I am running Home assistant on an old Intel NUC via Virtual Box. Since it is using shared resources with other server applications i run on the NUC, such as PLEX server, FTP server, XAMPP (apache etc) i would like to keep it as light as possible.
This is the reason i wouldn’t go to the node red as i believe that will chew up recourses and ultimately slow down the entire set up.
I can back up my virtual machine to a file (that can be deployed again) and give it a try.
If an automation runs in HA or in Node red should not make much difference. The idle of Node red on my Pi4 is:
I assume, when it’s running an automation it will be as much of a load as HA.
Also, making an automation in HA that needs more variables, helpers and steps seems counter intuitive in my opinion if load/performance is the goal.
But I don’t know for sure.
I am backing up my set up and installing Note Red. There only one way to find out! 
Here is a flow you can try.
It’s untested since I’m not home and I don’t have a one button remote.
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It could probably have been made simpler/smaller but this is what I came up with remotly.
The nodes that is marked with red is the ones you need to put some attention to.
You need to replace the device with your device long press/release command and the light entity
This dims up/down every other time you press it.
Just using a tweak of your logic above to try and get a button dimming and brightening my blind and got a bit of an odd thing happening… it works, but only twice…
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I suspect it might be because on my button, for some reason holding it (or any action actually) give a blank state response immediately after the actual state change
Is there any way to ignore this?
Is this flow still the best way of doing this?
I guess you can add a switch node to filter out any that is empty.
Not sure what that will do to the sequence though.
Sadly didn’t work… the state node still picks up the state change so it murders that ongoing flow…
As a long shot I wondered if the below would work
But even though it’s blank it’s still known / available
Wondering if there is a way to manually ignore some other state…
I also tried using a trigger node instead but the same problem that the trigger then fails the check
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Where is the switch node I suggested?
Not there because I already tested that and it didn’t work (as mentioned)
I was showing the alternate path I’m exploring
The switch test was in the other flow 
Irrespective, something very strange is going on tho - debugging further it seems that sometimes (but not always), the hold action triggers twice on this particular switch
So these 4 actions are a single hold - not just a stray empty string, but actually a stray repeat as well
This explains the “twice only” thing I was seeing - it was triggering the flow twice - it doesn’t seem to be traversing the loop for some reason however…
I also tried using a complete node to separate out the bits but again it triggers but doesn’t seem to traverse the loop properly for some reason 
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OMG… I’m such a muppet
NONE of the above matters… the loop was failing as I had string true as opposed to ‘is true’ in the switch 
I came across the same issue when setting up my ShellyI4 and i may have found the issue.
The automation “mode” is standard set to single, when the trigger is met the automation just starts the action and that’s it.
What i needed was for the automation mode to be set to “restart” so the automation will restart the action based on the new trigger (e.g. release, or “btn_up” for shelly). Combined with repeat/until this kills the actions when the release trigger is met.
Example:
alias: Shellybtndown
description: ""
trigger:
- platform: device
device_id: ShellyI4ID
domain: shelly
type: btn_down
subtype: button1
id: hold
- platform: device
device_id: ShellyI4ID
domain: shelly
type: btn_up
subtype: button1
id: release
condition: []
action:
- repeat:
until:
- condition: trigger
id: release
sequence:
- device_id: LightID
domain: light
entity_id: light.woonkamer_stalamp
type: brightness_increase
mode: restart
Hope this helps
I would really like to steal your code of this for my Aqara 3-button device, but HA is not having it.
I managed to make it work as single-shot using the graphical editor:
alias: Study2 decrease hold
description: ""
trigger:
- device_id: 5c436d9650bd53e7232c0733905f2acb
domain: zha
platform: device
type: remote_button_long_press
subtype: button_1
condition: []
action:
- device_id: 37b49fbe56bc2b59b08df81ab6c89adf
domain: light
entity_id: light.gledopto_gl_c_007_light
type: brightness_decrease
mode: restart
But If I modify that to wat you have, I get this when I save:
Message malformed: Invalid trigger configuration
This is what I tried to set up:
alias: Study2 decrease hold
description: ""
trigger:
- device_id: 5c436d9650bd53e7232c0733905f2acb
domain: zha
platform: device
type: remote_button_long_press
subtype: button_1
condition: []
action:
- device_id: 37b49fbe56bc2b59b08df81ab6c89adf
domain: light
entity_id: light.gledopto_gl_c_007_light
type: brightness_decrease
mode: restart
I am also using Aqara scene Controllers with HA to dim my lights that are connected via zigbee2mqtt (since your light device is called gledopto_gl_c_007 I assume you’re using zigbee too?!). Most Zigbee Lights (actually all I have here, Osram, GLEDOPTO, Ledvance) implement a “brightness_move” and “color_move” function that’s quite handy in these situations since it does not flood your zigbee network with thousands of “set brightness to X” messages but only one message to start the brightness/color move and another one to stop it. My current automation for these light looks like this:
Dim down:
alias: TEST_SC_OFFICE_DIM_DOWN
description: ""
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- sensor.sc_test_01_action
to: button_3_hold
condition: []
action:
- service: mqtt.publish
data:
topic: zigbee2mqtt/office_lights/set
payload: "{\"brightness_move\":-50}"
- wait_for_trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- sensor.sc_test_01_action
to: button_3_release
- service: mqtt.publish
data:
topic: zigbee2mqtt/office_lights/set
payload: "{\"brightness_move\":0}"
mode: single
Dim up:
alias: TEST_SC_OFFICE_DIM_UP
description: ""
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- sensor.sc_test_01_action
to: button_4_hold
condition: []
action:
- service: mqtt.publish
data:
topic: zigbee2mqtt/office_lights/set
payload: "{\"brightness_move\":50}"
- wait_for_trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- sensor.sc_test_01_action
to: button_4_release
- service: mqtt.publish
data:
topic: zigbee2mqtt/office_lights/set
payload: "{\"brightness_move\":0}"
mode: single
Since I couldn’t find a way to fire a brightness_move event (I’m quite new to HA - migrated from ioBroker two weeks ago) I just send the required MQTT messages “manually” by calling the mqtt.publish service.
