How to troubleshoot automation top to bottom?

Configuration
1

I have the following automations.yaml

- id: turn on light
  alias: turn on light by event
  initial_state: 'off'
  trigger:
    platform: event
    event_type: esphome.button_pressed
  action:
    - service: 'homeassistant.turn_on'
      entity_id: light.t2_l2
  1. I have checked that the automation config is correct and loading - it is
  2. last_triggered is null
  3. I have tested the action in the services tab - works just fine
  4. the event ‘esphome.button_pressed’ fires in my events tab

But the event does not appear to fire the trigger. Whether created by my device, or created on the events tab.

I have the log level set to info, but there is nothing there.

Does anyone have any suggestions for my next step?

Thanks

2

You set initial_state to ‘off’ that means that the automation is disabled by default. Did you enable the automation after you created it? Also the homeassistant.turn_on doesn’t need to be in quotes, and because you only turn on a light you can just use light.turn_on instead.

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3

Thank you. For some reason (I don’t know why) I thought the initial state was that of the light, not the trigger.

4

Did it work? If so, please mark my pist as the solution, this way others will find the solution quickly and the topic will be marked as solved.

5

I am new to all of this.

Yes, thanks, it worked

6

No worries :slight_smile: have fun with Home Assistant :wink:

7

Further to what burning said (you have learnt that setting initial to false is bad)
But setting it to true is also bad as this initialises the automation on a core restart.
You may not fall foul of this for a while but eventually, when your automations get more complex, you will need to know when that automation was last triggered - and you won’t know if you set this to true as that gets reinitialised too.
Best just to remove that line completely

1 Like
8

Also, for the future this might help:

1 Like
9

Thanks Mutt.

1 Like