the way you currently have it written will only update when sensor.cabin_freezer_temp_timestamp updates. Meaning it will always be zero and it will never evaluate to true. If you want it to update every minute, you need to add an entity to it to make it update every minute. something like sensor.time.
see ‘working without entities’ section of the template sensor documentation
Thanks - I went down that path a bit but missed that the point of the entity_id was to update…and since my template was evaluting as expected in the template tester, I figured I was on the right path (now I realize that the tester forces an udpate…).
But alas, when I add the entity_id like below I’m still not getting an update to the binary_sensor:
binary_sensor:
- platform: template
sensors:
people_home:
friendly_name: People Home
device_class: presence
value_template: "{{ is_state('device_tracker.pixel_3_xl', 'home') or is_state('device_tracker.pixel_3_dan', 'home') }}"
no_freezer_data:
friendly_name: Freezer No Data
# device_class: problem
entity_id: sensor.time
value_template: "{{ (now() - states.sensor.cabin_freezer_temp_timestamp.last_changed | default(0)).total_seconds() > 60}}"