OpenGarage vehicle detection "Unavailable" makes automation triggers difficult

Configuration
1

The OpenGarage.io device uses sensors to detect the presence of a car. It also detects the garage door when it is fully opened, which blocks line of sight to the car’s spot. Thus, when opening the garage (often but not always to move the car into or out of it), the vehicle presence sensor goes to “Unavailable”.

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This makes writing triggers difficult. I cannot write a trigger that checks the state of the car presence going from on to off, because unavailable shows up in the middle.

How can I make that work? How can I do something simple like “if car goes from away (off) to home (on), turn on light”?

Ideally the integration for OpenGarage would not change the car presence to unavailable when the garage door opens, but that’s just my opinion.

2

You can’t do it entirely via the UI, but if you edit the yaml of your trigger you can specify ‘not_from’. See the documentation here: Automation Trigger - Home Assistant

Here’s one of my automation triggers as an example:

trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
    - alarm_control_panel.home_alarm
    id: MANUALLY_DISARMED
    to: disarmed
    not_from:
    - unknown
    - unavailable
3

Don’t specify the from state in your trigger, just the to state.

1 Like
4

Does that trigger when it goes on > unavailable > on?

5

If your trigger is to: 'on' then yes. It don’t care where it came from, just what it went to.

6

But that’s my issue. I only want it to trigger from off to on (with an unavailable in the middle).

Maybe I can just make a helper toggle that follows the on off state and ignores the unavailable, and have my automation trigger on that instead.

7

Trigger from off → unavailable.

In your actions use a wait for trigger, unavailable → on.

8

Does this keep waiting if it expects a wait trigger unavail → on, but instead gets off? If so, how can i make it stop waiting from unavail → any, but only move on when it’s the right bool?

This is what I have so far:

trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.car
    to: unavailable
    id: Home
    from: "off"
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.car
    to: unavailable
    id: Away
    from: "on"
condition: []
action:
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: trigger
            id:
              - Home
        sequence:
          - wait_for_trigger:
              - platform: state
                entity_id:
                  - binary_sensor.car
                from: unavailable
                to: "on"
            timeout:
              hours: 0
              minutes: 10
              seconds: 0
              milliseconds: 0
            continue_on_timeout: false
          - service: dostuff
      - conditions:
          - condition: trigger
            id:
              - Away
        sequence:
          - wait_for_trigger:
              - platform: state
                entity_id:
                  - binary_sensor.car
                from: unavailable
                to: "off"
            timeout:
              hours: 0
              minutes: 10
              seconds: 0
              milliseconds: 0
            continue_on_timeout: false
          - service: dostuff

Maybe I just write the wait trigger for from unavail, leave the to blank, and then the next step be a check for the appropriate on/off. This is somewhat annoying to test as it requires me driving back and forth.

I want stuff to trigger when I leave or get home (turning off lights for my office/bedroom when I leave, opening the garage as I arrive). I want other stuff to happen if the garage is opened for any other reason (where my car does not leave or enter the garage). I might just be going about this the wrong way entirely.

9

Yes remove the “to” state. That will trigger on unavailable to any state.

          - wait_for_trigger:
              - platform: state
                entity_id:
                  - binary_sensor.car
                from: unavailable
            timeout:
              hours: 0
              minutes: 10
              seconds: 0
              milliseconds: 0
            continue_on_timeout: false