Hi Thorsten,
neither, actually. There is a third option built into CCA for exactly this scenario, and it fits the state model much better than both of yours: the Resident sensor.
Recommended setup
- Use an
input_boolean(e.g. “sleeping”) as the resident sensor. Turn it on in the evening, let your alarm automation turn it off. - In the resident section enable “Enable automatic opening when resident wakes up”. Leave “Allow opening the cover when resident is still present” off.
- Set
time_up_earlyto the earliest alarm time you can imagine, andtime_up_lateas a fallback for mornings without an alarm.
How it works: at the early opening time CCA switches its internal base state to “open” but does not move the cover, because the resident is still present. When the alarm turns the boolean off, the resident handler fires, checks your opening condition and opens the cover. Shading, ventilation and lockout keep working as usual. If the alarm rings before time_up_early, the cover stays closed. That is intentional, so just set the early time generously.
Why I would not use Force Open via a helper
Force is the highest priority in the cascade and overrides everything while the helper is on: no shading, no ventilation, no lockout, no evening close. So you need a second piece of logic to switch it off again. And when you switch it off, “Return to Target State After Force Disable” derives the target from the background state. If the scheduled opening time has not been reached yet, the background state is still “closed” and the cover drives back down. Force is meant for storm and emergency scenarios, not for a daily routine.
Why I would not call cover.open_cover directly
CCA sees that as a manual movement and sets Manual Override. What happens next depends on your “Automatic movements blocked during Manual Override” settings. If you block automatic closing there, your own wake-up call blocks the evening close until a reset. The “Manual movement inside the schedule window counts as the scheduled event” option helps, but only inside the opening window. Before that window CCA still thinks the cover never opened that morning.
If you really want the alarm to open the cover at any time, even at 4 am in winter, then that is a deliberate override of the schedule. In that case a direct cover.open_cover plus the schedule adoption option does less damage than Force, because nothing stays blocked. But I would rather set time_up_early early enough and stay with the resident approach.