Configuration of state in automation

Configuration
1

Hello,

I have tried to understand the documentation around automations, but there is something that I can’t understand how to do…

I am setting up an automation where I get a warning if my front door is opened while I am away.

  • The trigger is when a door sensor is in the state Open.
  • The condition is connected to the NMAP state of my phone. The options I have is Home, Away, Unknown and Unavailable.
  • The action is set to notify my phone.

The issue I have is that if I choose the state ‘Away’ in the condition setting it works for a while, but then after a while being away that state changes to Unavailable - and the consequence is that I don’t get the notification.

But if I set the condition to Unavailable in the condition, the notification doesn’t work in the time span where the phone is in the state Away.

I can see that when I choose a trigger I have the option to chose the state either ‘from’ or ‘to’ a specific state, and that would work since I could choose ‘from Home’ to cover both scenarios. But when setting a condition I don’t have the choice to set ‘from state’ or ‘to state’.

How could I get around this problem?

I would like to mention that I use the NMAP integration because other methods don’t work for me since the GPS and other phone information seem to be extremely unreliable when updating HA. I have tried both geolocation with GPS and various WiFi related settings.

Thank you!

2

There are multiple ways to address this depending on the available entities and integrations.

One option, using basic components, is to use a Not condition, then nest your NMAP integration state under that, but set the wanted state to be “Home”… that way any non-home value will cause the Not to pass.

That’s because conditions are a snapshot in time, they do not wait around for events/changes to happen. If the condition isn’t true at that moment, it fails. There is no “from”, nor a “to”… just “is” or “is not”

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