Looking for a script to save the state of lights and revert after action

Configuration
1

I’m trying to avoid re-inventing the wheel here. I have a script which uses lights around the house to signal various alerts by flashing in a relevant colour. At the end of the script, I revert the lights to white and then switch them off. I do this by controlling the group to which the lights belong.

In practice, though, not all lights will have been either white or off before the process started.

What I need, ideally, is something which parses the group membership, records the state of each and saves it so that I can then revert each to its original state, rather than assuming white and off.

I’m sure that this must be a fairly common requirement? If someone could point me in the right direction, I’d be most appreciative.

TIA

2

Example from

# Example automation using snapshot
- alias: "Window opened"
  trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.window
    from: "off"
    to: "on"
  condition: []
  action:
  - service: scene.create
    data:
      scene_id: before
      snapshot_entities:
      - climate.ecobee
      - light.ceiling_lights
  - service: light.turn_off
    target:
      entity_id: light.ceiling_lights
  - service: climate.set_hvac_mode
    target:
      entity_id: climate.ecobee
    data:
      hvac_mode: "off"
- alias: "Window closed"
  trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.window
    from: "on"
    to: "off"
  condition: []
  action:
  - service: scene.turn_on
    target:
      entity_id: scene.before
3

Fantastic! thank you very much

4

Temporary scenes can be a great way of doing it.
For a simpler use case, you could just grab the state of the entity before you act on it and save its value into a variable such as:

variables:
  previous_switch_state: "{{ states('switch.aqara_switch_top_floor_bathroom_switch') }}"

Then, perform the action on your entity, then restore its state back to the previous value. This is fine where you have a simple entity like a switch, but for lights, where you might want to capture many attributes of that device, such as colour, brightness etc, then temporary scenes are really the way to go.

5

Oooh! that might be cleaner still. I just need to find a way to iterate it through all of the group members.

Thanks,