Creating automation to notify when a sensor hasn't updated for x time

[cadwizzard]

I’m trying to automate a check so that if something hasn’t confirmed valid updated for x time, then actions/notify needs to occur.
Its for an oil level sensor which doesn’t change all the time, but i need to know if it stops reporting to prevent running out. the reporting ordinarily happens every 24 hours or so, even though the reported value may not change

The entity is sensor.last_reading_date

This doesnt show as an option in device for the automation, so i was thinking numeric state. But that gives options of above/below etc, and i specifically want to to trigger on sensor.last_reading_date has not updated for x days.

Sounds simple and I have tons of automations in toggledbits MSR, but i’m trying to move things more and more into native automations where possible.

Anyone spare time to give me a pointer?
Many thanks

[fleskefjes]

I use a template sensor that detects stale data on my plant sensors and then triggers an automation to notify me, maybe something you can re-use?

  - name: Plant 16 stale sensor
    icon: mdi:flower
    state: >-
      {% if as_timestamp(now()) - as_timestamp(states.sensor.plant_16_illuminance.last_updated) > 43200 %}
        true
      {% else %}
        false
      {% endif %}

[Tinkerer (aka DubhAd on GitHub)]

trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: sensor.last_reading_date
    to: ~
    for: '24:00:00'

That’ll trigger when the state of the sensor hasn’t changed in 24 hours.

Keep in mind that when HA restarts that resets the clock (same goes for last_updated).

[cadwizzard]

Great, that should work, thanks for the HA restart warning.
That shouldn’t be an issue, as I don’t restart every day. I will set the trigger to two days, and if its delayed for 2 days more (maximum) due to a restart, it wont be an issue.

I was just trying to avoid not noticing the levels for week(s) or more then having a big surprise when it gets to (nearly or close to) empty

[123 (Taras)]

Examples

Trigger an automation when a value does NOT change?

The following automation notifies you when the sensor’s state value hasn’t changed in the past 30 minutes and then reloads the integration associated with the sensor entity (change sensor.your_temperature_sensor to your temperature sensor). alias: example abc123 trigger: - platform: template value_template: "{{ now() - states.sensor.your_temperature_sensor.last_changed >= timedelta (minutes=30) }}" action: - service: notify.persistent_notification data: title: Stale Temperature mess…

Polling Devices to Avoid Silent Failure

Paste this template into the Template Editor. It will list all sensors whose states have not changed in the past hour (3600 seconds, change it to whatever duration you prefer). {{ states.sensor | selectattr('last_changed', 'lt', now()-timedelta(seconds=3600)) | map(attribute='entity_id') | join(', ') }} You can use that as a starting point to create a template that checks for ‘stale’ entities. If you want it to check sensors and binary_sensors, use expand(). {{ expand(states.sensor, …

Notification in case no values have been recorded since X

One way to detect if a sensor’s value is stale (i.e. has not changed for a long time) is to compare the entity’s last_changed to the current time. If it’s more than some threshold value, like 30 minutes, that means the entity’s value hasn’t changed in the past half-hour. You can create an automation with a Template Trigger that triggers when the monitored temperature sensor is stale. The action can be whatever you want. It can log the incident to a file, notify you, do both and more. In the exa…