I’m trying to do what is probably a basic thing, but I’m still fairly new to HA.
I’m wanting to work it so that when I open the door after sunset, it will turn on my outdoor lights and then do the opposite when I re-enter the house. That’s simple. But I’m trying to get it to work practically.
Firstly, after opening the screen door, I’m going to close it immediately to prevent bugs coming in, but I obviously don’t want to then have my lights switch back off. So my first thought was to have a timeout feature that prevents the closing of the door firing the automation to switch the lights back off.
My thought is to have this ‘time-out’ to be, say, 30 seconds. Plenty of time for me to open the door, perhaps put my shoes on and then close the screen door without the lights switching off.
Could somebody point me to an example of the YAML for this? This is what I have so far without any ‘timeout’ feature:
- id: '1555374209260'
alias: Front Door Open
trigger:
- entity_id: binary_sensor.0x00158d0003120be7_contact
from: closed
platform: state
to: open
condition:
- before: sunset
before_offset: '1:00'
condition: sun
action:
- service: light.turn_on
entity_id: light.front_door_lights
- id: '1555375051458'
alias: Front Door Closed
trigger:
- entity_id: binary_sensor.0x00158d0003120be7_contact
from: open
platform: state
to: closed
condition: []
action:
- service: light.turn_off
entity_id: light.front_door_lights
Okay, just replying to myself, it seems that the for condition is kind of what i want, but it seems to only apply to the “to” state, no the “from” state.
- id: '1555375051458'
alias: Front Door Closed
trigger:
- entity_id: binary_sensor.0x00158d0003120be7_contact
from: open
platform: state
to: closed
for: '00:00:30'
condition: []
action:
- service: light.turn_off
entity_id: light.front_door_lights
it’ll turn off the light only after the door is closed for at least 30 seconds.
However, it’ll do that always (any time of the day). It’s not a big deal but if you want it to be more precise, add a condition so it only turn the light off after sunset.
Sounds like then I need to have the second automation (lights off when doors closed) only if the doors have been open for more than 30 seconds.
I think this is what I’m after:
alias: Front Door Closed
trigger:
- entity_id: binary_sensor.0x00158d0003120be7_contact
from: open
platform: state
to: closed
condition:
- condition: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.0x00158d0003120be7_contact
state: open
for:
seconds: 30
action:
- service: light.turn_off
I’m not sure the revised ‘Front Door Closed’ will work the way you want. The trigger and condition use the same sensor but have conflicting requirements.
The trigger want the door sensor to be open whereas the condition wants it to be closed for at least 30 seconds. Never gonna happen.
Open the door after sunset and you start a 30-second timer.
Starting the timer also turns on the light.
When the timer expires it turns off the light.
In this scenario, closing the door has no affect on the timer or the light. The timer keeps counting down to 0 then it turns the light off.
What will affect the timer is if you re-open the door while the timer is counting down. This will cause the timer to restart its countdown … and that’s usually a desirable behavior.
Timer
timer:
front_door:
duration: '00:00:30'
Automations
- id: '1555374209260'
alias: Front Door Open
trigger:
- entity_id: binary_sensor.0x00158d0003120be7_contact
from: closed
platform: state
to: open
condition:
- before: sunset
before_offset: '1:00'
condition: sun
action:
- service: timer.start
entity_id: timer.front_door
- alias: 'Front Door timer started'
trigger:
- platform: event
event_type: timer.started
event_data:
entity_id: timer.front_door
action:
- service: light.turn_on
entity_id: light.front_door_lights
- alias: 'Front Door timer finished'
trigger:
- platform: event
event_type: timer.finished
event_data:
entity_id: timer.front_door
action:
- service: light.turn_off
entity_id: light.front_door_lights
Yeah, I think that’s the way I’m going to have to go. Just have it go on for X amount of time as there’s no real way for it to know that I’m coming back inside so to speak.
Sorry to be a pain again, for some reason the automation isn’t firing to turn on the lights (I removed the sun condition for testing).
Logs show that the automations are being loaded:
[homeassistant.components.automation] Initialized trigger Front Door timer finished
[homeassistant.components.automation] Initialized trigger Front Door Open
[homeassistant.components.automation] Initialized trigger Front Door timer started
My configuration.yaml:
timer:
front_door:
duration: '00:10:00'
My automations.yaml:
- id: '1555374209260'
alias: Front Door Open
trigger:
- entity_id: binary_sensor.0x00158d0003120be7_contact
from: closed
platform: state
to: open
action:
- service: timer.start
entity_id: timer.front_door
- alias: 'Front Door timer started'
trigger:
- platform: event
event_type: timer.started
event_data:
entity_id: timer.front_door
action:
- service: light.turn_on
entity_id: light.front_door_lights
- alias: 'Front Door timer finished'
trigger:
- platform: event
event_type: timer.finished
event_data:
entity_id: timer.front_door
action:
- service: light.turn_off
entity_id: light.front_door_lights
Nothing is showing in the logs to indicate an issue and I’ve triple checked all entity names. The reed sensor is reporting correctly too. I tried changing the from and to states to on/off but that then did come up with a syntax error in the logs.
Just curious what is the advantage of adding that second automation over turning on light straight after starting the timer? Code consistency or something else as well?
Got it working, it was an issue with the state needing to be on/off rather than open/closed. It didn’t work when I first tried to correct it because I did this:
