Creating dynamic entities names, getting string instead of object.state

Configuration
1

Tried for hours now, and started to feel really stupid, so I hope someone can shed up some light on my problem…

Big Picture:
I’m trying to mute my sonos when snips detects the hotword. As my snips siteId is the same as my sonos media_players name I want to have one automation for all my rooms.
The siteId is delivered in the payload and can be etxracted (trigger.payload_json.siteId). Then I want to dynamicaly create the object.

Problem
That works in the condition, it works in the service to lower the volume, but it is just not working where I want to save it to a variable via the custom component hass_variables. https://github.com/rogro82/hass-variables Instead of the current volume, the string is beeing saved.

The automations work great when using static values e.g.

states.media_player.arbeitszimmer.attributes.volume_level

This is what i got so far:

Automation to save the actual volume level, and lower the volume

- alias: Mute Sonos when SNIPS hotword detected
  id: mute_sonos_on_snips
  trigger:
  - platform: mqtt
    topic: hermes/hotword/default/detected
  condition:
    condition: template
    value_template: "{{ is_state('media_player.' ~trigger.payload_json.siteId, 'playing') }}"
  action:

#Problem start
  - service: variable.set_variable
    data_template:
      variable: tmp_sonos_volume
      value_template: "{{'states.media_player.' ~ trigger.payload_json.siteId ~ '.attributes.volume_level' }}"
#Problem end

  - service: media_player.volume_set
    data_template:
      entity_id: "media_player.{{trigger.payload_json.siteId}}"
      volume_level: '0.05'

a second automation is setting the volume back when snips goes inactive again…

I’ve also tried among others:

{% set where = my_test_json.siteId %}
{% set front = 'states.media_player' %}
{% set back = 'attributes.volume_level' %}
{% set value = states.media_player.arbeitszimmer.attributes.volume_level %}
{% set final = [front,where,back]|join(".") %}

value is working, but hardcoded result: 0.05
final is a string and not the object and its volume setting result : states.media_player.arbeitszimmer.attributes.volume_level

value_template: "{{ states('media_player.' ~ trigger.payload_json.siteId ~ '.attributes.volume_level') }}"

gives me this error:

ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Invalid service data for media_player.volume_set: expected float for dictionary value @ data['volume_level']. Got 'unknown'

so I added the conversion to float

value_template: "{{ states('media_player.' ~ trigger.payload_json.siteId ~ '.attributes.volume_level') |float}}"
or
value_template: "{{ states('media_player.' + trigger.payload_json.siteId + '.attributes.volume_level') | float }}"

which results in 0.0 instead of the current volume of the object…

Thanks!

2

So after palying arround with it for days, and finally posting it to the community I’ve found the solution a few minutes later…

value_template: "{{ state_attr('media_player.' + trigger.payload_json.siteId, 'volume_level') }}"

the state_attr() is converting a string to an object it seems, and therfore I can concatenate the string.

Feeling less stupid now, just a little slow :wink:

will leave it here as a ressource for others…

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