Crockpot Time Control Blueprint: Automate Your Crockpot Cooking

Hello everyone,

I’m excited to share my new Crockpot Time Control blueprint for Home Assistant. This blueprint is designed to help you automate the control of a crockpot connected to a smart outlet switch based on dinner and cook times.

Core features:

  • Automatically calculates the start time for your crockpot based on the desired dinner time and cook time in hours.
  • Starts the crockpot at the calculated time, ensuring your meal is ready when you want it.
  • Turns off the crockpot after the specified cook time has elapsed.

Open your Home Assistant instance and show the blueprint import dialog with a specific blueprint pre-filled.

To use this Crockpot Time Control blueprint, you’ll need to create the following input helpers in your Home Assistant instance:

Open your Home Assistant instance and show your helper entities.

  • Input Datetime entity for dinner time:
    • Create an input_datetime entity that allows you to set the desired dinner time.
    • Example entity name: input_datetime.dinner_time
  • Input Number entity for cook time:
    • Create an input_number entity to set the cook time in hours.
    • Example entity name: input_number.cook_time

You can create these input helpers by navigating to Configuration > Helpers in your Home Assistant frontend, and clicking on the “Add Helper” button. Select the appropriate type (Input Datetime or Input Number) and configure the entity according to the descriptions above.

Once you have created these input helpers, you’ll need to select them when configuring the automation using the imported blueprint.

How to use the blueprint:

  1. Import the blueprint into your Home Assistant instance using the link above.
  2. Create an automation using the imported blueprint.
  3. Set the input fields for the blueprint:
  • Calculation Time: The time of day when the crockpot start time will be calculated.
  • Dinner Time Input: Input Datetime entity for setting the desired dinner time.
  • Cook Time Input: Input Number entity for setting the cook time in hours.
  • Smart Outlet Switch: smart outlet switch to control the crockpot.
  • Timer Entity: Timer entity used to control the crockpot cooking time.

Please note that you’ll need to create the required input_datetime and input_number entities in your Home Assistant instance if you haven’t already.

Feel free to comment on this thread if you have any questions or feature requests. Enjoy automating your crockpot cooking with this blueprint!

Best regards,

Mikey

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You should make yourself one of those pretty links like all the cool kids have…

Also I think it needs to be .yaml, not .yml

Good idea for a BP, though.

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Fixed, great feedback, thank you.

Why does it have to be zigbee?

It definitely doesn’t, mine just was.

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The other query, I guess this crockpot must be quite old. My Slow Cooker needs input from the controls to make it go.

No, less than a year old, just a simple one with a knob. Sounds like it won’t work with yours though.

Awesome, but I have two question:

  • Timer Entity: I created selecting restarted option and duration 0:00:00. Is ok?
  • Calculation Time: by default

The automation not work. I select a hour in the input_datetime.* entity, and time to cook (1, 2 or 7 hours) in the imput_number.* entity but de automation and switch not start.

The error: UndefinedError: 'input_datetime' is undefined

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