Extend the timeout of a motion detector

Configuration
1

I have some Zigbee/MQTT motion detectors that have a maximum timeout of 2 minutes. I want to extend this timeout to e.g. 10 minutes and I want to use the state of these motion detectors not as triggers (it’s easy to add a delay there) but as conditions in other automations.

My first idea was to create boolean helpers and have an automation that sets those to false after a delay, but boolean helpers can’t convey the “unavailable” state and also don’t have device classes, so they can only be on/off and not detected/clear.

Ideally I would create some kind of template sensor that can look into the past (“state is clear if motion hasn’t been detected for 10 minutes”) - is something like that possible?

2

Use a Template binary sensor with delay_off set to 10 minutes.

1 Like
3

Uh, wait, how do I set these options, now that template sensors are created in the UI?

4

Do it in YAML… only the most basic functions are available in the Template Helpers, everything else is still YAML only.

5

Ah, I thought YAML was deprecated. I regularly get these “repairs” where it tells me to remove certain YAML definitions because they have been migrated.