I would like the ability to control automation from integration in HomeAssistant.
sometimes there are ecosystems that have there own automation system like Philips Hue or Shelly and sometimes they make it easy to create automatons which are difficult to create in HomeAssistant easy to create. So i would create them there. The problem is now i need to go to that app to enable or disable that automation.
if we had the ability to control them from HomeAssistant that would solve the problem. I’m thinking that could be done in a similar manner than the scenes which are imported by some integrations. I understand that this ability is not possible to do for all integrations because of API limitations but at least for the more open once i think it could be done.
the scope that I think would be needed is for toggle them on or of and as an optional thing to trigger them.
that would give us the ability to for example use philips hue to create a automation for an automatic irrigation system like the one from gardena which uses internal logic and disable it when i set my HomeAssistant instance in a winter state without going in the gardena app.
I know that not every API will provide access to enable or disable automations. Ontop of that I don’t think all systems have that option in general.
The following examples are a bit difficult to use my suggested solutions for because the only way I was able to integrate them was throw “HomeKit Device” and that would not have that feature in its API.
The first system is the Gardena Smart system it has a way to automate my irrigation with the help of the weather forecast the measured ground water level and adjust itself for the sunrise and does all of that by my telling it what type of garden I have. I would be able to do a primitive version in Homeassistant but not all, and I don’t see an obviaes way how homeassistant would be able to adopt such a system without getting a DB of plants and compare it with my chosen ones water needs.
My other example is the Velux Activ system. This system is able to Control my blinds and windows based on a room sensor and on the outdoor conditions, so that my windows get Opend when fresh air is needed and closed if it would negatively impact the room. Sins all components are solar powered it looks out for the Batterys to not drain them to much to not be able to control them anymore. And Controll the blinds so when to much sun hits the window my room does not get to hot. Such a automation has so many components that move and need many conditional Componans it would be realy hard to get it right in Homeassistant.
So yes we would need the api to expose the options to turn on and off the automation but we would also need Homeassistant to be able to use this API.
The alternative to being able to see them in the automations plain and control them from there would be to go in to the automations which APIs support that and create switches for this purpose but I think that would be working “around the system”