Need help with a time based trigger: 10min workibg, 24 hours not working

bigcookie · February 3, 2020, 8:15pm

Dear community,

the following automation fails for me. It is to detect a long term absence automatically after 24hours of normal absence:

- alias: Mark person as extended away
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: input_select.presence_andre_preset
      to: Abwesend
      for:
        hours: 24
    - platform: state
      entity_id: input_select.presence_maria_preset
      to: Abwesend
      for:
        hours: 24
  condition:
    condition: and
    conditions:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: 'input_select.automation_presence'
        state: 'Automatik'
  action:
    - service: input_select.select_option
      data_template:
        entity_id: >
          {% if trigger.entity_id == 'input_select.presence_andre_preset' %}
            input_select.presence_andre_preset
          {% else %}
            input_select.presence_maria_preset
          {% endif %}
        option: Lange weg

The device tracker triggers my input_select option. If this is now triggered to “absence” (Abwesend) for 24hours I would like to get the according persons state to be moved to extended away (Lange weg).
Unfortunately this never triggers.
the condition is a multi-select switch which is set to “Automatik”. This condition is checked for other automations which work…

Anybody has an idea, why this doesnt trigger? I checked the state, it is definitely longer in the Abwesend state than 24hours.
I also have another script for forcing the update, which checks the last_changed timestamp - this would work as expected. It seems that the 24hours trigger in the automation doesnt work…

Thanks

Btw: this one triggers perfectly. It is for a similar purpose: when away the state is “just away”, after 10minutes it should switch to “away”

 
- alias: Mark person as away
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: input_select.presence_andre_preset
      to: Gerade weg
      for:
        minutes: 10
    - platform: state
      entity_id: input_select.presence_maria_preset
      to: Gerade weg
      for:
        minutes: 10
  condition:
    condition: and
    conditions:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: 'input_select.automation_presence'
        state: 'Automatik'
  action:
    - service: input_select.select_option
      data_template:
        entity_id: >
          {% if trigger.entity_id == 'input_select.presence_andre_preset' %}
            input_select.presence_andre_preset
          {% else %}
            input_select.presence_maria_preset
          {% endif %}
        option: Abwesend

komadori1 · February 4, 2020, 4:52pm

I can’t spot anything wrong with the automation honestly? But I’ve never used hours to the extend of 24. This just makes me wonder - can you use 60 minutes, or do you have to write it as 1 hour(s)?

Maybe instead of choosing 24 hours, try it with days: 1

bigcookie · February 4, 2020, 5:12pm

Will try. I have found a potential other cause: I disable the automation for a certain period of time between the 24hrs, then enable it again before the 24hrs are over (at least in the tested case).
I will check
for: “24:00:00”
as well as
for:
days: 1

Thanks for checking - this helps already.

regards!

bigcookie · February 5, 2020, 6:15pm

I found the issue:
What happens is the following (example):

Being “Abwesend” at 7am
Automation to detect 24hours being “Abwesend” will be enabled at a later stage, e.g. 10am.

In this situation, the automation doesnt fire when reaching 7am the next day. I am able to fix this, but for me this is interesting as the trigger should look into the past.

@petro: You are the person I know who knows most of automations - sorry to involve you directly. Can you let me know if the case above is a bug or by design? I would file a bug if correct.
Summary: I do have a time based trigger in an automation to be in a specific state for x amount of time. The according automation is enabled AFTER the state is “reached”, but before the amount of time is reached.
I assume it is by design, but I am not sure … Thanks!

komadori1 · February 6, 2020, 2:29am

Thanks for the update!
So it does not matter whether you specify 24h or 1day?

bigcookie · February 6, 2020, 6:43am

Will provide an update tonight. Had to trigger another 24hrs cycle for testing :-).

bigcookie · February 6, 2020, 5:53pm

So, now another 24hours passed by, I tested the following:

    - platform: state
      entity_id: input_select.presence_andre_preset
      to: Abwesend
      for:
        hours: 23

-> this worked (hours: 23)

    - platform: state
      entity_id: input_select.presence_andre_preset
      to: Abwesend
      for:
        days: 1

-> DIDN’T work

    - platform: state
      entity_id: input_select.presence_andre_preset
      to: Abwesend
      for: "24:00:00"

-> DIDN’T work

Not sure, if it was the full day, as accidently in the first attempt I put 23 hours… I will check again with 24 hours. I am a bit concerned, that 'for: “24:00:00” ’ didnt work though…

komadori1 · February 6, 2020, 6:12pm

After doing some research, can I add one more test to the lot from here and try it with the history statistics sensor? An example is further down.

Also that 23h works and 24h doesn’t is very intriguing… could you also try 23:59:59?

pnbruckner · February 6, 2020, 6:32pm

The issue you are running into is that the way the for option in the state trigger works is, once the entity changes to the specified state, it must stay in that state for the period specified in the for option, AND while HA continues to run AND while the automation continues to be enabled. If HA restarts, or the automation is turned off and back on, the trigger is “reset”, meaning it starts over looking for the entity to change to the specified state, and then starts the time-based monitoring again. The trigger does not look back into the “history” of the entity. It only monitors the entity’s state changes while it is enabled.

