Create a constant

Configuration
21

As far as the usefulness of constants, here’s one place I’d normally use a constant, and I’m curious what you guys would recommend for HA YAML.

So I have motion sensors in our bathrooms to turn on/off the lights. Cool. But when you get into the shower and close the door/curtain, the sensor no longer detects motion and turns the lights off. Now you’re showering in the dark. Not cool.

My current solution to this problem is to put a humidity sensor near the shower. Then add a condition to the “Lights Off” automation that it only activates if the humidity is below a certain value. No more unhappy wife. But… I’m still experimenting with exactly what value to use as the humidity trigger.

Especially considering I have multiple bathrooms that use this humidity value, instead of coding a literal value (i.e. magic number), I’d normally define a constant for this… but I don’t see a way to do that in HA YAML.

Example:

- id: 'spam'
  alias: Motion Lights Off - Master Bath
  trigger:
  - entity_id: binary_sensor.master_bath_motion_sensor_motion
    for: 00:02:00
    platform: state
    to: 'off'
  condition:
  - below: '65'
    condition: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.master_bath_humidity_sensor_humidity
  action:
  - data:
      transition: 5
    entity_id: light.master_bath_lights
    service: light.turn_off

In the above example, I’d love to be able to define a constant for the “65” and maybe even for the “5” on the transition to make tweaking things easier when those values are used in multiple automations. Suggestions?

22

Use an input_number.

23

Thanks! That seems to work well. From reading about how to use input_number , it sounds like you can’t just put that in the below or above field; using a template seems to be the way to do it, right?

Example:

  condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: '{{ states("sensor.master_bath_humidity_sensor_humidity")  | float 
      < states("input_number.humidity_threshold_shower") | float }}'
1 Like
24

Yeah, that’s how to do it :+1:

25

Hi,
I suggets to deine a binary_sensor and use the sensor state as condition.

Example:

  • platform: template
    sensors:
    humidity:
    friendly_name: “BathHumidityLightLevel”
    device_class: none
    value_template: “{{states(‘sensor.bath1_humidity’)|float>60
    or states(‘sensor.bath2_humidity’)|float>60}}”
26

Can i also update that static number through automation?

27

Thanks exactly what I was looking for!

28

Simple Const idea

input_text:
  my_const:
  initial: 'required_value'
30

I’ve read through this chain and checked out a few others but remain unable to find a solution to my goal of using constants in Lovelace cards, As an example here is a Gauge card for rainfall:

type: gauge
min: 0
entity: sensor.rainfall_month
name: Month
needle: true
severity:
  green: 2.5
  yellow: 4.5
  red: 6
max: 8

This gauge is repeated a couple of times in other places so if I decide that I want to change the min/max or severity values I need to edit each instance. I’ve tried the suggestions described earlier but either they don’t address this instance or I am not implementing them properly. Any thoughts are appreciated.
Ron