Hope that solves your problem.
I know this topic is silent for a while but when I was looking for a way to dim my ledstrip I found this thread.
I fixed it by adding a boolean helper
input_boolean.twinkly_slaapkamer_dimming
This is my automation for my Hue Smart button (1 pressable button with 5 events)
Simplefied the script since I use this with 2 buttons, left and a right one
description: "Hue Smart Button Slaapkamer Long Pressed"
mode: single
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- event.hue_smart_button_slaapkamer_left
attribute: event_type
to: repeat
condition: []
action:
- if:
- condition: state
entity_id: input_boolean.twinkly_slaapkamer_dimming
state: "on"
then:
- repeat:
sequence:
- device_id: 54291e227b8ef6e114eaf2155995dcff
domain: light
entity_id: 6826e3a7b0360c251683e8e18db34ded
type: brightness_increase
until:
- condition: state
entity_id: event.hue_smart_button_slaapkamer_left
attribute: event_type
state: long_release
else:
- repeat:
sequence:
- device_id: 54291e227b8ef6e114eaf2155995dcff
domain: light
entity_id: 6826e3a7b0360c251683e8e18db34ded
type: brightness_decrease
until:
- condition: state
entity_id: event.hue_smart_button_slaapkamer_left
attribute: event_type
state: long_release
- service: input_boolean.toggle
data: {}
target:
entity_id: input_boolean.twinkly_slaapkamer_dimming
Hopefully this is usefull for someone
I just ran across this challenge myself and wanted to share what’s working for me. Thanks to Hotfield and others for their solutions, which I started with. The main trick is setting the mode to “Restart” and triggering on both the button being pressed and the button being released. This means that when the button is released, the automation run from the button being pressed gets cancelled. The next trick is to have the action do nothing when the trigger id is not button-pressed. Third trick is to terminate the loop when it has reached too many iterations, so it doesn’t run forever in case the release event is not received - thanks to this post for how to do that. The final trick is to add a delay to the loop to rate-limit the dim commands sent - adjust for your preferred dimming speed. For my particular button (IKEA Rodret) the final trick is triggering on “Dim up released after long press” even for the dim down command, because the Rodret appears to send a “Dim up released” event when the dim down button is released (perhaps this is a bug?). For good measure I cancel the automation if either dim up or dim down are released, in case the behavior changes in the future.
Here’s my YAML for the dimming automation:
alias: Rodret => Master Bedroom Dimmer
description: ""
trigger:
- device_id: 09cb83cd15c47ad4c213f0082f5f5f2e
domain: zha
platform: device
type: remote_button_long_press
subtype: dim_down
id: pressed
- device_id: 09cb83cd15c47ad4c213f0082f5f5f2e
domain: zha
platform: device
type: remote_button_long_release
subtype: dim_up
- device_id: 09cb83cd15c47ad4c213f0082f5f5f2e
domain: zha
platform: device
type: remote_button_long_release
subtype: dim_down
condition: []
action:
- repeat:
sequence:
- device_id: 190d09647566c764d4ef3416ebd7de16
domain: light
entity_id: 5b441d76bd3feaa8ad316a8244839860
type: brightness_decrease
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 0
milliseconds: 350
while:
- condition: and
conditions:
- condition: trigger
id:
- pressed
- condition: template
value_template: "{{ repeat.index < 20 }}"
mode: restart
In the GUI it looks like this:
Smooth dimming!
Here is slightly improved version of the above thanks for inspiring me! The main change is targeting the device using light.turn_on action, in order to use the nice API where we include a brightness change in percentage-points and a transition time. This also means just targeting the device_id and not also the entity_id.
This works with my Ikea trådfri switch and Ikea Ormanas LED strip. For dimming up, just replace -20 with 20 and ..._down with ..._up.
alias: Dim this down
description: ""
trigger:
# Either long pressing or releasing will trigger this action
- device_id: d6eff8819416684ba3ac23f9b4a16346
domain: zha
platform: device
type: remote_button_long_press
subtype: dim_down
id: pressed
- device_id: d6eff8819416684ba3ac23f9b4a16346
domain: zha
platform: device
type: remote_button_long_release
subtype: dim_down
condition: []
action:
- repeat:
sequence:
- action: light.turn_on
target:
device_id: 6a3368aacc82ae15e7b5f7bd87d390f5
data:
# For 5 steps, we use -20%
brightness_step_pct: -20
transition: 0.350 # seconds, matches 350 below for smoothness
- delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 0
milliseconds: 350
while:
- condition: and
conditions:
- condition: trigger
id:
- pressed
- condition: template
value_template: "{{ repeat.index < 20 }}"
mode: restart