📆 Calendar Notifications & Actions

[Blacky]

FAQ: How do I set up a rubbish reminder?

We will go through how to set up a rubbish / bin / trash reminder. In this example we have a 2 bin rotation but some of you may have a 4 bin rotation so you may need to change the events to suit you.

Our bins have colour lids that represents what we put in them. We have a Red, Yellow & Green bin. One week we need to put out Green and Red, and the next week we need to put out Green and Yellow.

How To Set Up The Notification Automation - Rubbish Reminder

1. First you must have a calendar in Home Assistant (HA). HA has done a lot of work on their local calender and it works realy well with HA . This is the one I use as HA will always make sure it works. If you haven’t installed it yet you will need to add it into HA. To do this there is a link below to the Official HA Calendar. Once you click on the link there is a big blue button “Add Integration”. Click on it and follow the steps.

   Local Calendar - Home Assistant

   

   You will also need to make sure your mobile App allows notifications by going into the settings.

   
   

2. Once installed go into the calendar and click on “Add Event”. Then I selected weekly under repeat.

   

3. Now I added in all the information. The summary has the bins I need to take out and in the description I put the Trigger - Key Word “@bins”. Also note it is in the “Home” calendar. Make it an all day event on the day the bins get collected with a repeat interval of 2 weeks as I have a rotation of bins. Set it to never end, click save. Then I add another event for the following week with a different summary for the other bins rotation. The rest is the same and once done click save.

   
   
   

4. Now that our calendar events are set up we need to create an automation. Use this blueprint. The first thing is to add the calendar, make sure “Use “Key Word” in calendar” is ticked and add the key word @bins. Because we made it an all day event we will need to put in the offset. The start is “-8 (minus 8 hours)” this works out to be 12am - 8 hours = 4pm the day before the bins are collected. So at 4pm the day before collection it will trigger the “Start” settings. I also would like a reminder to bring the bins back so I put an offset of “-9 (minus 9 hours)” this works out to be 12am - 9 = 3pm on the day the bins are collected as they always collect the bins early in the morning. So at 3pm it will trigger the “End” settings. In global conditions we will leave this blank. All the triggers settings and global conditions are now set.

   

5. Next we need to set up the “Start” notify message as below. I only need one action button but you can add 3 action buttons. When adding the action buttons the cancel button will be added automaticity. This notification will be sent at 4pm the day before the bins are collected. Note in the title we have put “{{ trigger.calendar_event.summary }}” This will make sure the calendar summary is shown in the notify message. This is why I added 2 events sowing what bins that were needed to be taken out. Now the notification will let me know what bins to take out as well to take the bins out as I can never keep track of it.

   

6. Because I have two people to notify I use the confirmation message as it let the other person know if the bins were taken out. The time delay is 4 hours. So our trigger was sent at 4pm + 4 hours = 8pm. If no one takes the bins out and presses an action button the automation will continue to run. So when this happens at 8pm we get another message in the “Time Delay Confirmation Message” reminding us to take the bins out again.

   If you would just like to receive the “Time Delay Confirmation Message” as a second reminder then you would need to enable this option.

   

7. Below is the action part of the automation. For this automation I don’t need HA to do anything so it is left blank. If you wanted HA to do something this is where you would add it.

   

8. Now we need to do the “End” notification. It is all the same as before like the “Start”. The “End” will send me a notification at 3pm on the day the bins were collected.

   

9. Again confirmation is the same as the “start” but our time delay is 3:30. So our trigger was sent at 3pm + 3:30 hours = 6:30pm. At 6:30 if no action button was pressed we will get a “Time Delay Confirmation Message” reminding us again to get the bins.

   

10. Again we don’t need HA to do any actions.

    

Now click save and your done .

You will now have a bin reminder that will send a notify message to the phones every week. The message will be, to take the bins out and to bring them back. It will also remind you of what bins to take out as we added 2 rotation calendar events with different summary’s.

NOTE: For the automation to fire, the calendar event must be set at least 15 min into the future or it will not trigger. So if you are testing it and can’t work out why it is not working this will probably be it. Example; if it is 3pm now and you are testing it then when you enter in a calendar event the start time must be 3:15pm or greater than 3:15pm. Then you have to wait for the calendar event to fire.

If you have set it up like this then also note the time offsets when testing. When testing and setting 15 min into the future the offsets must be “0”

Enjoy

Blacky

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