Outdoor Lighting Automation Based on Specific Dates

Configuration
1

Huge apologies if this has already been asked (and please feel free to send me the link), but I’m still learning HA and am stumped on this. It seems like it should be simple, but…

We have our outdoor light (and now Twinkly lights in our bushes for the season) set to come on at sunset, and go off at 11pm. We’re huge football fans (I’ll spare you the team name, as to not set off a totally different discussion), and on game days, I set all of the lights to red manually, then change them back to the normal setting the next day.

So the question is: How can I automate this to change the lights on specific dates, but then change back to normal on all other dates?

I truly appreciate the help!

2

Post the automation you currently use (YAML format).

3

I would probably go the slightly less automated way of having a switch on you deck that you need to flip on game days. So just one button to press, and not at a specific time. But also not pulling game days from a calendar or something. If you’d prefer that, give us more info in what format you have the game days, and how you want to connect the data to HA.

  1. Add an input boolean helper
  2. Add an automation to reset it to “off” at midnight every day
  3. In your existing automation, if the helper is “on”, set the lights to red; otherwise set them to normal
  4. Add the input boolean to your deck. Now you only need to flip that switch on your deck on game days.
4

Here’s the current. Note that I need to figure out the “specific day” and how to change back to regular on all non-specific days:

alias: Outdoor Lighting - Team Gameday
  description: ''
  triggers:
  - trigger: sun
    event: sunset
    offset: 0
  conditions: []
  actions:
  - type: turn_on
    device_id: 1b46b6c0dbafb705b38b4a497a473078
    entity_id: 8090daf34cd6995a577bffc767e44bf1
    domain: light
  - type: turn_on
    device_id: cea7353d8111e94b9be9b4a0c7a4e3de
    entity_id: 6163b049f416eb2b816f270ff1cd86a6
    domain: light
  - type: turn_on
    device_id: cf0ea6b4c90b1ce850c1ca512c4a8ec7
    entity_id: 4003f8a8459bd4a23739559a5d3dc30b
    domain: light
  - type: turn_on
    device_id: 84d40409081b65ce3880dc0b1d24ca5d
    entity_id: fca45d0ab377209519457928892734e3
    domain: light
  - action: scene.turn_on
    metadata: {}
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: scene.outdoor_sconce_lighting
  - type: turn_on
    device_id: ae0c218d9bc1c52bd6dfb580da1d0991
    entity_id: 2639311a5098c9ef8fd0b8a0afba76c2
    domain: switch
  mode: single
5

The automation seems to control more than just one set of Twinkly lights. It turns on 4 light entities, 1 switch entity, and 1 scene entity.

Which one(s) is/are the Twinkly light(s)?

Please list the entity_ids (human readable version, like light.porch, not the long alphanumeric string) for the 4 lights and 1 switch.

Lastly, what’s in the scene?

6

The team will have a calendar that you can load in home assistant. Use that as the trigger for your automation. There’s a good blue print that will help.

7

Just realized I didn’t put the Twinkly lights in the automation individually. They are on an outdoor switch. I can leave them on their regular setting, so we’ll just leave the switch and house lights in.

ID’s are:
light.front_door_1
light.front_door_2
light.garage_door_1
light.garage_door_2
switch.side_house_plug_mss620_switch_1

In the Scene is just the four lights (above), all set to Red.

Truly appreciate your responses - thank you!

8

Apologies but I didn’t understand your explanation.

The 4 light entities are the Twinkly lights?

You said the scene contains the 4 lights and sets them to red but the same automation first turns on all the 4 lights before setting them to red? Why?

Or are the 4 lights that get turned on different from the lights in the scene?

9

The four lights are essentially Sconce lights. One on either side of our front door, and the other two on either side of our garage. The Twinkly lights are plugged into an outdoor smart plug. I figure for the sake of simplicity, I can just leave the plug (with Twinkly’s) doing it’s thing, as I really want to understand how to make the lights go red on certain days, then on every other day go back to the regular warm white.

Once I learn and understand this - then I’ll try tackling the Twinkly lights. Crawl before I walk. :slight_smile:

Thanks so much!

10

Did you see my post above?

11

Is it switch.side_house_plug_mss620_switch_1?

Why do you have your Twinkly lights connected via a smart plug?

I have a set of Twinkly lights and they appear in Home Assistant as a light entity which can be turned on/off, set to a desired color or lighting effect. Its entity_id is light.tree.

What is the entity_id of the light entity representing your Twinkly lights?