I am trying to create a template within an automation that has a for loop that does the following:
Loop through all my zigbee battery operated devices and retrieve the timestamp of when the corresponding linkquality value was updated.
The reason for this is I want to know if/when one of these devices goes offline. I can’t use the battery’s last_updated value as this updates very irregularly/infrequently. However, linkquality is updated several time each day. In this way I can test to see if the device was heard recently.
I have the automation set up, and I have the template working to the point where I can get a list of my devices, and even the battery levels. I now need to be able to do something like:
I have been able to craft a string variable that has the exact string like the line above, but putting that variable between double braces doesn’t work.
Anyone know how I can do this? Or does anyone have an alternate solution for determining the offline status for zigbee battery devices?
This is not the solution I am looking for. Although this may be a good visual indicator for mains connected devices that are off line, it does not work for battery connected devices. Also, I am looking for a templated solution that I can use in my automation. I use a for loop that scans all battery devices and then for each battery device I find, I want to know the last time this device communicated with HA.
My mistake, the offline indicator does work for battery devices. Sorry for the confusion. Now all I have to do is work the status into my template. Thanks for giving me a new direction to explore.
For my setup I’ve gone with 3 hours for battery devices, which allows for two messages to be missed, but that may go down to 2 hours and a few minutes to allow for a single missed message.
For end devices 10 minutes is fine, though as all of mine check in at least every 2 to 3 minutes that may get dropped to 5 minutes.
