Moving from WebCORE

Hi all. I am moving my automation from WebCore over to HA and I am having problems re-creating my first automation…

Basically, this will turn on a smart switch (called “Bar Xmas Lights”) between 6 and 7 AM M-F. But this will only happen if a “Virtual Switch” (called “VS Bar Lights”) is also off.

I use the VS to track manual state so if someone manually turned on the lights, the automation won’t turn it off on them.

I think I figured out the 6-7, M-F via a “Condition” but I don’t really then have a Trigger (as in the old system, what was tracked was the time and the switches (physical and virt) changing status).

I also made a input boolean helper to be the VS but I don’t feel that is correct as I can’t really turn it on or off…

Any pointers to get me going in the correct direction?

Thanks

I think I figured this out.

First, had to make a Template Switch by adding the following to my configuration.yaml file. The regular template just didn’t have the options I needed:

switch:
  - platform: template
    switches:
      vs_bar_lights:
        friendly_name: VS Bar Lights
        unique_id: vs_bar_lights
#        value_template: "{{ is_state('switch.vs_bar_lights','on') }}"
        turn_on:
          service: switch.turn_on
          target:
            entity_id: switch.vs_bar_lights
        turn_off:
          service: switch.turn_off
          target:
            entity_id: switch.vs_bar_lights

A lot of examples I found had the value_template line but I had to get rid of that to allow the switch to stay “on” so I could then turn it off. I am not 100% sure what that is for (or if I need it?) but it seems to work only if I comment it out.

The other thing I haven’t figured out is how to add the VS to my dashboard. Still working on that one.

Once I had the VS to play with, I could re-make the automation I had before…

alias: Bar Lights School Mornings
description: "Turn on the Bar In-Wall Outlet to turn on the Bar Xmas Lights during the week"
triggers:
  - id: "on"
    trigger: time
    at: "06:00:00"
  - id: "off"
    trigger: time
    at: "06:45:00"
  - type: changed_states
    device_id: e54e2b7a46fd0b3af2c6c0b1a628dfca
    entity_id: a70a90049683804cd987a0d800c4cc42
    domain: switch
    trigger: device
  - trigger: state
    entity_id:
      - switch.vs_bar_lights
conditions: []
actions:
  - if:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: switch.vs_bar_lights
        state: "off"
      - condition: state
        entity_id: switch.bar_in_wall_outlet
        state: "off"
      - condition: time
        weekday:
          - mon
          - tue
          - wed
          - thu
          - fri
        after: "06:00:00"
        before: "06:45:00"
    then:
      - action: switch.turn_on
        metadata: {}
        data: {}
        target:
          device_id: e54e2b7a46fd0b3af2c6c0b1a628dfca
      - action: switch.turn_on
        metadata: {}
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id: switch.vs_bar_lights
  - if:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: switch.vs_bar_lights
        state: "on"
      - condition: state
        entity_id: switch.bar_in_wall_outlet
        state: "on"
      - condition: time
        weekday:
          - mon
          - tue
          - wed
          - thu
          - fri
        after: "06:45:00"
        before: "06:00:00"
    then:
      - action: switch.turn_off
        metadata: {}
        data: {}
        target:
          device_id: e54e2b7a46fd0b3af2c6c0b1a628dfca
      - action: switch.turn_off
        metadata: {}
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id: switch.vs_bar_lights
mode: single

Basically this will turn on an outlet at 6AM and turn it back off at 6:45AM M-F. The VS tracks state so if someone turns the switch on manually outside that 45 minute time window, it will stay on. I plan on adding a third “if” section that sends me notifications if things get out of sync (VS is on but the PS is off, PS is on but the VS is off @ 6AM, etc).

Of course things getting out of sync may not really be an issue with HA? It was with Smartthings years ago which is one of the reasons I still have it set up this way.

Anyway, I would guess that there is a totally different way to accomplish the same thing using another method so if anybody has suggestions, I am up for going down another path. This was how I had to do it using WebCore so this, at least, lets me easily migrate things over to HA while I look into re-working everything.

Since you’re coming from WebCORE you might want to take a look at the Node Red Add-On. I installed Node Red shortly after migrating from SmartThings and started building automations in both yaml and Node Red. Both have a learning curve, but I find it much easier to visualize, create and troubleshoot automations with NR.

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