I’ve got a automation rule for traffic observation and notify if the value of my google_travel_time sensor is bigger than 25 min. This notification should be only executed an work days and for example between 6 and 8 am.
This is what I’ve done:
- alias: Home to work
trigger:
- platform: numeric_state
entity_id: sensor.traffic_home2work
above: 25
condition:
condition: and
conditions:
- condition: time
after: '06:00:00'
before: '08:00:00'
weekday:
- mon
- tue
- wed
- thu
- fri
action:
service: notify.telegram
data_template:
message: >
Much traffic on the road. {{ states("sensor.traffic_home2work") }} min.
It works but I’ve got a few advanced requirements:
If traffic sensor is above 25 min BEFORE 6:00 the automation won’t be executed yet. For example traffic sensor changes to 26 min on 5:45 and stays until 6:00 so I would like to be notified on 6:00.
Execute automation only if the sensor state changes by 5 minutes. For example if the sensor changes from 26 to 27 it is not a big deal but if it changes from 26 to 31 I would like to be notified.
For the second part, are you wanting it to trigger when it changes 5 in a single update, or 5 from the last time you were notified? If it’s the former, you can use a template condition with {{ abs(trigger.to_state.state - trigger.from_state.state) >= 5 }}. For the latter, you’d probably need to save the value off somehow every time the automation executes. I can think of several ways to do that, but none of them are exactly trivial to do from an automation (e.g. MQTT, write to a file, use REST API to update a sensor value, etc).
@tboyce1
Great idea. I would like to be notified if the state changes more than 5 minutes after last notification. I have to think about the implementation. Beside the last notified value, I need further information like last notify timestamp (e.g. 5 minute rule should be ignored on the next day and should notify immediatly). Another possibility is to reset the sensor value to 0 after 8:00 am…I think I will try it with MQTT.
I just wanna give a update on my implementation. As mentioned by @tboyce1 I used a MQTT sensor to save the old drive time. The sensor with the old drive time is set to 0 at 8:01 in a second automation.
Assuming sensor.traffic_home2work_old is your MQTT sensor and is only updated whenever you publish a new value, you don’t necessarily need to reset the value at 8:00. Another option is to use the last_updated attribute of the sensor to tell if it was updated recently enough to use it.
then it will trigger if traffic_home2work_old hasn’t been updated in the last 3 hours (since it only updates in a 2 hour window, this would mean it hasn’t updated since the day before, with a small buffer so it doesn’t falsely trigger at the end of the window) or if the value is greater than the last time reported.
Then you can remove reset_mqtt_traffic_home2work automation and the if/else check in pub_mqtt_traffic_home2work.
Going a bit further, you can probably even use a template sensor for traffic_home2work_old:
sensor:
sensors:
# If the time is between 6:00 and 8:00, update the value only if traffic_home2work
# has increased above the last trigger value, otherwise leave it unchanged.
# If the time is not between 6:00 and 8:00, reset the value to 0.
traffic_home2work_trigger:
entity_id: sensor.traffic_home2work
unit_of_measurement: min
value_template: >
{%- if '06:00' <= now().strftime('%H:%M') <= '08:00' -%}
{%- if states('sensor.traffic_home2work') | float > states('sensor.traffic_home2work_trigger') | float -%}
{{states.sensor.traffic_home2work}}
{%- else -%}
{{ states.sensor.traffic_home2work_trigger }}
{%- endif -%}
{%- else -%}
0
{%- endif -%}
automation:
- alias: Home to work
trigger:
- platform: numeric_state
# Use traffic_home2work_trigger here, that way we don't need the template condition anymore
entity_id: sensor.traffic_home2work_trigger
above: 25
- platform: time
at: '06:00:00'
condition:
- condition: and
conditions:
- condition: numeric_state
# Leave this using traffic_home2work so it works for the time-based trigger
entity_id: sensor.traffic_home2work
above: 25
- condition: time
# Probably don't need after or before since the trigger sensor will always be 0 outside of that range
after: '06:00:00'
before: '08:00:00'
weekday:
- mon
- tue
- wed
- thu
- fri
action:
- service: notify.telegram
data_template:
message: >
Much traffic on the road. {{ states("sensor.traffic_home2work") }} min.
Note: I haven’t tested this so the syntax may a bit off or there may be some issues but it should give you the general idea if you want to try to go this route.
I’ve implemented this but didn’t get the right result today (implemented it in a slightly different other way). Will double check this at the weekend and test it next week and finally report my solution back
@tboyce1,
I’ve tested your solution but this won’t work the way it is meant to be.
I think the template sensor updates it self immediately after the update of the traffic sensor. Therefore the sensors are always the same value (except the time is out of range, than the template sensor is 0). There is nothing to compare with For now I stay with the MQTT solution which runs very well.
Maybe I come back to this topic later. I appreciate your help! Thanks!
