Conditional Card String

[rlongfield (Rob)]

So I implemented a custom weather sensor. Part of the weather component is a sensor.warning.

Currently we have a Special weather Statement in our area. I figures this was a great time to implement a conditional card with a weblink to the weather statement if the sensor returned a Special Weather Statement, Watch, or Warning.

I have the card setup, I know the sensor state right now is - SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT

My conditional card code is:

#Weather Warning Card
      - type: conditional
        conditions:
          - entity: sensor.ec_warning
            state: 'SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT'
        card:
          type: entities
          entities:
            - weblink.weather_alerts

So with this the card doesn’t show up. But if I set the state to be SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT using the Set State option on the dev-state page the card appears until the sensor is updated.
The kicker is I’m getting SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT from the state column next to the sensor.ec_warning entry.

I’m not sure why the card appears when I manually set it.

Oh, I’ve also tried the state: with double quotes with no difference in the outcome.

[pnbruckner (Phil)]

Are you sure there aren’t any extra spaces, or tab characters, or something like that in the state? Did you try the following in the Template Editor:

{{ states('sensor.ec_warning') == 'SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT' }}

And maybe:

X{{ states('sensor.ec_warning') }}X

which would help show if there are extra spaces before or after.

[rlongfield (Rob)]

@pnbruckner Thanks for the tip! It looks like there was a lead and trailing space.
Weird as now the sensor is saying 'Wind Warning , Special Weather Statement ’ (without the ’ ')
Not sure why the Wind Warning has only a trailing space and the Special Weather Statement has Leading and trailing.

Anyways the card is now appearing, do you know if I can use wild cards for the condition?

[pnbruckner (Phil)]

I don’t know as much about the frontend in general, and Lovelace in particular, but according to the docs, no.

[rlongfield (Rob)]

yah, I just tried a few and nothing worked, looks like it’s a yaml thing, seems short sighted on yaml’s end so I’ll have to figure something out, there are 23 possible warnings that could be issued, I haven’t looks at watches yet, too many variables to handle with wild cards

Anyways thanks for your help!

[finity]

I’m not trying to dissuade you from getting your sensor alerts working but if you want a (at least for now) working drop in set up for US national weather service alerts there is always this:

Severe Weather Alerts from the US National Weather Service

I have needed to add another function to this project due to the recent switch to Lovelace as the default UI and the disappointing way that Lovelace handles the misleadingly named “persistent” notifications. It used to be that the pop up would occur on every page in the UI and remain until you clicked on the “Dismiss” button. Now, in Lovelace, the persistent notifications don’t populate in the main window but iunstead just put a little orange indicator dot on top of the “bell” icon in the top…

that link is to the post that links to the latest working code on gist.

I don’t know if would be useful to read the whole thing but you might get something out of it.

[rlongfield (Rob)]

That looks great, unfortunately I am not located in the US…

[jusdwy]

Maybe a template binary sensor that looks at the alert state is not blank then binary on.
Conditional card looks at the binary sensor.

[rlongfield (Rob)]

Temporarily I am using the state_not function. When there are no alerts the sensor state is ‘unknown’ I can use that and make the card appear for all alerts, not ideal but it’s something right now.

[finity]

Ok, sorry for my bad assumption.

[rlongfield (Rob)]

No worries, may not help me but maybe someone else will see it and help them!