Help wanted: simple automation to toggle on and off a group of lights every hour

Configuration
1

hello all,

i want a simple script, where every 60’, will toggle on and off a group of lights.
can someone help me, i’m a little new to this…

regards,
George.

2

Hi. Look at adding this to your palette: node-red-contrib-looptimer

The help will show how to trigger something on a frequency. To over simplify, you could use 2 different loops. One for on and the other for off, each every 2 hrs. Of course there are more elegant ways too.

Good luck!

3

What you’re looking for is not a script, in Home Assistant this is called automation. :slight_smile:

How to do this, you can lookup here:

And the trigger you’re looking for would be the time_pattern trigger, where you can set an automation to run every X minutes, hours, days.

See here:

4

i think that i’m close enough, but i get a Message malformed: expected dictionary

my automation goes like this:

- alias: Toggle TH16
  id: Toggle_TH16
  trigger: 
    platform: time
    hour: '/1'
    minutes: 0
    seconds: 0
  condition:
  - condition: time
    after: '00:00:00'
    before: '23:59:59'
  - action:
    service: light.toggle
    target:
      entity_id: light.th16_sensors
  - delay: 00:00:05
    service: light.toggle
    target:
      entity_id: light.th16_sensors
5

ok, i did it… i just have to expect some minutes to test :slight_smile:

alias: Toggle TH16 every 1 hour
description: ''
trigger:
  - platform: time_pattern
    id: Toggle TH16
    hours: '1'
    minutes: '0'
    seconds: '0'
condition:
  - condition: time
    after: '00:00:00'
    before: '23:59:59'
    weekday:
      - mon
      - tue
      - wed
      - thu
      - fri
      - sat
      - sun
action:
  - service: light.toggle
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: light.th16_sensors
  - delay:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 2
      milliseconds: 0
  - service: light.toggle
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: light.th16_sensors
mode: single
6

Yes you are :+1:

You need to look more on indentation and the general structure. :wink: But you’ll get there! The yaml in HA is structured in a “logical” manor. An automation needs two things: a trigger and an action. Optionally a condition, if necessary. So these are on the first level (indented by 2 spaces). Under trigger you specify the platform that is used for the trigger, so it is second level (indented by 4 spaces). Same goes for the action. :slight_smile:

In the end it gives you this:

- alias: Toggle TH16
  id: Toggle_TH16
  trigger: 
    - platform: time_pattern
      hour: '/1'
  action:
    - service: light.toggle
      target:
        entity_id: light.th16_sensors
    - delay: '00:00:05'
    - service: light.toggle
      target:
        entity_id: light.th16_sensors

I deleted the unnecessary parts like the time condition. Not needed if it should run every hour (every hour of the day is between 00:00 and 23:59). Same goes for the minutes and seconds - not needed, leave them out. :slight_smile:

7

your version does not work for me, but this works…
thank you for the help :slight_smile:

alias: Toggle TH16 every 1 hour
description: ''
trigger:
  - platform: time_pattern
    id: Toggle TH16
    hours: '*'
    minutes: '1'
condition: []
action:
  - service: light.toggle
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: light.th16_sensors
  - delay:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 2
      milliseconds: 0
  - service: light.toggle
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: light.th16_sensors
mode: single
1 Like
8

Totally right, I used the wrong trigger, it must be time_pattern, not time and had a typo in hour… :slight_smile:

This should work now:

- alias: Toggle TH16
  id: Toggle_TH16
  trigger: 
    - platform: time_pattern
      hours: '/1'
  action:
    - service: light.toggle
      target:
        entity_id: light.th16_sensors
    - delay: '00:00:05'
    - service: light.toggle
      target:
        entity_id: light.th16_sensors
1 Like