I have automated two rooms using presence sensors to save the scene on exit and restore the scene on entry. This works great, but I find the configuration process confusing.
When adding the scene.create action, you specify:
scene_id: foo
But with the scene.activation action you specify (correctly):
entity_id: scene.foo
The scene.create action GUI editor has you type in the variable name, but the scene.activate GUI editor used a menu, which seems inconsistent.
Looking at the YAML it looks like foo and scene.foo are different (because one starts with “scene.” and the other does not) and it is tempting to make the strings identical, which does not work.
Furthermore, the scene.activation GUI editor includes a menu to select the scene_id, but this is not populated until you create the scene (of course).
Also, I tried creating the scene by hand in the entities page, but the actions don’t seem to work with a scene created that way.
One way to resolve this is to clarify the documentation with these observations.
Another might be to fix things so you could create the scene in the entity editor, and then have the scene.create action use a menu like the scene.activation action.
There is a template to set this up, but I wanted to add conditions so my scene activation does not happen at night, which meant I could not use the template.
Overall, this configuration pattern is one of the most obvious uses of Home Automation (turn the lights when out of the room and restore them on entry) so I think it should be very easy to setup. At present, it is confusing.
Thanks,
-Christopher
