Newbie Templating Question

[Sergeantpup]

Hello,

I’ve been on HA almost a month and I know enough to be dangerous. With that said, I have two very simple templating questions.

I’ve gotten far enough to figure out how to average the temperature of two sensors per the instructions on the templating docs page:

template:
  - sensor:
      - name: "Average Outdoor Temperature"
        unit_of_measurement: "°F"
        state: >
          {% set front_door_trisensor = states('sensor.front_door_trisensor_air_temperature') | float %}
          {% set garage_door_trisensor = states('sensor.garage_door_trisensor_air_temperature') | float %}

          {{ ((front_door_trisensor + garage_door_trisensor) / 2) | round(1, default=0) }}

I plugged it into dev tools and it gives me the answer I expect:

It’s at this point, I get a little lost in the weeds and I don’t know which action is appropriate.

I ultimately want to make an automation trigger when the average of these two temperature sensors drops below 40F
Now that I have a sensor built that averages the two temperature sensors, when I try to build the automation, it’s not really setup in a way like “drops below”

This doesn’t seem right and I think I’m lost/this won’t work.

Should I be triggering the automation off of a value template that already has the average temp of these two sensors with the offset for 40 degrees?

I need an automation that will trigger when the average temp of these two sensors drops below 40 sensor.front_door_trisensor_air_temperature and sensor.garage_door_trisensor_air_temperature

I need another automation that will trigger when the average illuminance of these two sensors drops below 150 sensor.garage_door_trisensor_illuminance and sensor.front_door_trisensor_illuminance. With help on the temperature, I can probably meander my way through the illuminance.

I know I’m missing a step and I think it’s because I’m confusing two different ways of implementing this trigger.

[finity]

You can use a template that says “((sensor_1 + sensor_2) / 2) < 40” to trigger the automation and skip creating another sensor just for that one purpose.

but since you already have the sensor you could also use the ‘numeric-state’ trigger and set tht so the average sensor below 40 to do the trigger.

[Sergeantpup]

@finity

((sensor_1 + sensor_2) / 2) < 40

That was so incredibly obvious and makes perfect sense lol. I already plugged it in and now I can see how to do the same thing with illuminance. ((sensor.front_door_trisensor_air_temperature + sensor.garage_door_trisensor_air_temperature) / 2) < 40

Thank you

[Sergeantpup]

Hello,

I know you randomly popped in and provided me with what I thought was the solution. I’ve since discovered it’s not working and I was wondering if you could once again offer some advice.

Any time I use this template for the illuminance, it’s not working. I’ve definitely narrowed it down to this part of the automation.

condition: template
value_template: >-
  ((sensor.front_door_trisensor_illuminance +
  sensor.garage_door_trisensor_illuminance) / 2) < 150

This all seems like it should work but everywhere I used it, it failed. I also tried using “<150 lux” and I got the same non-results.

Do you know what I might be doing wrong or where I can look to investigate?

Here’s a picture to confirm the illuminance data:

Here it is if I’m just trying to do with straight with 1 sensor:

type: is_illuminance
condition: device
device_id: 2149ea6050af0e14cbc6b68ff1a51ab5
entity_id: sensor.front_door_trisensor_illuminance
domain: sensor
below: 150

[Didgeridrew]

Your template is missing a few important parts…

condition: template
value_template: >-
  {{ ((states('sensor.front_door_trisensor_illuminance')|int +
  states('sensor.garage_door_trisensor_illuminance')|int) / 2) < 150 }}

[Sergeantpup]

@Didgeridrew

{{ ((states('sensor.front_door_trisensor_illuminance')|int +
  states('sensor.garage_door_trisensor_illuminance')|int) / 2) < 150 }}

thank you, that worked perfectly and I understand why now.

[finity]

I guess I needed to be more specific on what I wrote.

I was just giving a generic description of what could be done and didn’t mean that you could directly copy it without the correct jinja template syntax surrounding it.

sorry about that.

[Sergeantpup]

No worries, I’m learning and I’ve only got 5 templates I need to worry about!