_watcher. It all seem to work as designed, however the wait_for_trigger is never actually triggered. The confusing part is that when watching the automation, the wait is triggered (coloring blue, see image below) and of course the script does create a snapshot.

It doesn’t matter how long I set the wait. The trigger is near instant there. I increased the wait time up to 30 second, but that just results in a longer wait before the persistent_notification is created. That’s also a confirmation that it’s not the choose-condition failing.

alias: Camera Snapshots PoC
description:
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.front_motion_detected
    to: 'on'
    id: Camera Sensor
    variables:
      camera_id: camera.front
condition: []
action:
  - service: script.camera_snapshot
    data: {}
  - wait_for_trigger:
      - platform: event
        event_type: folder_watcher
        event_data:
          event_type: created
        id: Created while waiting
    timeout: '00:00:05'
    continue_on_timeout: true
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: template
            value_template: '{{ wait.completed }}'
        sequence:
          - service: persistent_notification.create
            data:
              message: Snapshot captured
              title: Snapshot test
            enabled: true
    default:
      - service: persistent_notification.create
        data:
          message: No snapshot
          title: Snapshot test
        enabled: true
mode: single

Automation action step

image
image1054×762 18.4 KB

The trace

image
image710×508 21.3 KB

It feels like a bug, but maybe it’s me being the bug :wink:
Any ideas ?

Solution
The "mark as solution seems disappeared at the moment. The solution is using script.turn_on instead of just running it directly as a service_call cause then it waits for the script to complete. It doesn’t when you use script.turn_on.

2

It could very well be that the snapshot was written before the wait for trigger. Essentially the wait was waiting for the event to ‘change’ and it didn’t occur between the time it started and the time it began waiting. You’d need to listen for hte event and see when it actually occurred.

Have you verified the folder watcher event occurred during the wait time?

3

That’s a good tip. I have not and have to figure out how to do that. Meanwhile I added a one second delay to the script before it makes the snap, so it should be later than the start of the wait for trigger.

But I noticed that the automation waits for the script to complete!
image

Putting it in a parallel in the following scenario’s:

  1. everything in, but then the choose triggers at the same time as the script and the wait
  2. script and wait_for_trigger in parallel
    But then it (logically) just doesn’t wait before it arrives at the choose
  3. scenario 2 but added a wait (for the set wait.trigger.id) before the choose and changed the choose to the same condition, but that didn’t do anything good either.
4

You could use parallel, and then wrap the wait and snapshot in a sequence so they run in sequence. but remember the wait.trigger won’t be {{ wait.completed }} won’t be available in the outer code.

Thing is though is you’re chasing unicorns till you know the underlying problem. The folder watcher isn’t instant (at least I dont think it is! Im not 100% sure for that integration). I believe its 60 seconds by default? I can’t remember what the default for a sensor update is.

What I would try is instead of waiting on the event, you can do a while loop with a maximum number of repeats to check the new file exists before continuing. But i’d check the event before you start writing code you don’t need.

You could also use the service: homeassistant.update_entity to make sure it runs immediately on that watcher. I don’t think you can with watcher as it doesn’t create a sensor. Maybe it is fairly immediate.

Yes it does. Unless you put it in a script and call it with the script.turn_on. Then it won’t wait. Honestly, this is probably your issue. The snap completes before and there is no event change after that.

EDIT: Before you go any further, you need to verify the timing of the event using the develper tools events tab.

5

I thought the automation never waited for a script to end. That’s why I normally use script.turn_on in combination with a wait for {{ is_state('script.<name>', 'off') }}. So I use script.turn_on now and the wait_for_trigger is:

wait:
  remaining: 3.08957884699339

So that’s a confirmation to me. I saw but never used events listener before, so there is a first time for everything. Very easy and straight forward :slight_smile:

Unfortunately the wait.completed doesn’t return true (don’t know about false), but luckily wait.trigger does contain data to work with.

Thanks @calisro , the script.turn_on did it!

Edit: Don’t see the option to mark your post as solution but will do asap.

6

The wait.completed is only used after wait_template.

wait.completed Exists only after wait_template. true if the condition was met, false otherwise
wait.trigger Exists only after wait_for_trigger. Contains information about which trigger fired. (See Available-Trigger-Data.) Will be none if no trigger happened before timeout expired
wait.remaining Timeout remaining, or none if a timeout was not specified
7

I failed on my reading skills. Did look at the docs :blush:
I switched to wait.trigger.id and everything works perfectly.

Thanks again!

1 Like
8

Yea I made that same error a while ago. You can use this:

                - condition: template
                  value_template: '{{ wait.trigger == None }}'
1 Like