Help with template sensor and negative state

Configuration
1 
- platform: template
  sensors:
    presence:
      friendly_name: "Giannis Home"
      value_template: >-
        {% if is_state('person.elena', 'not_home') and is_state('person.giannis', 'home') %}
           on
        {% else %}
           off
        {% endif %}

Is there anyway to configure the fisrt part of this sensor to be true if person.elena is not at home? I mean like this it works, but as soon as person.elena enters one other zone then it wont be true even if person.elena is not home. I need something like this

- platform: template
  sensors:
    presence:
      friendly_name: "Giannis Home"
      value_template: >-
        {% if is_state('person.elena', =! 'home') and is_state('person.giannis', 'home') %}
           on
        {% else %}
           off
        {% endif %}
2

{% states('person.elena') != 'home' and is_state('person.giannis', 'home') %}``Preformatted text

1 Like
3

Or might be better with …

{{ not is_state('person.elena', 'home') and is_state('person.giannis', 'home') }}
1 Like
4

Isn’t this just the state of person.giannis?

That is to say that you have giainis at home, or you have elena at home, or both, or none.

So rather than having 4 template sensors for these eventualities, just use the individual person entities for the first 2, and a group for the latter two.

5

I don’t think so … I think they want the sensor true when giannis is home and elena is not home (i.e. when giannis is home alone).

That’s the way I read it.

6

Yeah I see that, but I’m trying to see where this would be used, and if you had a group with giainis and elena in it, then either both are home (group is home), neither are home (group is not_home), or one person is home (whichever person is). So the 4 template sensors that would otherwise establish these states are redundant imo.

I suppose you could use the sensors as a shortcut for a trigger/condition or two, but realistically for the number of times these sensors are actually going to be used it’s just duplicating data that’s already there.

One template sensor that returns a result of ‘all’, ‘Gianni’, ‘Elena’ or ‘none’ would probably be a better fit if there’s actually likely to be a number of uses.

7

I guess it would help to know more about their specific use case.

8

This is just an example, i have many other sensor that i want to use with a similar expression .

Jonah1970 gave me the right syntax i guess.