I’m missing the possibility to create collections of entities within automation’s. I wish it was possible to define a named collection of entities and iterate over the entities in it.
I’m missing an ordered collection and a random collection.
The ordered collection: you define your entities in a certain order and the iterator iterates over it every time in the same order.
A random collection, when entities are defined in it, the order of iteration is ‘every time’ different.
Usage example for the random collection: I have the blinds in the house, I would like to open them every day in an other order.
You can define lists and dictionaries and use for_each to iterate through their items.
Example of turning on a collection of lights where each light is set to its pre-defined brightness level.
You can also use variables within a script/automation to define lists and dictionaries. You can easily sort or randomize the order of the items using Jinja2’s sort and random filters.