Help setting up notification System for stuff to do

[daKazze]

Hey,

I am trying to create a notification system that checks if there is stuff to do every 20min or so. If there is stuff to do I want to get a TTS notification and flash some lights.

Right now I have set up input booleans for activities to do: “dishwasher” “trash” etc.
Now I am stuck on what to do next. I first thought I could set up a template sensor that counts how many input booleans are set to ON and go on from there but I dont know how to achieve that since I am pretty new.

If this is the right way to go please help set up the counter sensor. If not please point me in the right direction.

Thanks guys!

[Sergeantpup]

Hello,

I’m sortof new too and I leveraged some processes I used to use in webcore to perform these functions. I think I have the pieces of what you need, you’d just need to configure it elegantly.

I track some tasks:

They use input booleans for to track dates. I also have an associated toggle for each (you may not need this).

I have a toggle in addition to the date because I use Alexa to verbally trigger the toggle which applies the date via an automation. You can do this with fewer steps now that you can get a scene activated timestamp in the recent release (you’d essentially just be tracking whenever the scene was activated). A verbal command to indicate when I am doing one of these things sets up the ‘next time’ I need to do these things via automations.

alias: 2nd Floor Filter Tracker
description: ''
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: input_boolean.2nd_floor_filter_reminder
    to: 'on'
condition: []
action:
  - service: input_datetime.set_datetime
    data:
      datetime: '{{ now() + timedelta(days = 15) }}'
    target:
      entity_id: input_datetime.next_2nd_floor_filter_change_date
  - service: input_boolean.turn_off
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: input_boolean.2nd_floor_filter_reminder
mode: single

using the value template time delta was something I picked up in the forum and I really like how it handles this calc because it makes it easy to automate the notification:

alias: Notification - 2nd Floor Filter Reminder
description: ''
trigger:
  - platform: time
    at: '12:00:00'
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: >-
      {{ now().timestamp() >
      state_attr('input_datetime.next_2nd_floor_filter_change_date',
      'timestamp')|float(0) }}
action:
  - service: notify.mobile_app_serge_s_s9
    data:
      message: Replace 2nd floor vacuum filter
mode: single

I have my notification to evaluate at noon each day and if the date criteria is met, then it sends a notification (and will do that each day at noon until the date stamp changes). That’s just what’s convenient for me but it sounds like you’d want to adjust your notification automation to evaluate/send every 20 mins.

[daKazze]

Hey, I am sorry for the late reply but I am currently overwhelmed with work so I didnt have time yet to resume work on my system.
Thank you very much for the time you invested here! I’ll report back when I get to implement this.

[Sergeantpup]

If you notice in the screenshots above, several of these tasks became due today. Today at noon, I received a message on them and then I went one by one completing “chores” and alerting alexa to set up the ‘next time’ stamp.

This was actually the first successful run I’ve had end to end. I have been tweaking it for a month and troubleshooting but I can now 100% validate that all the above code works as intended with no gotchas. I’ll probably refine it to optimize/make it more efficient but its not a huge priority for me now that I know it’s working. The dates updated appropriately:

If you have any issues or have questions about adapting it, I can probably help