Yes, tom, that’s exactly what happens and what I believe is wrong. I want to be able to set all entities “offline” without them controlling the devices when I set the states.
I know no other system behaving this way when editing scenes.
This is just frustrating and unwise.
I’d opt for a checkbox in the GUI like “interactive scene setup” or a “Preview” button in scene editor which triggers state changes. In the case of checkbox when it’s unchecked - then everything happens without sending control signals from HA to the devices behind the entities.
But by default one should be able to edit offline without actually changing the real states of the devices. Smart home system should be smart and user friendly. HA creators understand this, so I hope it will be changed or improved e.g. as proposed above.
a checkbox in the GUI like “interactive scene setup” or a “Preview” button
Worth suggesting as a feature request on github (here isn’t really the place).
Until that is taken on board (or not) if you want to edit a scene “off-line” don’t use the interactive UI. Use a text editor to edit the scenes.yaml file.
No thanks, that’s fine. I want this to be here to bring the devs attention. I’ll open a new Feature with a clear description in a new thread and will crosslink this one.
In my case, I have a node red flow trigger on a light status change, so it becomes really frustrating when I start editing a scene but then node red takes control and changes my lights. Should have an offline edit mode as suggested.
Please fix this. I shouldn’t have to use the text editor because it’s 11pm at night and I don’t want to wake up my family with lights going on and off.
I also vote to have this issue addressed. I was really surprised that when creating a scene, I would be disturbing the current state of devices. For me, it wasn’t even editing the scene, because I was creating a new one, but rather, assuming that setting values for the included devices was just that - prepping the scene / values… nope, devices went off (on) and people were not happy.
The other consideration here is - do we want home assistant to be a toy/novelty or do we want to be confident that it can handle (semi) mission critical / production use cases?
On this production side note, I’m still surprised HA has not prioritized persistent timers - again - if a device needs to run for an hour and HA has a blip and needs to be restarted - it doesn’t know if entities should stopped or started again for however many minutes.
The current behavior of the scenes editor is not viable and dangerous!!! I have my PC screens on a smart device. When I created my “Turn off my studio” scene, my PC screens turned off while I was setting up the scene, and I had to end the setup because I was basically blind. How dumb is that?
I am trying to image what happens when someone is trying to configure his fire water sprinklers in the scene editor. You need to have an umbrella every time you enter the setup - Hahaha. Or Garden springlers. What a waste of water. Man, this thing really wasn’t thought through.
Or just image someone with a heart condition is setting up his alarms in the scenes and the sirene goes of - the guy gets a freak’n heart attack…
This scene setup up is super dangerous. Needs fix’n ASAP.
I’m guessing they don’t think this is very important or dangerous because it was not fixed in the new releases that just came out. Very fun sitting up scenes with people in the house turning on lights you want off and setting off the alarm and siren. I guess I’m lucky that I don’t have the water shutoff valve and dump valve yet for a water leak
I guess the simplest explanation is: they do not use the GUI scenes editor Otherwise it’d already be fixed. Assuming we’ll get this fixed some day - it may take a long while until they fix it as they emphasized that the current solution is already very complex and making it work as we want it - may be even more complex. And complex things take time, usually a lot of time.
+1 for editing the scene without first running it. Or at least have a pop-up warn the users that the scene will be run. There are safety concerns here like accidentally turning on a heater when someone is touching it.
Everyone on here realizes that the way the scene editor works is it captures the current state of selected devices right? It’s not like the script editor, you aren’t configuring a sequence of actions.
When you make a scene you select devices. Then you “edit” the scene by changing the state of those devices in the real world. When you save the scene it captures the state of those devices as the scene and running the scene returns all your devices to the state they were in.
So when you edit a scene the first thing it has to do is run the scene. This recreates the state you saved. Then you change those devices in the real world and save to update the scene.
Honestly this is pretty normal. Look into some other home automation platforms and I think you’ll find scening features are often offered in the same way. I wouldn’t say no to a warning though, I do forget sometimes.
But it seems like what you all want is a script. A script can do everything a scene can do and more after all. The big difference is that you don’t capture the current state of devices, instead you define what you want to happen step by step. And then there’s no reason to execute a script to edit it, the current state of stuff doesn’t matter.
Some may know how it works, some not. It’s not the point. I know a few Smart Home Automation systems and none of them implements scenes the way HA does it. And there’s surely a reason for this.
The way it works is irrelevant for the end users. What matters is that it’s doing things none wants it to do. It’s not a bug, it’s the way they implemented it. And it’s wrong. It makes people mad, so basically it isn’t helpful. People are hesitant to use it because the way it works. This means it should be changed. It’s a perfect candidate for this year’s streamlining experience Initiative in HA.
