Check logged in user and Save state/scene per user and device

Configuration
1

I have a Nest Doorbell and several tablets over the house, they all share the same username but each have their own Area on a shared Dashboard.

Now I started doing a simple automation, when the doorbell is Pressed, i navigate to the View that has the camera for the door, so far so good.

Now, what i want to do is,

  1. Make a Condition for the Automation to only apply to the user “Tablet”, reason being when someone pressed the doorbell i dont want my computer changing View risking loosing data when I´m working on the HA administration. But I haven’t found a way to check the currently logged in User but i figure it should be easy for HA to see that information so maybe I´m missing something basic here.

  2. Before the action to Navigate to the camera view, i need to save the current View for each Device/Tablet, normally i would just create a Scene and store the state of the current Url but I´m not sure how i can do that on a per device basis?

  3. And of course, after a short delay of say 45 seconds, return each Device to the previous View/url. Again, no problem to check my saved Scene state, but per user/device is where I´m stuck.

Surely this shouldent be out of the realm of possibility i thought and maybe someone already had something simular already in place or can point me in the right direction when it comes to,
Checking currently logged in user and Saving a state for each device logged in with a specific username.

2

In the GUI you can restrict an automation to only run for specific users.
The other option though is to use BrowserMod (install via HACS) which let’s you control specific devices.

3

Hi Andrew, must have had a brain-freeze but a lightbulb triggered when I read your comment about Automations for specific users, know i had seen that but dident click in the moment i suppose, thanks.

I will have a look at the Integration, seems promising at first glance. Trying to lay off integrations as I´m getting heavy but it might be my only choice.

4

I think it will probably your only option, because I think the automation system, which is of course backend - only uses the user restriction option to limit automations to a user that has triggered the automation rather than how you would like to use it.

Eg:
If a user turns on a light from the web interface, you can react to that happening. But you can’t react to someone pressing the doorbell or activating a motion sensor - because those are events that don’t have a user attached to them.

BrowserMod will let you “more info” pop up a camera on the screen of any / all devices with a delay timeout, which will automatically close the popup if it has not been closed, after the timeout.

5

Reading through the documentation and I hadn’t thought about using a popup but that would save me from storing the Device state to begin with, thanks again.

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