Still getting use to Home assistant. But Right now when my firestick turns on and starts playing something after 8 pm, it sets our netflix and chill scene where it turns the main room lights off and uses just the tv lights and lamp lights dimmed and set to a certain color. This is great for about 85% of the time, except when the wife wants to read. So Say I am watching alone and she is reading she has to keep fighting with her lamp to stay at a warm white because the automation fires whenever it plays (commercial breaks etc). How would I override that to have her lamp go to warm white and stay that way when shes reading? NFC TAGS? Etc all ideas welcome! thanks all!!
Use an input Boolean as a condition to block the action.
Ideally, you want the automation to automatically make the right decision (whether to dim the lamp or not). The first step to achieve that goal is to define under what circumstances the lamp should and should not be dimmed.
For example, when the firestick turns on after 20:00, if the lamp is currently off then it’s set to a dimmed level. However, if it’s already on and bright (i.e. your wife turned it on to read) then don’t dim it. To be clear, that’s just the basics for illustrative purposes only; your ultimate solution may need to consider more variables.
If you can’t think of a foolproof way for the automation to always make the right decision, then you’ll need to fallback to a manual-override solution as suggested by Danny2100. However, it should preferably be as convenient as possible for anyone (i.e. your wife) to use. In my home, having to reach for your phone to open an app to enable some mode setting wouldn’t be considered to be convenient but YMMV.
FWIW, here’s an example of a user’s action (manual override) influencing an automation’s behavior.
I have an automation that turns on a light based on motion, light-level, sun altitude, and time. The light is set to a specific brightness level if it’s after sunset and motion is detected. It’s set dimmer if it’s after 23:30 but before sunrise. If no motion is detected for 2 minutes, it automatically turns off the light. However, if the user alters the light level (using the wall switch) so that it’s no longer what the automation had set, the automation suspends the auto-off function for 20 minutes.
The upshot here is that all the user needs to do to override the auto-off function is reach for the wall-switch and change the light’s brightness. That passes for “convenient” in my home (making it voice-controllable might be the minimum for other people).
- Enter the room
- Light is automatically set to X% brightness
- User changes brightness to something else
- Auto-off is suspended
The moral of the story is, for manual-override, find a simple and easy action the user can perform to influence the automation’s behavior.
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