Well, Chrismas is gone for a while already . But just now I decided to get rid of my set of timer clocks, which I had installed for my external Chrismas illuminations. I thought, using HA I could do it much simpler, next Chrismas…
This season:
Besides an old analog timer, my digital Tasmota timer was set up to turn the lights on 30 minutes before sun sets until midnight, and then again turn on at 6am until 30 minutes after sun rise.
Now, when studying HA documentation, I came to a solution, which is “not so easy” to configure, at least less as I expected:
Using the UI helpers I created these four helpers:
Helper1: switch on the tasmota plug 30 minutes before sun set.
Helper2: switch off the tasmota plug 30 minutes after sun rise.
Helper3: switch on the tasmota plug at 6am.
Helper4: switch off the tasmota plug at 00:15 (because for 00:00:00 I got an error)
This seems to work. At least an unused testing tasmota plug is switched as desired. But I expect, that next Chrismas, there will be at least four different plugs to be controlled. Not all of them (indoor, outdoor) will follow the same intervalls. May be, there is a less complicated solution instead of a long list of helpers.
Hopefully, there are some readers here with more skills than I have, that can advise me. I prefer to use the UI, but could also read and write YAML.
Thanks
Peter