Do we know if this snapshot is really the fault and/or if there’s a known workaround?
Now that it’s summer, I’d like to use this…but trying to figure out how best to make this fool proof and not find myself in a house 5-10 degrees hotter than I want it because it didn’t reactivate the system when the door/window was closed. Maybe another automation to check and then re-enable would help?
Is everyone here using an ecobee device? I have tried recreating the problems you are experiencing (I’m also using an ecobee 4) and I am not having any troubles with this. I am updated to the latest version of home assistant.
The only other issue I can think of is if you are restarting home assistant while the automation is in the paused state. Then it will not resume upon re-closure of your door or window.
If using ecobee are you using the ecobee integration or are you using the HomeKit integration to control your ecobee? I’d recommend using the homekit integration as that allows local control as opposed to using cloud control via the ecobee integration.
I’m using an ecobee 3 lite via the ecobee integration, not homekit. Interesting, will try homekit and see how that goes.
The reboot hypothesis doesn’t work for my scenario because I was deliberately testing and waiting to see what would happen and reproduced the system not turning back on like it should.
Let me know how that works for you. When I first started using this a couple years ago I had a lot of trouble with the ecobee integration due to the long delays caused by it going through the cloud. Using homekit makes this work almost instantaneously.
The only trouble I’m finding now is it won’t let you select ‘0’ for the number inputs with the newer version of home assistant. I’ve already made an updated version with the ‘duration’ input method I can upload if you can get that working.
Ok, I’ve set it up and will be testing over the next few days.
Question regarding Homekit - did you connect Ecobee to Homekit first and then connect that entity to HA? Or did you setup Ecobee via Homekit directly in HA?
I did the latter, but I’ve noticed some interesting differences already between the ecobee integration and the homekit setup I did, such as the current temperature reported in the climate entity does not show decimal degrees via Homekit, but it does via the direct integration.
I set up the Ecobee via HomeKit directly in HA. Mine also does not display decimals in the temperature, however for me that is a non issue. Also direct from the ecobee support website “The ecobee temperature sensor has a +/- 1.0F accuracy”, so I wouldn’t trust it myself for anything useful.
Interesting. So what temperature sensor do you use to help regulate your climate that ecobee is trying to maintain?
Perhaps I worded that poorly. I use the ecobee and the ecobee remote sensors for monitoring temperature, but I would not attempt to control to within a tenth of a degree considering the accuracy is +/- 1.0
This looks pretty nice, thanks for posting, I’m going to give it a try. One thing I think I’m going to add in as well is pushing a notification to the Ecobee screen itself. I’ve done this manually before when my wife leaves the windows open and tries to run the AC. I remotely turn it off and send: “AC or Windows, pick one!” which results in sensor.wife_amusement=0
Something like that would also be useful in a VRBO where the tourons are oblivious.
Update: Looks like this doesn’t work with the “New style groups” in HA which can be managed via the UI or YAML.
This integration will only detect " Old style groups" via yaml, and I was able to get this working using something like this in my configuration.yaml.
group:
climate_impacting_doors_and_windows:
name: "Climate impacting doors and windows"
entities:
- binary_sensor.front_door_sensor_2
...
Docs on this topic: Group - Home Assistant
Is there anyway to make this persist across restarts?
I like to update home assistant while I am home and available, and today I had the windows open all day and it didn’t resume when I closed in the evening.
Is this a general home assistant state issue with automations or specifically this blueprint?
Seems like my code is starting to become dated… I haven’t been messing with home assistant too much so I’ll look into the new style groups from your previous comment. As far as making it persistent across restarts unless there has been some updates that make it easier there is not really a nice way to make it persistent using a blueprint. To make it persistent you would have to create a couple state values that track the status of the HVAC system and last time I checked I can’t include that in a blueprint. I have done it that way and can help you, it’s just a lot more custom and not terribly user friendly. I’ll also look into the newer versions of home assistant and see if maybe something was added that lets me create a simple blueprint you can download.
Edit: Unfortunately looking through the updates it appears the same problem exists if you are updating or restarting home assistant. The problem is the automations and created scenes are not persistent through a restart but adding the variables is still a usable workaround it just can’t be included directly in the blueprint. This is an excerpt from the scenes documentation that highlights the issues. (Also they have a new example of doing what my blueprint does that wasn’t there before, kind of funny.)
" Create a new scene without having to configure it by calling the scene.create service. This scene will be discarded after reloading the configuration."
Pretty good blueprint!
Could you please consider expanding this so that the HVAC will be paused if the door/window sensor(s)group(s) are already opened when the HVAC device is turned on?
Hi!
This blueprint is lovely but seems a bit inconsistent for me. Maybe about half the time, this doesn’t turn my HVAC back on. It leaves it in the off position. I’m noticing it mostly when the door or windows have been open for a while. Is there some sort of a timeout either in Home Assistant or this automation?
Thanks!
Hey glad you like the idea of the automation. There is no timeout in either homeassistant or in the automation. Some possible scenarios that could cause the issue would be if you are restarting either homeassistant or whatever you have homeassistant running on while the HVAC system is in the ‘paused’ state. It will not pick up where it left off due to current limitations with the scene creation process in homeassistant.
The other possibility I could see is if your sensors don’t have the greatest connection and become unavailable while the HVAC system is in the ‘paused’ state. To possibly correct this scenario you could try to edit the code by going to the
- wait_for_trigger:
section towards the bottom and where it says
from: on
to: off
try deleting the part that says
from: on
If you decide to edit the code don’t forget to either reload the automations or just restart homeassistant.
Hope this helps you out.
Is it possible to create 2 automations based on this blueprint for 2 different HVAC at home?
For what I see the scene_id is fixed, so when the second automation is triggered, if the other one is already triggered it tries to create the same scene_id so it doesn’t works.
It is possible to setup the scene_id name based on the HVAC entity that is controlling?
Thanks for the reply! I’m actually experiencing a slightly different issue now (and I’m not sure when it changed). This blueprint is, indeed, successfully stopping and restarting my HVAC but it’ll only return my ecobee to a permanent “hold” state, and not the comfort setting that it was set to before the automation occurred. Any ideas?
Thanks again! This is definitely one of my favorite automations I have going, even if just to turn the HVAC off.
Hey sorry for the late reply. I’m not terribly certain on if it is possible but I will definitely look into that. I like the idea.
Hey glad to hear it is working so I had the same issue but I was able to fix it using the ‘Resume Action’ built into the blueprint. In HA for ecobee there is a button press to ‘clear hold’. Using the ‘Resume Action’ I added in a ‘wait for trigger’ to look for when the ecobee goes ‘from off’ leaving the ‘to’ field blank and then an action after that which triggers the ‘clear hold’ button. The wait for trigger option is probably not necessary but it catches any issues if there is a slow down on the network. I also made the ‘continue on timeout’ option in the ‘wait for trigger’ action 5 seconds just to make sure it triggers. Once the ‘clear hold’ button is triggered your ecobee will resume the normal schedule.
Your suggestion has been implemented in version 1.5. Thank you for the idea! Let me know if you decide to use it how it works for you!