I am using a template to have a switch turn on, a certain amount of time after a google calendar event is fired and for some reason home assistant will only evlaute the template on reboot. does anyone know a way to get HA to evalute it every 5 minutes or so?
My guess would be that this is due to using now() in your template - see the docs for more info; essentially the value from now() is only determined when something else in the template updates state.
Maybe using sensor.time would be a better option for you?
It only evaluates your Template Binary Sensor at startup, and never again, because it’s unable to identify any entity within the template that it should monitor for changes.
Try this the following example. Home Assistant may have an easier time finding the entity it needs to monitor within the template (namely calendar.airbnb_cal).
If that still fails to work properly, it means calendar.airbnb_cal isn’t changing state often enough so add sensor.time as the entity to be monitored. sensor.time changes state every minute so the Template Binary Sensor will be updated every minute.