Persistent Counters?

[Khaztr (Steven Sanchez)]

Does anyone know of a way to pull off a persistent counter that will pick up where it left off in the case of a reboot of HA? The only idea I can think of (with my limited familiarity with HA) is using the “counter” component that somehow links to some sort of non-volatile memory such as a simple .txt file, writing the current value to the file on a periodic basis and pulling from it to set its initial value after a reboot. Can anyone confirm that this is possible and/or provide any pointers on how to accomplish that?

[keithh666 (Keith Hull)]

I think there are a couple in share your projects.

[Khaztr (Steven Sanchez)]

Cool, let me know when you finish your post with some contributing information.

[VDRainer]

You can use this

Custom component to declare/set variables

Because I found myself creating more and more workarounds ( using input_booleans and sliders ) to get some basic things done through automations ( e.g. counters and saving/restoring state ) I wrote a small custom_component for variables. It allows declaring variables (state) in the configuration and setting/updating variables through service calls. Source can be found on github: The readme on github contains all the information to get you set-up and examples for how to use it in automatio…

[fabaff (Fabian Affolter)]

The counter supports restoring the state on startup already or at least it should according to the unit tests.

[Khaztr (Steven Sanchez)]

It doesn’t as far as I can tell. Nothing in the official documentation about that feature, either. Curious, where did you get the idea it would support that? Sure would be nice.

[Khaztr (Steven Sanchez)]

Thanks! The variable component looks pretty good, since they added that “restore” attribute. I’ll give it a shot.

[fabaff (Fabian Affolter)]

@Khaztr

Curious, where did you get the idea it would support that?

Because I created the component and wrote the unit tests.

[Khaztr (Steven Sanchez)]

Hmm, then I’m surprised you’re wrong. Think support for this can be added soon?

[romain38]

Hi,

Same problem for me with 0.59.2 version (and previous).
I’ve opened an issue: https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/issues/10994.

Regards,

Romain.

[oakbrad]

I agree this would be nice. I want to track when to buy new filters etc based on use. So counting things over a long period.

[pho (Jaime)]

@fabaff, I’ve been trying to use the restore feature and its not working for me either

Looks like the config_schema uses an Optional field with a default value, so there is always an _initial in there for the async_added_to_hass check.
In fact, the unit tests are asserting that a counter without config with a last state of 11, gets resetted to 0 (https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/blob/master/tests/components/counter/test_init.py#L175)

[ajfriesen (Andrej Friesen)]

I just had asked on Discord but then found this post.
Running Hass.io on version 0.60.0 and the conter does not restore after a restart.

[wang3an]

I am looking for a way to set a countdown timer (which can be continued after the hass reboot).
After some searching work, I think maybe I can use component recorder and component input_number to achieve my goal.
Will try it later.