It would seem that a History Stats entity would help here. If you configured it to indicate how long the given entity was in the desired state, then you could use a numeric_state trigger to trigger the automation once that value went above 24 hours.

komadori1 · February 6, 2020, 6:41pm

I was about to tag you, but didn’t dare to and simply referred to the thread… but since you are here already do you have any guess why 23h works (which is also a pretty long time) and everything resembling a day does not? Is there some kind of overflow? A recorder issue?

bigcookie · February 6, 2020, 7:12pm

Just to clarify: I didnt test 24hours - accidently only 23 (using the “hours” option). Testing “hours: 24” currently.

pnbruckner · February 6, 2020, 7:30pm

No, there’s nothing wrong with specifying 24 hours. I haven’t tried to understand the previous posts entirely, but I suspect the problem was the trigger was getting reset (because the automation was being turned off and back on) before it could possibly reach 24 hours, hence it never got the chance to trigger.

bigcookie · February 6, 2020, 10:40pm

Hi Phil,

this was the first issue, you are right - and I got it confirmed. Nevertheless, I tried to specify the 24hours in different ways as written above, and only one of the automations triggered…, the one with

for:
  hours: 23

this didnt trigger:

for:
  days: 1

or

for: "24:00:00"

bigcookie · February 7, 2020, 6:01pm

I tested now again with

for:
 hours: 24

and it DIDN’T work. I can live with 23 hours though (as tested above), but somehow 24hours doesnt work.

If anybody can help, woudl be great. I am happy to test or deliver debug data

komadori1 · February 7, 2020, 6:40pm

I tested as well now without a condition to narrow the issue down as Phil said.

I’ve tested

for:
  minutes: 1

-> worked, was the control group to see if my automations work

for: "23:59:59"

-> worked

for: "24:00:00"

-> worked

for:
  days: 1

-> worked


for:
  hours: 24

-> somehow didn’t work, but I have to recheck the automation if there is no copy paste error tomorrow

bigcookie · February 7, 2020, 7:17pm

Weird. I used 4 automations, which I simply copied and changed the “for” part. Now 24 hours didnt work, but 23 did… Something is happening here. Most likely on my side, seeing your results.
Not sure why it doesnt work for me. I didnt update to the latest build as I am on 104.3 at the moment.

I created a simple environment with one input_select to monitor, which is only taking manual input. The automations have not been switched off either… Big “?”… Will investigate further. Thanks for the help!

Found one issue in my test today -testing again…

pnbruckner · February 8, 2020, 12:06am

I can’t imagine how “for: {hours: 24}” doesn’t work. But just in case there is something unexpected I just set up a test. It has two automations. Each uses a state trigger watching for an input_select to change to a certain value. Each has a for option with hours, with one set to 23 and the other to 24. When they trigger they send a persistent notification. I’ll let you know what happens (in about 24 hours. )

And, FWIW, I just used the state trigger’s schema with “days: 1” and “hours: 24”, and not surprisingly they resulted in the same timedelta object:

>>> from homeassistant.components.automation.state import TRIGGER_SCHEMA
>>> TRIGGER_SCHEMA({"platform": "state", "entity_id": "input_select.test", "to": "B", "for": {"days": 1}})
{'platform': 'state', 'entity_id': ['input_select.test'], 'to': 'B', 'for': datetime.timedelta(days=1)}
>>> TRIGGER_SCHEMA({"platform": "state", "entity_id": "input_select.test", "to": "B", "for": {"hours": 24}})
{'platform': 'state', 'entity_id': ['input_select.test'], 'to': 'B', 'for': datetime.timedelta(days=1)}

So there really doesn’t seem to be any way if “days: 1” works for “hours: 24” not to work.

komadori1 · February 8, 2020, 6:04am

I wrote it on another input_boolean for the 24h one, but it works as well

My point being is simply that it has to be the condition not staying in “Automatik” for a whole 24h which causes the problem as Phil pointed out

bigcookie · February 8, 2020, 7:57am

According to the history (db) it does - it is a manual setting. But in the last test I made a mistake, so those dont provide correct results. I will now further debug my setting.
For the tests, I am only using input_selects with manual input to avoid any other mistake.

I am wondering as I simply copy and pasted the same automation 4 times, renamed them and changed the “for”-line. At the end one automation fired.
At the end I must have made a mistake - so thanks for your testing. It give me the confidence to find the bug in my coding/setup

komadori1 · February 8, 2020, 8:02am

I just recently changed the automation again and added the condition with the same testcases as above to look like this

- id: 'test_24h'
  alias: 'test_24h'
  trigger:
    platform: state
    entity_id: input_boolean.dummybool
    to: "on"
    for:
      hours: 24
  condition:
    condition: and
    conditions:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: 'input_select.automation_presence'
        state: 'Automatik'
  action:
    service: input_boolean.turn_on
    data:
      entity_id: input_boolean.test24h

I’ve changed the input_select from Manuell to Automatik and then triggered the dummybool, I’ll report tomorrow my findings

Just want to note that I am not doinga nything else with the input_select - do you have some automation that includes it in an action?